Anzac Day Hijacked by Woke Agenda

The “Welcome to Country” lecture might have a place in some settings, but it has no place whatsoever in our traditional Anzac Day Dawn Services.

For over a century, Anzac Day ceremonies stood untouched, solemn, sacred moments of remembrance dedicated entirely to our fallen Diggers. However, over the past decade, activists have been trying to rewrite that history and inject politics into what was once purely about the sacrifice and courage of those who served and national unity

Anzac Day isn't a platform for virtue signalling. It isn't about identity politics, social experiments, or ideological fads. It's about men and women who gave everything, their lives, so that generations after them could live free. It's a day to remember that the freedoms we enjoy today did not come free; they were fought for and protected by past generations of Australians from all backgrounds. That's it. That's what the Dawn Service stands for. Everyone, of every race, who all served under one flag.

This “Welcome to Country” ritual, dreamed up in the 1970s, is a performative political stunt, one that divides Australians on the very day we should stand united. Anzac Day services exist to unite the nation in solemn remembrance, not to be hijacked for leftist agendas.

You cannot “welcome” men and women who already belong to this country, who died defending it. To imply that they or their descendants somehow need permission to stand on Australian soil is insulting. It cheapens their sacrifice and mocks their service.

The Cenotaph at Martin Place and memorials around the country are sacred sites that belong to all Australians, not stages for woke, divisive virtue-signalling or political agendas.

Anzac Day should be a unifying remembrance ceremony where all the fallen, including Indigenous troops, are remembered. But adding a “Welcome to Country” divides us by race. It is a calculated division, designed to provoke and politicise the one day that should honour our fallen without agenda.

The so-called “Welcome to Country” might be acceptable when it involves visiting foreign tourists, but for Australians born and bred here, it's not about being welcomed. We who live here do not require welcoming; we are not strangers in our own land. It is a political statement designed to delegitimise modern Australia. 

While the politically correct claim it's “disrespectful” to interrupt a Dawn Service, they overlook that the real interruption and disrespect to this traditional service is their arrogant hijacking of it, altering a century of tradition by ramming a “Welcome to Country” down everyone's throat right from the start. 

Then, leftists misrepresented the “booing,” asserting it was Indigenous servicemen being booed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The booing was rejecting the hijacking of a sacred national moment.

Over the past decade, Australians have put up with woke activists shamelessly overstepping the mark by hijacking Anzac Day Dawn Services to shove their political correctness down the nation's throat, in respectful silence, only because of the solemn and sacred nature of Anzac Day.

 But that patience has run out.

Australians are tired of being “welcomed” to their own country, and the booing was a raw, natural response to the demand that Australians show acknowledgement and respect not to those who served and paid the ultimate sacrifice, but to so-called “emerging leaders.”

The previous silence has now been broken, and the backlash will only grow louder.

When Vice Admiral Justin Jones was asked if the booing of the “Welcome to Country" was disappointing, he replied:

“One of the things we in the Defence Force are defending is our democracy and freedom of expression. So, whilst that (booing) might be disappointing, those are exactly the principles that the Australian Defence Force is designed to defend.”

And there lies the hidden agenda behind “This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.” It's based on Marxist ideology that rejects individual property rights. You work hard all your life to develop and improve a block of land which you own and have paid for. But if you accept the premise of the “Welcome to Country,” you don't own it; some Aboriginal collective does.

The RSL membership must look closely at the decisions made by those they've elected as leaders to include WTC rituals at Anzac Day services. How willing will the public be to continue donating generously to support the RSL, knowing funds are being given to an individual who has celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk, and who use the Anzac Day Dawn Service to lecture the public, demanding acknowledgment and respect for himself as an “emerging leaders,” without a single reference to our servicemen and women, while not even showing enough respect to remove his hat?

Australians may have stood in respectful silence over the past few years, swallowing the insult, but the taboo against booing has now been broken. It will only grow louder and become more widespread each year. The political nature of these “Welcome to Country” statements will become increasingly bitter and protracted. Instead of being a day of national unity, Anzac Day risks becoming a day of division, just as the left has tried to do with Australia Day. Is this what the RSL wants?

The RSL leadership must decide which side of history it stands on: the side of those who defend Australian tradition and unity, or the side that fractures and politicises it. The public's generosity, its trust, its respect, all of it depends on the RSL's choices now. Why should Australians continue to donate or support an organisation that allows a solemn memorial service to be turned into a lecture on “emerging leadership”?

The RSL leadership are the custodian of Anzac Day, and if it is to continue into the next century as a day that is sacred and sacrosanct, the RSL has a duty to ensure it remains free of political or divisive statements, focusing solely on national unity and honouring the courage of those who served and made the ultimate sacrifice.

Given the extent and intensity of public commentary arising from this year's services, perhaps the RSL should undertake a national survey of its members to vote on whether the “Welcome to Country” fad, only recently forced upon traditional Anzac Day services, should continue. 

I think I know what the result might be.

On Australia Day 1988, Bob Hawke said, 

“In Australia, there is no hierarchy of descents. There must be no privilege of origin ... the commitment to Australia is the one thing needful to be a true Australian.”

Anzac Day embodies exactly what he said and demonstrates what real commitment and unity mean. Anzac Day is a legacy for all Australian citizens, who collectively own our public spaces and memorials. We don't need to be welcomed to them as though we were foreigners.

 If you had a chance to vote on whether the “Welcome to Country” should continue at Anzac Day services, what would your vote be? 

“... the welcome to country ceremony we now have before school starts, when parliament sits and even when we catch a plane, is just 46 years old.
Ernie Dingo's dance troupe came up with the impromptu new routine in 1976 after an awkward stand-off with Maori and Cook Islanders who refused to perform at an arts festival until they were ritually welcomed.”
– The Daily Mail Australia, 2022