Support for Australia Day celebration on January 26 drops: new research

It's literally a day off work for me where I can sleep in, nothing more.

It's the holiday equivalent of those oversized American utes

Perth has an Australia Day tradition that's pretty wholesome. The slogan this year is "Reflect. Respect. Celebrate" it's a family day, very multicultural. Tonight there's fireworks and a drone show.

(I'm here, now. The kids are watching dreamtime stories)

It's the only long weekend I stay home and don't go camping due to ever increasing fuckwits.

If I do, I go inland away from the maddening crowds and down trails too difficult for common folk, but too boring for P-plated GQ Patrols. Avoid iconic regions. I used to live in SE QLD, and the only safe bet was around Granite Belt areas since everyone would pile to the islands, coasts, and surrounding forests. Helps to be far from a town with a bottle shop, since "the boys" in closer camps will go do top up runs.

The Commonwealth and state governments agreed to unify the celebrations on 26 January as "Australia Day" in 1946. So it is not even an age-old tradition the white supremacists like to pretend it is.

It's become a day/weekend for bogan flag waves to get drunk and annoy the shit out of everyone.

Not according to Murdoch's report. Am surprised they published it.

Scenes at Bondi Beach today made it clear: Australia Day certainly isn’t celebrated as it used to be.

“I went to a barbecue last year, and I was surprised because they had heaps of Australian flag stuff out, but they wouldn’t have done that in public,” she said.

because changing the date is a lose / lose for whoever attempts it, so it will just be left 'as is' and disappears on Jan 27. Fact is, some people support changing it, and other people want it left the same. Either of those two groups are going to be the noisy minority to that discussion... IMO, it will never happen, they will just mobilise police for the protests and schedule them for time in leiu the day after.

saw the SJ Patterson post and learned a lot on there

Haha yeah.

What isn’t exactly made explicit in that thread (it’s sorta just understood by everyone, so while hints towards it are there, nobody needed to make it explicit), 26 January is associated with the arrival of white people on this land, and thus it’s symbolic of the start of oppression towards the Aboriginal population. Among progressive and Aboriginal circles, you’ll often see it called "invasion day" for that reason.

That’s why people think it should be moved, though agreeing on when to move it to is a much harder proposition.

Some people want it to stay around this time of year because it’s summer and people like barbies and outdoors. Others say we have enough holidays already between late December and early May (Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year, Good Friday, Easter Monday, ANZAC Day, Labour Day) and would like to see something in the back half of the year, between September and November. Then there’s the question of whether or not it should be a day that has meaningful symbolism, and if so what that symbolism should be.

I’ll re-share my proposed alternatives in case anyone else wants to see them:

3 March as the day of commencement of the Australia Act (1986), which saw the last vestiges of Australia's status as a British dominion ended.

3 September as the day Australia adopted the Statute of Westminster with the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, which removed the United Kingdom's ability to legislate over the Commonwealth of Australia and making Australia truly a legally independent nation in a de jure sense.

9 July as the date the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 became law, enabling the constitution to actually take effect on 1 January 1901.