In a little over a days time on January 26th, 2013 we will once again celebrate our Nationhood - but is this really the correct date?

Please read Governor Phillip's instructions:
http://foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/nsw2_doc_1787.pdf

Now read Queen Victoria's Proclamation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_Declaring_the_Establishment_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Australia
http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/explore/federation/constitution-website/stories/britain-holds-out/pods/royal-proclamation/index.html
(Strangely, this crucial legal document to the founding of this nation is missing from here: http://foundingdocs.gov.au/area-aid-2.html)

Is it more than obvious which document has a national purpose in our modern world.

I think January 26th was chosen because January 1st was simply impractical. I think the powers that be in London rightly thought at the time, that our new nation should come into being on the first day of the 20th Century.

But, in hindsight and for the purposes of practical celebration maybe they should have chosen the day before, December 31st. It was at midnight December 31st, 1900 that the Queen Victoria's proclamation did come into force (add 1 nano second) and we finally became a nation.

As a non - Aboriginal , I am not offended by 26 January being the date . However , acknowledging Aboriginal sensitivity , I suggest that the Queens Birthday be renamed " Australia Day " and celebrated on a uniform date throughout the country .

There is no need to appoint another date for the Queens Birthday . Scrap it !

If people object to my suggestion , because it will mean one less public holiday , Each State government can compensate by adding a day to some other long weekend .

26th January is the only feasible date.
Otherwise 112 years of hard work and dedication would be ignored.
It was those 112 years that witnessed the major development of the
country that laid the foundation of all that has followed.

Baz, you must remember that the men and women who fought long and hard to achieve Federation have all been forgotten. If they had not succeeded we would have ended up like New Zealand; where each Premier of the various Colonies would have simply renamed themsleves Prime Minister.

The 112 years of hard work and dedication, should be celebrated at the State level as the various anniversary or foundation days.

Jaylex, I think Australia Day must be celebrated on the anniversary of Australia's founding. We usually don't pick a random date on the calendar to celebrate our own birthday.

Regardless of any celebrations that were held on January 1st 1901 in Centennial Park, Queen Victoria's Proclamation came into force and with it Australia as a new nation at or about midnight December 31, 1900.

December 31st would be a great lead-into the build up for New Years Night. In some years this would allow back-back 4 day weekends over the Christmas new year break.

<< As a non - Aboriginal , I am not offended by 26 January being the date . However , acknowledging Aboriginal sensitivity>>

Contrary to Jaylex’s assertion, January 26th is a particularly appropriate day.

And it is appropriate for the following reason: about 4000 years ago the Australian continent had another of its inflows of boat people. This early group of boat people didn’t come seeking hand-outs (like most post-Rudd arrivees). They actually brought a higher technology which was to diffuse through the whole continent and, according to researchers interviewed on ABC Radio National, lead to a huge jump in the technological development and by consequence the living standards of the continents older residents. Many things that we now hold iconically Australian –iconically indigenous, are likely to have arrived with these as yet unsung fore-bearers.

These new arrivees came from the Indian subcontinent.

Now it just so happens that India – the origin of those early arrivees – also has it’s national(Republic) day on January 26th!

So what could be better than to share a national day with a region which has contributed so much to our gene pool and early culture.

And, as some are wont ask, each time we modify our immigration policy:"what would our Asian neigbours think?"

It would be akin to Japan airbrushing the nasty bits of WWII from its history books.
It would to akin to Pakistan airbrushing all the nasty bits about the Islamic conquest and occupation of the subcontinent from its books.
And it might even be viewed worse --like, us re-introducing the White Australia Policy!

Move Australia day to another date –perish the thought

Why ask?
Why change?
It is not going to change anything.
Just be happy it is Australia day and celebrate it.
Invasion day?
Rubbish if not the British it would have been some one else.
And many of mixed ancestry would not be here in any case.

Belly:" Just be happy it is Australia day and celebrate it."

Will do, hope you all have a great long weekend!

