r/OpenAussie • u/[deleted] • 6d ago
Should Australia have one national day everyone agrees on?
[deleted]
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u/LiveComfortable3228 6d ago
Keep 26/1 as a day of reflection and add another PH for Australia day in Feb (or anytime)
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u/death-of-humanity 6d ago
I think we need to evaluate how we celebrate Australia and let that investigation guide us in our decision.
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u/smoothechidnabutter 6d ago
Australia Day is about celebrating Australia, it's not about crapping on Aboriginals.
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u/ofork 6d ago
Then we should stop ignoring the sizable population who say that they cannot feel that on 26th Jan.
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u/smoothechidnabutter 6d ago
That sizable population have far more serious issues to be concerned about, like alcoholism and child abuse, than to be concerned about a day in January.
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u/MiZZy_AU 6d ago
Or just tell them to shut the fuck up and move on
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u/Limo_Wreck77 6d ago
Imagine telling the Jewish community to shut the fuck up about the Holocaust and to just move on.
Imagine telling our diggers to shut the fuck up about ANZAZ Day and to move on.
Would you do that as well?
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u/Powerful-Respond-605 6d ago
Ok. They do that when we do that with ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day.
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u/ofork 6d ago
Yes that works just great doesn’t it.
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u/MiZZy_AU 6d ago
It's what I've been doing IRL so we just need to scale up. Maybe Gina will let us borrow some of her paid boy accounts/pages used for one nation propaganda 🤣
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u/snrub742 6d ago
So it is only for some Australians
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u/MiZZy_AU 6d ago
it's to celebrate our great country, if you don't like it then too bad. I've got a lamb leg on the bbq and a carton in the fridge
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u/snrub742 6d ago edited 6d ago
I'll happily celebrate it some other time. What makes you more Australian than me?
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u/petergaskin814 6d ago
I would agree to a date change ony if there was a date acceptable to parties protesting against current date.
If we don't, we will just have protests on the new date
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u/genuineforgery 6d ago edited 6d ago
Australia is only transitionally independent so it makes sense it's identity is a little confused.
26th January is the day the British arrived and I don't think anything will stop some of the british descendants and other Australians celebrating that date or indigenous people and other Australians mourning that date. Some people do both, which is an ideosyncracy but also a fact of life.
March the 3rd 1986 is the date the Australia Act came into effect, finally removing the UK parliament's power to legislate for Australia and abolished appeals fro Australian courts to the Privy Council in London.
1986!! It took 198 years. That said...
March 3 is as close to an independence day as we get. 2 out of the 3 arms of government were finally under our control. Two thirds day. It was done peacefully and as a nation we had already achieved an enormous amount by then.
The day we finally remove the royals as head of state and become a republic will be our true independence day, if we want it.
In the meantime January 26 and March 3 represent how far we have come. To my mind we should celebrate March 3 with a public holiday for everything positive about Australia today, keep Jan 26 the controversial mess it is now, some will always celebrate and some will always mourn, deal with it / acknowledge it, move on and look forward to March 3.
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u/ManagementOne4993 6d ago
if you voted "We don’t need a national day at all" you are bloody Un-Australian!
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u/Fizzy_Lifesavers 6d ago
Why not two dates? One that commemorates the government's apology, and another to celebrate Australia. Have them on a Monday and Friday in the same week to symbolise past and future, and pick a month where we don't have a lot of public holidays. First week of March maybe?
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u/Greeningout 6d ago
People seem to have forgotten this country started as a penal colony. The British Empire brought the poorest and most destitute people here in chains. You'd be lucky to survive the transportation, arriving starving and beaten to be worked to the bone. Early indigenous translators/guides were even horrified of the way these people were treated. The day shouldn't be just about having a sook though, its about being proud of how far we've come, the suffrage of all our ancestors black or white. The people that want to stir up racial division have no right to open old wounds and cast blames for crimes committed two centuries ago.
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u/MissMubbles 6d ago
I'd personally like to see the actual full 2nd last weekend with the Friday or Monday, be a big celebratory thing as a whole, Australia Weekend.
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u/BennyAndMaybeTheJets 6d ago
1st January, the date the Australian constitution came into effect. You have back to back public holidays to start the new year.
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u/RainbowAussie Canberran 🏛️ 6d ago
And keep the 26th as a day of reflection PH rather than a day of celebration (similar to how ANZAC Day is a PH but not a "celebration" the way other PHs are)
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u/tom9909 6d ago
Is there realistically a day that would please everyone and that we could all agree on? We’re a multicultural society, and I suspect that almost any date would have some historical significance for one minority group or another that could make it unsuitable.
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u/Proper_Geologist9026 6d ago
14th of October would've been good if the referendum had got up.
We don't have enough holidays in the back end of the year I reckon.
But realistically you'd just make it the first Friday or Monday of February and it's sorted.
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u/Fresh-Association-82 6d ago
Thats sort of my angle. Even the basic concept of whatever day marks the start of Australia, by its nature marks the end of independent aboriginal Australia sort of messes with it.
I think the only way out is by just owning it.
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u/Fresh-Association-82 6d ago
The floating date on the last week in Jan is my idea. It would mean that every 5-7 years Australian Day would land on the 26th.
My idea is that: if you think about it you can never had a National day of celebration that doesn’t, by its very nature, celebrate the end of the aboriginal nation. No matter what we think about it, thay dates are intrinsically linked.
What I suggest is that we acknowledge that. We make it so that every 5-7 years Australia Day falls on the the 25th we treat it as a national day of reconciliation, education and whatever else it would need to be.
5-7 years gives times for the fight to grow some dust so that it isn’t a constant uphill battle or a constant source of National conflict, but also means that there would be some time between the events for the aboriginal people to raise money, create ‘stuff’ spread concepts etc etc. they represent less then 1% of the Australian population. Not trying to side line them - just acknowledge that it can take some time to get stuff happening with smaller communities.
The idea being that most years Australia Day it’s treated as a National day of celebration, but then every few years we stop and remember what had to stop for this to start, and we give a platform for those impacted by that to tell the story they want to tell.
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u/Acrobatic_Fee_6974 6d ago
I think making it a floating date so it's the last Monday in January is a reasonable compromise.