Yes haha.
Honestly, i dont care.
This is the thing, mate. Many people do, even though the date doesn't make a shred of difference. These stubborn people are the reason many of us take issue with Australia Day. It is not the idea of a day celebrating the nation, in itself, it is the fact a large number of vocal a-holes resist the push to make it more inclusive at every turn. Let's celebrate the nation, for sure.....but let's just choose to do it on a date that everyone can get behind. Sure, there may be some who still object, but if there is no valid reason to challenge the date, these people can just be ignored and the rest of us can just get on with enjoying the day with a lot less conflict and division.
Yes. I've travelled quite extensively throughout country NSW, WA and NT. A little bit of country Qld, but not quite as much. If you want to know specific towns I'm happy to share them.
One anecdote which sums up what is going on in many of these places. One day, watching as a group of (i'm guessing) 11 - 15 year old aboriginal boys prowled the area and cased a ute parked outside the house I was staying. Came along, siphoned the petrol out of the car and ran. When the police started arriving (It takes a long time for police to arrive in rural communities), other members of the aboriginal community alerted the youngsters who fled on foot.
Why do you suppose 11-15 year old boys are out siphoning petrol? Aside from this they came back a few nights later and took the tyres off the car as well.
Worse than this was the eventual all out war (no exaggeration) between two aboriginal families where I was staying. This ended up in hours of street warfare with spears, rocks and knives. People were murdered and the NT police had to send reinforcements of riot police to get the situation under control.
None of this is breaking news. These stories happen nightly in rural communities. You just don't hear about it because the SMH and other 'mainstream' news sources don't publish it.
Of course I'm interested in meaningful solutions to problems that affect any community. Whether they be aboriginal, white, arab or otherwise. Who wouldn't? How could you be a human and not say that you want proper solutions to actual problems?
No.
I didn't just ask whether you had visited remote parts of the country. I asked whether you had made any effort to hold meaningful conversations with elders or other members of these remote Indigenous communities about the challenges they face.
Nobody (including the media) denies that these problems exist in these communities and nobody claims that conciliatory gestures such as changing the date of a national holiday will magically make these problems go away.....but I think anyone with common sense should be able to see that issues such as low self esteem and a sense of disconnection from our national identity help to perpetuate these destructive (and often self destructive) cycles...and that acknowledging this basic truth will do more good than harm. Nobody is even trying to present this as a be all, end all solution to problems which clearly run much deeper. Just another step in the process of attempting to build trust with elders and social workers in remote communities which might help us form a more cooperative approach in order to help us address these serious issues and challenges in a more meaningful way.
And please stop pretending this is an issue that affects all Aussies equally. We could change the date tomorrow and it would not negatively impact the self esteem or sense of identity of Australians in any form of meaningful way.
The only identities this issue threatens are the identities of those who want to be both patriotic and loyal to their cultural background and find it hard to reconcile these two goals based on the stubborn insistence that we continue to celebrate a day that is supposed to symbolise our unity on a date which holds deeply painful connotations for many.
If you are so confident this is just an issue that has been confected by white inner city academics, what is your opposition to a poll which is specific to Fist Nations people to determine their views on the change the date debate? If you are confident the majority of Indigenous Australians don't have an issue with the current date, what are you afraid of?
