Should We Ban Australia Day As Well?

[icyfroth]

We are after all celebrating the landing of the First Fleet on January 26th 1988...

Aldi pulls 'racist' T-shirts after online outrage

Discount supermarket chain Aldi has pulled an Australia Day T-shirt and singlet from its stores amid claims on social media that designs featured on the garments were racist.

Complaints that the range of promotional T-shirts with 'AUSTRALIA EST 1788' logos were racist led to people targeting @ALDIAustralia on Twitter and calling for them to be withdrawn.

The T-shirts and singlets were scheduled to go on sale on this week in the lead up to January 26.

Twitter users slammed the design as racist and culturally insensitive to indigenous Australians, who inhabited the continent for thousands of years before Europeans arrived.

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Perhaps we should abandon the celebration altogether.

[not_for_sale2025]

The date also marks the raising of the British flag and has been celebrated since 1808, long before the federation of Australia in 1901. Personally, I don't relate to the date because I associate it more with the beginning of British atrocities towards indigenous Australians and convicts. I'd like a date that celebrates the federation of Australia rather than British history. But I suppose it depends how you look at it!

[icyfroth]

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@not_for_sale2018 wrote:

The date also marks the raising of the British flag and has been celebrated since 1808, long before the federation of Australia in 1901. Personally, I don't relate to the date because I associate it more with the beginning of British atrocities towards indigenous Australians and convicts. I'd like a date that celebrates the federation of Australia rather than British history. But I suppose it depends how you look at it!

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I can see that side of it. But I don't see why changing the date would make any difference. 

[chameleon54]

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@not_for_sale2018 wrote:

The date also marks the raising of the British flag and has been celebrated since 1808, long before the federation of Australia in 1901. Personally, I don't relate to the date because I associate it more with the beginning of British atrocities towards indigenous Australians and convicts. I'd like a date that celebrates the federation of Australia rather than British history. But I suppose it depends how you look at it!

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Too much PCBS for me................. I didnt do it and neither did you. !!!!........The attrocities commited against indiginous Australians is a well documented and accepted blot on our history...........Going over and over and over mistakes of the past is not going to make it any better.  Heaven knows we have tried that for decades and where has it got us ????? ........Has it reduced the very high rates of indiginous youth unemployment ???, Has it fixed the generally poor state of aboriginal housing, education and health ??? ......... My guess is that by constantly harping back to the historical mistakes of colonisation, we are only making the situation worse for present day Aboriginal people by reinforcing their past oppression and further ingraining the marginilisation and predjudice associated with seperatism.

Accept it happened, Get over it and get on with it. ......... Buy a lamb chop, set up the BBQ and celebrate what a great country WE ALL live in, warts and all.

[not_for_sale2025]

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@icyfroth wrote:

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@not_for_sale2018 wrote:

 I don't relate to the date because I associate it more with the beginning of British atrocities towards indigenous Australians and convicts.

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I can see that side of it. But I don't see why changing the date would make any difference. 

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I suppose it all narrows down to how much people know about our history and how much people care. I imagine it makes little difference to some and a lot of difference to others e.g. those who associate it with invasion day. I would rather we celebrate an occasion that marks the birth of the Australian flag, not the raising of the flag of Great Britain. Perhaps an alternative to changing the date would be to retain it, but change the name to British Colony Day.

[johcaschro]

I wonder if the English look back on the 14th October 1066 with any sort of resentment? Still, that was almost one thousand years ago now.

It's still early days yet, over here.

[lyndal1838]

We could always have a Referendum to change it to the date of Federation.

It would be guaranteed to fall flat....no-one would be willing to give up their public holiday and those who celebrated the New Year would be too hung over to want to have another celebration.

[chameleon54]

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@johcaschro wrote:

I wonder if the English look back on the 14th October 1066 with any sort of resentment? Still, that was almost one thousand years ago now.

It's still early days yet, over here.

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The world is full of nation states that have been taken over by others at some point in their history. It is just an indication of human arrogance that we think we actually own part of the earth. Australia was here for millions of years before the first aborigine paddled here in a canoe and it will be here for millions of years more, long after the last white anglo saxon dies out.

No-one really owns any part of the earth. We are all just caretakers of our patch for a brief moment in history.

[bsal6160]

Invasion Day? That is the rubbish that is being fed to our young people in universities. Calling it an invasion implies the british came here with overwhelming forces to seize a country they knew existed only by a single coastline. How many decades did it take for them to even get beyond the Blue Mountains?

Now this overwhelming force for an 'invasion' consisted of approx 200 drunken soldiers and approx 600 chained convicts, now there's a fearsome invasion force... against how many indigenous people? By all accounts there are more indigenous people now than there was back then so obviously the invasion went well didnt it????

We all need to get over it so we can move on and grow this great country we live in (Yes I am very proud to call myself Australian) and as a senior indigenous leader has already stated, the indigenous people do not want to ban Australia Day. The only people who can be offended by what happened in our past is anyone how was there and lived through it.