In the lead-up to 26 January, the familiar machinery of right-wing propaganda is once again mobilised to manufacture consent around Australia Day. Through selective polling, omission of crucial information, and carefully framed headlines, the Murdoch media and allied organisations seek to present unwavering national support for the date, while concealing the wording, context and political purpose of the surveys they promote. This narrative implies that those who call for changing the date — not abolishing it, but relocating it in recognition of Indigenous history and dispossession — are somehow less patriotic or less Australian, an implication that distorts both history and civic reality.
As journalist and commentator Kostas Karamarkos argues, this campaign goes well beyond a cultural debate about a public holiday. Emboldened by the outcome of the 2023 Voice referendum, conservative media and political actors now push to eliminate alternatives altogether, portraying cultural sensitivity as “division” and workplace flexibility as a threat to national unity. In doing so, they revive an outdated image of Australian identity rooted in a narrow, exclusionary past, while marginalising the voices of Indigenous custodians and those who seek a more honest, inclusive national narrative. What is presented as unity is, in fact, the suppression of historical truth and democratic debate — and in this climate, propaganda replaces dialogue.
