Happy Australia Day!

[watt price tully]

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/nt-aboriginal-leader-defends-january-26-australia-day-20170126-gtzd74.html

"Yes, let's learn about our past and our history, but how is changing the date going to do a thing for the Aboriginal women dying at the hands of Aboriginal men, the Aboriginal children who miss out on school and an education and the Aboriginal children who are living in dysfunctional circumstances?" she wrote.

Like a lot of that type of argument, it is not relevant. Change of day & change of culture are both important. Change of day was never intended to sort social ills rendering that argument is a false one.

[Dave The Man]

The People who Burned the Flag on Australia Day can get our of the Country because they hate that much

[Skids]

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/nt-aboriginal-leader-defends-january-26-australia-day-20170126-gtzd74.html

"Yes, let's learn about our past and our history, but how is changing the date going to do a thing for the Aboriginal women dying at the hands of Aboriginal men, the Aboriginal children who miss out on school and an education and the Aboriginal children who are living in dysfunctional circumstances?" she wrote.

Like a lot of that type of argument, it is not relevant. Change of day & change of culture are both important. Change of day was never intended to sort social ills rendering that argument is a false one.

Think she might have more say in it than you or me.

It was only part of what she said.

[watt price tully]

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/nt-aboriginal-leader-defends-january-26-australia-day-20170126-gtzd74.html

"Yes, let's learn about our past and our history, but how is changing the date going to do a thing for the Aboriginal women dying at the hands of Aboriginal men, the Aboriginal children who miss out on school and an education and the Aboriginal children who are living in dysfunctional circumstances?" she wrote.

Like a lot of that type of argument, it is not relevant. Change of day & change of culture are both important. Change of day was never intended to sort social ills rendering that argument as a false one.

Think she might have more say in it than you or me.

It was only part of what she said.

I read it yesterday. However the point remains that change of day & change of culture are both important. Change of day was never intended to sort social ills rendering that argument as false & frankly irrelevant

[stui magpie]

Changing the day will fix nothing and do more damage to reconciliation.

Aboriginal people will be in exactly the same situation as they are now.

Culture change, Yes. I agree. Lets start with getting more Aboriginal kids to stay in school and get jobs. Let the kids see you can work in the "white" world and retain your culture, work on eradicating the cultures of poverty, blame and victimisation that in my humble opinion the progressives foster and nurture, and encourage self reliance and responsibility instead.

[Skids]

^ Yep... and an overwhelming majority of Australians agree. Aboriginal Australians are pretty much evenly split.

Just leave it alone.

A 2017 poll conducted for The Guardian revealed only 15% of Australians supported changing the date of Australia Day, with 83% supporting keeping the name "Australia Day". The poll also found that the majority (68%) felt positive about Australia Day, 19% were indifferent and 7% had mixed feelings, with 6% of people feeling negative about Australia Day. Among Indigenous Australians, however, only 23% felt positive about Australia Day, 31% were negative and 30% had mixed feelings, while 54% favoured a change of date.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Day

[David]

[Mugwump]

Changing the day will fix nothing and do more damage to reconciliation.

Aboriginal people will be in exactly the same situation as they are now.

Culture change, Yes. I agree. Lets start with getting more Aboriginal kids to stay in school and get jobs. Let the kids see you can work in the "white" world and retain your culture, work on eradicating the cultures of poverty, blame and victimisation that in my humble opinion the progressives foster and nurture, and encourage self reliance and responsibility instead.

Excellently said, Stui. The route out of Aboriginal despair is Aboriginal leadership on things that matter, not guilt-tripping things like this, that alienate ordinary Australians and matter very little.

Self-reliance, education and personal responsibility are the only reliable route out of poverty for anyone. Some government money can help, but only if it is matched by those things. Unfortunately the "progressives" seem more interested in parading their taxpayer-funded conscience and in attention-seeking gesture politics like changing the date of Australia Day, than they are in volunteering their own time and money to really make a difference.

[watt price tully]

Changing the day will fix nothing and do more damage to reconciliation.

Aboriginal people will be in exactly the same situation as they are now.

