NSW’s Anzac Day retail ban is the latest in a long line of pious and empty symbolic gestures

Anzac Day occupies a rarefied place in Australian political life, but it hasn’t always had the status of a holy day, Paul Daley writes. Photograph: Getty Images

I’ve thought and written a lot, including books, magazine articles and plenty of pieces here, about how Australia commemorates its soldiers of the first world war who are referenced as the most revered acronym in national conversation – Anzacs.

Truth, the old adage goes, is the “first casualty of war”. It might just be a primary fatality of its commemoration, too.