Invasion Day, The Matrix and Va
In many organisations, staff are offered flexibility around how they mark 26 January. On paper, this choice appears neutral, yet it often carries unspoken weight in practice. Such arrangements are usually framed as inclusive and flexible. In reality, the availability of alternatives does not remove the pressure of the day. It clarifies it. These moments invite reflection on what systems make visible for people operating within them: what is rewarded, what is made easier, and what quietly carries cost. For those who choose alternatives such as time off in lieu, the decision is rarely dramatic, but it can be revealing.
That realisation brought The Matrix to mind, not as fiction and not as conspiracy, but as metaphor. Not a story about escape, but about choice. The red wire or the blue wire. Neither is forced. Both are offered. What changes is what each option requires someone to hold, to name, or to leave unspoken. This reflection emerged from sitting with that question: how systems present alternatives, and how those alternatives reveal not just preference, but orientation.
Invasion Day has just passed, and once again it functioned as more than a public holiday. It became a moment where history, national identity, belonging, and power were compressed into a single date, and where the cost of participation or refusal became visible. Officially, 26 January is referred to as Australia Day. From a systems perspective, this naming is not incidental. It reflects the dominant narrative the state seeks to normalise. What is often described as division around the day is not confusion or disorder, but a moment when a system does exactly what it is designed to do: apply pressure, privilege one story, and reveal what different choices will cost.
The tension between calling the day “Australia Day” or “Invasion Day” is frequently reduced to a debate over language. In reality, these terms function as two different wires. Calling the day “Australia Day” allows celebration to proceed smoothly. It rewards participation with belonging and normalcy, and it requires that historical cost be absorbed quietly. Calling the day “Invasion Day” does something else. It names dispossession, disrupts celebratory consensus, and requires someone to carry the social, emotional, and political consequences of truth telling. The system does not force either choice. It presents both and makes the price of each unmistakable.
This is why people reach for the language of The Matrix. Not because systems are hidden, but because there are moments when they stop feeling abstract and begin to feel personal. In The Matrix, the system does not make the choice for you. It reveals what each option will cost. Comfort or clarity. Belonging or truth. Silence or consequence. Agency remains, but the terms are exposed. That is what Invasion Day does.
From a systems sense-making perspective, behaviour is not shaped by systems so much as revealed by them. Pressure exposes orientation. When the cost is low, many choices appear easy. When the cost rises, what people are willing to protect, trade, or ignore becomes clear. Systems apply pressure and wait. This is why Invasion Day is clarifying rather than confusing. For many Indigenous Australians, participation in national celebration requires relational amnesia: celebration without consent, unity without truth, belonging without repair. The alternative is refusal, which carries its own cost. The system does not compel either response. It simply reveals what smooth functioning depends on.
This is where Pasifika ideas of va help us see what is actually at stake. Va refers to the relational space between people, roles, institutions, and responsibilities. It is not empty space. It is active, ethical, and alive. From this perspective, the issue is not primarily a date or a name. It is whether relational space is honoured when doing so becomes inconvenient. Pressure does not destroy va. It tests it. When the cost of holding relational accountability is low, most systems accommodate it. When the cost rises, the choice becomes visible. Will dignity be preserved? Will relationship be held? Or will smooth functioning take precedence? Va is not fragile. It is revealed.
Recent history offers a clear example in Aotearoa. When Te Pāti Māori MP Hana Rāwhiti Maipi Clarke tore up the Treaty Principles Bill in Parliament, the act was not disorder for its own sake. It was a moment where the system’s demand became visible. The process could continue smoothly, but only if certain relational truths were absorbed quietly as cost. Once that cost was clear, the choice was made visible. Australia’s own legal history offers a parallel in the Mabo decision. For more than two centuries, Australian law functioned on the fiction of terra nullius, a narrative that allowed the system to operate smoothly by denying Indigenous sovereignty. The High Court was not compelled by chaos, but by pressure. It reached the point at which the cost of maintaining that fiction became greater than the cost of acknowledging truth. Mabo did not dismantle the system. It cut a wire. It made visible what smooth functioning had required others to carry in silence.
Leadership, then, is not about dismantling systems or pretending they do not exist. It is about recognising the moment when pressure reveals the cost of belonging, and deciding which wire to cut. One wire keeps the system running smoothly. The other restores awareness of people, of relationship, and of consequence. That choice is rarely dramatic. More often, it is quiet, internal, and costly. But it is where leadership actually lives.
Invasion Day is not simply an alternative label for Australia Day. It is a moment where systems reveal what they require to remain comfortable, and where people choose differently once that cost is visible. Culture shows us what is happening. Systems reveal why. Pressure reveals who we are willing to be when the price is known.