Turns Out Most Australians Don’t Actually Care When Australia Day Is Held

Well, it turns out that most Australians genuinely don’t care what date Australia Day falls on, so long as we get a national holiday at some point.

A new poll released today by the Australia Institute reveals 56 percent of Australians don’t mind when we celebrate our national day, suggesting that the push to change the date out of respect for Indigenous Australians might not actually be as big a drama as the federal government insists it will be.

In fact, the poll found less than half of the people surveyed even knew why January 26 was chosen in the first place (it’s the anniversary of the First Fleet landing in Sydney, fyi). Some people genuinely thought January 26 commemorated events that haven’t actually happened yet, like signing a treaty with Aboriginal people, or becoming a republic.

Forty-nine percent, meanwhile, agreed the celebration should not be on a day that’s offensive to Indigenous Australians. When asked to pick the best day for Australia Day from a list of options, a whopping 70 percent of respondents did not select the current date.

Thanks to the anonymous person that emailed me this:
'australia day has always been January 25 – u just like to be anti everything.' with the subject line 'you are an idiot'

— Richard Di Natale (@RichardDiNatale) January 17, 2018

In short, while the government continues to insist that changing the date would be a denial of history, it looks like most Australians actually know jack shit about said history, and aren’t super fussed about the prospect of celebrating at a different time.

In fact, in a quintessentially Aussie data point, people who wanted to make sure the day always fell on a Friday or Monday (creating a long weekend) outnumbered those who thought January 26 was the best day.

The poll comes a few days after the Greens launched a renewed push to change the date of Australia Day. Just today, Reconciliation Australia described asking Indigenous people to celebrate on January 26 as “like asking them to dance on their ancestors’ graves”, and pointed out that changing the date is “a relatively small task” that would go a long way.

Today’s polling pretty conclusively backs this up. It’s time for the government to get on board.

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Feature image by Eva Rinaldi, CC BY-SA 2.0