Just when did Australia go so woke? How left-wing, anti-British ideology and virtue-signalling is sweeping the country – with Captain Cook statue toppled, Queen Victoria memorial vandalised and even TV comedies apologising for being filmed on ‘stolen land’

Anti-British attacks on statues of Captain Cook and Queen Victoria in Melbourne before Australia Day have sparked outrage in a nation recently branded the most ‘woke country in the world’.

Hard-left group Antifa have claimed responsibility for cutting down the statue of the great explorer at the shins and spraying ‘the colony will fall’ on the plinth, even though he died a decade before British colonialists first arrived at Sydney 235 years ago tomorrow.

Captain Cook was toppled and Queen Victoria desecrated less than 24 hours before Australia Day – marking the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson in 1788. 

But as 25million enjoy a national holiday on Friday, 100,000 people will march through capital Canberra demanding Australia Day is renamed ‘Invasion Day’.

Australia is famed for its TV exports including Neighbours, Home and Away and most recently kids show Bluey. But its latest comedy hit is Colin from Accounts, which begins with an apologetic statement that its makers ‘acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land in which this programme was produced’.

The Melbourne statue attacks came three months after 9million Australians returned an overwhelming rejection of a referendum to give greater political rights to indigenous people. All six states voted No in what was branded Australia’s ‘Brexit moment’.

This was despite the ‘Yes’ campaign being bankrolled by the nation’s biggest businesses and backed by most of the country’s most famous names including Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett as well as a host of social media stars, influencers and sports heroes.

A recent poll found Australians believe their country has never been so divided. 

Recent division has been blamed on the nation’s left-wing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has been accused of bowing to a ‘noisy minority’ spouting ‘woke rubbish’ and virtue-signalling on issues such as climate change and gender.

The avowed republican is also accused of stoking anti-British sentiment as well as being instrumental in ensuring that King Charles III does not appear on the new $5 note after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Some have questioned whether corporates such as Qantas co-opting of the ‘Acknowledgment of Country’ to show respect for Aboriginal culture and heritage is doing more harm than good to Indigenous causes. 

These are also known as ‘Welcome to Country’ announcements – recognition of Australia’s ancient history before the British arrived – and a promise that Australia ‘always was and always will be Aboriginal land’. 

The attacks on British statues from the 19th century give an insight into the increasing wokeifcation of Australia – a country, to the outside world at least, better known for their love of beer, beaches and cricket.

But a new young generation of ‘woke-left noisy activists’ has emerged with children Down Under ‘being taught that their country is shameful and racist’, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Albanese’s critics have said Australia in the midst of a culture war and has become too quick to ‘beat ourselves up’ and apologise for the past as well as ignored the benefits that came from being a colony.

Former prime minister John Howard, who led the country from 1996 to 2007, said last year: ‘I do hold the view that the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British’.

The statue in Melbourne of British naval officer James Cook, who in 1770 charted Sydney’s coast, was sawn off at the ankles on Thursday, while a monument of Queen Victoria in the city’s Queen Victoria Gardens was doused in red paint.

It happened on the eve of Australia Day, which held each year on January 26 to mark the anniversary of British settlement in 1788.

Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins and disgraced former skipper Steve Smith have recently claimed that January 26 is not an appropriate date to celebrate the national holiday, with the date a highly controversial issue due to the landing of the First Fleet from Britain in Australia.

Justifying the vandalism aboriginal politician Uncle Shane Charles insisted today that Australia Day should be called ‘Invasion Day’ and ‘Captain Cook is the founding father of genocide in this country’.

Attacks on statues linked to Britain have become more frequent with Captain Cook and other British historical figures attacked a number of times over the past decade. 

Statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II have been toppled in Canada because of its colonial past.

A recent poll found that almost half of Australians believe the nation is more divided than ever on major issues such as climate change, immigration and foreign policy including how to deal with the threat of China.

Many blame Australia’s current Labour Prime Minister.

Just last year, after discussions with Albanese’s government, Australia’s central bank announced that its new $5 bill would not feature an image of King Charles III after the Queen’s death.

Anti-royalists hailed it as a step towards a republic Down Under. 

One of Mr Albanese’s longstanding policies is to hold another vote on the issue after a referendum was narrowly defeated in 1999.

