Australia day to be celebrated on the 28th Jan.

[Morrigu]

As for being ruled by the Spanish, Morrigu, was it the tapas, the Rioja, the successive military coups or the Fascism that first attracted you ? .

Hmmm initially I think it was the devilishly handsome men speaking a musical language - but then they produced Rioja wine, Jerez sherry, tapas and paella- SOLD!!

[stui magpie]

I agree with both sides, agree with Stui that without the first fleet arriving, what would have become of this land?

Yet, when the first fleet DID arrive, they absolutely treated the aboriginals appallingly, stole their children, barely seemed to acknowledge their existence, refused to even count them in the population (as Morrigu pointed out), not allowed to vote, etc etc. So I get that some call it 'invasion day' & can totally understand why.

But how to find a happy medium?

Just a nit pick.

They were allowed to vote in many states prior to federation. They were excluded from the vote at federal level from federation until the early 1960's.

By comparison, African Americans didn't get the vote until 1965, Native Americans weren't US citizens until 1924 and many still weren't allowed to vote because of state laws until 1957.

Women didn't get the right to vote in the US until 1920.

[What'sinaname]

Do we mark it as a "significant historical event" in the history of our country or because it's the day the British occupation force landed? It strikes me that it's a little like giving Dennis the "best Colonial bowler" award in 1977 - it's a quintessentially British viewpoint, not an Australian one, that focuses on the arrival of the First Fleet.

It isn't much related to the founding of the present Australian nation-state - the appropriate day would probably be the day the Australia Act was passed in 1986 and we became actually independent of the English Overlords.

It's quite quaint that we mark the arrival of the first few prison ships to get here. The Anericans don't mark their national day by commemorating the arrival of the first boat from the UK. They mark it by the day they signed their Declaration of Independence.

Then again, perhaps it is entirely apt - when I google "independence Australia", I get links to a disability support organisation....

Good point, I think we can celebrate 26 Feb as Janszoon Day and then 1 January as Australia Day as the establishment of a Commonwealth of Australia.

26 Jan as penal day is pretty shit to be honest.

[Mugwump]

As for being ruled by the Spanish, Morrigu, was it the tapas, the Rioja, the successive military coups or the Fascism that first attracted you ? .

Hmmm initially I think it was the devilishly handsome men speaking a musical language - but then they produced Rioja wine, Jerez sherry, tapas and paella- SOLD!!

To channel Blackadder further, "what made you do it ? Was it the pumpernickel, or the thought of hanging around with big men in leather shorts" ??

[Mugwump]

I agree with both sides, agree with Stui that without the first fleet arriving, what would have become of this land?

Yet, when the first fleet DID arrive, they absolutely treated the aboriginals appallingly, stole their children, barely seemed to acknowledge their existence, refused to even count them in the population (as Morrigu pointed out), not allowed to vote, etc etc. So I get that some call it 'invasion day' & can totally understand why.

But how to find a happy medium?

Just a nit pick.

They were allowed to vote in many states prior to federation. They were excluded from the vote at federal level from federation until the early 1960's.

By comparison, African Americans didn't get the vote until 1965, Native Americans weren't US citizens until 1924 and many still weren't allowed to vote because of state laws until 1957.

Women didn't get the right to vote in the US until 1920.

I suspect that our forebears from the first half of the twentieth century would be appalled at the well-documented squalor, alcoholism, sexual and child abuse, pornography and drug-taking that characterise too many aboriginal towns today. We might do well to actually fix some of the problems, before we take too many virtue-selfies at the expense of the past. The past might tell us that we emote too much and care too little, and that our repudiation of paternalism was probably right and inevitable, but it does seem to have made matters little better, and in many respects worse.

On the more general picture of aboriginal treatment post British settlement, I think the evidence is rather mixed as to intentions and effects. In an age where slavery was quite legal and widely practised across the world, the aboriginal Australians were spared that horror. Governor Phillip took pains to stress that murder of aboriginal Australians by white settlers would be a capital crime (see Hughes's Fatal Shore on this). There were nonetheless well-documented brutalities and dispossessions that arose when a stone-age nomadic culture came into contacts with a technologically-sophisticated one in a racist age. It takes many threads to make a string. Pantomime history is satisfying, I suppose, and useful in an ideological battle, but it is not admirable.

