Australia Day Oral Plan
‘Should Australia Day be held on January 26th?’
Australia Day should be changed to a different date where it will include all Australians.
• Doesn’t bring us together – segregates us
• Doesn’t reflect the Australia of today
• Australia Day is the coming of one race at the expense of another
Australia’s national day has been marked on the day that Captain Arthur Phillip who was the commander of the First Fleet that sailed to what they first thought was “Terra Nullius” at Port Jackson on 26 January 1788 and established a convict settlement and claiming the land. They day is referred as First Landing but was later referred as Australia Day when the country became an independent nation after the Federation in 1901. Australia
…show more content…
day has now become a national public holiday, and it is a day that celebrates our national identity and defines what it means to be Australian, celebrating our values, freedom and history of our country. However, Australia Day is a day that supposedly brings people together, but for a specific population, they are pushed away. To them it is not a celebration, but a remembrance of invasion, dispossession and a genocide they had endured for more than 200 years. It has never been a date that brings Indigenous Australians with non-Indigenous Australians. Rather than uniting people of the nation on January 26, it divides Australians. Therefore I believe that Australia day should not be held on the 26 of January. Just what exactly does being Australian mean? To me, being Australian is to be free and independent, wanting to live in peace and harmony, acknowledging that we all come from different backgrounds. Being Australian is essentially giving everyone a fair go, to celebrate each other’s rights and cultures. Our national day doesn’t reflect the Australia of today.
We have a very unique history of more than 50,000 years and ethnically diverse culture with one in four of approximately 24 million people in Australia were born overseas. Our society has developed into a multicultural society and we should be acknowledging each other’s cultures and that we all come from different backgrounds. Australia Day doesn’t represent our multiculturalism, it reflects an invasion of territory, a genocide of Indigenous Australians and the stolen children from their families which is referred to as “Survival Day” or “Invasion Day”. Australia day is the antagonization of Indigenous Australians and Europeans and as a result protests such as the Aboriginal rights protest that disrupted last year’s Australia Day Parade occurred. It is not reflective to the majority of Australians or the values of Australia. “Let us find a day on which we can all feel included, in which we can all participate equally, and can find a day which we can all feel included, in which we can all participate equally, and can celebrate with pride our common Australian identity.” As said by Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue, which was an Australian of the Year in 1984. The national day should reflect our identity as a whole country.
Australia Day is the coming of one race at the expense of another. All Australians enjoy the privileges of everything Australia has to offer that includes our freedoms, legal and political rights and our opportunities directly at the sacrifice of the Indigenous Australians. Should we be really celebrating
this? Australia should not be held on the 26 January as it doesn’t bring us together but segregates us from Indigenous Australians. Australia Day only celebrates the arrival and colonisation of European settlers. This means that as a society, we are condoning, in fact, celebrating the slaughtering, raping, taking away of land rights, and kidnapping of Indigenous Australians that occurred in the past. This is offensive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as we are marginalizing their suffering and glorifying the European history of Australia. It is time that we should honour our oldest cultures in history of this land, reflect on their mistreatment and for the removal of the stolen generation from their families and communities, and celebrate their culture as being a vital part of our own.
December 11th is not a date many Australians want to remember. But why? Because Australians don't condone racism or because they don't accept it is a great part of their society and history?
It is well known that Captain Arthur Philips landed in Australia on 26th of January and took over the land and is referred to as “invasion Day”. Yet little do people know, Captain Arthur Phillip didn’t land in Australia on 26 January. He first landed in Australia between the 18th and 20th of January 1788 in Botany Bay, however where he landed he couldn’t find fresh water so he then sailed into Sydney Cove on the 26th where he found a Tank Stream…..problem solved. Australia day today celebrates our diverse society, our remarkable achievements, our future as a nation and how we can make Australia a better
ANZAC Day has been significant to Australians and New Zealanders since the first service in 1916 for memory of the soldiers who lost their live at Gallipoli in 1914 . Over time Anzac Day has changed to remember all the service men and women of Australia and New Zealand . As this year makes 100 years since the landings on the beach of Gallipoli, Australia has had a larger focus on Anzac Day compared to other years due to the importance .
“The day that we come together as a nation to celebrate what’s great about Australia and about being Australian.” That is the phrase used by the Australia Day National website to describe the traditional day that we all love to claim as our own. Correction, traditional may have been the wrong use of word seeing as though the day has only been celebrated by ALL states as a public holiday since 1994. To call it a tradition would be unwise, it’s more of a newly developed phenomenon that allows us to develop a dangerous sense of patriotism. It is through this developing sense of patriotism that, some would argue, our modern culture of exclusion and superiority is being predominant. A ‘white fella’ superiority that is driving us to celebrate the
Of course it is naïve to believe that Australians only developed an identity after the First World War, but it is true to say that it was changed forever. Before Australia became the Australia known today, it was a land of bush rangers, farmers and convicts; a penal colony that had ambitions of becoming a nation who self-governed and had unified defence and transport*. Before federation Australia had fought in Sudan and the Boer War to provide support to the mother country as it was thought to be a heroic endeavour that was a type of rite of passage (Australian War Memorial, n.d.) and there was a global perception of who and what Australians were. Upon federation the people were very consciously intent on building themselves into a great nation (Bean, 1993), but not to sever ties to Britain completely as mostly foreign policy relied on what the British government dictated (Rickard, 1992).
