Want to get a $10,000 grant to celebrate Australia Day next year?

Great news, you can, but there’s a catch.

It’s for a Welcome to Country smoking ceremony.

Or it could be for a multicultural event.

Maybe a “morning of mourning”.

In fact, if it’s tied to an Indigenous group, you can get even more money.

But just don’t go out there and have something like a flag raising ceremony, or celebrate great Aussies.

This sounds ridiculous.

But it’s true.

The Australia Day Council, a government agency that falls under the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, has announced applications are open for Australia Day 2026 grants.

According to the press release announcement:

Local councils, government entities and not-for-profit organisations are eligible to apply for a federal government grant of between $2000 and $10,000 to deliver inclusive and accessible community events.

So far so good, sounds like a great initiative to celebrate our nation after all these years of division over changing the date and attacking the flag.

But according to the grant website, that’s not what this is for at all.

Instead, they talk about:

… smoking ceremonies to family fun days, citizenship ceremonies and First Nations cultural activities to multicultural festivals and backyard BBQs.

And the grant specifically allows for an extra $5000 if your event has significant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elements.

They throw “backyard BBQs” in there, but you and I know what these grants are really for.

One Labor MP in a social media post suggested you could use the grant for a “morning of mourning”.

Even the responsible Minister, Patrick Gorman, says in the announcement we should “reflect on our complex history”.

Give it a rest.

We live in a great country and we should be proud to celebrate it without qualification or apology.

No one believes Australia is perfect, or our history is unblemished, but the fact that these moral busybody activists and bureaucrats can’t allow just one single day for us to forthrightly celebrate our nation tells you a lot about their priorities.

Actually, it’s worse than that. Because they’re actively funding activities that denigrate, minimise, and talk down our country.

It’s easy to notice the activists when they’re marching and protesting in our cities, or they’re making ads and campaigning for some dangerous left wing policy, but the real insidious influence is in programs like this.

People who don’t like our country and who have an activist agenda work in these agencies and hold the purse strings for grants and government programs 

They are harming our national unity and cohesion and it needs to stop.

That begins with you and I celebrating our nation without apology next January 26.