Happy Australia Day 2017

[Crazy Dazz]

Well thank goodness most people have empathy & common sense and don't see things the same way as that.
I'd recommend enjoying Jan 26th to the max while you still can. Bask in its white glory, because its days of officially* being Australia Day are most definitely numbered.
(* unofficially I'm sure that certain marginal groups will celebrate it extra-hard on Jan 26 after the date has changed)

I'm not a bigot. I respect peoples' right to have a different opinion to mine, and if and when a clear majority of people support changing the date (whatever their reasoning) then it should happen.

Now that said, the most recent Roy Morgan poll shows that support for keeping the date is increasing.

Personally, this feels like one of those perpetual issues (like republicanism, changing the flag, daylight savings in WA, etc) where supporters keep claiming that "things have changed" and support has increased, but overall it tends to stay stagnant.

[Favonius Aquila]

What does changing the date actually do? It doesn't change the fact that the English settled here. For much of human history - including during the late 1700's - more powerful countries/groups took land by conquest. If it wasn't the English, then the Dutch, French, German, Spanish or Portugese would have. We should all be eternally grateful that it was the English. The English themselves have been invaded by the Romans, Normans, Angles, Saxons, etc. Just get on with it and live your best life.

[Mr Q]

What does changing the date actually do? It doesn't change the fact that the English settled here.

It doesn't, but it does say to the Indigenous community that we now realise that was, in fact, an invasion, that it was quite deleterious to them as a community over the next 150 years at least, and that perhaps it's time we stopped celebrating Britain starting an effective conquest of their people. *You* might not see it as that, but certainly the majority of Indigenous Australians, and an ever-growing percentage of non-indigenous Australians as well see it as just that. Invasion Day.

The reality is that it's a made up (and relatively modern) day, that should be easy to change. And changing it does mean that we're now inclusive of what came before and after British colonisation.

And finally, it stops basically insulting our First Nations people. I mean, why do we need to continue on with insulting people when we can so easily stop insulting them. It's not a zero sum game where someone has to be insulted (and anyone that thinks that changing the day would somehow insult white people, well I've got some bridges to sell you).

The British influence on Australian culture isn't going to be wiped out any time soon. Hell, as long as we keep playing cricket it's there.

[Favonius Aquila]

There's not an inhabited region on earth that hasn't been invaded/settled at some time by a more powerful group. England, herself, has been invaded /settled multiple times. Do we honestly believe that, in 'pre-colonial' times, indigenous groups didn't invade/settle neighbouring groups? It was the way of the world until the Covenant of the League of Nations was signed in the aftermath of WW1.

Changing the date, to me, seems tokenistic. Would celebrating Australia Day on 25 Jan really be any better than 26 Jan?

It's a bit like individuals and businesses (including WCE) who push the 'always was, always will be' line, but don't actually practise what they preach by signing over their own land to the local indigenous people.

Changing tbe date doesn't do anything to address what most see as the pressing issues in indigenous communities, such as:
- low rates of attendance at school (with associated lifelong disadvantage)
- high rates of unemployment/underemployment
- high rates of domestic violence
- high rates of child sexual abuse
- high rate of criminality leading to high rates of imprisonment

'Change the date' & 'always was, always will be' look great on a t-shirt and get multiple likes on social media, but in my view don't really do anything to benefit indigenous people.

[Mr Q]

There's not an inhabited region on earth that hasn't been invaded/settled at some time by a more powerful group. England, herself, has been invaded /settled multiple times. Do we honestly believe that, in 'pre-colonial' times, indigenous groups didn't invade/settle neighbouring groups? It was the way of the world until the Covenant of the League of Nations was signed in the aftermath of WW1.

We don't live Pre-WWI, so the standards of pre-WWI aren't applicable.

It's the same argument as people who excuse bad behaviour with "but in Saudi Arabia they...." as if our standards should be determined by some pathetic lowest common denominator.

Changing the date may not do anything about those other things. But you know, I'd like to think these aren't either-or items, they can both be done, the practical and the symbolic. And let's be honest, providing the symbolic gives indigenous people some indicator that the rest of the country actually gives a shit about them. Keeping the national day on what they see as Invasion Day is pulling a big "fuck you" to them. Improving relations can help with all of those things.

