Update:
Occasionally, just occasionally, people from different parts of the political spectrum say something memorable on patrioitism. These paras came from Marcia Langton and in the edition of The Saturday Paper for 19-25 September and John Hewson in that of 22-28 August.
Marcia Langton AO
Australia’s nationalism has always rested on an unstable foundation. Lacking a revolution, a founding document, or a unifying moment of democratic birth, the nation turned the military catastrophe of Gallipoli into its emotional bedrock. From this unlikely material, fought on a foreign beach, Australia built a civic religion, renewed each Anzac Day with dawn services, marches, medals and ritualised reverence.
The legend’s peculiar power lies in its claim that the authentic nation resides not in parliament or constitution, but in the sacrificial body of the soldier. To be a “real” Australian is, at some level, to be imagined as a digger, or as someone who reveres the digger appropriately. Military service becomes the highest currency of national belonging.
The Hanson–Hastie affair is instructive precisely because it puts that currency under pressure. Hastie is not a figurative stand-in for the digger; he is a literal one. Yet a party built on nationalist symbolism produced and then refused to delete a cartoon depicting him as a traitor. This contradiction reveals how thin and instrumental “patriotism” becomes when it collides with anything more complicated than a slogan.
John Hewson AM
Patriotism is about love of country in terms of working together with shared values and ideals, and about a collective identity that carries civic responsibilities on all of us to understand and care for others. Unfortunately, it is often conflated with nationalism, which defines people who “belong” by cultivating superiority and even hatred of others.
The overuse of the word patriotism is very American, and it is concerning that its use is creeping into Australian political narratives as a tool for division. We are not Americans and I am sure most of us, even the Trump sympathisers, wouldn’t want to be, but our recent public discourse on immigration has inevitably borne similarities.
The need to specify an Australian identity has been about nationalism, and proponents such as Pauline Hanson and Angus Taylor are seeking to define who should be included and who rejected.
As with so many modern nations that have been colonised, indigenous people who occupied the land before monarchs, constitutions, governments and elections were in some cases displaced if not destroyed. Australia has had the unique opportunity to develop our national character and identity by building on 65,000 years of Indigenous culture. We can’t ignore the massacres and other atrocities in the early years of European settlement, nor the more recent reactions to the Voice referendum, nor the embarrassing gap that persists in living standards and opportunities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. Elements of white supremacy persist in the strengthening antipathy towards non-European immigrants.
Related: Paul Daley on patriotism deserves another look in the era of Hanson 3.0
Picture credit: Children celebrating Federation, Melbourne 1901 (Parliament of Australia website/NLA)
Posted
Sep 24, 2026
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