Celebrate nationhood on day that includes us all
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AUSTRALIA DAY
The novelist Henry James wrote: ″Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”
A kind approach based on empathy, respect and compassion, would acknowledge the trauma to First Nations people of celebrating Australia Day on the date British colonisation began at Sydney Cove.
That date marked the start of dispossession, violence, and cultural devastation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
A kind approach would seek to find a date to celebrate our nationhood that is inclusive of all Australians.
Sarah Russell, Mount Martha
We changed date before, so do it again
I wrote to The Age in 2014 that I wouldn’t celebrate Australia Day until Indigenous Australians celebrate it. I just don’t understand how most non-Indigenous Australians can keep ignoring the sadness this day carries for First Peoples and the reasons for this sadness.
We know that the day was celebrated as Foundation Day until 1935 and was held on different dates among the states and territories until it officially became a national holiday on January 26 in 1994.
So change it again, and find a date that really unifies us. We’ll all feel better and will have something momentous to be proud of – a country with the oldest living culture in the world, as well as a diverse range of people from many origins.
Ange Mackie, Coburg
Forever tinged with guilt
Once again, Australia is being confronted with the injustices of its colonial past. Will changing the date of Australia Day bring healing to the aggrieved, or to the nation’s soul?
If not, what is the point?
It seems fair to compare it to Lady Macbeth’s ″damn spot″, her deep guilt that she could never assuage.
Ross McPhee, Seaford
Gather to celebrate living here
Each year, there are calls for Australia Day on January 26 to be dropped. This year the 26th happens to be on a Monday, the usual day to complete a long weekend.
But rather than associate Australia Day with that contentious date, could it be a floating date within the last seven days of January, such that it falls on the only Monday within that seven-day range that year?
This would be less disruptive than if it falls on other days during the week, would still be within the usual school holidays, and in summer which is still a festive time for many, and hopefully somewhat dissociated from the reason the fixed date was chosen in 1994.
Whatever our background or beliefs, we can still choose to gather to celebrate living here, including welcoming new citizens at citizenship ceremonies that day.
Davina Hurst, Ocean Grove
THE FORUM
Condemning hate
As members of the Melbourne Jewish community, we watched the very moving service at St Paul’s Cathedral in honour of the victims of the Bondi terrorist attack.
It was conducted with great compassion and love and was truly a gathering of wonderful unity and remembrance. The readings and prayers were well chosen to reflect the sorrow and hope felt by so many Melburnians.
In particular, we were moved by the beautiful Hebrew prayers recited by the Cantor and choir of Temple Beth Israel.
The Archbishop of Melbourne could not have put it better when he said: “We stand side by side with members of the Jewish community here in Melbourne and throughout Australia, and with countless people the world over whom, like us, condemn antisemitism, hate crime, persecution and violence”.
Monica Petterson and Jock Orkin, Mount Waverley
Think of the country
Is the name ″opposition″ the problem? All this current federal opposition does is oppose everything – even on its own side. Perhaps it should borrow from the US (absolutely the only thing worth borrowing), and call Sussan Ley the ″house minority leader″. With the term leader in the title, maybe we could get more leadership and less opposition.
It is time politicians start acting for the good of the people of this country, not their own pathetic power games.
Louise Kloot, Doncaster
Trumpian errors
The extraordinary reason stated by David Littleproud for withdrawing his National parliamentarians from its coalition with the Liberal Party is not that he finds Sussan Ley’s leadership too problematic, but that he justifies his criticism of her and her party by the fact that he had a good relationship with previous Coalition leader Peter Dutton.
The Liberal Party’s review of its decimation in 2025 federal election is allegedly so critical of Dutton’s role that it has not been made public due to his reported threats to sue it if released.
Both at his local and the national level, Dutton’s Trumpian policies such as DOGE, nuclear power, pro-fossil fuel, discounting of climate change, and his leadership style were defeated.
A great win for the vast majority of Australians passionately wanting a sustainably just, peaceful and socially cohesive future.
Jennifer Gerrand, Carlton North
Worm turns
With the Liberal Party in such disarray and having lost its political partners, the Nationals, maybe it’s time for all Liberal Party members to join the teal movement and stand as independents.
It was only last year that the Libs were criticising the teals for not having any policies and not being worthy of electors’ votes. Wow, how the worm has turned.
Stan Thomson, Sandringham
Right to irrelevance
Before the Liberal Party embarks on its next round of bloodletting and poring over the entrails, it would be well advised to reflect on the fate of the UK Tories who in fear of being outflanked by Nigel Farage, lurched right, far right ″lite″, and right into irrelevance.
Peter Rushen, Carnegie
Big chance for Libs
The Nationals have said they will not enter into coalition for as long as Sussan Ley remains leader. The Liberal Party should seize this opportunity to recover ground in middle Australia with both hands – and not change leaders.
Mick Beasley, Sunderland Bay
End climate denial
I would have thought one of the major policies the Liberal Party needs to address is responding appropriately to climate change mitigation. If it can do that, sans Nationals, then a divorce from the Coalition will be well worthwhile for it and the country.
If the Liberal Party keeps meandering down the path of climate change denial – see Howard and Abbott – then it is in real trouble.
Phil Labrum, Trentham
Might not right
Forty degrees is predicted today but climate change is not just fire and flood. We’ve always had them and clearly they’ve been exacerbated by climate change due to human activity – and because it now impacts so many people and so much infrastructure, it’s imposing huge social and economic costs.
But while fire and flood are attention-grabbing, they’re not the main threat. Quietly and slowly, the silent disaster, drought, or water insecurity, water bankruptcy, now threatens our future – worldwide.
