Say NO to the Australia Day of Division

 

I recently spent two weeks as a booth captain for the No campaign so, I'm no lefty, woke activist. I do however think we need to change the date of Australia Day. Having spent two weeks telling people to vote no to the voice of division, I think it's now time to say no to the Australia Day of division. 

January 26th is not really Australia Day

In Australia, each colony/state has had a day to celebrate it's founding. Melbourne Day is an annual celebration to mark the founding of the colony on 30 August 1835. South Australia has it's Proclamation Day, Western Australia has its Foundation Day and Queensland Day marks the official date Queensland separated from New South Wales as an independent colony in 1859.

January 26th is not Australia Day. It's NSW's foundation day or "Anniversary Day" as it was known in NSW. There was no such thing as Australia in 1788. NSW was a British colony in New Holland. The flag that was flown on January 26th was the Union Jack.

Also, as everyone probably knows, Australia Day wasn't always held on Jan 26th. It was first celebrated on July 30th 1915 and it wasn't until 1994 that all states and territories began to celebrate a unified public holiday on 26 January. If interested, you can read the full history here. 

Traditionally, a national day is a celebration that marks the founding of a nation. It could be the date of independence or of becoming a republic or - as in the case of Australia - becoming a federation. Australia became a nation on 1 January 1901 when the six British colonies united to form the Commonwealth of Australia. So, our national day should really be January 1st. 

Given that a large percentage of Australians are nursing a New Year's Eve hangover on January 1st, it's probably not a great day for another celebration. January 1st also has much the same problem as January 26th - in that it only celebrates the last 122 years of a continent that has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years.

So, there's really no point in having Australia Day on a date that's incredibly divisive when it isn't even really Australia Day.

What's the liberal perspective? 

I once had a long debate with a conservative about changing the date. I slowly broke down all his arguments until all he had left was: "I don't like change", which is really the essence of conservatism. It's their one principle. 

But what would a liberal do? Since liberalism is all about individual rights and freedoms, I guess we can all celebrate Australia Day on any day we damn well like. It would be nice though if we all celebrated Australia Day on the same day but, if we all have the right to celebrate Australia Day on different days, what do we do?

In liberalism, when we have conflicting rights, we resort to utilitarianism - which is basically "the greatest good for the greatest number". One example of this was the marriage equality debate where it was argued that some bakers may not want to bake wedding cakes for gay couples however, the number of gay people wanting to marry was far greater than the number of homophobic bakers so, according to utilitarianism, the gays win.

So which date for Australia Day has the greatest good for the greatest number of people? I haven't a clue, but one thing we can say for sure is that it definitely isn't January 26th.

Change it to what?

Seriously, there's only 365 days in a year. If there was a good date for Australia Day somebody would have thought of it by now. Do we actually need a set date though? It's Australia Day - not Australia Date. I first suggested holding Australia Day on the First Friday in February ('FFF' - easy to remember) many years ago and I haven't seen anyone come up with a better idea since. I see some are now talking about last Friday in January but, that can still fall on January 26th, so best not go there.

What could be more Australian than a guaranteed long weekend in summer to celebrate Australia Day?!

My only concern is that, as someone who has held a lot of Australia Day barbeques, I know that there's a lot of preparation involved. Mowing lawns, cleaning the pool, putting up flags/decorations, shopping for food & beer and basically getting everything ready beforehand so that all you have to do in the morning is go out to get ice. It would actually be better to hold Australia Day on the Saturday so that you had a day before to get ready and a day after to recover. Or for those who are travelling, a day before to get there and a day after to come home. Not sure how that would fit in with Friday being the public holiday. Maybe just call it 'the Australia Day long weekend' with Friday to be known as 'Preparation Day', Saturday as 'Australia Day' and Sunday as 'Recovery Day'.

The precedent

But can you have a national day without a set date? Do any other countries do this? If you look at the list of National Days here, it turns out that there are a number of countries that do. Including the United Kingdom which has a (sort of) national day on the official Kings birthday on the 3rd Saturday in June.

But there's one precedent to rule them all. As mentioned above, the first Australia Day was held on 30 July 1915. It was subsequently held on 28 July 1916, 27 July 1917, and 26 July 1918. I always thought it was strange that the date kept changing slightly, but then on a hunch, I decided to look up the weekday for those dates. 

They were all Thursdays. They were all the last Thursday in July. 

Australia Day was originally held on the last Thursday in July!

It's inevitable

Australia Day is now just an annual shit-fight and it gets worse every year. It's not fun any more. Australia Day should be a day that unites us but, like the Voice, it divides us by race. There really is no good reason to have Australia Day on January 26th and "I don't like change" is not a good enough reason to keep it on that day - especially when the alternative is so much better.