Culture change, Yes. I agree. Lets start with getting more Aboriginal kids to stay in school and get jobs. Let the kids see you can work in the "white" world and retain your culture, work on eradicating the cultures of poverty, blame and victimisation that in my humble opinion the progressives foster and nurture, and encourage self reliance and responsibility instead.

I personally think that argument is flawed for the following reasons:

1. This isn't a blame or guilt game. Never was. However Howard & his ilk called it that, nurtured that view till it gained traction & mileage through the culture wars baloney. The real straw man argument.

2. Your use of the terminology here is simplistic & misleading. Your argument states that fostering victimhood belongs to the progressives (baddies) while on the other hand the motherhood statement of encouraging self reliance belongs to the non progressives (goodies) . It's that sort of self-serving rubbish that the culture wars gave us promulgated by Howard et al

3. To say that Aborigines were murdered & killed by the invading whites is simply a statement of fact not an issue to feel guilt or shame - merely an acknowledgement.

4. Overall however, none of this has anything to do with changing Australia day to be inclusive of all Australians including Aborigines.

In my humble opinion your worship.

[HAL]

It seems logical to me.

[Mugwump]

Changing the date is probably only superficially about what happened on January 26th 1788. It is really about Orwell's formulation : "Who controls the past controls the future."

What is really being aimed at here is an act of forgetting. If we can be made to forget how and where our freedom originated, and made to feel ashamed of our past, then we will give ourselves over to those who assume new power, based upon the idea that our very occupation of Australia is illegitimate. For if 26th January is illegitimate, then the whole of modern settlement is illegitimate. And once you accept that, then you are subject to those who administer the new legitimacy, free from any responsibility to history. Australia's historic liberties, its free market system, its free speech, are all chipped away until the edifice falls and the "progressive" state, under new management, can refashion the ruins until we are as successful as Brazil or South Africa - two alternative courses that our history might have taken, but thankfully did not.

This stuff pretends to be about morality, but it is really about power and domination. As Lenin, said, the "who does what to whom?" question. The restraint on "who-whom" is our memory of the institutions and history that brought us here so successfully. Many Australians assume that these liberties fell from the sky, but they did not. They grew from the cultural and institutional assumptions of those who founded and developed Australia post-1788.

As long as they remain unforgotten, we can remain free and prosperous.

[Mugwump]

Changing the day will fix nothing and do more damage to reconciliation.

Aboriginal people will be in exactly the same situation as they are now.

Culture change, Yes. I agree. Lets start with getting more Aboriginal kids to stay in school and get jobs. Let the kids see you can work in the "white" world and retain your culture, work on eradicating the cultures of poverty, blame and victimisation that in my humble opinion the progressives foster and nurture, and encourage self reliance and responsibility instead.

I personally think that argument is flawed for the following reasons:

1. This isn't a blame or guilt game. Never was. However Howard & his ilk called it that, nurtured that view till it gained traction & mileage through the culture wars baloney. The real straw man argument.

2. Your use of the terminology here is simplistic & misleading. Your argument states that fostering victimhood belongs to the progressives (baddies) while on the other hand the motherhood statement of encouraging self reliance belongs to the non progressives (goodies) . It's that sort of self-serving rubbish that the culture wars gave us promulgated by Howard et al

3. To say that Aborigines were murdered & killed by the invading whites is simply a statement of fact not an issue to feel guilt or shame - merely an acknowledgement.

4. Overall however, none of this has anything to do with changing Australia day to be inclusive of all Australians including Aborigines.

In my humble opinion your worship.

You say you will list reasons, but your points 1,2 and 4 are not reasons, just bald assertions. I think most people would say that it is surely "a guilt or blame game", when you want to dethrone a day of commemoration because one group of modern people feel "hurt" because of what another group of historic people did - in alleged murder and theft - over 200 years ago. I think it is pretty clearly a guilt and blame game, leading ultimately to reparations and privileges based on racist notions of blood and land ownership, if we are to be consistent in logic.

Point 3 might be a reason : it says that white settlement is founded in murder and it would seem to imply that there is a question over legitimacy, so therefore we should not celebrate the day it happened. I think it is a dangerous line to take, as it leads to some genuinely racist and conflictual places, but it at least has some logic to it.

