JENI O’DOWD: Australia Day BBQ ban shows why Pauline Hanson and One Nation are winning over Australian voters

Until the date of Australia Day changes, it’s a public holiday that we are entitled to celebrate however we like.

Some may protest while others reflect on what it’s like being Australian. Plenty of us would love to enjoy a free snag on a couple of pieces of sliced bread with our neighbours, but if you live in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, you can forget that.

It seems a budget-friendly $20,000 free BBQ and community market stalls for people who live in Bondi Beach and surrounding suburbs is too harmful to hold.

Waverley Council, which covers this prime piece of Sydney real estate, ruled against the free BBQ to celebrate Australia Day at a recent meeting.

This was after its First Nations Advisory Committee warned the event could cause a “negative impact and potential harm” to the local Indigenous community.

“Australia Day is considered a day of mourning for many Aboriginal people and committee members felt they were being asked to celebrate at the expense of history and the devastation that resulted,” the report to council read, according to The Daily Mail.

“The only additional activities that would be supported by the committee on Australia Day would be a ‘Survival Day’ activity.”

Which is actually a good idea, if you did both. Marking the day two ways, rather than rejecting one of them, might actually bring the community together.

For many local Indigenous people, January 26 represents the start of dispossession rather than a day of celebration.

I understand that, and I am not dismissing it. But there’s a difference between “this date is painful for many Australians” and “a free BBQ on this date constitutes harm”.

One is a serious point about history and healing. The other is a leap in logic that a room full of councillors somehow decided to run with. And so, here we are again.

Every year, it’s the same argument. You could set your clock by it. Change the date of Australia Day, keep the date, don’t hold citizenship ceremonies and, whatever you do, don’t celebrate being an Aussie as you may offend people.

I, like many others, am sick of it. Sick of being told what I can and can’t celebrate on our own national day.

I’m sick of seeing a free BBQ treated as a political statement instead of what it actually is: people getting together over a snag in a very Aussie way.

And it makes me wonder if this kind of decision-making is exactly why One Nation keeps rising in the polls, with Pauline Hanson positioning herself as the unapologetic, staunchly Australian voice defending the country’s traditions when everyone else seems too nervous to.

Senator Hanson argues January 26 is a unifying day of celebration and encourages people to mark it by firing up the BBQ with friends and family and reject “woke culture”.

Remember when Woolworths and Big W pulled Australia Day merchandise off their shelves a few years ago? After much criticism, they put it back on sale the following year.

This year, it was on offer again, alongside Coles, which never stopped stocking it in the first place.

If companies that live and die by reading public sentiment have decided the mood has shifted back towards just letting people celebrate, you have to wonder what Waverley Council thinks it knows that they don’t.

Every time a council cancels a sausage sizzle or a retailer pulls the Australian flag off its shelves, they hand One Nation another photo opportunity and more voters who feel like nobody understands them anymore.

The Albanese Government has already made it optional for councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on January 26, so it’s hardly surprising some are taking that as a licence to cancel everything else too.

This is the mood of the nation Labor does not understand.

It’s not just a free BBQ and merchandise sales. It’s a growing number of Australians who feel their country is changing faster than anyone in Canberra is prepared to admit, on immigration, on housing, on who gets a say in what “Australian” even means anymore.

Deciding not to hold a sausage sizzle isn’t the cause of that anxiety, but it’s a perfect symbol of it: another small, everyday tradition quietly shelved by people who seem more worried about causing offence than standing for anything.

I think the Government should settle the argument about the date once and for all, but I know it won’t.

The date should either be changed after a national conversation, or we commit to marking January 26 as what it actually is: complicated and messy, but ours, our history and who we are, warts and all.