[Peter_Melesso_Fanclub]

Changing the date, to me, seems tokenistic. Would celebrating Australia Day on 25 Jan really be any better than 26 Jan?

Yes.

[Favonius Aquila]

We don't live Pre-WWI, so the standards of pre-WWI aren't applicable.

No, we live in 2022. In the late 18th century people operated under a different set of values (both 'Europeans and indigenous people). It's fundamentally flawed logic to judge the actions of people 250 years ago by modern standards.

The greivance mob will never stop - there'll always be some other 'trigger'. Change the date, change the flag, change the constitution, give us reparations for this, add a chamber to parliament, tear down this statue, erase this person from the history books, change the name of that suburb, etc.

There's more to indigenous people than perpetual victimhood.

Far easier to wear a 'change the date' t-shirt than focus on real solutions.

[Mr Q]

It's fundamentally flawed logic to judge the actions of people 250 years ago by modern standards.

Many of these "founding fathers" of Australia committed multiple massacres of Indigenous people back in the day. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to judge them on that. And to judge that the British colonization of Australia was violent beyond belief, and that keeping that as a core to celebrating our nation holds us back. It's not unreasonable to stop celebrating them and their actions - we're starting to see that in some areas - a few Federal electorates named after sometime butchers have been renamed for instance (Batman, Denison, McMillan).

Not judging them is like saying "it was OK for the KKK to lynch black people in the 1920s, because that's what was accepted back then".

It makes us small and petty that we can't accept that our nation was built on occupation, theft and violence. Because it was.

Australia Day is wrong as it is, and it's so easy to fix. So easy. What chance have we to fix the real shit if we can't even fix the straightforward simple symbolic stuff.

[Favonius Aquila]

I don't know anyone who would claim that Australia wasn't settled by the English against the local inhabitants wishes. As I've made mention before, there's not an inhabited region on earth which hasn't experienced (often multiple) invasions/settlements. By their very nature, they're not peaceable processes. I imagine the inhabitants of England met with violence in the invasions of the Romans, then the Angles, Saxons, & Jutes, then the Danes, then the Normans, etc. (not to mention the constant raids by the Barbary slavers from the Ottoman empire's north African states). I imagine that there's also been some pretty brutal conflicts between indigenous groups in their time here, no doubt occasionally leading to displacement and dispossession of the defeated group.

We'll never move forward if we keep looking backward with an eye to cancelling anything with which we take offence. Perpetuating a 'victim mindset' is a path to nowhere.

We live in a stable liberal democracy with an approach to multiculturalism that's the envy of the world. Different waves of migrants have settled and made their way through grit, hard work and determination - the Chinese in the early gold rush, the Irish during their great famine, the Greeks & Italians following WW2, the Vietnamese in the aftermath of their civil war & more recently from Africa and the Middle East. Did they have an easy run? No, but they got on with building a life for themselves and their families.

We should look to and be inspired by their example. Taking personal responsibility to better one's own position is more likely to bring about success than a grievence mentality. A simple example is school attendance. A #gotoschool campaign would be of far greater benefit than #changethedate, in my opinion.

It's fundamentally flawed logic to judge the actions of people 250 years ago by modern standards.

Many of these "founding fathers" of Australia committed multiple massacres of Indigenous people back in the day. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to judge them on that. And to judge that the British colonization of Australia was violent beyond belief, and that keeping that as a core to celebrating our nation holds us back. It's not unreasonable to stop celebrating them and their actions - we're starting to see that in some areas - a few Federal electorates named after sometime butchers have been renamed for instance (Batman, Denison, McMillan).

Not judging them is like saying "it was OK for the KKK to lynch black people in the 1920s, because that's what was accepted back then".

It makes us small and petty that we can't accept that our nation was built on occupation, theft and violence. Because it was.

Australia Day is wrong as it is, and it's so easy to fix. So easy. What chance have we to fix the real shit if we can't even fix the straightforward simple symbolic stuff.

[HH]

Fine fine fine.

Change the date to 27 January or whatever. It won’t stop me or the vast majority of Australians from celebrating just as hard and being thankful for this wonderful country of our’s.

Then maybe all the progressives can actually move on to a real substantive initiative that actually addresses real problems faced by First Nations people.