Dear runner,

What do you think made this country so great -
and why? And should we change the date of
Australia Day?

Thanks.

Paul,

There is one Australia, all Australians no matter what their background are Citizens; one of the benefits that Aboriginal Australians now enjoy.

We might keep in mind also that Arthur Phillip didn't claim the whole of the island continent, the French had the West.

"What do you think made this country so great - and why?"

Too easy! The pioneering settlers who broke their backs but rarely their spirits building the infrastructure and producing the food. To that add the democratic tradition, administrative know-how including skills such as engineering, and law from the UK.

All who were liberated from the Nazis and then Russia and fled Europe after WW2 to be given safe sanctuary and a new life in Australia would have been in their knees thanking their Maker for the Australian people. Of course not all of their pampered children would be thankful having had everything given to them, which they came to see as their selfish entitlements, but that is life I suppose.

Australia Day should not be marred by those with an overdeveloped sense of their own entitlement and importance, especially the middle class hipster 'Progressives' with their elitist cultural cringe, to hitch a ride on the occasion be bring their whining to a crescendo.

Everyone but everyone is heartily sick of the whiners with their hands always out for a guvvy freebie. Especially the young employed couples who are already not having the children they want or at the optimal time in young women's lives because they cannot afford to do it. Yet Australia has population growth that a Third World country would be criticised for.

The only reason you want to change the date for Australia Day is to throw a curve ball into the proceedings, to disrupt it for others and your pleading that you support it is unbelievable. You are a poster who habitually sledges Australia Day. -Because of the UK origin of the customs, traditions and law that protect you and your family and deliver a bunch of valued benefits. Hypocrisy.

Foxy, "I had forgotten that January 1st was already taken as
New Years Day, and a public Holiday".

No thought given at all. As if you cared, you just want to stir the possum because of Australia Day.

Australia day is a fairly recent invention, I don't remember anyone observing it when I was growing up and it's probably only because I worked on the traveling bicentennial exhibition in 1988 that I know anything about the occasion at all. We did learn about the first fleet in primary school but it was very much, "when the British came here", which is right, none of those people were Australians and most of them were actually slaves.
Really, Australia day only became a subject of discussion under Howard, so the occasion as it appears today is less than 20 years old and it's certainly not an important tradition of the legacy populations of Old Australia.
It is what it is, a celebration of post 1996 Australia.

Jay,

It's not a fairly recent invention at all, the patent model goes way back.
"....Although it was not known as Australia Day until over a century later, records of celebrations on 26 January date back to 1808, with the first official celebration of the formation of New South Wales held in 1818".
Local Aborigines protested on Australia Day in 1938.

When I went to school, 1940-1949, we were well aware of Australia Day and what it meant.

Is mise,
Where did you grow up? NSW? I don't remember any commemorations growing up in country Victoria, if there had been we'd surely have gone because my parents would go to the opening of a letter.
We had ANZAC day, the parade for the agricultural show in November and an annual trades fair, that was it, the show was the biggest event of the year.
I was 20 in January 1988 and that's when I became aware of Australia day as a distinct event on the calendar, prior to that I'd had nothing to do with it.
According to Wikipedia it wasn't a national holiday until 1994 and not widely observed in all states.