Last night Melbourne’s Yarra council voted to stop referring to January 26 as Australia Day, as a way to support the #ChangeTheDate campaign. The council will also stop holding citizenship ceremonies on that day and will lobby the federal government to change the date of Australia Day.’

This morning Today presenter Karl Stefanovic thew his support behind the call to change the date, telling viewers “if we are to truly follow through with the apology and move forward together hand in hand, arm and arm then I believe it must change”.

Both of these things are legitimate expressions of a particular political view. Yarra council, like Fremantle before it, is allowed to take a position on Anzac Day. Karl Stefanovic is allowed to put forward the case for change.

But the federal government, who ultimately has responsibility for when Australia Day is officially celebrated, is having none of it. Today in parliament Malcolm Turnbull made a statement defending Australia Day’s current date, and the assistant minister for immigration and border protection, Alex Hawke, has stripped Yarra council’s authority to hold citizenship ceremonies in response to their decision.

If these moves seem like a massive overreaction that’s because… they are. And they’re not about Australia Day, they’re about distracting from the government’s long list of clusterfucks.

The Government Is Extremely Mad

Today in parliament Turnbull argued that even though “the history of European settlement in Australia has been complex and tragic for Indigenous Australians” Australia Day was about recognising “the greatness of our achievements as Australians” and “the remarkable nation we have become”.

He urged Australians to celebrate Australia Day and “be proud of it” and be “committed to it”. Turnbull went on to describe Yarra council’s decision as “utterly out of step with Australian values” and accused the council of dividing Australians.

A few hours later the government issued a statement confirming it had stripped Yarra council’s ability to hold any citizenship ceremonies in order to “safeguard their integrity”. The assistant minister for immigration and border protection, Alex Hawke, said the government “would not tolerate Yarra council’s use of citizenship ceremonies as a political device in a campaign against Australia Day being celebrated on January 26”.

This Is A Desperate Distraction

On first glance it looks a bit like the government’s extremely heavy handed response to an inner-city Melbourne council is an attempt to distract from their embarrassing mishandling of the postal survey on marriage equality, the ongoing citizenship mess and the diplomatic incident we’ve managed to get in with New Zealand.

Actually, it looks a bit like that on the second glance as well.

There’s no two ways about it — the government is having an absolutely shit time. They don’t really have much of an agenda, the postal survey has sucked up a huge amount of oxygen, while copping a lot of criticism, and Deputy PM could be booted out of parliament by the High Court for being a secret Kiwi.

It’s not too surprising that the government has pivoted to safer territory: an over the top culture war about Australia Day and good ol’ fashioned “Aussie values”, but it is still pretty bloody cynical.

Unfortunately for Turnbull it won’t work. The government is lurching from crisis to crisis because it has no clue what it believes in or wants to achieve, and is being dragged around by a cabal of uber-conservative backbenchers who are deeply out of touch with the public.

A lazy attempt to fire up the base by picking on Yarra council might distract everyone for an afternoon but it won’t make up for all the government’s deep, structural problems.

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Feature image via Samuel Leighton-Dore