Australia Day by Doug Bannerman 25th January 2026
In my lifetime, less than a hundred years, the skies of my homeland have darkened to the point where the milky way is barely visible on a supposedly clear night. The climate has changed, and democracy is shredding. Oddly enough, Australia is lucky to have the most robust democracy in the world, thanks to compulsory voting and the preferential counting system.
In the lifetime of Australian First Nations People, some 65,000 years, they developed ongoing spiritual and cultural connections to the land and sea for thousands of generations. That led to a sophisticated culture and civilisation; and they can be accounted as Australia’s first explorers, navigators, engineers, farmers, botanists, scientists, diplomats, astronomers and artists – a culture all but destroyed by an imperialist occupying power.
65,000 years has been long enough for First Nations People to be able to read and hear the land, also known as Country (capital C). They can feel the heart of Country, be aware of her breathing. Deep listening for First Nations people arises from a seamless integration with Country. It is not a skill; it is a way of being.
Today is Aboriginal Sunday, the Sunday before Australia Day. The antecedents of Australia Day go back a long way. In the early 19th century, Sydney celebrated “Foundation Day” on 26 January. As the other colonies were established, they celebrated their own foundation days.
In 1901 the primary national holiday, the late Queen Victoria’s birthday, was renamed “Empire Day”, celebrated on May 24. The last celebration of Empire Day in Australia took place in 1958, when it was renamed Commonwealth Day. Commonwealth Day is still observed by Australian state governors and the governor-general.
By 1935, the states all agreed to use the name Australia Day and celebrate it on January 26.
Meanwhile a parallel process of activism dominated by Uncle William Cooper (born in 1860 or 1861), together with Uncle Jack Patten, Uncle William Ferguson, Aunty Pearl Gibbs, Aunty Marg Tucker, were seeking justice for the indigenous peoples of Australia. Cooper was familiar with the indigenous rights movements in North America and New Zealand.
His long campaign for Aboriginal rights, especially land rights, began with the Maloga Petition to the Governor of New South Wales in 1887. He and ten others signed the petition, which, amongst other things, held that local Aboriginal people should be granted sections of land not less than 100 acres per family in fee simple (a permanent and absolute tenure in land with freedom to dispose of it at will), or else at a small nominal rental annually with the option of purchase at a later date. The governor turned down that petition.
Much, much later in 1933, after decades of relentless letter writing, Cooper and others mounted a petition to the King. Despite active obstruction from the national and state governments of the day, the petition was finally submitted to the commonwealth government in August 1937. However, Joseph Lyons and his cabinet thwarted that initiative. On a technicality.
Responding to the many failures of democratic means to gain justice for First Nations people, Cooper's Australian Aborigines' League, together with Jack Patten and William Ferguson from the Aborigines Progressive Association, arranged a Day of Mourning to commemorate the sesquicentenary of colonisation, on Australia Day, 1938.
But there still remains unfinished business.
We, here, now, acknowledge the elders of the Bundjalung Nation who continue to, and will always, care for these lands; and, I hope, we seek to hear their voices, listen to their stories, respect their wisdom, and respond adequately to their pleas for justice.’
I have often commented to you on my personal response to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, as being the most graceful, peaceful and courteous document of its kind. The response to the statement was hardly that.
This long weekend of Australia Day, dozens of events will be held around the country by First Nations communities, families and allies to commemorate the day, also known by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as Survival Day or the Day of Mourning.
I am very interested to note that, almost without exception, the planners of these events are inviting people to come together peaceably, using words like yarning, reflection, listening, understanding, reconciliation, remembering, justice, truth telling, peaceful protest, connecting, respect, strength, honouring, and solidarity, together with smoking ceremonies, music, dance, art and the inevitable picnicking.
We are a multicultural country with strong populations of differing faiths and ethnicity. So, although today I am addressing the particular issues of First Nations people, what I have to say has a universal appeal. Cosmic, in fact. For however we as individuals or communities might identify ourselves, our origins are undeniably cosmic.
Glenn Loughry wrote last week, with regard to the Bondi killings,
‘For Aboriginal people, the past is not past; it remains present in Country, in memory, and in ongoing structural harm. Any claim about “national shame” that overlooks this reality risks reinforcing the very exclusions it seeks to condemn. We do not honour today’s victims by forgetting yesterdays. We honour them by refusing selective memory — by insisting that grief, accountability, and truth apply to all, not just to some.’
In similar vein Elie Wiesel spoke of a World War 2 occasion in his acceptance speech for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.
‘I remember. It happened yesterday or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night. I remember his bewilderment; I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
‘He asked his father: “Can this be true?” This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?
‘And now the boy is turning to me: “Tell me”, he asks. “What have you done with my future? What have you done with your life?”
‘And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. We could not prevent their deaths the first time, but if we forget them, they will be killed a second time. And this time, it will be our responsibility.
‘And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the centre of the universe.’
We are a multicultural country. Surely, we cannot avoid being aware of injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism, and political persecution, writers and poets, prisoners in many lands governed by the Left and by the Right. Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. And it is happening on our own doorstep. The doorstep of, possibly, the most functional democracy in the world. Shameful.
I hope that Australia can respond adequately sooner rather than later. But that requires a profound cultural and political change that big money resists. Imperialism has given way to mammon. But who is protesting? And how?
We need to speak up in whatever way we can. And yet such speaking must be irenic, peaceful, devoid of the antagonism that marks parliamentary debate and some protest marches and gatherings.
A Franciscan Blessing.
May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships. May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation. May God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, doing in God’s name what others claim cannot be done. Amen.
Doug Bannerman.