I used to love Australia Day.
Every year my friends and I, boom box on our shoulders, would go from house to house dressed in board shorts, singlets and pluggers variously emblazoned with the Australian flag. Any excuse to drink far too much with my friends really – and this excuse was delivered with a public holiday, some lamb, and a national countdown, the Hottest 100. I loved it. I would get shivers down my spine when that deep booming voiceover revved up and said “number 100”. Blissfully ignorant to the fact that Indigenous Australians were being excluded simply because of the date.
26 January is of course the anniversary of the first fleet of British ships arriving on traditional Gadigal land in what is now known as Sydney. It’s the wedding anniversary of a forced marriage. A celebration of one of the greatest armed robberies ever conducted. That’s just a fact we all must accept as Australians, just as the high court did in 1992. And that is the day Triple J choose to throw a massive party.
A day that kicked off two centuries of Indigenous Australians being classed as flora and fauna, refused the vote, stolen from their families as children, entirely and purposely killed off in some parts, wiped out by foreign disease such as smallpox in others, being incarcerated in higher numbers and educated in lower, have lands taken from them and then only returned in part, experience daily racism on their own lands and after decades of campaign eventually be told “sorry.”
Sorry – but we’re still going to throw a party. Sorry – you won’t be able to come.
It is very simple: Triple J’s Hottest 100 is the definition of structural discrimination. In this case it is structural racism. Indigenous Australians are kept out by hosting it on a day they can’t attend.
That is reason enough to change the date. No more discussion required.
Would Triple J consider the grand final as a potential date? No. Of course not. Too many would miss out. They don’t need to consult stakeholders.
Would Triple J host a party on Remembrance Day? No. Of course not. It’s obviously not the right day to celebrate music. No survey required. In fact, holding a national survey would be hugely disrespectful.
I suspect that Triple J has already made up their mind that they will change the date of the Hottest 100; one decision-maker within the building once told me he will see it happen or resign.
Surveying the wider audience sidesteps the responsibility of making the decision, without care for how much pain it might cause the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community to dredge up the divisive, ignorant and racist slime that can be expected from a debate over how much their day of mourning does or does not matter.
It’s the same reason the LGBTI community has campaigned not to have a plebiscite; we don’t need to open that floodgate of hate.
Most Triple J staff members are embarrassed about the day on which it is held. And while some still don’t see the problem, they are in the minority.
The date will change.
It is just so utterly disappointing that content director Ollie Wards does not have the courage to simply change the date and back the decision.
On a very basic level, if the Hottest 100 is to bring us all together, it cannot be a day that so obviously drives us apart – no matter what the masses might say.
