Sydney Review of Books Chris Conti is a Lecturer at Western Sydney University and a member of its Writing and Society Research Centre. He is the author of Proofs: 104 short stories (2012). Written by CHRIS CONTI 4 May, 2017 Grenville on the Frontier FEATURES In December last year, Malcolm Turnbull blasted the City of Fremantle for its bid to hold a Australia Day fireworks display and citizenship ceremony not on 26 January but two days later, in what the council promoted as a ‘culturally-inclusive alternative event.’ The council’s snub of the national celebration could not go unanswered. What, after all, is more culturally inclusive than Australia Day? Indignant, Turnbull threatened to revoke the council’s right to hold the ceremony. By politicizing the Citizens hip Act, Freo council had sent the public an ‘anti-Australia Day message.’ Mayor Brad Pettitt saw off protests from local business groups (who let off their own fireworks) and the United Patriots Front (who went off at a rally), but at the eleventh hour bowed to government threats of prosecution. The alternative event went ahead—without fireworks or ceremony. This is not the first time the date assigned for national self-congratulation has been called into question. Commemorating the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove and the onset of settler colonialism has long carried the suggestion of Anglo-Irish ascendency. In 1938, celebrations were overshadowed by an Aboriginal Day of Mourning; in 1988, by Invasion Day commemorations; in 1992, by Survival Day concerts. In 2007, the Rudd government backflipped on its policy promise to change the date, starting an online conversation that swelled into the #changethedate movement behind Fremantle’s alternative event. In fact, questioning the ambiguous symbolism of 26 January is now part of the national ritual. The brouhaha over ceremonial behavior in Freo unfolded during the 2016 broadcast of the SBS series First Contact, the reality TV show in which celebrity types confront their own ignorance of Aboriginal Australia. The show’s point of controversy was delivered by David Oldfield, the former Tony Abbott staffer and advisor to Pauline