The Guardian Weekly

Australia Invasion day

By Ben Doherty BEN DOHERTY IS A REPORTER FOR GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA

‘ We need to stop the lying,” Prof Marcia Langton, a Yiman and Bidjara woman, said last Thursday, as tens of thousands of people attended protest rallies in cities across the country, amid a rising political and social reckoning with the country’s colonial history. “The biggest lie, of course, is Australia Day.”

The day – 26 January – commemorates the landing of the first British fleet of convicts at Sydney Cove in 1788, the beginning of the settlement that entrenched European colonisation of the Australian continent. But Langton argues that Australia’s national day should not be one that commemorates colonisation: “I think we can find an inclusive date and I think we can start to tell the truth about Australia’s history and show some respect for all the survivors of the frontier wars.”

While the date has been acknowledged since the 19th century, Australia Day has been a national public holiday only since 1994, and has grown increasingly divisive with a broadening public awareness of the systematic dispossession of Indigenous Australians, the genocidal violence that marked British settlement and the persistent disadvantage and oppression faced by Indigenous people.

Last Thursday, rallies were held to mark “Invasion Day”, “Survival Day” and “Sovereignty Day”, in a public sign that activities on 26 January are moving away from fireworks, festivals and flag-waving to become marked by reflection, protest or disengagement.

Increasing numbers of Australians are campaigning to “change the date”. Councils have forsworn to hold citizenship ceremonies on the day, and the national broadcaster’s annual music poll – once a 26 January fixture – has been moved to the nearest weekend.

In Sydney, Wiradjuri woman Lynda-June Coe told the thousands-strong crowd the day marked a “reckoning” for white Australia. “They tried to wipe us out, still here. They tried to breed us out, still here. They tried to commit genocide on us, still here.”

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said last week that there was no proposal from his government to move Australia Day to another date, but a Guardian Essential poll found growing support for a change: 26% of Australians were supportive in 2023, up from 20% a year ago, and 15% in 2019. Advocates say an eventual change of date is inevitable.

Defenders of Australia Day, such as the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, argue Australia should celebrate its unique blend of Indigenous, British and multicultural histories. “We shouldn’t be embarrassed or ashamed by who we are, we should be more proud of who we are,” Dutton said. “We don’t need to tear down one part of our history to build up the other.”

The moment of reflection on Australia’s history and national identity has been particularly acute this year as the country begins to debate a referendum proposed for later in the year that would enshrine an Indigenous “voice” to parliament in the constitution.

The voice would advise on matters relating to the social, spiritual and economic wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Parliament and government would be obliged to consult, but the voice – proposed to be made up of 24 Indigenous people drawn from across the country – would not be a law-making body.

“It’s about drawing a line on the poor outcomes from the long legacy of failed programmes and broken policies, and listening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, said the minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, a Wiradjuri woman.

The referendum was an election commitment of the Labor government, which took power last year, but it has been criticised both from outside and within Indigenous Australia for not going far enough.

The Greens senator and First Nations spokeswoman Lidia Thorpe, a Djab-Wurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman, told an Invasion Day rally in Melbourne the Australian government needed to sign a treaty recognising Indigenous sovereignty before any vote on the voice.

“Do we want to become advisers now? We deserve better than that … our constitution comes from the soil and the blood of our people. We need peace. We deserve better than an advisory body.

“We want real power, and we won’t settle for anything less.”

At a recent campaign stop, Peter Obi responded to a regular criticism. Bola Tinubu, a rival candidate in next month’s presidential elections in Nigeria, had called him stingy. Obi told a crowd of supporters that yes, he has been stingy with public funds, and that made him a better fit for the country’s top job.

Nigerians go to the polls on 25 February to choose a replacement for Muhammadu Buhari, whose eightyear rule has been sharply criticised for failing to get to grips with rampant insecurity and a cost of living crisis.

A former state governor running for the Labour party, Obi is the first third-party candidate to present a real challenge to the dominance of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and its main opposition, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), since the end of military dictatorship in 1999.

The 61-year-old has appealed to younger voters with a message that he wants to bring real change.

Weyimi Lube, a voiceover artist, had just turned 24 when terrorists struck a Catholic church in the southern city of Owo in June last year, killing at least 40 worshippers. She said the trauma of the attack pushed her into Obi’s camp. “I told myself if we don’t push hard for Obi, I don’t think there will be a Nigeria in the future for me and the people I care about,” Lube said.

Analysts say some younger people have turned towards Obi out of a sense of desperation with the status quo in Nigeria and continued anger over the brutal suppression two years ago of the #EndSars movement, which demanded better governance.

“The youth are disillusioned with the APC and PDP. Their hopes have been squandered,” said Stephen Lafenwa, a senior lecturer at the University of Ibadan.

“We now get to see competition beyond the two parties [and] we have an expansion of choice,” said Dengiyefa Angalapu, a research analyst at the Centre for Democracy and Development. “It is no longer a situation of the devil and the deep blue sea, now it is the devil, deep blue sea and perhaps the Red Sea.” Obi faces an uphill battle against the

PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and Tinubu, a two-term governor of Lagos state and veteran of Nigerian politics running for the ruling APC. Known as the “godfather of Lagos”, Tinubu will benefit from the ruling party’s national network. Whoever wins will have to grapple with a dire economic outlook – inflation is running at 21.47% and the naira’s value has rapidly depreciated – and a proliferation of terror attacks and attacks for ransom around the country.

Security forces are fighting a 13-year-old war against jihadists in the country’s north-east, bandit militias in the north-west and separatist tensions in the country’s south-east.

Gunmen have repeatedly targeted local offices of the independent national electoral commission, which has warned that it may have to cancel or postpone the vote.

It is possible that Obi will take enough votes to prevent Abubakar or Tinubu winning in the first round, which requires a simple majority of all votes and 25% of votes in at least two-thirds of the country’s 36 states. A second-round runoff would be a first in Nigerian electoral history.

“Obi speaks the language of our problems,” said Lube. “He understands what Nigeria should look like, sound like and feel like.”

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2023-02-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

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