Cartoons of the Week

 

Peter Broelman

Cathy Wilcox

Cartoons of the Week

 

Cathy Wilcox

 

Matt Golding

 

Gorkie

Australia Day aka Invasion Day or Day of Mourning 2024: far right media and politicians making an increasingly ugly day even uglier

First it was verbal attacks on local government councils which intend to change how they celebrate Australia Day or hold their citizenship ceremonies on a January day other than the 26th or split their official and community activities over two days. 

Then the mainstream media, led by baying News Corp staff opinion writers and political commentators, looked about for other imaginary 'woke' enemies of the public holiday designated Australia Day.

Following an early January 2024 announcement by the Woolworths Group that while it sells Australian flags all year round it will not be stocking additional items for Australia Day due to a decrease in store sales in recent years, the meeja decided this announcement made its supermarkets a suitable target.

Opposition Leader and LNP Member for Dickson (Qld) Peter Dutton eagerly jumped on the bandwagon accusing the Woolworths Group and others of "peddling woke agendas" and calling for a boycott of all Woolies stores - with predictable response from those who voted "No" at the 'Voice' referendum.

An even more predictable response came from racist cranks and the 'cookers' amongst us.

Teneriffe store, inner Brisbane City Qld
IMAGE: 7 News, 16 January 2024

Cleveland Central store, south-east Brisbane Qld
IMAGE:  Herald-Sun, 16 January 2024

Woolworths Group, 24 January 2024:

A message from Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci to customers

Dear Customers,

Over the last two weeks, there's been much commentary in the media and we have had direct feedback from our customers and our team regarding our approach to selling Australia Day merchandise.

I have tried to read all customer complaints and team incident reports, and I’m writing this in the hope of clarifying our position and also asking everyone to treat our team with respect.

In terms of the Woolworths position:

As a proud Australian and New Zealand retailer, we aren’t trying to ‘cancel’ Australia Day. Rather, Woolworths is deeply proud of our place in providing the fresh food that brings Australians together every day. As evidenced during COVID or increasingly natural disasters such as what is currently unfolding with Cyclone Kirrily in Northern Queensland. Woolworths will always support Australians in the moments that matter.

In terms of merchandising - our commercial decision to not stock specific Australian Day general merchandise was made on the basis of steeply declining sales. The decision to stock this mostly imported merchandise has to be made almost 12 months in advance. So as a business decision, it doesn’t make commercial sense.

Rather than stocking imported Australian themed merchandise, Woolworths is focused on what we do best 365 days of the year – providing the best of Australian fresh food for Australia Day long weekend gatherings with family and friends and working hard to ensure we deliver great value.

There are many other ways in which we are supporting our customers and our team to celebrate Australia, such as acknowledging the best of Australian products in our stores and online and supporting our team to mark Australia Day with their local community.

As a first generation Australian who gratefully calls Australia home, I look forward to getting together with my family and I hope that you too spend Australia Day in your own way and cherish what it means to be Australian.

Brad Banducci

Woolworths CEO

It seems that a number of Ballina Shire councillors are about to show an ugly side

 

Ballina Local Government Area covers 485.6 sq. kilometres with an estimated 46,760 local residents (ABS ERP 2022).

A conservative estimate is that 1,824 men, women & children in this local population are of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander descent, with the majority being from First Nations family groups who have lived in the eastern Australia coastal zone since time immemorial.

There are many people living in Ballina today whose families have been birthing their babies and burying their dead in this local government area for tens of thousands of years and they don’t deserve either the level of cultural insensitivity or the false historical narrative of Australia Day celebrations being held on 26 January every year to commemorate the invasion of their country and the subjugation of their families, by an arrogant British Government on the other side of the globe.

However, some Ballina Shire councillors have tin ears and it seems a steely resolve to perpetuate the type of one-dimensional potted 'histories' sometimes found on the back of cereal boxes, lids of gift biscuit tins or sides of shopping bags.

A rescission motion has been put forward for consideration by Council in the Chamber on Thursday 23 June 2023 seeking to nullify Resolution 250523/17:

11.1 Rescission Motion - Australia Day Celebrations 

Councillor Cr Buchanan

Cr Ramsey

Cr Bruem

This is how the the situation is playing out in local media.....

