The Guardian view on Australia Day: change the date The Guardian | Editorial | 24 January 2017 Mick Dodson explained succinctly why he thought Australia’s national day is celebrated on the wrong date after accepting his Australian of the Year award in 2009. “Many of our people call it Invasion Day … to many Indigenous Australians, in fact, most Indigenous Australians, it really reflects the day in which our world came crashing down,” the prominent Indigenous leader and academic said. The idea that it’s not appropriate to hold a national celebration on the date the first fleet arrived in Sydney cove in 1788 to begin the process of Indigenous dispossession wasn’t new. It wasn’t even the first time an Australian of the Year had said so. Lowitja O’Donoghue pleaded for a date change after she was honoured in 1984. It’s even more widespread now. Guardian Australia agrees. This is not a date that unifies Australians. In fact it’s hard to think of a worse date for a party that is supposed to include us all. The National Australia Day Council itself acknowledges the problem. “We recognise that some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and some nonAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians may have mixed feelings about celebrating this day. January 26 has multiple meanings: it is Australia Day and it is also, for some, Survival Day or Invasion Day. The NADC acknowledges that the date brings a mixture of celebration and mourning and we believe that the programs presented by the NADC should play a powerful and positive role in advancing reconciliation.” The national strategy that followed the initial decade-long process to achieve reconciliation recommended the date be changed. “Governments, organisations and communities negotiate to establish and promote symbols of reconciliation,” it said. “This would include changing the date of Australia Day to a date that includes all Australians.” But, despite the obvious historical arguments and the growing acknowledgement the date is a problem, there is still deep resistance to the idea that 26 January is inappropriate. Back in 2009 the then prime minister Kevin Rudd’s reply to Mick Dodson’s suggestion was even more brusque. “To our Indigenous leaders, and those who call for a change to our national day, let me say a simple, respectful, but straightforward no,” he said. Some – like the Indigenous leader Noel Pearson – have suggested changing our understanding of exactly what we are celebrating on 26 January. He sees three defining moments in Australia’s history: “Firstly, 53,000-plus years ago, when the first Australians crossed the Torres Strait land bridge to this continent; secondly, the landing of the first fleet in 1788; thirdly, the abolition of the White Australia policy between 1973 and 1975.” “I believe the celebration of Australia Day will always be equivocal as long as it is about only one of these three parts,” he said at the National Press Club last year. “If we brought these three parts of the nation together and the day defining Australia spoke to these three parts then less offence and hurt would attach to 26 January. It can’t just be about what was destroyed. It must also be about what we have built.” When he became Australian of the Year in 2014, the footballer Adam Goodes also suggested broadening what Australia Day is about. “There was a lot of anger, a lot of sorrow, for this day and very much the feeling of Invasion Day,” he said. “But in the last five years, I’ve really changed my perception of what is Australia Day, of what it is to be Australian and for me, it’s about celebrating the positives, that we are still here
as Indigenous people, our culture is one of the longest surviving cultures in the world, over 40,000 years. “That is something we need to celebrate and all Australians need to celebrate … It’s a day we celebrate over 225 years of European settlement and right now, that’s who we are as a nation but we also need to acknowledge our fantastic Aboriginal history of over 40,000 years and just know that some Aboriginal people out there today are feeling a little bit angry, a little bit soft in the heart today because of that, and that’s OK as well.” There are many reasons for Australians to feel proud. We agree 26 January is the wrong day for national festivities, but we think respectful debate – about changing the date or the meaning of the celebration – is the best way to a solution that will allow all Australians to join the party.
