THE Greens’ plan for a national campaign to change the date of Australia Day has support in Bathurst.
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The party’s national leader Richard Di Natale says changing the date is one of his priorities for 2018, with his team planning to contact Greens councillors across the country on the movement.
He wants to see more local councils follow the lead of Yarra, Darebin and Fremantle, which have all attempted to move Australia Day celebrations from January 26.
Bathurst Regional councillor John Fry, who ran for the Greens for the September local government election, said he is of the opinion that the date should be changed.
He said each local government area should decide when to hold celebrations.
“Councils should be able to have citizenship ceremonies on any days they like and I don’t think it is up to the federal government to stop that,” Cr Fry said.
Australia Day, he said, has changed over the years and to most Australians the date itself isn’t that significant.
“January 26 will always be First Fleet day and only five million Australians are related to the First Fleet convicts, not the other 20 million people,” Cr Fry said.
Cr Fry considers himself to be among the five million with family ties to the convicts and was firm in saying that it didn’t matter to him if Australia Day was held on a different date.
“I don’t mind if the date is changed, and we can keep First Fleet day on January 26 for people like me who have convict heritage,” he said.
In terms of moving Bathurst’s celebrations, Cr Fry wasn’t confident it would happen.
“I don’t think it would get much support in Bathurst because it is a traditional city,” he said. “I think it would have to be a national day.”
The push to change the date comes from the treatment of Indigenous people following the arrival of European settlers in 1788.
Cr Fry hasn’t spoken directly with Aboriginal elders in Bathurst on the issue, but has heard they would support changing the date.
When contacted by the Western Advocate, elder Dinawan Dyirribang confirmed the elders were in favour of it as January 26 has never been a date the community could celebrate.
“The way we see it is the date should be changed because it is not a date to be celebrated,” Dinawan said.
“It is not really telling the story of our history … to us, if we’re going to have a day called ‘Australia Day’, let’s have it on a date that brings us all together, not divides us, like this one does.”
In recent years, Wiradyuri elders have been included in Bathurst’s Australia Day celebrations, where they have done the welcome to country at the Citizenship Ceremony.
However, Dinawan said, with the exception of that, the Aboriginal community does not take any part in the day or celebrate it.
“A lot of Aboriginal people in Bathurst go down to Sydney for the Survival concert,” he said.
He added that Wiradyuri people also choose not to celebrate Bathurst’s Proclamation Day for similar reasons.
“We’ve never actually been involved or invited from the very beginning [of European settlement] and you can’t expect us to take part in those days,” Dinawan said.
He feels the Greens campaign to change the date of Australia Day will be “educational” for many Australians.
Dinawan said there are already statistics that support the campaign, including data from The Australia Institute’s survey, which found only 38 per cent could correctly identify the events that happened on that day.
The same survey also found 56 per cent didn’t mind when Australia Day is held, as long as it exists.
“It is not about changing the day of January 26. This is about having another day to celebrate us as Australians,” Dinawan said.