Invasion Day is truly worth protecting

As white nationalists try to “reclaim” Australia Day, Invasion Day remains the real counter-rally in the face of racism. Tom Tanuki reports.

AT MELBOURNE'S FIRST March for Australia (MFA) on 31 August last year, organisers saw their next steps reflected in the size of the crowds. One speaker and organiser took to the mic during speeches to call for a follow-up event to "take back" Australia Day.

Though that was months away at the time, they sensed an opportunity. Those organisers were all white nationalists, if not self-avowed neo-Nazis; they all feel that their national day of patriotism has been robbed from them by paradigm shifts in the Australian sociopolitical landscape.

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In a call for endorsements for 2026 Invasion Day, Gadigal organising group the Blak Caucus wrote the following:

“Disgracefully, the racist March for Australia group will be holding a demonstration on 26 January to “reclaim Australia Day” and protest immigration. We condemn this rally and call for it to be cancelled.”

What March for Australia (MFA) organisers hope to do on 26 January is to "take back" and "reclaim" Australia Day, specifically, from change. Not to re-introduce flag-waving as a national pastime.

I asked Dr Kaz Ross, an independent researcher into the Australian far-right, about their motivations:

“MFA is trying to have a bet both ways: it's supposedly about celebrating the founding of Australia, but at the same time, it's also a protest against immigration. Yet because MFA is based on crude white supremacy, the leaders feel no cognitive dissonance whatsoever.”

What they are attempting is a counter-rally, whether in direct confrontation or not, against the agent of much of that recent change: the groundswell movement around Invasion Day events.

Tarneen Onus-Williams joined Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) as a young organiser in 2015, at first helping put small Invasion Day rallies together in Melbourne and Portland. They watched the rallies grow and grow, first numbering in the thousands and then well into the tens of thousands. Then institutions began to respond accordingly.

“Then removed the Australia Day parade. And lots of councils started switching their days [to hold citizenship ceremonies]."

Tarneen has observed that the nature of Invasion Day events has developed over that time.

It’s a time for [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people] to talk about the issues that are affecting us. Obviously, it marks the invasion of this continent, but we have also made it a national day of protest for us. I compare it to May Day for unions. It’s our day to protest.

It’s been really deadly to see so many people come out to support Invasion Day.

There’s a two-pronged threat to these events, and the greater one comes from the state. State and federal governments are quickly dismantling our legal right to protest around the country. In NSW, Chris Minns said that Invasion Day is exempted from his deeply anti-democratic moves to quash freedom of assembly, but protesters are right to be worried about how NSW Police will respond on the day.

In Victoria, the police have declared a large zone around the entire CBD a "designated area" for an entire six months, allowing police to search people, force them to remove their face coverings and so on.

All the more reason, Tarneen observed, to continue to show up:

“Now we have to defend these protests.”

Many anti-fascists are asking if there are counter-actions happening to the MFA nationalist rallies happening on that day.

They’re right to ask, of course. But we need to remember that the big, beautiful activist movement created by the energy and will of many generations of Indigenous activists and organisers on 26 January is the real threat to nationalism here. It’s that threat they’re trying to parasitise.

Dr Kaz Ross remarked:

“Counter-protesting MFA not only legitimises their ridiculous sense of oppression and righteousness, it also brings them more media attention. They want to be taken seriously. Starving them of attention to demonstrate how irrelevant they are is the best strategy for hastening the inevitable decline of MFA.”

It is the neo-Nazis who are the counter-ralliers here; the nationalists are the parasites. Anti-fascists – as with all anti-racists, and supporters of Indigenous sovereignty and rights – have something truly worth rallying around to protect on that day.

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Speaking of the impact – and future – of Invasion Days, Tarneen put it best:

“I feel that our events are a counter-rally to Australia Day! They’re a counter to this colonial state, to nationalism and to white supremacy. Invasion Day rallies have made possible many changes, like treaty & truth telling in Victoria, changes to public drunkenness laws, and changed the way Australians think about their national identity. They’re a place of truth-telling for First Nations people.”

Tom Tanuki is an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear on YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.