Re: Australia Day - Change the date, or keep it the same?
Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2017 8:13 am
People are celebrating the cities that were built, the government system, the civil order, the life expectancy and endless things which are directly linked to the arrival of the English.SRW wrote: But those who are engaging in the debate to resist a shift from specifically January 26 need to be clear of their reasoning of why Australia Day must be tethered to it.
People are celebrating the current modern Australia which has a whole lot to do with the settlement and then development of Australia.
The celebration is directly of the English settlement, it makes sense to do that on the day it began.
You can move the date to May 8 and the celebration would still be celebrating what the English did to/for Australia.
You can not disconnect the reality of what happened and why it happened.
To remove the importance of January 26 removes most all of the Australian history that people want to celebrate.
Basically no one in the country is celebrating the arrival of the Aboriginals and removal of any previous occupants.
Or the wandering, hunter gatherer society. The aboriginal languages or the diet. Or any primitive tools they had made. Or any primitive huts they built.
That is history but it isn't history people are commonly wanting to celebrate.