Invasion Day is not a date to celebrate

Today in Parliament, Abigail condemned the Opposition's tone-deaf motion on Australia Day, calling out the erasure of Indigenous culture and advocating to change the date in recognition of January 26 as a day of mourning, not celebration.

Abigail said:

I felt compelled to make a contribution on this motion. Here we are on Whacky Wednesday, and it does seem to bring out the worst in members in this Chamber. When we are talking about erasing an entire culture of people, I am sorry, that is pure fascism, and I am calling that out because that is disgusting. No-one is saying, as we clutch our pearls at the idea of people pushing over statues—gosh, the poor statue—that that is somehow an excuse for perpetrating the racism that comes about by just ignoring what happened. 26 January is a day of mourning. It was a day when this country was invaded. It is okay to acknowledge that, to accept the truth of the beginnings of this country as we now know it and say, "That is okay. We can celebrate Australia Day on another day." I love this country, and most people I know and who want to change the date of Australia Day to one that is not about the beginning of the murdering of an entire culture also love Australia. They just do not want to celebrate it on Invasion Day. I do not think that is a big ask.

It is fascinating that people are saying, "They're woke and anti-fun", or whatever. It was once put in a really beautiful way. I was listening to Triple J one day when they were talking about changing the day that they play the Hottest 100 from 26 January. A young Aboriginal man said, "Look, I think about it this way. If I was going to have a party with my flatmates in our flat and I said, 'Let's have a flat party today,' and my mate said to me, 'Well, actually, today is a bad day for me because this is the day that my family were killed and, yeah, it was hundreds of years ago now, but it actually marked the beginning of an attack on my family and everything we stood for, and it has continued to this day, where we get locked up and my family is the target of ongoing discrimination and persecution and attempts to erase the fact that we even exist,' I would just say, 'You know what, mate? Let's have that party on another day.'" It is as simple as that. Let us not celebrate on a day when a significant portion of our population are in mourning. We should not erase that and pretend that something else is happening. Today's motion is astounding. I fully support the comments of my colleague Ms Sue Higginson.

Read the full debate in Hansard here.

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