Because your point 3 does lead to a logical place, the counter-argument should be made - that white "invasion" and settlement did entail some murder and much privation and neglect ; but it also entailed law and areas of intentional fairness, which protected aboriginal people from the kind of relentless policy-driven genocide that might well have been inflicted on such a defenceless people in the late 18th century by colonial power. It is a complicated story, and if anyone is being "simplistic" it is those who reduce it to a "good day/bad day" dualism.

The 26th January is the day which defined what we are, and how we got here, and it should include a discussion about what happened to the aboriginal people along the way. If they want that discussion on another day, well, I have no objection to an Aboriginal remembrance holiday. But that would be an act of remembering, not an act of forgetting, as it would be if we efface 26 January as the day when modern Australia was born.

[stui magpie]

Changing the day will fix nothing and do more damage to reconciliation.

Aboriginal people will be in exactly the same situation as they are now.

Culture change, Yes. I agree. Lets start with getting more Aboriginal kids to stay in school and get jobs. Let the kids see you can work in the "white" world and retain your culture, work on eradicating the cultures of poverty, blame and victimisation that in my humble opinion the progressives foster and nurture, and encourage self reliance and responsibility instead.

I personally think that argument is flawed for the following reasons:

1. This isn't a blame or guilt game. Never was.

Wrong. I've read a number of articles, including over the weekend, interviewing Aboriginal people, many of whom blame their current parlous personal situation on white settlement. It's not a game, it's a culture of being the victim.

2. Your use of the terminology here is simplistic & misleading. Your argument states that fostering victimhood belongs to the progressives (baddies) while on the other hand the motherhood statement of encouraging self reliance belongs to the non progressives (goodies) . It's that sort of self-serving rubbish that the culture wars gave us promulgated by Howard et al

No, you created the good guys bad guy sides. There's no good or bad guys here, just helpful and unhelpful behaviour

3. To say that Aborigines were murdered & killed by the invading whites is simply a statement of fact not an issue to feel guilt or shame - merely an acknowledgement.

One fact among many but a fact nonetheless.

4. Overall however, none of this has anything to do with changing Australia day to be inclusive of all Australians including Aborigines.

In my humble opinion your worship.

You don't need to change the day to be inclusive of all, just some of the marketing which has already begun.

The vast majority of Australian, including a number of Aboriginals, want the date left alone. Change the date and you risk a backlash to set the inclusiveness culture back a decade or more

[David]

[stui magpie]

^ I'm honestly sceptical over the assertion that changing the date would cause a backlash. Some proportion of the population would shake their heads and mutter about "political correctness gone mad" and a few on the far-right would be ropeable, but that's inevitable with any change of this kind. I just don't think it's an issue that greatly concerns the majority of the population and I think most people would accept the change pretty quickly. .

I think you seriously underestimate the possibilities.

If January 26th is no longer celebrated as Australia day and a different day chosen it may all go swimmingly. it also m,ay go something like this.

large numbers of people are annoyed at first, some see the logic but don't like it, others are disgruntled, some are outraged.

THE SJW and their cohort of WII, never graceful "winners", proceed to rub their "victory" in the nose of any and all. This has the effect of galvanising the Alt Right into 'reclaim Australia Day" protests. The majority of people who were already sick to death of the SJW preaching and were beginning to push back against political correctness start to get louder in voice.

The SJW and their cohort of WII can't allow this to go ahead unchecked, so they re-double their efforts, hurling insults and invective like a gattling gun and decide to stage counter protests to the Reclaim Australia Day marches, bringing back their Invasion Day placards and burning Australian Flags.

And guess who is caught right in the middle of this shit fight? The Indigenous Australians.

leave the day alone, just adjust the marketing.

When we (finally) get some form of recognition for the First Australians in the constitution, declare the date that was signed a national holiday. Call it Recognition day or something. if we need to drop a holiday to fit it in, drop the Queens birthday.

make Australia day a day for ALL Australians, including the Indigenous ones, make the new holiday a recognition of the first Australians and their culture. Roll it in with NAIDOC