Celebrating Australia Day on January 26

People in NSW have been marking January 26 since the early 1800s to commemorate the anniversary of the first British landing. The other colonies celebrated their own founding dates.

It wasn’t until 1935 that all Australian States and Territories accepted January 26 as Australia’s national day and agreed to call it “Australia Day”.

Marking January 26 had always been about commemorating British arrival. But over time it also became a day for the colonies to celebrate growing self-reliance and lessening dependency on Britain. There’s always been a tension between celebrating British arrival on the one hand and celebrating Australia’s own identity and independence on the other.

In 1938, then Australian premiers gathered in Sydney to mark 150 years since the First Fleet’s landing. That same day, Aboriginal leaders held a Day of Mourning and Protest to highlight the mistreatment of Aboriginal people and campaign for equal rights.

Jack Patten opened the Day of Mourning and Protest conference saying: “On this day the white people are rejoicing, but we, as Aborigines, have no reason to rejoice on Australia’s 150th birthday. Our purpose in meeting today is to bring home to the white people of Australia the frightful conditions in which the native Aborigines of this continent live.

“This land belonged to our forefathers 150 years ago, but today we are pushed further and further into the background... We do not wish to be left behind in Australia’s march to progress. We ask for full citizen rights.”

The 26th of January is the wrong day to celebrate Australia Day.

Firstly, Australia wasn’t founded on January 26, 1788. It was founded on January 1, 1901, when six British colonies united as a single nation under the Australian Constitution.

Before then, people living in those colonies were British subjects. For most of their history the other colonies/states didn’t commemorate January 26 because it was a day of significance for NSW. They resisted embracing it as the national day, reluctant to signal NSW as the senior state.

Secondly, the tension between commemorating British conquest on the one hand and celebrating Australian identity and independence on the other isn’t going away. This isn’t a recent tension drummed up by Lefties. It’s always been there, even before anyone cared about what indigenous people think.

Now I know Australia loves its public holiday at the end of January. So declare the last Friday of January a public holiday and let the end of January continue to be part of our national routine for holidays, BBQs with friends and family, summer activities and fun.

But it doesn’t need to be on the 26th every year and it doesn’t need to be Australia’s national day.

Australia Day should be celebrated on January 1. That’s the proper day to celebrate Australia’s independence, identity and nationhood because that’s the day Australia came into being and it’s a day everyone can unite behind.

All Australians, including indigenous Australians, should be able to celebrate our country, its achievements and unique identity. The sentiments expressed on Australia Day are good and they’re sentiments most indigenous people share. But we can’t celebrate unity on a day representing conflict and conquest.

I want Australia Day moved — not because I don’t want to celebrate Australia but because I do.

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

The only time that I actually put any real effort into "celebrating" Australia Day was in 1988, on the bicentenary of the European settlement of Botany Bay...

Most Aussies only treat it as another public holiday;  while a small number of neo-nazis, xenophobes and monarchists take the opportunity to get pissed as parrots, and reaffirm their opposition to anything changing within their lifetimes..

It has been a highly controversial move, criticised by the Federal Government and Fremantle's business community.

Faced with losing out on one of the biggest trading days of the year, businesses have clubbed together to raise the $50,000 needed to salvage the traditional fireworks display on the 26th.

Visitors and residents now have a choice: the fireworks, which are part of a four-day fiesta called "Australia Week", or the council's alternative event "One Day in Freo" on the 28th.

On top of all that, far right groups Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front are planning to converge on Fremantle on Australia Day to protest against what they called "an act of betrayal against Australia".

'Aboriginal support for this decision has been overwhelming'

veya_victaous wrote:Also one of the best comments was from an Irish Australian (still with an Irish Accent)
"we celebrate by Eating and Drinking till we fall over, the date we do it doesn't really matter"

THERE is something about Australia Day that turns both socialists and skinheads into chumpsticks, which is perhaps in itself an argument for saving the date.

But what does it actually mean?

For most people it is little more than an excuse to have a beer or watch the tennis — and while there might not be much joy in the latter this year there is always a good reason for the former. Certainly no one I know sits around with a VB in one hand and a chop in the other shouting: “Yay! Cultural genocide!”

For those who mark Australia Day in any official capacity, indigenous Australians are emphatically represented, their culture celebrated and their dispossession acknowledged.

For more recent arrivals than Arthur Phillip and his cargo of convicts it is the day when they are formally welcomed into this nation, often after fleeing genocide themselves, in citizenship ceremonies around the country.

And for everyone else there’s always a barbecue or a Wiggles concert on somewhere.

But it cannot be denied that January 26, 1788 was not a good day for Aboriginal people — nor convicts for that matter — and this is something our history must recognize. Our constitution should recognize it too.

And of course the day of our technical founding as a nation is January 1, 1901. But that’s already New Year’s Day and what red-blooded Australian would ever tolerate losing a public holiday?

And so January 26, once a parochial day on the New South Wales calendar that competed with the foundation days of other colonies, was plucked from the hat of history. It wasn’t until the 1930s that it was even called Australia Day.

The prevailing wisdom seemed to be that it was as good a day as any, even if indigenous Australians begged to differ.

But the national days of many great democracies also have little to do with fairness or commonsense.

The most famous national day is of course America’s Independence Day, upon which in 1776 the brave colonists threw off the yoke of British oppression and dedicated themselves to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

However there wasn’t much life for the native Americans they killed, nor liberty for the black slaves they kept — indeed, if they had remained a British colony the slaves would have been freed three decades sooner.

And dear old Mother England, whose troops and social detritus sailed into Sydney Harbour, doesn’t even have a national day. It’s been invaded so many times that the notion of “Invasion Day” would be utterly absurd.

“Er, which particular invasion are you referring to?” some Cornishman would politely ask.

The truth is every country has a dark past. It is how its citizens respond to it that matters.

For the only absolute and undeniable fact about history is that it cannot be changed. Obsessing over historical grievances is what tore apart the Balkans in the 1990s and the Middle East in, well, forever. It’s also why so many people from these places are so grateful to have found a new start here.

We cannot reverse the mistakes of the past, nor fully remedy them. There is a limit to justice when both the victims and the perpetrators are long dead. All any mortal can do is accept the present and try to improve the future.

So maybe we should change the date of Australia Day or maybe we shouldn’t. Either way it will make no difference to the lives of Aboriginal people unless we couple it with more than hashtags and hand-wringing.

“The real change is only going to happen is when we start getting all our kids educated and when we start getting jobs and businesses in all our communities,” says Mr Mundine. “The real injustice is we spend so much money and so little has changed.”

Or, as said by the “proud part-Aboriginal” Anthony Dillon from the ACU’s Institute for Positive Psychology and Education: “For those who feel it is their mission to insist that non-Aboriginal Australians should somehow feel guilty for past sins, your energy would be better spent celebrating how far we’ve come and perhaps addressing the serious problems affecting Aboriginal people today”.