The Welcome to Country at Melbourne’s Anzac Day Dawn Service has been booed by a group of protesters.
Hushed whispers earlier filled the air as masses of people turned out under the cloak of pre-dawn darkness in Melbourne on Friday to commemorate those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.
But the peace was broken during Bunurong elder Mark Brown’s Welcome to Country, when heckles and boos came from a group of around six to ten people near the front of the crowd.
Their voices were picked up by microphones and loudspeakers, making the disturbance clearly audible to the rest of the crowd.
The interruption was soon drowned out by louder applause from the crowd.
‘The tone took a turn when the service began and that was during the Welcome to Country,’ 3AW reporter Madelaine Burke said.
‘The boos lasted the entire five minutes of the Welcome to Country.’
Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan unleashed about the booing.
‘[It] runs counter to why we gather at the Shrine at dawn [with] hundreds of thousands people across the country simultaneously,’ she said on ABC radio shortly afterwards.
‘They gather to never forget what war is like and why it is so important so we can gather peacefully today because of that sacrifice.’
Ms Allan said education about Gallipoli, the ANZAC tradition, and wartime history was essential in countering displays of disrespect.
‘As we were taking our places this morning… [the MC Justin Smith] was reading out letters that young men had written to their mums from war zones,’ Ms Allan said.
‘That is what is being dishonoured. That is why we cannot give up educating, helping people understand why not only is that behaviour disrespectful, it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the past.’
A Welcome to Country is a traditional ceremony performed by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander elders to formally welcome visitors to their land and to give their blessing for events taking place on their traditional lands
While the small ceremonies are intended to be friendly and inclusive, it has proved divisive, with some claiming it is a token gesture and a symbol of woke culture.
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price previously said was ‘saturated’ with it, which was ‘removing the sacredness of certain traditional culture and practices’.
‘It’s just become almost like a throwaway line. We don’t want to see all these symbolic gestures. We want to see real action,’ she said.
The incident has been quickly condemned by RSL Victoria, which said the heckling was completely out of keeping with the intention of the solemn event.
Service men and women and their descendants will later march from Princes Bridge near Federation Square to the shrine before commemorations end with a wreath-laying service.