Today is January 26th, which means half the country is covered in flags and getting drunk or enjoying a day off, and the other half is in mourning, or walking in one of the many Invasion Day marches across the country.
This divide gets greater every year, and the debate gets louder.
2017 seems be welcoming a whole new type of breakthrough for the #ChangeTheDate side, with plenty of well-known Australian personalities and politicians coming out and publicly saying they do not accept 26th January as Australia‘s national holiday.
This morning, federal Greens leader Richard Di Natale posted a video to his official Facebook page explaining that his party would be bringing a motion to the Senate about changing the date of Australia Day.
The politician tells the camera,
“All Australians want a day where we can come together as a national community to reflect on where we’re at, and to celebrate what we’ve become – a wonderfully diverse, inclusive, open and free society. But January 26 is not that day…”
Di Natale goes into the details of what happened on January 26th, 1788, explaining that the First Fleet landed and began a colonial invasion of the world’s oldest culture – Aboriginal people.
He then explains that changing the date wouldn’t really affect white Australians at all – it would, however, allow Indigenous Australians to join in on the celebrations:
“Celebrating Australia Day on Jan 26 locks us in to one position or another – we’re either celebrating Australia Day and forgetting its history, or we’re remembering and resisting. As things stand, we are actively celebrating a day that is a day of mourning, and a day of pain to many First Australians. This diminishes all of us.“We wouldn’t lose a public holiday. We wouldn’t lose any sense of our national identity, and we’d still be able to celebrate what it means to be Australian – we’d just be able to celebrate it together.”
He then announces that when Parliament resumes, the Greens will be asking the Senate to support a motion to change the date of Australia Day from January 26th.
Watch below:
Photo: The Australian Greens / Facebook.
