Australia Day 2025 LIVE UPDATES: Dawn service kicks off national holiday despite outrage

A ‘dawn service’ was held in the eastern suburbs on Sunday to mark Australia Day.

Waverley Council – which incorporates the well-heeled eastern suburbs of Bondi, Bronte, Rose Bay, Tamarama and Dover Heights – announced earlier it will feature ‘cultural expression from local Knowledge Holders and artists’ at sunrise on January 26.

The council said the event was to ‘acknowledge the resilience and survival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their continuous connection to Country and culture as the Traditional Custodians of this land’.

Military Cross recipient Michael von Berg told Daily Mail Australia the notion of a dawn service was deeply linked to ANZAC Day and that it was an ‘ambush’ from council ‘sticking it to veterans and all those who have fallen protecting this country’.

In case you missed this one yesterday, here it is again.

Former footy great Neale Daniher, whose brave and very public battle against motor neurone disease has raised more than $100million to help find a cure, has been named the 2025 Australian of the Year.

Gina Rinehart will celebrate Australia Day surrounded by family in Washington DC before attending an exclusive soiree in honour of one of the nation’s greatest sporting exports.

Indigenous Australians were called ‘blacks’ and ‘natives’ at the time of white settlement and over the past two centuries have been subjected to far more racist labels.

Sam Newman has been accused of an astonishing act of disrespect during an ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ in Victoria.

The former Footy Show host and AFL great was among the guests at an Australia Day function at the state’s Government House on Wednesday.

According to another guest at the event, when governor of Victoria Margaret Gardner began an Acknowledgment of Country, Newman could be seen turning his back and heading for the exit.

Australia Day, called ‘Invasion Day’ by Indigenous Australians, its January 26 date and the festivities held on the day are increasingly a point of division in Australian society.

January 26 marks the day of the 1788 landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove and the raising of the Union Flag by Arthur Phillip, the colony’s first governor.