Dear Paul,

Look how far Australia has come. The country has changed.
The Australia of today is made up of all ethnicities
you can imagine. And it will continue to change, evolve,
and grow. January 26th does not define Australia today.

To change the date of Not to Change?

I say - change it!

Dear Paul,

My husband has pointed out that there once was something
called "Bonfire Cracker Night." Apparently it celebrated
things British by having bonfires and the lighting of
fireworks until it was found to be too dangerous. It
stopped around the 1980s. Was that before your time?

A little bit more history:

While other nations like the United States, New Zealand,
Canada, and India negotiated treaties with their
Indigenous people, Australia didn't even bother talking
to them. Until 1967 Indigenous Australians were not even
allowed to be citizens - they were considered as
wildlife.

Did you know that Australia Day is not as old as we may
think it is. Before 1988 Australia Day as we know it
didn't really exist. Most people had the day off with
drunks stumbling down the street. And the flag was only
made the national flag in 1952.

Ever since the White Australia Policy was abolished on
March 24, 1966 the country has become a multi-cultural
success story. Our population now comes from 200
countries from around the world.

Fixing Australia Day to the date the British arrived to
create White Australia is illogical if we're to celebrate
"Australian-ness."

It has no real meaning for the majority of Australian today.

Keeping Australia Day on January 26th only shows Australia's
collective ignorance. It shows Australia is not ready to
come to terms with its history, nor the reality that our
Indigenous people are worse off than almost every other
group in society.

Our Indigenous people have been demanding change since
2000. How much longer will they have to wait?

I see Australia Day as having no useful significance.
We are all taught that the British landed here and established a colony.
Does it really matter what day that was?
All we need to know is that it was about 250 years ago.
And Australia Day is just a holiday for most people?
So do away with it, and all similar 'days', and just have the holidays instead?
A much more logical approach?
And while we are about it, do away with statues and similar 'reminders'.
They are distasteful, vulgar, and almost barbaric sometimes.
They mostly encourage us to remember something unpleasant?

We need to be clear about something else here too.
Nobody in Australia was an adult person a hundred years ago.
We are all effectively newcomers.
And we all have ancestry going back more than fifty thousand years.
We all had ancestors who lived somewhere, and tried to make things better?
They passed on to us the infrastructure and knowledge they had.
I think fairness and sharing and teamwork were essential for their survival.
Probably because of geographic change, one of the groups became very isolated from the rest.
It developed a different way of life, and had a different understanding of it existence?
But surely it is illogical that its descendants can demand extra privilege because of those facts alone?

And nobody owns the world.
If anything, it owns us.
And we live on it. It is our 'space ship'.
We all need a physical area to effect our survival.
A large group will need a large area.
So that group will define boundaries, and defend the area of land it has chosen.
It needs to reap what it sows.
And this group needs to behave as a team.
If it divides in to sub-goups, and each demands different standards, the overall team effort is lost.
Anything which aids such division is to be avoided?
Because the world has not learned to act as a single team, it is fragmented and quarrelsome.
A major weather disaster, of catastrophic proportions, might pull it in to line?

This argument is all a load of rubbish.
The arrival of the First Fleet was the biggest event in 64,000 years.
What can possibly top that !