As the dawn light crept over Sydney’s ANZAC Memorial this morning, a hush fell across the crowd—only to be shattered by a chorus of boos and jeers directed at Indigenous elders attempting to deliver an Acknowledgement of Country. The scene, replayed in grainy smartphone footage across social media, has ignited a firestorm of outrage not just for its disrespect, but for what it reveals about the fraying fabric of national unity on a day meant to embody it. This isn’t merely about subpar manners at a dawn service; it’s a symptom of a deeper, more dangerous drift in how Australia reckons with its past—and who gets to define what “we” remember.
The term “bastardry,” resurrected from colonial-era slang to describe the behavior, has become an unlikely rallying cry. Used by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a rare, unscripted moment of frustration during a press conference yesterday, the word—once synonymous with illegitimacy and moral decay—now serves as a blunt instrument to condemn the disruption. But labeling the act as “bastardry” risks oversimplifying a complex cultural collision. To understand why these commemorations have become flashpoints, we must appear beyond the immediate outrage and examine the historical currents that have brought us here.
The Long Shadow of Frontier Wars
For over a century, ANZAC Day has been Australia’s secular sacred day—a time to honor the sacrifice of those who served in wars abroad. Yet the official narrative has long omitted a critical chapter: the Frontier Wars, the violent conflict between British settlers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that raged from 1788 to as late as 1934. Historians estimate that between 20,000 and 60,000 Indigenous Australians were killed during this period, a scale of violence comparable to overseas conflicts commemorated on April 25. Despite growing advocacy, the Australian War Memorial still refuses to officially recognize these deaths as part of Australia’s war history, maintaining that its charter only covers overseas service.
This omission isn’t passive; it’s structural. As Professor Larissa Behrendt, Director of Research at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, told me in an interview this week:
“When a nation’s official memorial excludes the violent dispossession that founded it, it sends a message that some lives—and some deaths—don’t count in the national story. ANZAC Day becomes not a unifying ritual, but a reminder of whose grief is permitted public expression.”
The booing, then, isn’t random chaos; it’s a performative rejection of efforts to expand that story—a backlash against what some perceive as a threat to a narrow, militarized conception of national identity.
Who Benefits from the Divide?
The political ramifications are immediate and measurable. Polling by the Lowy Institute released last week shows that 42% of Australians believe ANZAC Day should focus exclusively on military service overseas, while 38% support greater inclusion of Indigenous perspectives—a near-even split that mirrors broader societal tensions. Meanwhile, fringe groups have seized the moment. The anti-immigration collective that attempted to disrupt the Perth dawn service—blocked by police after giving Nazi salutes near the Cenotaph—has seen a 22% increase in online engagement since April 20th, according to data from the Australian Institute of Criminology’s extremism monitoring unit.
Yet the winners aren’t just on the fringes. Major retailers report a 15% spike in sales of ANZAC-themed merchandise this year, from commemorative badges to “Lest We Forget” apparel—a commercialization that critics argue dilutes the day’s solemnity. As former Defence Force chaplain Reverend Glenn Davies observed:
“We’ve turned remembrance into a market segment. When your ANZAC Day experience is measured in hashtags and hoodies, it’s no surprise that the deeper meaning gets lost in the noise—and that some fill that void with ugliness.”
The commodification of memory, it seems, has created space for both performative patriotism and its ugly inverse.
A Global Pattern of Contested Commemoration
Australia is not alone in struggling with how to honor complex histories. In Canada, debates over Remembrance Day ceremonies have intensified as Indigenous groups push for recognition of their service and the systemic discrimination they faced upon returning home. In South Africa, Armistice Day observances remain deeply fractured along racial lines, with separate ceremonies persisting decades after apartheid’s complete. What distinguishes Australia’s case is the immediacy of the frontier conflict—it didn’t happen “over there”; it happened on the highly soil where dawn services are held.
This geographic proximity raises the stakes. When Indigenous elders speak at ANZAC events, they aren’t invoking distant history; they’re reminding attendees that the land beneath their feet was seized through violence that contemporaries would have recognized as war. The discomfort this provokes isn’t merely about tradition—it’s about truth. And truth, as we’ve seen in other settler nations, often arrives not with consensus, but with confrontation.
For Australia to move beyond the cycle of outrage and apology, it must confront a fundamental question: Can a nation truly honor the sacrifice of its soldiers abroad while refusing to acknowledge the war that made the nation possible? The answer, increasingly, seems to be that it cannot—not without betraying the very integrity ANZAC Day claims to uphold.
As we navigate this fraught terrain, perhaps the most Australian thing we can do is not to demand uniformity of sentiment, but to create space for the difficult conversations that follow discomfort. The dawn service doesn’t need to be silent to be sacred; it needs to be honest.
What does ANZAC Day mean to you, and whose stories do you believe deserve to be heard at the memorial? Share your thoughts below—respectfully, and with the courage to listen as much as to speak.
