The direction of travel is changing

‘Is the fate of Australia Day heading only in one direction?’

Back in January 2023 that was the question in the headline to a 1,600 word article in The Age. The article predicted that ‘as young people age, overall support for Australia Day will tumble into the minority over the next decade.’ That’s not happening. Australia Day is heading up – not down.

Last week I mentioned polling commissioned by the Institute of Public Affairs conducted by Dynata of 1,002 Australians showing public support for Australia Day being celebrated on 26 January increased from 63% last year to 69% in 2025. Those who said the day shouldn’t be celebrated fell from 17% to 14%.

Significantly, 52% of 18-24 year-olds support celebrating Australia Day – up from 42% last year, while those who disagreed fell from 30% to 23%. The idea that all young Australians are Green and Left and Woke and therefore that’s the country’s future is just wrong. Remember, 41% of all 18-24 year-olds voted No to the Voice.

Then a few days ago The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald released a survey from Resolve Political Monitor, also about Australia Day. The findings were similar to the IPA poll. The Resolve survey had 61% of Australians saying 26 January should be the country’s national day, with only 24% saying the date should be changed. Last year, 33% wanted it changed, and in 2023, 39% did. That’s a big decline. Interestingly, more Labor voters wanted the date to stay as is (39%) than want it changed (32%). That percentage of Labor voters who support Australia Day is close to the figure of 37% of Labor voters who voted No at the Voice referendum.

So, what do I think is happening? Why is it that rather than support for Australia Day ‘tumbling’ it’s growing? I think there are a few reasons.

1. Mainstream Australians discovered they’re not alone.

The result of the Voice referendum did many things. One of them was to provide proof that the values of the mainstream are the values of the majority of Australians. One of those values is a commitment to the principle that all Australians, regardless of their race or background, are entitled to the same political and legal rights. However, that was not the position taken by the corporate, cultural, civic, legal, and educational establishments, and it wasn’t a view reflected in most of the media’s coverage of the referendum. It’s highly unlikely that the CEO of every ASX 100 company voted Yes. But I do know that every CEO either said they were voting Yes from commitment or convenience or was intimidated into silence. Not a single CEO dared to say they were voting No. For a long time, anyone arguing for equality felt pretty alone. As we saw on the night of 14 October 2023, they weren’t alone – but up until then, they felt as if they were. In the lead-up to the referendum vote, many Australians felt something like ‘if voting No is good enough for Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine because they say we’re all equal – then that’s good enough for me.’ The ‘vibe shift’ is about having the confidence to say what you believe and knowing that most people think the same thing. The confidence flowing from the Voice referendum is witnessed in many other debates about our country and culture, including Australia Day.

2. Elite opinion is a minority opinion.

The flipside of mainstream opinion, being the opinion of the majority, is that the opinions of the elite are those of the minority. Certainly, it is a powerful minority, but a minority nonetheless – and the beauty of the Voice referendum was that every Australian’s vote was equal. The hold over the public and the opinions of the elites and experts is slowly being loosened. There are many reasons for that, the primary one being that over the last few years, elites and experts haven’t done a very good job, while the decline of the legacy media has allowed people to talk about it. It’s not exactly the case that if a former prime minister (Malcolm Turnbull) or even an Australian of the Year (Grace Tame who described 26 January as ‘Invasion Day’) calls for the date of Australia Day to be changed, that, therefore mainstream Australians will say ‘we should do the exact opposite’ – but we’re not far off it. Big business is leading the push against Australia Day. And a reaction has been provoked. Public sentiment in Australia at the moment is such that the best way to kill off an idea is to get big business to back it.

3. The stakes are now higher.

The debate about the date of Australia Day is not just a debate about a date. How we think about ourselves and Australia is enormously important. Symbols and words matter. There’s no point talking about ‘social cohesion’ in Australia if there’s nothing to cohere to. The British historian Benedict Anderson might have been a Marxist, but he wasn’t wrong when he said a nation is ‘an imagined political community’. He meant that because it’s impossible to know the other members of the nation personally, citizens need to imagine they are all part of the same community, share the same values, and look out for each other. No one who has seen the protests on the streets of the country’s cities and the encampments at its universities after 7 October could think that they were manifestations of Australians looking out for their fellow Australians. It’s easier to find in Australia symbols of division than symbols of unity. Even if not every person in that 69% of Australians who support celebrating Australia Day on 26 January thinks the day is a perfect encapsulation of the country they live in, they know it’s one of the few symbols of the nation we have. They know it has the potential to be so much more.