The Echo, 20 June 2023:

Last month’s Ballina Council meeting saw a decision to move the Australia Day Awards and Citizenship Ceremony, to be held at Lennox Head Cultural Centre, from the controversial date of 26 January 2024, to the evening of 25 January. This amendment to an earlier motion was moved by Cr Simon Chate with the support of Cr Stephen McCarthy.

Two conservative councillors allied with Mayor Sharon Cadwallader, Nigel Buchanan and Eva Ramsey, were absent from the meeting when this decision was made. These two councillors, along with Cr Rod Bruem, have since announced that they intend to launch a motion of rescission at this week’s meeting, to return the local ceremony date to 26 January.

As Cr Simon Chate told The Echo, ‘The recission motion is likely to succeed as they have the numbers, with Cr Eoin Johnston and Mayor Cadwallader’s casting vote.

‘There has been strong emailed support from the community for the change of date to the more inclusive and welcoming 25th of January and only a handful of emails supporting the January 26 date,’ he said.

‘In my opinion, if this rescission motion is successful (and barring a miracle, it will be), this is a real lost opportunity for Ballina Council to show compassion and cultural sensitivity to the pain felt amongst many of our First Nations people and their supporters around the January 26 date.’

Simple gesture

According to Cr Chate, ‘Such a simple gesture, to move the awards ceremony forward by about 15 hours, would make our ceremony open, inclusive and welcoming. To rescind it would be narrow-minded and unkind.

‘At every meeting, we stop for an acknowledgement of country and for Council to move the ceremony back to the 26th of January seems dismissive and culturally insensitive.’

Cr Chate suggests that people who agree that the issue is important should contact their councillors. The rescission motion will be debated at this Thursday’s meeting in Ballina.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ordered an urgent review of the 42 year old National Australia Day Council

On 1 May 2021 The Saturday Paper reported that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ordered an urgent review of the board of the National Australia Day Council, established as the Australia Day Committee in 1979. 

National Australia Day Council Limited (NADC) is a not-for-profit Commonwealth owned corporation, within the Prime Minister's portfolio responsibilities, as well as being a tax exempt charity which is the “coordinating body for Australia Day celebrations across the nation and for the Australian of the Year Awards. The NADC heads a network of eight state and territory Australia Day affiliate organisations and 780 local Australia Day committees….reports to the Commonwealth Parliament under the provisions of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. The operations of the company are overseen by a board of Directors appointed by the Prime Minister”.

The NADC board of directors in 2019-20 were:

Ms Danielle Roche OAM Chair

Ms Robbie Sefton Deputy Chair

Ms Stephanie Foster PSM

Dr Robert Isaacs AM

Dr Stepan Kerkyasharian AO

Ms Jane McNamara

Major General (Ret’d) Maurie McNarn AO

Mr Richard Rolfe AM

Mr Norman Schueler OAM

Ms Naseema Sparks AM appointment ended 25 June 2020.

As of 1 May 2021 the position of Chair, Deputy Chair, and two Director/Non Executive Director positions are vacant. Danielle Roche and Maurie McNarn are no longer on the board. Robbie Sefton is no longer Deputy Chair but remains a Director/Non Executive Director and Alison Page became a board member in September 2020.

NADC employs around 12 people full-time and is located in Canberra, ACT.

In its last published annual report NADC stated that:

During the period ended 30 June 2020, the NADC and Network continued to deliver both national and state programs. The Australian Government, through the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, provided a total of $14,665,913 funding for the company. Sponsors provided a total of $2,109,860 for national programs, and part of this funding was allocated to state and territory Australia Day affiliates for local projects.

NADC does not appear to have any significant debt. There appears to have been no ministerial directions received, no government policy orders received and no judicial decisions or decisions of administrative tribunals were made concerning NADC during the 2019-20 reporting period.

So what has made the Prime Minister hot under the collar? After all, he makes those NADC board appointments.

Could it be that Morrison is uncomfortable with the fact that from January 2020 NADC through its “The Story of Australia” advertising placed a much greater emphasis on the histories and stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? That he didn't like the NADC commitment for 2020-21 to "work to expand the reach of our Respect, Reflect, Celebrate: We’re all part of the story message into Australia Day events in every State and Territory, every town and city"?

Or was he incensed to the core of his narrow, historically inaccurate world view by this event?

"At dawn on Australia Day 2020, Port Phillip City Council in Melbourne and the Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council, with the support of the NADC, held a We-Akon Dilinja (Mourning-Reflection) ceremony."

