The Solution to the Australia Day Controversy

As regular readers will know, I am loath to get involved in anything controversial.

As they will also know, that is a baldfaced lie, so bear with my one second while I douse my pants before they scald my precious and then let’s break down this Australia Day issue which is threatening to divide a nation and break up families nearly as much as the Guy and Shannon phone in votes in the season one finale of Australian Idol.

Australia seems firmly divided into two camps at the moment: Change The Date vs Fuck off, Snowflakes.

And before I go on I would like to say I totally understand people not wanting to change the date at all. Why should we move it? It’s celebrating the birth of our nation on the day the First Settlers arrived to befriend the natives and live in harmony together. It’s a tradition our founding fathers put in place all the way back in 178…

No, wait.

183…ummm, no, not then either.

190…??

Jeez, this is harder than I thought.

1994.

That can’t be right, can it?

The fact is historically the date was all over the shot all over the country and called different things.

But I get it. People’s backs are already up because they took away an Aussie bloke’s god given right to poofta bash on a Friday night and next thing you knew gays could marry like normal people. Then we caved so aboriginals weren’t flora anymore and now here they are wanting us to acknowledge the date the genocides of many of their tribes became inevitable might not be culturally sensitive.

There’s just too much change over too few generations.

I mean we lead the world in giving our women-folk the right to vote like proper citizens. Isn’t that enough to be getting on with?

Yes, yes, I know I’m being facetious. I also know aboriginals were never really listed as flora, so don’t bother messaging to correct me.

However, I do genuinely think a lot of the resistance to changing the date is stubbornness because there’s already been so much change in our lifetimes. Which is fine. I understand that all these different ‘minorities’ demanding stuff can be annoying. But not, you must understand, as annoying as celebrating the deaths of their great-grandparents.

I think, at the end of the day, there might not much by way of a good reason to leave the date where it is, although the weather is particularly nice around the end of January for BBQ’s and going to the beach.

But as much as I like a long weekend at the end of school holidays and a chance to swim and eat snags, I also accept there might be a good reason to move the date.

Australia is, after all, the country of a fair go and mateship. We have each other’s backs. We give two hoots.

Plus, we’re a young country. We should work this stuff out now and save future generations the trouble.

Personally, I love the idea of May 8th, because I think it has a larrikin element to it. But I get we should perhaps look to something a little more of a historical context.

Another idea I’ve heard which I think has merit is two public holidays, adding either the 25th or 27th to the mix. This means we could celebrate either the last day before settlement and the longer continuous culture on the planet, or the day after settlement as a day of unity. For all people are saying they’re upset about indigenous Australians getting a say in our national holiday I think an extra day off work might be the sweetener to get them onboard. Hell, throw both days on and let’s make a festival of it.

But I don’t really care when. I’ll leave that for others to nut out.

Meanwhile, until things inevitably get moved around, we have the issue of uniting the two halves of our country – the pouters and the snowflakes – so we can all enjoy a long weekend together watching for rips, perving at white pointers and lifeguards before walking half the beach back to our cars.

Everyone who wants to celebrate Australia Day can go right ahead and do exactly that. I mean it’s not like we have Australia Day chocolate egg hunts or a Santa-like avatar walking about shoving goodwill up people’s noses.

And anyone else who doesn’t think it’s such a great idea to celebrate the 26th of January if it upsets a lot of our indigenous citizens can instead join me in raising their plastic cup of beer (or white wine if you’re that way inclined) in the joyous recognition of an event which has been wrongfully overshadowed: the Rum Rebellion of 1808.

Yes, this is a real thing.

The Rum Rebellion was when William Bligh, the forth Governor of NSW and before you ask yes he’s also the Bounty bloke, was on the receiving end of the only successful armed takeover of government in Australian history.

Given our current crop of leaders I think this is something many of us feel we could probably get behind and have a drink to.

Maybe Bundy Rum could sponsor?

Anyway, problem solved. You over there in the right corner can ching-ching Australia Day and us over here in the left corner can giggle about Rum Rebellion Day, and everyone can have a grand ol’ time together making the most of a public holiday in the luckiest country in the world.

You’re welcome.

Or rather, Cheers!

Raising a family on little more than laughs

This post is not sponsored but the one below is. Our family would appreciate if you would click the photo of Miss9 & her friend to check it out so we can eat meat this week 😉 Thank you, tribe 😀

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