We couldn’t have chosen a worse day.
Every year now, Australia Day is accompanied by a debate about whether
it is the most suitable date to celebrate our nationhood. Let me be
clear from the start – I am on the side of changing the date and I think
a change will occur in my lifetime. It is becoming increasingly
difficult to justify continuing with this national day. However,
suggesting a change of date will bring out the reactionaries and their
unsound reasoning as to why it should stay where it is.
What the 26th January commemorates is the British colonisation of Australia. Not only is it a slap in the face to Indigenous people (and white people explaining why they shouldn’t have a problem with it is just salt in the wounds), but what the actual fuck Australia? A quick study of national days around the world reveals most countries celebrate an anniversary of declaring independence (a lot of the time from Great Britain). No other country celebrates being colonised.
Yes, it is a significant day in our history but not an auspicious one. Apart from the dispossession of the Indigenous people and their subsequent struggle which continues to this day, the circumstances around the First Fleet were bloody awful as well. If you remember your school history lessons, the British government decided the solution to their overcrowded prisons wasn’t to try to reduce the gap between rich and poor and maybe address their class system, but to instead set up a penal colony on the other side of the world. Prisoners were selected fairly randomly for transportation to Sydney. The conditions on the ships were vile and at the end of this journey, they then had to build their own prison. This course of action would not be allowed today. That’s right – the First Fleet and its arrival in Sydney was just one massive abuse of human rights for almost everyone involved. The question is why we ever thought this was a date worthy of celebrating.
So why are some people so resistant to even considering a change? Simply, it is because race issues are front and centre of this discussion. Because their comfortable lives and purview are unsettled when reminded there is another story of Australia that is at odds with their shiny, happy version. This other story creates dissonance. They don’t like this dissonance. Deep down they probably know their society was built on an injustice (which began on 26 January 1788). Their small minds want to be allowed to ignore it.
Perhaps that is too sympathetic to them though. Maybe their conviction that their opinion should prevail is based on an innate sense of superiority to Indigenous Australians; nothing provokes their ire more than when their sense of entitlement to tell the nation’s story is questioned by Indigenous people. In other words, they are racist.
I suggest 3 March be the new Australia Day. It is the day the Australia Act became law in 1986, signalling Australia’s independence from the British government (still have their head of state though. One step at a time then).
Posted from Yuggera land (Brisbane)
What the 26th January commemorates is the British colonisation of Australia. Not only is it a slap in the face to Indigenous people (and white people explaining why they shouldn’t have a problem with it is just salt in the wounds), but what the actual fuck Australia? A quick study of national days around the world reveals most countries celebrate an anniversary of declaring independence (a lot of the time from Great Britain). No other country celebrates being colonised.
Yes, it is a significant day in our history but not an auspicious one. Apart from the dispossession of the Indigenous people and their subsequent struggle which continues to this day, the circumstances around the First Fleet were bloody awful as well. If you remember your school history lessons, the British government decided the solution to their overcrowded prisons wasn’t to try to reduce the gap between rich and poor and maybe address their class system, but to instead set up a penal colony on the other side of the world. Prisoners were selected fairly randomly for transportation to Sydney. The conditions on the ships were vile and at the end of this journey, they then had to build their own prison. This course of action would not be allowed today. That’s right – the First Fleet and its arrival in Sydney was just one massive abuse of human rights for almost everyone involved. The question is why we ever thought this was a date worthy of celebrating.
So why are some people so resistant to even considering a change? Simply, it is because race issues are front and centre of this discussion. Because their comfortable lives and purview are unsettled when reminded there is another story of Australia that is at odds with their shiny, happy version. This other story creates dissonance. They don’t like this dissonance. Deep down they probably know their society was built on an injustice (which began on 26 January 1788). Their small minds want to be allowed to ignore it.
Perhaps that is too sympathetic to them though. Maybe their conviction that their opinion should prevail is based on an innate sense of superiority to Indigenous Australians; nothing provokes their ire more than when their sense of entitlement to tell the nation’s story is questioned by Indigenous people. In other words, they are racist.
I suggest 3 March be the new Australia Day. It is the day the Australia Act became law in 1986, signalling Australia’s independence from the British government (still have their head of state though. One step at a time then).
Posted from Yuggera land (Brisbane)
Absolutely agree
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