Chronologically it seems that Morrison's unusually short extension of Danielle Roche's contact as a NADOC director, which saw her ending her association with the National Australia Day Council on 31 March 2021, possibly may have followed on from his personal dissatisfaction with the 2020 Respect, Reflect, Celebrate Australia Day message which acknowledged Aboriginal dispossession commencing in 1788.  Within four weeks of becoming prime minister Scott Morrison in 2018 was on record as viewing any such acknowledgement as "indulgent self loathing".

Or is it that in 2021 NADC made Grace Tame @TamePunk Australian of the Year and she refused be cowed by his ‘eminent’ position or pull her punches when it came to publicly speaking of institutional sexual abuse, sexual assault and sexual harassment? 

Or is Morrison upset that on 25 January 2021 the NADC Board made a referral to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) of the leak of some Australia Day award recipients' names, given strong suspicions that there was an attempt by a person or persons to manipulate the betting market? For operational reasons about 180 individuals were informed of the winners names in December 2020 and that possibly would have included one or more staff in the Office of Prime Minster and Cabinet. No award finalists are ever informed before the official announcement on 26 January.

Australian Prime Minister can't stop people speaking out on the matter of the annual anniversary of the invasion of Australia

One of the reasons why Prime Minister Scott Morrison will fail in his bid to deny Australia's colonial history.......

The Daily Telegraph, 28 January 2021:

Hayley Talbot has long been recognised as a leader, an innovator, and a person with a drive to create positive change within the Clarence Valley.

In the past year, among a myriad of projects she helped drive a revitalisation of koala habitat devastated by bushfire with a program that planted 5000 trees and empowered many in the community who had lost their jobs due to COVID-19.

Along with her team, she also hosts a safe space for young women through her Blanc Space business in Yamba, where they provide an atmosphere to create, learn and converse openly.

It was for these works she was this week awarded the Clarence Valley’s Citizen of the Year.

While Ms Talbot said she was grateful to be honoured, she made the brave decision to use the opportunity to express what she described as an incongruous meeting of both celebration and mourning on Australia Day.

“... in good conscience I have to say, we should be doing this on another day. Ms Talbot said the decision to speak her mind and to receive the award was one she deliberated over, and admitted nerves beforehand, having heard the crowd boo 2019 Citizen of the Year Susan Howland for expressing her views at the ceremony.

“I was concerned at that, but I thought that if I didn’t accept the nomination, and didn’t show up, I would lose the opportunity to speak that truth and add to the conversation that needs to be leading the discourse on Australia Day,” she said.

“I know that conversations were catalysed among new hearts and minds, that was my goal, and I consider that a vindication of my decision to attend the ceremony and accept the award.” Ms Talbot told the hard truths of our history, including the atrocities perpetrated on the banks of the Clarence, and urged the crowd to consider the voices of those most hurt by the day.

“I can’t stand here today wholly with joy in my heart knowing that the neighbours I’m called to love are shattered apart by a day that’s considered a day of mourning by many Aboriginal people,” she said.

“I can’t stand here another white woman in a room of mostly white people pretending that in 2021 we’re all equal when we are governed by a system that still says we’re not.

“There’s a ‘ray’ in Australia, and there’s an us too, but only if we’re brave enough to tell the full story. Even though a date change can’t change it can we at least try?” 

A Quote for Australia Day-Invasion Day 2021

 

“I'm astounded at the comment [from the Prime Minister]…..

"It indicates to me a very shallow understanding of the arrival of the First Fleet and the impact of that on Aboriginal Australia.

"It's a very selfish comment. He said nothing about the arrival of that fleet on the Aboriginal owners who own the place.

"There's no empathy there at all. He's turning it inward. It's all about self-praise and aggrandisement of white fella colonisation.

"It's so shallow in that it doesn't involve inclusion or diversity.

"I just think he's very lightweight when it comes to understanding Australian history and Aboriginal perspectives about the British colonisation of the country.”

[Former Australian of the Year. Northern Territory Treaty Commissioner and ANU Professor of Law, Michael Dodson AM, a proud Yawuru man, quoted in ABC News online, 22.01.21]

An example of how Australian colonial history was re-written

In 1803 the first British soldiers and convicts landed in Van Diemen's Land and in 1824 it became a separate colony to New South Wales. 

By then the colonial population of the island numbered est. 11,967 souls and a population explosion had begun which expanded across more of the land.