Throughout the world, in history and in present day, injustice has affected all of us. Whether it is racial, sexist, discriminatory, being left disadvantaged or worse, injustice surrounds us. Australia is a country that has been plagued by injustice since the day our British ancestors first set foot on Australian soil and claimed the land as theirs. We’ve killed off many of the Indigenous Aboriginal people, and also took Aboriginal children away from their families; this is known as the stolen generation. On the day Australia became a federation in 1901, the first Prime Minister of Australia, Edmund Barton, created the White Australia Policy. This only let people of white skin colour migrate to the country. Even though Australia was the first country to let women vote, women didn’t stand in Parliament until 1943 as many of us didn’t support female candidates, this was 40 years after they passed the law in Australian Parliament for women to stand in elections. After the events of World War Two, we have made an effort to make a stop to these issues here in Australia.
Anzac Day. On the 25th of April, 1915 Australian and New Zealand forces formed part of the allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula. Anzac day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand that commemorates the Australia New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) who served in all wars, battles and conflicts. Anzac day is an important day for many Australians and New Zealanders as it is a day where people take time to appreciate the soldiers who risked or gave their lives to represent and fight for our country in all the wars. Since Anzac day is celebrated so widely, there are many opinions that have developed over time. Some Australians and New Zealanders believe Anzac day shouldn’t be celebrated and others believe
Which leads into my third and final premise, changing the date will be a large step towards reconciliation and act as a demonstration that we have aspirations to make our country better. Many people claim that changing the date will not change history. Of course they’re right because nothing can change history. If we were capable of doing so, I’d like to think we would have done it already. Changing the date of Australia Day will not reverse the suffering that the original custodians of this land were subjected to. Nor will it abolish the iron fist of racism that Australia seems to be gripped by.
As patriotic Australians we pride ourselves to be a nation that accepts and respects the beliefs of all cultures, but on this historical day majority of Australians tend to forget the true meaning behind the celebration. If you ask today’s society, what they did this Australia day mass numbers would respond with “binged on alcohol” and “indulged in a barbecue.” Consequently, this day cannot be called a national celebration when some of our fellow Australians are grieving while others are out celebrating an occasion they know little about. Giving due regard to the indigenous people and their mostly negative perspective on this issue, should be a priority. A new date, not the 26th of January should be established, as rather than unite, it seems
0.8% of the overall Federal health expenditure in 2009 which was spent on Aboriginal health. The overall wellbeing of an individual is more than just being free from disease. It is about their social, emotional, spiritual, physiological as well as the physical prosperity. Indigenous health issues are all around us, but we don’t recognise because it doesn’t affect us, but this issue is a concern to Indigenous Australia and also to modern day Catholics in Australia The statistics relating to Indigenous health is inexcusable, life expectancy is at an all time low, higher hospilatisation for avoidable diseases, alerting rates of deaths from diabetes and kidney disease. This issue is bigger than we all think, for example 13% of Indigenous homes
This day is to remember and commemorate the mistreatment of the Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. In Source A, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had apologised publicly on behalf of what happened in the Stolen Generations and the Voting Rights in his speech. In Source A, Kevin Rudd had said “We reflect on their past mistreatment.”, this meant that Kevin Rudd was apologizing for what past White Australians had done.Aboriginal People had accepted the apology Mr. Rudd had given the Aboriginals. The Aboriginals have lived out the 5th Beatitude of “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Aboriginals had lived out this Commandment because they showed mercy and accepted the apology of Kevin Rudd. This is how Aboriginal People and Torres Strait Islanders had lived out the Beatitudes throughout their
The first real attempt to raise awareness of the lack of equality facing Indigenous Australians was the Day of Mourning campaign 1938. Aboriginal people saw this day as an opportunity to get the attention of white Australia and walked in protest. The Day of Mourning was a chance for Indigenous Australians to stand up for what they believe in, and was the first step towards equality.
Australia is a very unique place, along with our multiculturalism there is also a strong heritage surrounding us. At first thought of Australian heritage we think about such landmarks as Uluru, The Sydney harbour bridge and The Sydney opera house, The Great Barrier reef and other internationally recognised places. But our heritage goes much deeper than that; it is far more than outstanding icons. Along with these icons there are also unsung places like the old cattle stations, Aboriginal missions, migrant hostels, War memorials, our unique wetlands and the towns and cities we have built. Adding all of these things together, helps to tell the story of who we are and how we have shaped this land in the unique identity it has today.
Ever since the 1970s, Australia has become a multicultural nation. Australia’s multiculturalism is a way to explain the variety of ethnic backgrounds within the Australian people. “It implies that there are many ways of being Australian, not just one ‘Australian way of life’” (Carter 333). Multiculturalism has majorly changed the way that people view Australian history and identity.
To commemorate the Anzac memory no matter what circumstance or day of year. Associated with Anzac is the world freedom, poetically put the Anzac’s were and are freedom fighters. To place beyond doubt weather or not Anzac commemoration is relevant, I bid the question of relevance of freedom. Freedom is possibly the one thing that every Australian would take for granted, one thing everyone feels they're entitled to and yet many times through history it has been threatened. And many times through history people have stood up, put their life on the line and fought, fought for freedom.