In recent years the approach of Australia Day has been seen by the mainstream media as a time for reporting on the antics of those politicians who are intent on dividing the nation, splitting us into patriots and non-patriots, Indigenous and non-Indigenous – to which this year they have added a new divisive line between the pro-Israeli and the pro-Palestinian. As each year goes by it’s as if the point of the day is merely to find new ways to prevent us thinking about what holds us together in our diversity. The overwhelming purpose of all the hoopla seems to be to pull us apart.
Underneath it all though, there’s a stubborn strain in Australians about things we agree on. One of those is that the people of Australia want to live in a democracy. The Australian Values Survey periodically conducted by the Social Research Centre at the Australian National University (ANU) since 2005 shows that our support for democracy as a preferred system of government has been consistently strong, at least until 2018, when 57% of Australians said they believe it is “absolutely important” to live in a country that is governed democratically and only 11% believed it is unimportant. According to ANU, “For most Australians, democracy is still the ‘only game in town’”.
And yet as we approach Australia Day in 2024, we may have to contemplate the loss of our democracy. The signs that we are drifting towards its demise were disturbingly apparent in 2023 – at least if we imagine that, in democracy:
In 2023 the veil was pulled from our eyes on both of these imaginings.
In the first case, Australians were led by the antics of some politicians to reverse their collective support for........