Minute’s silence on vexed day

There is a photo pinned to a board where I write that is just joyous. It was taken on Australia Day a year ago at the beach and features my dear friend John, my dog and myself. Fresh from the surf, our embrace is backlit by a sensational retreating sun and we are all beaming. If ever there was to be a caption ‘‘happy days’’, this picture deserves it.

For John, the picture has a special relevance. He had just returned from a long stint living in the US and it was his first Australia Day back home. As we hit the beach that day and noticed crowds with flags waving and some revellers’ faces painted with the Union Jack, John flinched. The last time he had seen such a patriotic display was in Sydney’s Maroubra, where he lived before he left some 15 years earlier. As a black man, the overt patriotic symbols worried him.

‘‘Am I OK here?’’ he asked me tentatively. His question broke my heart. You see, I too remember the ugliness of that awful time in December 2005 when so-called loyalists rioted at Sydney beaches after messages calling for a ‘‘Leb and Wog bashing day’’ had been shared widely, producing unruly crowds sporting Southern Cross tattoos and spouting racist slurs. Vision of the shameful exhibition was broadcast all over the world, causing some countries to issue a warning for its citizens not to travel to Australia.

That day, John was holed up in his home, watching the news and hoping his sister was somewhere safe. Thankfully, she was. But some 15 years later, the fear of that day was still clearly evident as we navigated our way through the celebrating crowds to find our spot on the sand. And I was saddened and appalled that this was the case. Despite the fact we ended up spending a wonderful day together, where we shared drinks with strangers and experienced friendship and respect, you only have to look at former president (damn it feels good to type that) Donald Trump’s divided America to see the result of so-called national pride at its abhorrent extreme.

Samuel Johnson, who compiled his English dictionary, once said ‘‘patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’’ and I couldn’t agree more. Because to believe that the crimes of racism and bigotry should be tolerated by those declaring a ‘‘love of country’’ is as absurd as is obscene. Tragically, racism lives on in Australia. As does a nationalistic pride that is too often blinkered to the injustices against Indigenous Australians that have indelibly scarred our early settlement history that began on January 26, 1788, when Arthur Phillip arrived in Sydney Cove, founding the colony of NSW.

As such, January 26 is not a day of celebration for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with many referring to it as Invasion Day, Survival Day or Day of Mourning. Some want to change the date to one that’s inclusive of and respectful to early inhabitants. Some want to keep the date as it is, and some want to cancel it altogether. It’s a loaded debate that recently resulted in Prime Minister Scott Morrison changing the words of our national anthem from ‘‘we are young and free’’ to ‘‘we are one and free’’ after pressure to acknowledge the more than 50,000 years Aboriginal Australians have lived on our continent.

It’s a good start to being able to own some nationalistic pride but, for me, not enough. I believe moving the date of Australia Day is an important step in recognition of our early history, as is having a day where we recognise those who came before us with respect and condolence. And it appears I am not alone. A poll conducted by Essential Media released this week shows more than half the respondents support a separate day of recognition, with 35 per cent supporting a separate day and also keeping Australia Day, and 18 per cent wanting a separate day to replace Australia Day.

Yet this seems unlikely, with Morrison saying in 2018, ‘‘We don’t have to pull Australia Day down to actually recognise the achievements of Indigenous Australia, the oldest living culture in the world; the two can coexist. Australia Day is Australia Day. You can’t pretend your history isn’t your history. That’s the day the flag went up in Farm Cove. That’s the day the course of the nation changed.’’

The idea that this ‘‘change of course’’ is somehow worthy of celebrating is an arrogance that suggests progress is the same as improvement.

And so, this Australia Day, I shall once again head to the shoreline to enjoy the surf and sunshine. But I won’t be waving any flags or chanting ‘‘Aussie Aussie Aussie!’’ Instead, I will do what Sydney MP Zali Steggall suggests, and that is to observe a minute’s silence in respect of our original inhabitants and the pain and injustice they have endured.

What’s more, my friend John will again be beside me to sit in reverential silence, knowing only too well that without inclusion and respect for all, patriotism can be, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, ‘‘the virtue of the vicious’’.

Wendy Squires is a regular columnist.