I posed the question in another thread, "Who are the January 26er's?", the vast majority of White Australians have no connection to the first fleet, many wouldn't admit it if they did. Did people even celebrate Australia Day in decades past? I'm 45 years old, granted Australia Day falls in the school holidays but I have no recollection of anyone celebrating the day as I was growing up, there were definitely no organised public activities in our town. To me Australia Day is "Howard's Holiday", a celebration of the contribution of non White migrants, I had literally no experience of it before the early 2000's, I knew what it was of course but until the flag cape wearers and "Oi,Oi,Oi" pests became numerous I had no idea people were interested in claiming it as a White rite.

If we're talking about changing the date -
what about the date to become a Republic?
This would be a moment to celebrate in a way
that would give all citizens pride in our
maturity and identity as a Nation . It would
include everyone.

Jay,
I agree I'm in my 50s, January 26th was just another long weekend, nobody took any notice of it, not all of the States celebrated the same day anyway. Not at least until Bob Hawk began pouring millions of dollars into marketing the day.

But this government funding isn't quite enough, they now apparently want to start indoctrinating children at school age level.
http://ministers.deewr.gov.au/garrett/aussies-kids-learn-about-australia-day-under-national-curriculum

I think the real purpose is to keep Australians ignorant. The dumber they are, the easier they are to govern.

It would be an entirely different matter if the Minister was talking about educating children about Federation and about the Constitution.

Lexi,

I think we need to fix Australia Day first before we can move on to become a Republic. I think we have always been a Republic, we have no palaces nor grenadier guards never have.

The simplest change would be to replace the Queen with a President whilst retaining the Governor General. This way there can be no conflict of interest and it would require minimal changes to the Constitution.

SPQRD,

I've got some videos for you to watch:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/303603-1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSTuMqVK7P4

>>But this government funding isn't quite enough, they now apparently want to start indoctrinating children at school age level.<<

They're already 'indoctrinated' in NSW schools: Australian history lessons for primary school kids teach that Australia was settled on January 26 1788 by Captain Arthur Phillip - and that that's the reason we celebrate our national day on 26/1. I was anyway.

I think it's great that the kids are getting history lessons which focus on facts and dates and names because when they get to high school they'll find that the history syllabus is rubbish.

Cheers,

Tony

Sense “The 112 years of hard work and dedication, should be celebrated at the State level as the various anniversary or foundation days.”

Do we even have annual anniversaries for that? I've never heard of it.
Which just goes to show how irrelevant the states/colonies are in the Australian community.
We identify, and celebrate, as "Australians".

Are you forgetting only NSW existed for quite some time?
26th January is not a “random” date.
It was NSW's founding date (the only colony at the time, from which all others, except WA, were later subdivisions).

Trying to change an accepted custom that most people have no problem with is futile.
It would be like changing Christmas because Jesus wasn't really born on that day. Good luck!

Jay Of Melbourne “I had no idea people were interested in claiming it as a White rite.”

Maybe it's more prominent now, because we need a ”White rite” now.
We didn't need to state the bleeding obvious in 1971.

Shockadelic,

South Australian Foundation Day is actually December 29th, so you cannot include South Australia, Western Australia or for that matter the Northern Territory. So, virtually half the country is not included in the original colony of NSW - makes no sense.

Also remember it wasn't until as late as 1994 that all States and Territories began celebrating on the same day.

If Australia Day were correctly held to commemorate the Foundation of this Nation, there would be no ambiguity about what it really means anymore, it would have a specific focus. There would be fewer protests or none at all, people would learn some facts about modern institutions like when was the Australian Navy and the Australian Army formed - March 1901, or that the precursor to Australia Post and Telstra were formed in 1901.

John Howard has suggested moving it to January 1st, I disagree December 31st would make more sense.

Sense, what is now South Australia and the NT *was* part of NSW.
Even New Zealand was part of NSW!

The only state/colony that wasn't was Swan colony/Western Australia.
This is only because Cook made no claim on the western part of the continent, due to previous Dutch navigations.

But before Swan River was declared, there was a settlement at King George Sound administered by, you guessed it, NSW!

