ANZAC Day and Welcome to Country – Incompatible by Design, By Bruce Bennett and John Steele

On ANZAC Day, Australians gather at dawn services, war memorials, and RSL clubs to honour the sacrifice of those who fought and died for our country. It is a day of solemn remembrance, mateship, courage, and national unity. The Last Post sounds, heads bow, and we reflect on the ANZAC legend, that spirit forged in the blood of Gallipoli and reinforced through every conflict since. It is our day, belonging to all Australians who value the shared inheritance of the nation built since 1788.

Yet in recent years, a modern ritual has been inserted into these ceremonies: the Welcome to Country. This practice — where an Indigenous elder or representative "welcomes" attendees to traditional lands — is now routine at many dawn services. On the surface, it may sound harmless or inclusive. In reality, it is fundamentally incompatible with the spirit and purpose of ANZAC Day.

Two Conflicting Narratives

ANZAC Day tells one clear story: Australia is a sovereign nation worth defending. Young men (and later women) from every background volunteered to fight under the Australian flag, often far from home, for a country they considered theirs. Indigenous Australians served too — with distinction, despite facing discrimination at home. Their sacrifice, like that of all Diggers, helped forge a unified national identity based on loyalty, endurance, and equality under one flag. The day is about what we built together and what we are prepared to defend together.

Welcome to Country tells a very different story. It frames the land as belonging perpetually and primarily to Indigenous peoples as "Traditional Owners." Attendees — including veterans, descendants of settlers, immigrants, and everyday Australians — are positioned as guests or visitors on someone else's country. The subtext, often made explicit in longer addresses, is one of prior and ongoing sovereignty, "stolen land," and unceded territory.

This is not mere acknowledgment of history. It is a political assertion that clashes directly with the ANZAC ethos. You cannot simultaneously honour men who died for a sovereign Australia while ritually reminding the nation that its citizens are outsiders on their own soil. As one critic of the practice put it, it violates core principles of commemoration: equality (no racial precedence), focus on shared sacrifice, and remembrance in perpetuity without turning sacred days into platforms for grievance.

Recent Events Expose the Tension

The growing public discomfort is impossible to ignore. In 2025 and 2026, booing and heckling erupted during Welcome to Country segments at major dawn services in Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth. While media outlets rushed to label it "racism" or "neo-Nazism," the broader sentiment among many ordinary Australians — including veterans and older generations — is simpler: this does not belong here. Polls show a majority now view Welcome to Country ceremonies as divisive, especially at national commemorations.

Peter Dutton and others have openly questioned its place at ANZAC events. The pushback is not about denying Indigenous service or history — Indigenous Diggers are rightly honoured as part of the ANZAC story. It is about refusing to let one ideology colonise a day that belongs to the entire nation.

Why the Incompatibility Matters

National Unity vs. Division: ANZAC Day unites Australians across backgrounds in remembrance of shared sacrifice. Welcome to Country introduces a hierarchy of belonging that divides "Traditional Owners" from everyone else.

Sovereignty: The men of the ANZAC legend fought for Australia as a settled, sovereign Commonwealth. Ritualistically undermining that settlement on the very day we honour them is incoherent.

Performative Overreach: What began as occasional cultural respect has become mandatory and often politicised. Longer addresses frequently slide into activist talking points rather than brief welcomes. ANZAC Day is not the venue for that.

Precedent: Australia Day has already been hollowed out by similar activism. Allowing the same on ANZAC Day risks the same fate for our most sacred secular commemoration.

Indigenous Australians who served deserve full and equal honour on ANZAC Day — as Australians, alongside their mates. That honour does not require framing the rest of the country as perpetual guests.

Restore the Focus

The RSL and commemoration committees should return ANZAC Day to its core purpose: honouring the fallen, the veterans, and the values they defended — without imported rituals that pull focus or sow division. A simple moment of silence or inclusive acknowledgement of all who served suffices. No group needs ritual "welcome" to mourn their own country's dead.

ANZAC Day is not a Welcome to Country event. It is Australia remembering what it cost to become and remain Australia. Those two truths cannot coexist without one undermining the other. Lest we forget — and lest we allow the meaning of that day to be diluted beyond recognition.

The pushback we're seeing is not extremism. It is Australians quietly insisting that some things remain sacred, shared, and above ideology. And it shows that the Welcome to country ideology, a Leftist narrative of the dispossession of the British roots of Australia, is in need of deep public debate and critique.

https://celina101.substack.com/p/guests-in-their-own-country