Test on Australia Day highlights the toxic divide splitting the country

It was almost three years ago that Scott Morrison delivered one of his one-liners. The then prime minister thought it was “pretty ordinary” that Cricket Australia had dropped references to “Australia Day” in Big Bash League promotional material leading up to the public holiday. The day, considered by some as a day of mourning and increasingly referred to as Invasion Day by many First Nations people and others, would instead be referred to only as “January 26”.

In response, Morrison claimed the date in 1788 “wasn’t a particularly flash day for the people on those [first fleet] vessels either”. Among those angered by the remarks was Cathy Freeman, who tweeted that the experiences of those early settlers were incomparable with “what their arrival meant for all generations of Australia’s First Nations people”.

That was January 2021. It is now January 2024. Australia has a different prime minister, and Anthony Albanese possesses views so dissimilar to his predecessor that he attempted to give Indigenous Australians a Voice to Parliament via the unsuccessful 2023 referendum. Even Twitter is called something different now, and yet the views on both sides of the issue being spat back and forth on the platform now known as X remain as full of outrage as they were three years prior.

CA’s stance, which created headlines again on Monday, is not new. Last year, the women’s national team played a T20 match against Pakistan. The year before, there were BBL games. The year before that, the same. “Australia Day” was not referenced for any of these fixtures. The only difference is this is the first time during this period that a men’s Test will fall on January 26, which coincides with day two of Australia’s second Test against the West Indies – the result of a packed calendar.

CA, which says it consulted its Indigenous advisory board (NATSICAC) on the issue, will conduct a standard Welcome to Country ceremony on day one at the Gabba, this Thursday. On Friday, Australia Day will be marked in passing by a ground announcer. Still, CA and Tennis Australia, which will avoid celebrating Australia Day for a second consecutive year, have been accused of “wokeism”.

NSW Premier Chris Minns on Monday urged both sporting bodies to “revisit the decision”.

Ashleigh Gardner believes cricket should not be played on January 26.

“The idea that you would take a national day away from any country, particularly Australia, is a strange one,” Minns told 2GB. “We should, right now, [be] trying to pull each other together, and this is the day that we’ve set aside to celebrate what it means to live in the greatest country on Earth.”

Indigenous all-rounder Ashleigh Gardner has thoughts about what it means to live in the greatest country on earth. In January 2023, she said being told she would be playing against Pakistan on January 26 “doesn’t sit well with me as an individual but also all the people I’m representing”. In May, she felt uncomfortable once more when the men’s Test was slated for this year.

“I just don’t understand why this one day of the year, which is a day of mourning, which doesn’t have a very good history of what happened on that day, that there needs to be cricket,” Gardner told News Corp. “I see sport as a celebration and entertainment and an event you want to go to. Why does there need to be something that represents something that’s quite morbid. It’s probably not overly appropriate.”

At the time, Indigenous bowler Scott Boland said: “I fully support Ash’s comments. I don’t think Jan 26 is the day to celebrate. It’s not really a fully inclusive day where everyone can celebrate Australia.”

The Test team with the Australian flag at the Gabba during the series against South Africa in 2022.

This is why CA’s position is so delicately poised, so prone to inflammatory reaction each time it continues along the same policy trajectory.

“We appreciate that many Australians celebrate Australia Day and love watching the cricket, and the fact we are playing a Test match across the long weekend reflects that,” a CA spokesperson said in a statement on Monday.

“However, we also know that January 26 is a difficult day for many people, especially many Indigenous Australians. So, there’s a balance in that we’re playing cricket but also want to acknowledge that the day means different things to different people. We encourage people to enjoy the cricket and be inclusive and respectful of each other.”

But this conversation has rarely been inclusive or respectful. I recently attended a social gathering where the Voice referendum came up in conversation and sparked a heated debate. One guest, a conservative, had voted no because they incorrectly believed the Voice constituted an actual seat at parliament which, if enshrined, could build numbers to pass “left-wing policies”. That person indicated they might consider voting yes in the future if these (misperceived) circumstances changed.

Another guest, a yes voter, was so incredulous that, instead of engaging the other person, perhaps seeking to understand their perspective or point out that misinformation and disinformation were rife among the no campaign, took the binary “I am right and you are wrong” route. Everything became a bit shouty after that, and nobody walked away feeling heard.

This is modern Australia right now. A toxic dichotomy of a country finally reckoning with the colonial logic upon which it was built and finding some people are taking a lot longer than others to come around.

CA’s stance on this highly charged issue is about as neutral as it gets. The organisation could – and arguably should – have taken its position further by avoiding scheduling matches on January 26 at all.

Invasion Day rallies and the gradual disappearance of Australia Day paraphernalia from supermarket shelves conveys an acceptance of First Nations trauma slowly but surely edging towards the norm. At what point will those who rail against this acceptance become the exception?

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