So at one point, all British *settlements*/land claims, even what is now in WA and New Zealand, were administered by NSW.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Australia_history.gif

Since people at first only settled in Sydney, there was no need for other political administrations until other population centres were established.
And people were referring to the continent and its colonies as "Australia", and its people as "Australians", long before federation.
Why else would they choose that name?

What you're ignoring is that it's not just a celebration of the political technicality of becoming a nation.
It's about what and who we are.

I doubt anyone would support Dec 31/Jan 1, since we already have another distinct celebration at that time, with very different symbolic associations.

If you have to change, why not the proclamation date 17 September (1900) or 19 April (Cook's first encounter with the east coast, 1770; bit too close to Anzac Day)?
But any change is swimming upstream.
Why not wait until the Republic is declared, and choose a specific date for that, after much tedious debate?
More likely than not, that date will also be Jan 26.

BTW, just went to what I thought was Australia Day celebration in local park.
Turned out to be an Aboriginal festival (publicly funded, of course).
Lucky I didn't wear my flag t-shirt!

The usual (green/left) suspects had stalls: The Greens, Socialist Alliance, Amnesty, anti-discrimination, women's health centre (i.e. baby butchers).
And oddly, state agencies like NSW Rail, all given an Aboriginal twist.
Got out alive (and quick).

Shockadelic,

I like the Wikipedia gif good learning tool.

Okay, I overstated my case by excluding all of S.A. & the N.T, but your case is also overstated because it includes all of S.A. and all of the N.T.
The 135th parallel cuts mid-way through S.A. and to the east of the mid-way point in the N.T.

But, this helps state my case anyway, in that this is the ludicrous level of detail one needs to go to help extrapolate the meaning of January 26th across the whole country.

Whereas celebrating the true birth of this Nation is a far simpler affair.

You've got my vote for September 17th, we've got far too many holidays in the beginning of the year anyway. I just thought it would be too far from the existing day for people to accept it.

If the Royal Proclamation had never been signed we would never had become a single nation under one PM and one Parliament

The 9th of July would also be okay, because clause 3 in the Constitution authorised the proclamation anyway. But the Queens proclamation nicely sums up the whole story in a single document.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s3.html

REPUBLIC
I don't think we can ever become a republic until we officially recognise the history behind the constitution through a national day of celebration ie Australia Day, otherwise we'll end up with another debauchery similar to the one perpetrated against Sect 15 of the Constitution.

If you look at the crossed-out text in the following link below, you'll see the original text from Sect 15 of the Constitution (1900), you'll see how beautifully it is written, in simple plain English, with the minimal use of text to convey an idea.

Now look below, at the gargantuan verbose modern legal jargon underneath it, they replaced the original text with garbage in the 1977 referendum.

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2004C00469/Html/Text#param26

Sense "The 135th parallel cuts mid-way through S.A. and to the east of the mid-way point in the N.T."

But nobody settled there anyway for yonks, so it's kinda irrelevant where they drew the line.

"the ludicrous level of detail one needs to go to help extrapolate the meaning of January 26th across the whole country."

Which makes changing it even harder.
To justify change, you'd first have to explain why that date exists in the first place.

Most Aussies probably don't have a clue why that date is celebrated.
They just know it's "Australia Day", party time.
That's one reason it would be so hard to change it, it's simply unquestioningly accepted.

I agree about the ridiculousness of the Sect 15 revision, but it was necessary.
When the constitution was written, nobody was voting for parties in blocs, just individuals.

Verbose legalese is a curse of representative government.
More direct democracy would help eliminate much of it.
Many laws made by "representatives" would never be made by "the people", especially Australians, a people with an aversion to rigmarole and a preference for simplicity.

But I still think changing the day is a futile endeavour.

My god what a silly discussion. Why not make it Feb 2 or June 15 or October 30 or even Jan 26? Be happy there is a day to celebrate everything Australian.

Waterhole, I'm afraid the indigenous lefties, and their white Labor supporter base, won't accept any date, or ceremonies, that they don't approve of. So much for a united Australia.

Not only the date but also the location of the flag pole and which flag was flown.