Politician Floats Swapping Queen’s Birthday For Mabo Day, Internet Applauds

By

Alex Bruce-Smith

Published

File this one under: bloody good ideas we can’t believe aren’t already a reality.

A member of the Labor ACT Legislative Assembly has called for the Queen’s Birthday holiday in June to be scrapped, and instead replaced with a national holiday celebrating the landmark Mabo decision – which, as it happens, is just one day later on the calendar year.

In an op-ed published for The Guardian today as part of their IndigenousX series, Dr Chris Bourke – a politician / well-known advocate for Indigenous affairs – laid out the (many) reasons this is a perfectly logical decision, and a damn good one to boot.
They are:
  • Queen’s Birthday = a total snooze fest that has zero meaning to most Aussies, and is simply celebrated as a public holiday (we can’t speak for everyone here but PREACH).
  • The Mabo ruling = a historic day that was “a watershed in the struggle for Indigenous rights, and decisively overturned the 200 year-old lie of terra nullius.”

  • The schedule of public holidays will barely register a tremor. Queen’s Birthday is the 2nd Monday in June, and the Mabo ruling as on June 3rd, 1992. Okay, you *might* lose a three-day weekend, but small sacrifices.
  • It would be a big push in the Reconciliation process, currently “bogged” at a federal level
  • HE’S ALREADY DONE MOST OF THE WORK*.
*kinda. He’s found the exact bit of legislation that needs changing – Holidays Act 1958 in Section 3(1)(a)(ix), for anyone playing at home – and pointed out that the ACT Government could probably just substitute the words ‘Queen’s Birthday’ with ‘Mabo Day’ and be done with the whole thing.
EASY PEASY, MATE.
Dr Bourke writes:
“The stars are aligned. We have a day whose current significance has become irrelevant to the public, and we have an event of great significance to Australian history ready to take its place. Let’s make history.”
In next-to-no time at all, ‘Mabo Day’ was trending on Twitter; the response thus far is definitively on the ‘pro’ side of things.


Source: The Guardian.

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