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Australians threatened to boycott 200 pubs that were plotting to scrap Australia Day celebrations. Now the hotel group has apologised, in just the latest evidence that Aussies are taking back their country from woke ideologues.

It’s December, which means it’s the season for Australia Day naysayers to begin sowing national discord again.

This year, fortunately, the pushback from everyday Australians has been swift and substantial.

Australian Venue Company (ACV), which operates more than 200 pubs around the country, has apologised after news broke last week the company had told its venue managers not to celebrate Australia Day this summer.

In response to the news, Aussie patrons took to social media threatening to boycott all such venues.

On Monday, ACV released a statement saying it regrets the “concern and confusion” it caused by denigrating the national holiday.

“It is not for us to tell anyone whether or how to celebrate Australia Day,” the statement read. “We acknowledge that and we apologise for our comments.”

Some of Australia’s premier hotels are owned by ACV, and the company welcomes approximately 15 million patrons each year. Had the boycott gone ahead, it would likely have resulted in a significant loss of business for ACV venues, particularly over the busy summer period.

Wokeness: An Ideology in Retreat

The public backlash and the subsequent apology from Australian Venue Company are just the latest evidence that wokeness is an ideology in retreat.

To be sure, we can expect more attacks on Australia Day as summer sets in.

Last year, the High Commissioner cancelled Australia Day celebrations in London; 80 councils Down Under scrapped their Australia Day citizenship ceremonies; and Woolworths told customers they would no longer stock Australia Day merchandise.

Brace yourself for similar antics from all the usual suspects.

But this year, expect a much louder outcry from Australians who, like their counterparts across the Western world, have grown weary of the confected outrage of the woke movement.

As I recently documented at Mercator:

The Economist [has] noted that “discussion and espousal of woke views peaked in America in the early 2020s and have declined markedly since”. The magazine conducted a detailed analysis using measurable data to track the decline of wokeness, including:

• Polls from Gallup, Pew and YouGov revealing a reduction in concerns about racial and sexual discrimination
• A decrease over time in the use of terms like “white privilege” and “intersectionality” in media, books and academia
• After peaking in 2021, a sharp drop in mentions of woke-related terms in newspapers, TV shows, books, academic papers and course catalogs
• A significant fall in frequency of DEI references in corporate earnings calls
• A growing number of states passing laws limiting DEI initiatives and race-based policies

Given that wokeness is a culture war imported by Australian progressives from the United States, we can expect to see — and are beginning to witness — similar trends unfold here.

Correcting the Record on Australia Day

Unfortunately, the taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has been at the forefront of this wayward culture war.

In its article reporting on the Australian Venue Company backflip, the ABC repeated the misleading canard that “it was only in 1994 that January 26 became a permanent national public holiday named Australia Day”.

In 10 Reasons to Celebrate Australia Day on the 26th of January, I set the record straight on the origins of our national holiday:

In the early 19th century, the name “Australia” had not yet come into common use, so we can hardly expect that the 26th of January was known as “Australia Day” back then. Instead, in that era, it was called “Foundation Day” and was celebrated for the founding of the British Colony of New South Wales — the only British colony that yet existed on New Holland.

As early as 1808, the colony’s immigrants — and especially emancipated convicts — were observing the 26th of January with “drinking and merriment” to “celebrate their love of the land they lived in”. Successful colonists began holding anniversary dinners on this date, with one such event being documented in the Sydney Gazette in 1817.

The year 1818 marked the 30th anniversary of the First Fleet’s arrival in Sydney Cove, prompting Governor Lachlan Macquarie to put an official stamp on the 26th of January celebrations. This included a holiday for all government workers, an extra allowance of fresh meat, and a 30-gun salute at Dawes Point — traditions that were continued by subsequent governors.

Soon, sporting events also became associated with the 26th of January, including what would ultimately become the Australia Day Regatta in Sydney Harbour, held for the first time in 1837.

The following year was the 50th anniversary of the colony. As part of the celebrations, the 26th of January was declared as Australia’s first public holiday. The Regatta was held again, this time with crowds dotting the Harbour’s foreshores. A 50-gun salute was staged at Dawes Battery, the Royal Standard was hoisted, and at night, rockets and fireworks lit up the Sydney sky.

In 1888, when the 100th anniversary rolled around, every colonial capital in Australia except Adelaide celebrated the 26th of January as “Anniversary Day”.

In 1901, the colonies federated to become the Commonwealth of Australia. The idea of celebrating a national holiday called “Australia Day” took a while to catch on, but by 1935, all of the states were celebrating the 26th of January as Australia Day.

In 1938, on Australia’s 150th anniversary, the day was proclaimed an official holiday, and in 1988, on the 200th anniversary, it became a national public holiday.

So, what about the year 1994? That was when the parts of the country that had been celebrating Australia Day on the closest Monday to the 26th of January agreed to observe the holiday on the actual date.

Don’t believe the naysayers. The 26th of January has been associated with Australia’s founding and nationhood from the earliest of days.

Aussies Love Australia Day

Far from being organic and homegrown, efforts to problematise Australia Day are a vital branch of a radical global movement best described as Western Marxism.

Western Marxism views Western Civilisation in general, and Christianity in particular, as problematic and “oppressive”. It seeks to stir up division and hostility among the “oppressed” — in this case, Indigenous people.

Seeking to appease Western Marxists is doomed to fail, however. Anti-Australia Day activists are not looking for a solution. They are looking for a problem. Their end goal is not to abolish Australia’s national holiday but to abolish Australia in its current form — or in their words, “decolonise” it.

Though it enjoys strong support at the ABC, far-left activism is the furthest thing from the minds of most Australians.

In a poll taken at the start of this year, the Institute for Public Affairs found that 63% of Australians support celebrating Australia Day on the 26th of January and only 17% disagreed. Patriotic sentiment is even higher, with 87% of those polled saying they are proud to be Australian, and just 4% disagreeing.

So as you get ready for the summer break, be sure to ignore the naysayers. Better yet, send them a strong message by celebrating our national holiday with even more fanfare this year.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.