KATE EMERY: Australia Day discourse is the Meghan Markle of politics

Australia Day discourse is the Meghan Markle of politics.

Polarising. Tedious. And something of a Rorschach test, in that those who express an opinion about either usually reveal more about themselves than about the thing itself.

The bad news is that both the Australia Day debate and Markle are about to become inescapable, as January 26 looms and Markle’s new lifestyle show — With Love, Meghan — drops on Netflix next week.

The stakes may be wildly different — Australia Day is a source of genuine pain for many Indigenous Australians, while Markle just wants to teach the world how to make a light sponge — but both events have a certain sense of inevitability.

We know that we will hear the same arguments in favour of moving Australia Day that we have been hearing for years.

Critics will argue that celebrating our nationhood on the anniversary of the day the British flag was hoisted at Sydney Cove is hurtful for many Indigenous Australians, for whom colonisation is associated with genocide and dispossession.

Others may point out that January 26 has only been celebrated with a national public holiday since 1994 and perhaps an anniversary that’s younger than Jessica Mauboy isn’t such an intrinsic part of our cultural fabric that it should never be touched.

We will also hear the arguments against changing the date: it’s divisive and won’t do anything to improve life expectancy and health outcomes for First Nations Australians.

Just as predictable is the media onslaught from Markle and the Netflix publicity department, both keen to sell the glossy-haired former royal as the feminist trad wife we didn’t know we needed.

Markle, who shuttered her old lifestyle blog as part of her failed Faustian pact with The Firm, looks very much at home in beige neutrals and with a cake knife in her hand in the trailer for With Love, Meghan. That aggressively anodyne trailer has already been watched 8 million times, by the way.

Also inevitable? The rotten tomatoes thrown by Markle’s critics.

We’ll hear plenty about how Netflix had to hire a mansion close to Markle’s actual, bigger, mansion so she could convincingly cosplay a day in the life (cooking guru Nigella Lawson did the same thing for at least one of her TV specials but we probably won’t hear that part).

We’ll also get a steady stream of “leaks” from “royal sources” claiming Markle has acted like a diva (again), driven a (new) wedge between Harry and William or that she secretly bumped off the Queen, actually.

The other thing that Markle and the Australia Day debate have in common is that both have become radioactive.

For her haters, Markle can do nothing right. This is a women who can’t even admit to a fondness for avocado on toast without the Daily Mail running a story headlined (I’m not making this up): How Meghan’s favourite avocado snack is fuelling human rights abuse.

Similarly, any time a politician or business leader tries to weigh into the Australia Day argument they wind up looking like Sideshow Bob in that episode of The Simpsons where he steps on a series of rakes.

Witness Woolworths’ tremendous own goal in first pulling its Australia Day merch last year, then (somewhat) reinstating it this year — pissing off both sides in a way rarely seen outside professional politics.

Speaking of which: the Federal Government might be able to justify changing the date on moral grounds but not on political ones. It’s a fight that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese doesn’t need, as he limps towards an election, a Voice-shaped wedge of shrapnel lodged in his knee.

Corporate Australia, having witnessed Woolworths’ Simone Biles-worthy performance, will be leery of taking much of a stance either way, even though some have already given employees the options to take the public holiday on a less controversial date.

State governments and councils will continue to pussyfoot around the issue, ultimately powerless to do much but posture.

Changing the date of Australia Day is inevitable, less because it’s the right thing to do (which it is) than because most of us just want a public holiday where we can relax, have a drink and not have to run the gauntlet of a month of tedious public discourse to get there.

The fact that another Australia Day seems likely to come and go without that change happening means we can expect to tune in this time next year to the same old arguments and counter-arguments.

The only real unknown is whether we’ll be watching season two of With Love, Meghan at the same time or whether, by then, we will have opted to change the channel.