4. Australia is worth celebrating.

During the Voice referendum I was doing a radio interview with the ABC and the host asked whether I would take some talkback calls and I said I was happy to. The very first caller began by saying that Australia was a racist and imperialist country with a history to be ashamed of. When the host asked me my reaction, I replied (and I said it nicely), ‘a) – that’s not a view I share, b) – who are you comparing us to?, c) – I can’t name a country where I’d rather live.’

As Andrew Bolt wrote out in his column in The Herald Sun this week, what Anthony Albanese said in his speech on Australia Day is revealing. Albanese said: ‘We all belong to the same proud story. We are all part of a nation built by hope and hard work, aspiration and determination. A democracy where every citizen counts themselves equal. A society where your character counts more than your name, where your hard work matters more than where you came from.’ That’s all good as far as it goes – but that’s not what Albanese actually believes. The Voice repudiated the idea that ‘every citizen counts themselves equal’. Albanese is just wrong when he claims that in Australia,’ your character counts more than your name’ and ‘your hard work matters more than where you came from. ‘ Albanese was talking about an Australia that may have once existed but doesn’t anymore. And the 60% of Australians who voted No to the Voice know it.

Albanese probably hasn’t read the ‘2024 – 2027 Inclusion, Equity and Diversity Strategy’ of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He should. Then, he should explain how he can claim that in Australian public service, ‘your character counts more than your name’. The 32 pages of the Strategy prove, at least when it comes to working at DFAT it might be better for your name to be Joanna than John. 59% of department staff identify as women. We know this because the department collects data and reports in detail on the identity of its staff, including their sexuality. The department has employment targets for the number of its staff according to their gender, Indigeneity, and whether they are ‘Culturally and Linguistically Diverse.’

The department embraces every sort of diversity – except diversity of political opinion – as you can see from this list (from page 7):

Diversity attributes can include the unique mix of a person’s age, ancestry, culture, faith, language, place of birth, education, class [does anyone still talk about ‘class’ anymore?], gender, sex, sexual orientation, disability, neurological difference and more.

Albanese says ‘ancestry’ and ‘place of birth’ don’t matter in Australia. Penny Wong’s department says they do. Both can’t be right.

All of this is justified because according to the Strategy, ‘The case for inclusion, equity and diversity is compelling and backed by extensive research. Organisations with mature approaches to diversity – characterised by inclusive cultures that value different thought patterns, experiences and abilities – are more effective at risk analysis, more creative and better at decision making.’ Apparently these things can be precisely measured – ‘inclusive teams [are] 8.5 times more likely to collaborate effectively.’

Just as the vibe shift came first for the Voice and then Australia Day, so it will come, for as Janet Albrechtsen brilliantly described them in today’s Australian newspaper, ‘The Diversity Divas’. This is how her piece started:

One phrase in an executive order signed by Donald Trump last week must have caused a collective inhaling of breath from diversity divas in Australia.

That Trump wants an end to the ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ fad was no surprise. What’s most agitating to DEI devotees is the language he used when announcing its demise.

Trump said DEI policies’ not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding federal civil rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence and individual achievement in favour of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatised, demeaned or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex’.

In that terrific denunciation of DEI is one short phrase – identity-based spoils system – that exposes the racket. That kind of cut-through is enough to make Australian beneficiaries of DEI gird their loins for battle. Having secured the spoils from DEI, don’t count on DEI benefactors giving them up.

Albrechtsen pointed out that the entire DEI edifice that ‘diversity’ improves outcomes ‘was built on sand’. When the claims of a 2015 McKinsey report that purported to show a connection between corporate profits and diversity were proved untrue, McKinsey backtracked and said its research only showed ‘correlation, not causation’. ‘Alas, zealots paid no attention to this. The McKinsey report was their corporate bible and its untrue claims about the benefits of diversity became religious dogma.’ The piece concluded:

The spoils-based DEI system in Australia is almost exclusively for the benefit of women, and works heavily in favour of affluent, well-educated women. Are these middle-class women fighting so hard to hang on to quotas because, if they are abandoned and diversity left to the good sense of boards, they might have to share the spoils with say, bright but poor males of immigrant extraction?

God forbid that blokes should benefit from DEI.

Recommended Reading

On Australia Day the Institute of Public Affairs released a new research monograph by IPA Research Director, Morgan Begg. ‘Australia Day: Why we celebrate 26 January’ brilliantly explains the date’s significance and why it should be celebrated. As Morgan writes, ‘Our pioneers created a unique land of opportunity in Australia based on the values of egalitarianism, the rule of law, and liberal democracy’. The monograph is available to read and download for free – which you can do here.

Thank you for your support.

Kind regards John