Between 1825 and 1831 - when the British-European population had almost tripled - Aboriginal resistance to invasion and occupation of their country increased, with 219 colonists and 260 Aboriginals reported killed. [Nicholas Clements, 2014] 

Though the reality is that Aboriginal deaths were likely considerably higher as this number may not have counted all men, women and children gratuitously murdered, as it is believed that few so-called 'reprisal' incidents were officially recorded at the time they occurred. [Hobart Town Gazette December 3, 1823; Ryan, 1996:86-88; Bonwick, 1870:99, Hobart Town Gazette May 5, 1827; Colonial Times May 11, 1827; George 2002:13, Lee 1927:41; AOT VDL 5/1 No.2, 14/1/28 in SciencePo, 5 March 2008]

However, contemporary colonial history often tried to paint a different picture......

 

Legend reads: "Why Massa Gubernor", said Black Jack. "You Profflamation all gammon.
"How blackfellow read him eh? He no learn him read book."
"Read that then", said the Governor, pointing to the picture.'

“Images are treacherous; labels more so. As it happens, Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines 1816 had nothing to do with Governor Davey. It does not date from 1816. And it is not really a proclamation. It was commissioned by Lieutenant Governor Sir George Arthur; in 1830, around one hundred copies were published by the government printer in Hobart, placed on wooden boards, and disseminated. The misattribution dates from its re-discovery in the 1860s and might be explained in two ways. First, by setting the date back almost a generation, the notion that the British colony was founded on the principle of the rule of law is thereby promoted.

Law always needs some mythic retrospectivity to shore up its legitimacy—a penal colony established by dispossession and maintained by violence over whites and blacks alike, especially. The violence and chaos that mark the birth of any new legal order thus become cloaked in a myth that emphasizes instead its inevitability, its order, and its naturalness. By the 1860s, it surely served the interests of Tasmania’s free settlers to inject the rule of law into their narrative of legitimate settlement, as early as possible.

Secondly, Thomas Davey cuts a more attractive figure as author of the Proclamation than Sir George Arthur. As governor, Davey had protested in 1814 his “utter indignation and abhorrence” about the kidnapping of Aboriginal children. But Governor Arthur was an altogether more paradoxical figure, a man who oscillated wildly between expressions of concern for the Aborigines and military campaigns against them; between inciting white settlers to kill Tasmania’s first inhabitants and expressing outrage when they did. He was a man who combined eruptions of extreme action with outbursts of remorseful reflection. Above all, as the man behind the notorious Black Line, the dragnet which attempted to corral like cattle the Aboriginal population of the whole island, Arthur symbolizes a way of thinking about the original Tasmanians that “would be laughable were it not so criminally tragic.” Such a background surely taints and complicates the promise of the rule of law.

The cartoon was suggested and apparently drawn by Arthur’s Surveyor-General George Frankland, and he in turn was inspired by Aboriginal bark paintings.....

The paradox that this drawing raises lies in the difficulty of squaring “the real wishes of the government,” as the Proclamation presents it, with the “the actual state of things” in Van Diemen’s Land. At the very same time that Governor Arthur’s Proclamation elaborated an expansive commitment to the rule of law, he was extending martial law throughout Tasmania. Martial law had initially been declared in 1828 in the face of Aboriginal resistance to colonial settlement. In February of 1830, a reward of five pounds was proclaimed for the capture of adult Aborigines (two pounds for a child), describing them as “a horde of [s]avages” consumed by “revengeful feelings.” In October of 1830, faced by “continued repetitions of the most wanton and sanguinary acts of violence and outrage,” Arthur extended martial law to “every part of this Island.” On October 7, “the [white] community . . . en masse” was to spread out like a human chain across the whole island and, by moving forward, herd the Black or Aboriginal Natives on to Tasman’s Peninsula where they could be penned in once and for all.

Yet martial law had always been understood as involving the suspension of the rule of law. In 1829, the brutal murder of an Aboriginal woman was deemed by the Solicitor-General to be beyond the reach of the common law precisely because it fell under the very broad rubric of “necessary operations against the enemies.” Subject to “an active and extended system of Military operations against the Natives generally” and until the “cessation of hostilities,” Aboriginal Tasmanians were specifically placed outside the rule of law. The Black Line, a dismal and notorious folly, led to the capture of a grand total of two Aborigines and the shooting of two more, but it was powerfully evocative of the colonial government’s attitude towards them…." 

