Be alert, call it out!

Last weekend I received an email message with an attached document (see image at left) claiming to be “The truth of Australia Day…”. A quick scan revealed that the little truth it contained was outweighed by its untruths.

My correspondent had received it from a member of an email list he runs and then circulated it to that list which has more than 100 recipients. I felt compelled to email him pointing out some of the most egregious errors. He called me later and we discussed some of the issues. Evidently, he had not paid close attention to the content of the document and seemed surprised to find it contentious.

The origin of the material is obscure. Someone has attributed it to ‘Peter Lee’ but there is no indication of who he might be. Google found several pages and Facebook posts sharing the material and some debunking it. One search turned up a post sharing it to a group I follow along with my comment debunking it on 26 January 2023. I’d forgotten that I’d seen it and taken issue with it then.

When I thought of writing this post my intention was to debunk the claims but in my searching I found that has already been done comprehensively by Australian Associated Press – No, this is not ‘the real reason’ Australia Day is celebrated on January 26. There was no reason for me to repeat the exercise but, on reflection, there are other points to be made.

The fact check by AAP is dated 24 February 2020 and cites its source for the material as a Facebook post dated 1 February 2020. Some more searching on phrases from the document turned up a piece on The Daily Declaration by Monica Bennett-Ryan dated 25 January 2020 – Australia Day: The Day We All Became Australians. It is not identical to the document I received but includes some of the same phrases and mistruths. More searching found other material that shared similar phrases attributed to different authors but it seems the real origin may be Monica Bennett-Ryan. It’s a little sad that someone who claims to be a whistleblower, presumably in the interest of truth, has not corrected the errors identified by AAP.

What is truly sad and worrying is that despite the fact checking by AAP various derivatives of this propaganda piece continue to circulate in 2025. What does it take to suppress misinformation?

Most of those who circulate this material do so with apparent good intentions, arguing that their confected reason for celebration, the proclamation on 26 January 1949 of the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948, is cause for all to celebrate. They seem to have missed various points, including the fact that although there were Australian citizens from that time they did not have Australian nationality but remained British Subjects until 1984 (see Citizenship in Australia).

As we enter a federal election year, social media winds back fact checking, and generative AI produces more convincing fakes we need to be alert to the risks of being misled. So much reporting is selective and none of us has broad enough knowledge to detect every mistruth directed at us. Perhaps the best we can do is to be alert for the errors we can detect and call them out for the benefit of those who may not detect them. If we cannot rely on the media to give us the truth then we will need to rely on each other.

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