One spokesman for Woolworths explained it was partly because “there’s been broader discussion about January 26 and what it means to different parts of the community”.

Sure, so why not just stock the merchandise and let the customer decide? Coles will stock Australiana merchandise, but it assured Australians it was not specifically for Australia Day. Phew!

Ironically, I can buy all my Australia Day gear at The Reject Shop.

Of course, it’s the right of any private business to stock whatever it likes, and Woolworths and other retailers are exercising this right. But this whole business is strange because the retailers are taking a moral stance on an issue that really has nothing to do with them, as though they are churches offering moral guidance.

It would seem many major corporations are increasingly (over)run by agonised souls who on the one hand are climbing the ladder of ruthless, lucrative careerism, while atoning for it by trying to turn profit-driven corporations into beacons of righteousness.

If there was one lesson from the voice referendum, it was that Australians don’t like major corporations preaching about national issues, and especially trying to use their bottomless pit of resources to try to influence the outcome of a national debate.

These retailers have the right to sell what they like, and Australians have the right to avoid them in favour of small businesses to buy everything they need for Australia Day, meat and all.

But the oikophobia – or fear of one’s own nation – on display every Australia Day is not trivial. We are raising a generation in a way that can only be detrimental to the nation in the long run. We are clearly not inculcating a sufficient gratitude for Australia or Western civilisation in our education system, certainly not a sufficient love for democracy over tyranny and terror.

The protests against Israel immediately after October 7 show the dire state of our education system. Amazingly, a “week of action” in schools in support of Palestine was endorsed by several regions of the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union. Many teachers planned to turn up to class wearing pro-Palestinian paraphernalia.

An open letter to the Victorian government signed by hundreds of Victorian teachers and school staff denouncing Israeli human rights abuses continues to gather signatures. Nowhere does the letter condemn the actions of Hamas or demand that Hamas return any Israeli hostages. Nowhere. It’s as though evil Israel just launched a campaign into Gaza for no reason whatsoever. School students began rallying in support of Palestine against Israel soon after the attacks. This is their right, but one must ask whether they are being told both sides of the story.

Israel is a multiracial, multiethnic democracy established as a safe haven for millions of Jews to flee genocide after World War II. It has an Arab minority of roughly 20 per cent that has the same legal rights as Jewish Israelis. It sits in the midst of a region where it is no exaggeration to say millions of its enemies would like to see it destroyed.

Indeed, it would seem many young Australians would like to see it destroyed as well, or at least unwittingly call for its destruction. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is chanted at the protests. It literally calls for the erasure of the state of Israel. How could such a chant be fulfilled except through violence; that is, genocide?

In 2022 the Sydney University Students’ Representative Council passed a motion condemning Israel as an apartheid state. It was titled “From the River to the Sea”.

Many of those same chanters accuse Israel of genocide against the Gazans as Israel does nothing more than seek to remove those in Gaza who would seek a repeat of October 7.

Indeed, innocent people in Gaza are being killed, but perhaps Israel’s critics might consider the people to blame are those who deliberately use Gazans as human shields by launching attacks from built-up urban areas. For Israel to desist from retaliatory action that would take innocent lives would be to sit back and allow Hamas terrorists, and sympathisers, to launch attacks until, as the chant goes, Israel has been obliterated “from the river to the sea”.

If Gaza is to have any future then Hamas must be destroyed, and, atrociously, it fully intends to bring many innocent Gazans down with it. As the Hamas Covenant of 1988 had it, “death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its (the movement’s) wishes.”

How can so many Australians, particularly young Australians, be so blind as to see Israel as the oppressor here? Sadly, it’s pretty clear too many teachers, themselves products of a very one-sided university education, are reluctant to teach both sides of the story.

Many young Australians seem to feel the West and its satellite allies, such as Israel, are at best hopelessly flawed, and at worst positively wicked. This uninformed cynicism has the pernicious effect of muting our national solidarity with Israel, a democracy amid authoritarian regimes, and established in defiance of actual genocide.

The seriousness of a lack of enthusiasm for celebrating Australia Day is not really about flags and bucket hats, it is linked with the ever-growing cynicism towards Western civilisation in general.

We must do more than merely publicly disapprove of retailers who seem to have jumped on the cynical bandwagon. We must demand that some in our national legislature have the courage to stand up and fight for an education system premised on gratitude for Western civilisation and the historically unprecedented free and prosperous lives it has afforded all of us in this great land. Not to mention the promise it holds for millions of outsiders who aspire for something better. This is what we celebrate on January 26.

John Anderson is a former deputy prime minister. His regular conversations can be found at johnanderson.net.au/