[Desmond Manderson (January 2013) in NYLS Law Review, Vol 57, Issue 1, “THE LAW OF THE IMAGE AND THE IMAGE OF THE LAW”, pp. 157-158]

Scott Morrison's prime ministership and his opportunistic, jingoistic approach to Australia Day have become objects of derision

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is so desperate to create an election issue out of Australia Day and couch his absurd argument in terms of patriotism versus anti-Australian 'activists' that he and his cronies have taken to running tweets like this on social media.

Unfortunately for Morrison the advertising industry and probably the entire country have his measure and, they are laughing in his face.

Frustrated by our politicians? Australia Lamb has suggested we steal New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. pic.twitter.com/ZFoSI4k3Jb

— SBS News (@SBSNews) January 21, 2019

Is Australian Minister for Immigration. Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs & Liberal MP for Banks David Coleman trying to stir up trouble ahead of Australia Day 2019 in the hope of gaining some nebulous political advantage?

Australian Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs & Liberal MP for Banks David Coleman, a Scott Morrison appointee, appears to want to renew the culture wars ahead of the May 2019 federal general election.

ABC News, 13 January 2013:

The Immigration Minister David Coleman has announced he will update the that governs how citizenship ceremonies are conducted, to force councils to hold them on January 26.

"Some councils say NO to Australia Day. We believe that all councils should say YES to Australia Day....in this wonderful, wonderful nation that we are so proud to be a part of."

Australian Associated Press (AAP), 13 January 2019:

Citizenship ceremonies will have to take place on January 26 and a dress code will also apply, in a federal government move to protect Australia Day.

The federal government has revised the citizenship code to make it compulsory for all councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, it has been reported.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has told the Sunday Telegraph the government will "protect our national day and ensure it is respected".

"We believe all councils who are granted the privilege of conducting citizenship ceremonies should be required to conduct a ceremony on Australia Day," he told the newspaper.

Under changes to the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code to be introduced in 2020, councils must hold a second citizenship ceremony on September 17 - Australian Citizenship Day - and new citizens will have to abide by a strict dress code that bans boardshorts and thongs.

Long before Coleman's announcement Welcome to Country had posted notice of these 
events scheduled for Saturday, 26 January 2019:

Narrm (Melbourne) – Invasion Day 2019 #AbolishAustraliaDay (Hosted by Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance WAR & BrisbaneAboriginal-SovereignEmbassy ) – Jan 26  

Sydney – Invasion Day 2019 (Hosted by Fighting In Resistance Equally FIRE) – Jan 26 

Meanjin (Brisbane) – Invasion Day 2019 (Hosted by WAR) – Jan 26 

Perth – Invasion Day Rally (Hosted by local Indigenous activists) – Jan 26 

Adelaide – Invasion Day Protest (Hosted by Occupy Adelaide) – Jan 26  

Note: Under the NSW Public Holidays Act 2010 Australia Day will be officially celebrated on Monday 28^th January 2019 and the year after that on Monday 27th January 2020.

Scott Morrison just can't get his political spin to stick up here on the NSW Northern Rivers

Interim Australian Prime Minister and Liberal Member for Cook Scott Morrison just doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut.

He tweeted what looked like one of his own staff's media releases which had been taken up by the Murdoch media, only to have Byron Shire Council issue a denial of his claim that it had backed down. 

SBS News, 29 October 2018:

Byron Shire mayor Simon Richardson has dismissed the Morrison government’s claim the council has backed down from plans to change the date of its Australia Day festivities.

Immigration minister David Coleman stripped the council of its right to hold citizenship ceremonies in late September as a punishment for “politicising” the day, only to reinstate the right on Monday.

The government claimed Mr Richardson’s council had “reversed” its plan to change Australia Day ceremonies.

But the mayor said the bitter argument with the government was triggered by a “misunderstanding”. Byron Shire will proceed with its plans to move Australia Day speeches and awards to January 25, he said.

“Nothing has changed, from our perspective,” Mr Richardson told SBS News on Monday…..

The council plans to hold a citizenship ceremony in the coming weeks. The events are held semi-regularly throughout the year.

BACKGROUND

North Coast Voices, 26 September 2018:

An est. 5 per cent of the total population of the Northern Rivers are Aboriginal people principally from the Bundjalung, Yaegl, Gumbaynggirr and Githabul Nations.

They are an integral part of townships and villages spread across seven local government areas and, able to clearly demonstrate cultural connection to country, hold Native Title over land and water in parts of this region.

