Always Was Tonight

1/30/2026

There is a particular cruelty to scheduling Always Was Tonight on Australia Day. Not because it mocks the holiday—though it certainly does, with Gamilaroi host Tony Armstrong delivering lines like describing January 26 as "the only day of the year when white people argue about which date to be racist" from behind a desk shaped unmistakably like a boomerang. No, the cruelty lies in the mathematics. On an average night in Australia—say, Sunday 26 January 2026—35 Indigenous children under the age of thirteen are incarcerated nationwide. They are 21 times more likely to be imprisoned than their non-Indigenous peers, a statistic that, as Armstrong notes with devastating flatness, "makes the lottery look like a sure bet". In Armstrong's homeland of Victoria, the age of criminal responsibility