Australia Day

IFocus said:

Current date just doesn't represent Australia that's before you get to Aboriginals being against it as I said before if people want to celebrate the start of the British penal colony no big deal that's great but it doesn't represent today's modern Australia, just change the date to celebrate the day end of problem.

Click to expand...

IFocus said:

Current date just doesn't represent Australia that's before you get to Aboriginals being against it as I said before if people want to celebrate the start of the British penal colony no big deal that's great but it doesn't represent today's modern Australia, just change the date to celebrate the day end of problem.

Click to expand...

Knobby22 said:

It celebrates the first offshore detention centre, a proud tradition that we still continue today

Click to expand...

sptrawler said:

I don't disagree with that, but what if another group disagree with the next date, then as Christians become a minority why wouldn't we change Christmas, or indeed Easter ?

At the end of the day where do you delineate which groups are more deserving, changing dates IMO is problematic and to a degree pandering to minority pressure.

They do have issue, so incorporate it with another holiday that is recognised as being representative of Australian spirit, like ANZAC day maybe.
To change it to a day that represents nothing, doesn't instill patriotism it tips our hat to tokenism and shallowness.

If it was Anzac day, it actually represents something all Australians should be proud of loyalty, respect, bravery and mateship and give a time to reflect on what it means to call yourself Australian rather than just a member of the lucky country.

Click to expand...

IFocus said:

What group in Australia does the 26th represent and how?

Click to expand...

IFocus said:

What group in Australia does the 26th represent and how?

Click to expand...

IFocus said:

That's very good knobby

Click to expand...

JohnDe said:

How would you feel if someone cut down your front doors? After all, it’s not your land that you have decided to put your possessions on. Right?

Click to expand...

sptrawler said:

As I've said all along, it is time to actually ask the indigenous what they want in the way of compensation.

All this poncing on is nonsense, all Governments talk about is we will do this, we will do that.

As I keep saying, the indigenous feel they had their land stolen, they want compensation for loss.

Ask them exactly what they feel they are owed and come to an agreement, done, over, move on.

It goes onto the national debt bill, taxes are raised and it is put into the historical journals.

Once done, always will be, it is just like an NBN, or an NDIS, or a better schools, do it move on.

It isn't as though the compensation will be sent to a Swiss bank account, or through some offshore tax haven.

Well no doubt some will, but the majority will be spent in Australia and some of it will help the remote aboriginals, probably not much, but some.
it just needs to be done IMO, as I said in the beginning of the voice thread, the issue will not go away with anything other than compensation, like it or not.
Hawke promised it, Rudd waffled about it as Rudd does, Albo tried to sell a bunny and no one bought it.

Just get on with it, get a line in the sand on what the indigenous think is fair and reasonable and work from there, get it out in the open and transparent.
I'm sure everyone is over it and everyone needs to know what the bottom line is to bury the issue and allow indigenous to be treated the same as the rest of the population.
Rather than being an unfunded bottomless pit, with very little to show for it.

The Australian public deserve that, rather than the constant stress and angst perpetrated by political and media shaming.
Be honest and up front, and explain what the indigenous feel is fair compensation, above and beyond what they already receive.

At the end of the day, we can afford to pay $300billion for subs, just in case, so sorting out an clear and present issue shouldn't be an issue, just move the tax scales back up.

Click to expand...

sptrawler said:

As I've said all along, it is time to actually ask the indigenous what they want in the way of compensation.

All this poncing on is nonsense, all Governments talk about is we will do this, we will do that.

As I keep saying, the indigenous feel they had their land stolen, they want compensation for loss.

Ask them exactly what they feel they are owed and come to an agreement, done, over, move on.

It goes onto the national debt bill, taxes are raised and it is put into the historical journals.

Once done, always will be, it is just like an NBN, or an NDIS, or a better schools, do it move on.

It isn't as though the compensation will be sent to a Swiss bank account, or through some offshore tax haven.

Well no doubt some will, but the majority will be spent in Australia and some of it will help the remote aboriginals, probably not much, but some.
it just needs to be done IMO, as I said in the beginning of the voice thread, the issue will not go away with anything other than compensation, like it or not.
Hawke promised it, Rudd waffled about it as Rudd does, Albo tried to sell a bunny and no one bought it.

Just get on with it, get a line in the sand on what the indigenous think is fair and reasonable and work from there, get it out in the open and transparent.
I'm sure everyone is over it and everyone needs to know what the bottom line is to bury the issue and allow indigenous to be treated the same as the rest of the population.
Rather than being an unfunded bottomless pit, with very little to show for it.

The Australian public deserve that, rather than the constant stress and angst perpetrated by political and media shaming.
Be honest and up front, and explain what the indigenous feel is fair compensation, above and beyond what they already receive.

At the end of the day, we can afford to pay $300billion for subs, just in case, so sorting out an clear and present issue shouldn't be an issue, just move the tax scales back up.

Click to expand...

JohnDe said:

How would you feel if someone cut down your front doors? After all, it’s not your land that you have decided to put your possessions on. Right?

Click to expand...