But this is currently on hold after his premiership was badly wounded last October when he lost a national vote to reform the constitution and give Aboriginal Australians a ‘Voice to Parliament’.

His campaign was backed by a host of Australian celebrities including Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, Chris and Luke Hemsworth. American Hollywood superstar Jason Momoa and New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi also spoke out in support.

A wave of new young celebrities and influencers including up and-coming Hollywood actress Angourie Rice, known for her roles in Spider-Man and non-binary actor Kath Ebbs.

Australia’s ‘big four’ banks and accounting firms, supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths, and mining behemoths BHP and Rio Tinto bankrolled the Yes23 campaign.

National airline Qantas even decided to paint the Yes23 logo on some of its aircraft.

But 9million ordinary Australians voted against Albanese’s key policy compared to 6million for it.

Sky News contributor Gary Hardgrave said after the vote that Australians are ‘fed up’ with ‘woke rubbish’ and claimed the rejection of Albanese’s Voice to Parliament agenda proved it.

‘I think the people of Australia are going to rise up – people are actually fed up with all of this woke rubbish, all of this Voice stuff and the reality is they’ve turned the gas off, we’ve got plenty in the ground – we’re going to import gas from another country – people are sick to death of this,’ Mr Hardgrave told Sky News.

He said Australia is the most ‘woke, broke country in the world’ and pointed to the decision to ban gas exploration and use of coal seen as a driver of inflation hitting hard-pressed Australian families.

He said: ‘We’re the first ones to fold when it comes to climate change, we’re the first ones to beat ourselves up.

‘China is getting rich off the back of our coal, we’re getting poor off the back of not using it. It’s feeding into inflation, it’s creating a circumstance where inflation is going up. China doesn’t respect us, because we don’t respect us’.

He added that the country had lots of natural gas but must turn to importing it because of domestic bans, adding that government is far more focussed on climate change than building homes for Australians.

He says Australians are ‘fed up’ with all of this ‘woke rubbish’ alongside the Voice to Parliament agenda giving the public a push to rise up against it all.

‘I think the people of Australia are going to rise up – people are actually fed up with all of this woke rubbish, all of this Voice stuff and the reality is they’ve turned the gas off, we’ve got plenty in the ground – we’re going to import gas from another country – people are sick to death of this’.

So-called ‘Welcome to Country’ announcements are now commonplace – an apology to Australia’s indigenous population acknowledging their suffering and a pledge that Australia ‘always was and always will be Aboriginal land’.

But some Aussies have urged national airline Qantas to drop forcing cabin crew to make the announcement on the in-flight PA system on every flight because the public is split on whether it is meaningful or just tokenism.

Aboriginal Elder of the Narungga People, Kerry White, said recently that the ‘Welcome to Country’ was once a ceremonial welcome at some events that has become overused and is ‘virtue signalling’.

She said that it was used by Aboriginal elders welcomed other Aboriginals onto their land for negotiation talks.

‘They didn’t use it every day, it was a ceremonial process, so they’ve taken our ceremonial process and demeaned it by throwing it out there every day in every aspect of what Australian people do,’ Ms White told Sky News Australia, adding: ‘And I think that is culturally wrong.’

Tomorrow an estimated 100,000 people gathering at Parliament House in Canberra tomorrow for a rally by protesters who call Australia Day ‘Invasion Day’ instead and a recent poll.

Australia’s largest grocer Woolworths has even decided to not stock merchandise linked to the national holiday on January 25 this year – even though a large and growing majority of Australians, in all age groups, support ‘Australia Day’ and its name.

The CEO is facing calls to be fired.

The popularity of the monarchy has fallen in Australia since the Queen’s death. Support to ditch a reigning king or queen rose three per cent to 39 per cent in the four months after Her Majesty passed, a recent poll found. 

Support for a monarchy, which had been in the slight majority, fell from 37 to 31 per cent.

The same poll found that the public have also been swayed towards supporting an Australian republic because of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s attacks on the Royal Family, especially since their Netflix series and Harry’s memoirs Spare.

The Queen’s death was marked by public mourning in Australia but some indigenous groups also protested Britain’s colonial past and called for the abolition of the monarchy. 

Like the UK, Australia is a constitutional monarchy, a democracy with the King as its head of state. A referendum proposing a switch to a republic was narrowly defeated in 1999.