We already need desalination plants, and in recent fires, we see the lack of water in dams. It’s a crisis to which there is no solution.
On the one hand, steady, reliable rainfall is increasingly being replaced by unpredictable isolated cataclysmic downpours, while ever-growing populations demand more water, just to survive.
Add to this, wealthy nations investing billions in extremely thirsty technology, which offers little benefit to humanity. The new world order, ″might is right″, will only make this worse.
Australia is a dry country but our attitude to water remains a cavalier legacy of our English colonial beginnings. At a national level, we urgently need to impose rigorous water management, driven by enforceable and equitable government policy. Globally, we need to engage nations with the aim of ending the toxic delusion of ″endless growth″ and addressing world population issues.
John Laurie, Riddells Creek
School inequities
Chip Le Grand’s article, ″In the so-called education state, Gonski puts our schools stone cold last″, (22/1) highlights the extent to which the Victorian government has been underfunding our public schools compared with other states.
Victoria has fallen well short of meeting its share of the Schooling Resource Standard for public schools since the needs-based model was introduced after the Gonski 2.0 review in 2018, and before that.
What is less well known, is that over that time – and like the Commonwealth government– it has been fully meeting its share of SRS funding for Victorian non-government schools. Why the difference? Are our public school students and teachers less important?
Lawrence Ingvarson, Canterbury
Learn from past
The recent damage to the Separation Monument in Flagstaff Gardens is to be condemned. To vandalise a public statue is to shut off debate, not to encourage truth telling about our past.
There are alternatives. Fremantle has a First Nations explanatory panel on its Maitland statue on the Esplanade. Nuremberg displays its Nazi past in the Documentation Centre. Budapest has built a Memento Park to house its Soviet-era statuary. Each of these initiatives produced an informed debate about difficult histories.
Robert Pascoe, president, Royal Historical Society of Victoria
Carney’s stand
A message to world leaders lacking the intestinal fortitude of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in standing up to Trump, for fear of his spiteful reaction: “A principle isn’t a principle until it costs you something” (Bill Bernbach, co-founder of advertising agency Doyle Dane and Bernbach).
Renny Cunnack, Port Melbourne
When hope rose
I never met him or knew him but when I learned of Rob Hirst’s death I was surprised to find myself teary. Sure I’ve been a monumental Midnight Oil fan for close to 50 years but somehow this was more than that.
Upon reflection, I think our collective nerve ends are still raw from the recent Bondi horrors. We also hope against hope every day that the world doesn’t get any worse but are constantly disappointed. Losing Rob is part of that disappointment. He was such a beacon of goodwill, energy, humour, creativity, musical talent and dare I say it, hope. His band, with him in the engine room, rocked us down the years. They were a marker and a reminder of better times, times when hope was in good supply. The Berlin Wall came down, apartheid was dismantled and the Soviet Union came asunder, the world was on the mend. Rob and Midnight Oil lived and worked in that spirit of hope and optimism. They spurred themselves on to become ever better musically and they spurred us all on to be better, do better. Environmentally, politically, socially.
I think when we mourn Rob we also mourn the passing of more hopeful times and yearn for their return some day.
Iain Colquhoun, Brunswick West
That would be a noi
Can we please replace the cringeworthy ″Oi, Oi″ chant we hear at the tennis and other sporting events with something more irreverent and wittier please? I suggest we hold a national competition to come up with a new chant song that is less annoying and embarrassing.
Panagiota Frangopoulos, Malvern
Sport shrift
The Australian Open has also become a victim of shrinkflation. Prior to 2024, a reserved day ticket to the three main arenas of Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena and John Cain Arena would enable you to see three scheduled matches. Now, it is just two matches per day session.
On Thursday, the two scheduled day matches on John Cain arena finished at 2.30pm after just over three hours of play. There was little to no chance of getting a seat on the outside arenas (such as the ANZ and Kia arenas) with massive crowds queueing for seats.
Clare Rock, Blackburn North
AND ANOTHER THING
Coalition
Anthony Albanese has been presented with a gargantuan gift, given the bizarre, acrimonious implosion and subsequent divorce of the Libs and the National Party. It appears Albanese could still be our prime minister when he is 90 years old.
Steve Barrett, Glenbrook, NSW
Of course, David Littleproud would blame the woman for the Coalition break-up.
Jenny Bone, Surrey Hills
The LNP treats Sussan Ley like some misfiring spark plug that needs to be replaced, when they themselves behave as self-entitled non-representatives of their very weary, long-suffering, conservative constituents.
Alan Williams, Port Melbourne
Does Pauline Hanson now claim the mantle of ″opposition leader″?
Matt Dunn, Leongatha
Perhaps either the Liberals or the Nationals will form a new coalition with One Nation. They’re all much of a muchness now anyway.
Penelope Buckley, Kew East
The Coalition will rise from the embers after they hit rock bottom. The trouble is they just keep finding a new rock bottom.
Eric Kopp, Flinders
Former UK prime minister, Harold Wilson, reportedly said “a week is a long time in politics”. As The Age reports, “mass resignations, recriminations and leadership threats” all occurred within 48 hours.
Joe Wilder, Caulfield North
Trump world
Why anyone listens or reacts to what comes out of the mouth of Donald Trump is a mystery. Nothing he says can be expected to stay the same from one minute to the other. He’s totally unreliable and therefore unbelievable.
Juliet Flesch, Kew
TACO yesterday, TACO today and TACO tomorrow. I think world leaders are finally beginning to understand Trump’s game plan.
Graham Fetherstonhaugh, Carlton North
19th-century UK prime minister Lord Palmerston said that nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests. How precise was his voice then, and still accurate now.
Peter Whelan, Gladstone Park
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