IFocus said:

Current date just doesn't represent Australia that's before you get to Aboriginals being against it as I said before if people want to celebrate the start of the British penal colony no big deal that's great but it doesn't represent today's modern Australia, just change the date to celebrate the day end of problem.

Click to expand...

orr said:

Oblivious to the irony of his post;
The 'doors' were cut down on a home occupied for tens of thousands of years

Click to expand...

sptrawler said:

As I've said all along, it is time to actually ask the indigenous what they want in the way of compensation.

All this poncing on is nonsense, all Governments talk about is we will do this, we will do that.

As I keep saying, the indigenous feel they had their land stolen, they want compensation for loss.

Ask them exactly what they feel they are owed and come to an agreement, done, over, move on.

It goes onto the national debt bill, taxes are raised and it is put into the historical journals.

Once done, always will be, it is just like an NBN, or an NDIS, or a better schools, do it move on.

It isn't as though the compensation will be sent to a Swiss bank account, or through some offshore tax haven.

Well no doubt some will, but the majority will be spent in Australia and some of it will help the remote aboriginals, probably not much, but some.
it just needs to be done IMO, as I said in the beginning of the voice thread, the issue will not go away with anything other than compensation, like it or not.
Hawke promised it, Rudd waffled about it as Rudd does, Albo tried to sell a bunny and no one bought it.

Just get on with it, get a line in the sand on what the indigenous think is fair and reasonable and work from there, get it out in the open and transparent.
I'm sure everyone is over it and everyone needs to know what the bottom line is to bury the issue and allow indigenous to be treated the same as the rest of the population.
Rather than being an unfunded bottomless pit, with very little to show for it.

The Australian public deserve that, rather than the constant stress and angst perpetrated by political and media shaming.
Be honest and up front, and explain what the indigenous feel is fair compensation, above and beyond what they already receive.

At the end of the day, we can afford to pay $300billion for subs, just in case, so sorting out an clear and present issue shouldn't be an issue, just move the tax scales back up.

Click to expand...

orr said:

And Trawler to #58; that's a ham, cheese and pineapple sandwich (think pizza)... I can add some more hints if you're still having trouble.
what about? .... 'book him Danno, murder one'
more pertinant... 'this day will live in infamy'
There's more than one place you can cut down a Cook.

Click to expand...

orr said:

Hand me a magic wand Focus... I'd make it two days, if Xmas can have two and Easter.
If we take the 26th Jan, it is a point of delineation, there was no going back.
So if we take 25-26 Jan, The 25 to know what was: 26 aspiration for what can be.

Click to expand...

orr said:

Hand me a magic wand Focus... I'd make it two days, if Xmas can have two and Easter.
If we take the 26th Jan, it is a point of delineation, there was no going back.
So if we take 25-26 Jan, The 25 to know what was: 26 aspiration for what can be.

Click to expand...

Contemporary Australians, and particularly the young, tend to view the early settlement solely through the prism of colonisation and dispossession. Many others have absorbed the gulag myth propagated by Hughes, who wilfully confused the harshness of the places of secondary punishment – such as Port Arthur, Norfolk Island and Moreton Bay – with conditions and practices in the main settlements.

The untold story of the Australian revolution carries its freight – moral, political, philosophical – into our century. It suggests that individuals, and entire societies, can be improved by improving their conditions; that work and purpose are, in fact, morally uplifting.

It illuminates some of the causes of social misery, as well as some of the cures. It’s an optimistic, and a badly needed, tale.

This cheering vision of what has often been seen as an infernal colony, shouldn’t skew towards utopianism. In its broad outlines the convict experience was, as Darwin put it, about remaking, conversion and elevation. But it was, nevertheless, at heart, a form of extreme punishment for mostly petty offences. For many coveys the pursuit of freedom, despite the considerable risks, was preferable to the rigidities of indentured servitude. They escaped – even from the strictly supervised chain gangs – into the bush. Many perished there.

The reason, I think, that French observers were keen to stress the philosophical implications of the Australian revolution – the wonderfully named Hyacinthe de Bougainville also makes this point during his visit of 1825 – is that the French Revolution had been so heavily freighted with unrealised, or betrayed idealism. They were attuned to the sentiments of equality and fraternity. But they had lived through bloodshed, repression and, at the end of it all, the heady swell of Bonapartism and the restoration of a repressive monarchy. What they observed at Sydney Cove was the realisation of humane social ideas without any espousal of those ideals: a revolution without a Robespierre; a revolution without a guillotine.

It was not, of course, a revolution without bloodshed. Or violence, in the form of dispossession. Or murder, on both sides. But it would be facile to reduce the one story – the celebratory story with a powerful contemporary resonance – to the other. To reduce everything to black and white. Sophisticated cultures deal with complex origin stories of many strands.

Luke Slattery is the author of four works of non-fiction and one of fiction.

Click to expand...

IFocus said:

Current date just doesn't represent Australia that's before you get to Aboriginals being against it as I said before if people want to celebrate the start of the British penal colony no big deal that's great but it doesn't represent today's modern Australia, just change the date to celebrate the day end of problem.

Click to expand...