[David]

[stui magpie]

t's not the indigenous people I accuse of being over sensitive and perpetuating the victim mentality with their unconsciously paternalistic behaviour.

[watt price tully]

Is this Policital correctness gone mad?

Nope but I would have it on a different day. It's not just Aboriginals (or some / most) but many others including yours truly see it as Invasion Day (personally I can't see how anyone could see it as anything other but we all have our views) - have no issue with it what so ever.

28 January though? I'm just not too sure of that days significance though.

Need some popcorn though as I wait for the Australian & other shock jocks to feign & spew forth their outrage, apoplexy & indignation

I find the term Invasion day insulting. A european nation started to colonise a continent inhabited by a fragmented collection of stone age tribes who had distinguished themselves in their 60,000 years of occupancy by inventing no higher technology than the stick, directly contributing to the extinction of multiple species of flora and fauna and irrevocably altering the environment and climate.

Anyone who genuinely thinks they're worse off now than before white settlement is living in an alternate reality.

I have no idea why you would find the term invasion day insulting. Your choice.

I would simply call it empathy.

I'm the lucky recipient of British Colonisation of Australia but that doesn't mean I can't see how it affected & affects Aboriginal Australians.

For a long time on Nicks I've advocated for a different day to celebrate a day for all Australians.

To me 1 January is the logical day however it is also New Years Day so can't really do that on a practical level.

I'm not too sure which day it ought to be.

Having said that, we should acknowledge 26 January but not call it Australia day. It could well be:

* Boat people day,
* Prison hulk day,
* the antecedents to Eugenics day
* Transportation day,
* Bringing stodgy food to the Great Southern Land Day

In addition to the acknowledgement of this day of colonisation & the beginnings of European civilisation in Australia day it is also & at the same time an
Invasion Day.

This doesn't not need to be an either or argument & does not need to be mutually exclusive, it is both.

The argument that we are better off now is a red herring - it is irrelevant to the the notion of 26 January being amongst other things an invasion day.

[David]

t's not the indigenous people I accuse of being over sensitive and perpetuating the victim mentality with their unconsciously paternalistic behaviour.

Well, if you understand and respect their view, why does it matter what (paternalistic or otherwise) white hand-wringers are doing? We have a sufficiently clear divide in sentiment between traditionalists and Indigenous date-change advocates. White fellow-travellers may be amplifying the views held by the latter group, but they're hardly exaggerating them or putting words in people's mouths. It seems pretty clear to me that the most passionate advocates of changing the date are Aboriginal.

[HAL]

Do you mean you and me have?

[Mugwump]

Needless to say, we are no longer that country. We are no longer British subjects and no longer a white-only nation, and we now recognise that Australian history didn't begin in 1788. So it makes sense that, as our national identity has changed, some symbols will become irrelevant or counterproductive. The landing at Port Jackson hasn't stopped being an important date in our history; but it is clearly a day that no longer holds the purely celebratory associations that it once did.

You're not going to be able to change the way Aboriginal people view the day.

We're not the Christian country we were either. So I guess Christmas and Easter will have to go. They too are "counter-productive" in the eyes of the atheists, Muslims and Zoroastrians. Funny thing, this forgetting business. It starts as a luxury and ends in national Alzheimer's. Revolutionaries always seek to create a year zero and to erase the past, because that way they can experiment freely with the future, without anyone holding them accountable through memory. It always ends so well, too.

And Stui, I think many aboriginal people have learnt, and been taught to play,
the game of identity politics - "you owe me something now because of what someone unrelated to you with your skin color did to someone unrelated to me with my skin color as part of an historical process many years ago". It is a peculiar, regressive (indeed archaic, blood-based) idea of morality which retards the many as it enriches the few.

[David]

[HAL]

[HAL]

[Mugwump]

No, not equating reform with revolution - Conservarives have often been in the vanguard of reform. Erasing important events from your nation's history is not reform, however. It is very very reminiscent of the formulation of 1984 - who controls the past controls the present, and who controls the preeent. Bottoms the future. etc. As I said, those who want to experiment with the future hate the past because the ordinary natural human attachment to it forms a kind of popular oppositional memory. In any event, the really key point remains the irrefutable one that the greatest influence on the successful look,feel and political nature of modern Australia is the British settlement commencing in1788. It takes a lot of propaganda to whitewash that reality. Fortunately the Australian people still seem attached to their real history.