These families and tribal groupings contribute to the richness of community life in the Northern Rivers.

So Byron Shire Council's media release of 20 September 2018 comes as no surprise.

However, Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison's reaction and the manner in which it was delivered did surprise me. 

SBS News, 24 September 2018:

A NSW mayor says his council's decision to change the date of an Australia Day ceremony is to reflect history after Prime Minister Scott Morrison weighed in.

A NSW mayor whose council won't hold its Australia Day ceremony on January 26 has hit back at Scott Morrison after the prime minister tweeted about the issue.

Byron Shire Council will hold some council events on the national holiday but has announced its official ceremony will move to January 25.....

Prime Minister Scott Morrison favours a romanticised, sanitised version of Australian history

Thus far around 250 sites of massacres which occurred between 1788 and 1930 have been mapped by Newcastle University. This is an ongoing project.

Each dot on the map represents the murder of 6 or more people and one dot in the Northern Rivers region (north-east NSW) represents 100 Aboriginal men, women and children slaughtered in 1843 by 11 mounted stockmen using firearms and swords, supported by sailors on nearby ships. Only two children from the Aboriginal camp were said to have survived.

In another instance in the Northern Rivers one arrogant 'settler' committed wilful murder by giving poisoned flour to unsuspecting local Aboriginals in 1848 resulting in 23 deaths.

This is what the New South Wales section of the massacre map looks like.

Interactive Colonial Fronteirs map of Australia at https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php

An est. 5 per cent of the total population of the Northern Rivers are Aboriginal people principally from the Bundjalung, Yaegl, Gumbaynggirr and Githabul Nations.

They are an integral part of townships and villages spread across seven local government areas and, able to clearly demonstrate cultural connection to country, hold Native Title over land and water in parts of this region.

These families and tribal groupings contribute to the richness of community life in the Northern Rivers.

So Byron Shire Council's media release of 20 September 2018 comes as no surprise.

However, Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison's reaction and the manner in which it was delivered did surprise me. 

SBS News, 24 September 2018:

A NSW mayor says his council's decision to change the date of an Australia Day ceremony is to reflect history after Prime Minister Scott Morrison weighed in.

A NSW mayor whose council won't hold its Australia Day ceremony on January 26 has hit back at Scott Morrison after the prime minister tweeted about the issue.

Byron Shire Council will hold some council events on the national holiday but has announced its official ceremony will move to January 25.

Mr Morrison on Monday said the "modern Aus nation" began on January 26, 1788 and that was the day to reflect on what the nation had accomplished, become, and still had to achieve.

"Indulgent self-loathing doesn't make Australia stronger," Mr Morrison tweeted on Monday.

"Being honest about the past does."

Byron Mayor Simon Richardson said the celebrations on January 26 caused pain in a section of the community and questioned whether the values of a fair go and mateship were being reflected.

"Is it true mateship to willingly, willfully and continually to celebrate what rightfully is great to be an Australian on a day that some Australians are pained by?" the Greens representative told 3AW on Monday.

He said the prime minister's response was understandable but he found the remark about "modern Australia" interesting.

Indulgent self-loathing doesn’t make Australia stronger. Being honest about the past does. Our modern Aus nation began on January 26, 1788. That’s the day to reflect on what we’ve accomplished, become, still to achieve. We can do this sensitively, respectfully, proudly, together. https://t.co/uM59Lwrr1p

— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) September 23, 2018

"I thought we were actually celebrating Australia Day, not 'modern' Australia Day,"

"All we're trying to do is trying to reflect history and acknowledge that Australia began, not with the second wave of settlers, but the first."

Mr Richardson's motion was passed at a council meeting last week.

The current prime minister obviously favours the same distorted version of Australian history as sacked former prime minister & Liberal MP for Warringah, Tony Abbott.

One where the heroic and benign British brought 'civilisation' to these shores.

He can't even get his historical dates right -  26 January 1788 was not "the day the ships turned up". The first of the ships turned up at Botany Bay on Friday 18 January 1788 and the fleet shifted moorings to Sydney Cove on 25 January.

Saturday 26 January 1788 was the day Arthur Phillip formally took possession of the country in the name of King George III. This was the day traditional owners became dispossessed of their lands. By 1790 the killings had begun. Over 200 years later they are still occurring.

Dismissing the history of colonial dispossession and massacre as "a few scars, a few mistakes, a few things you could have done better" is disingenuous.

A responsible adult in the prime minister's office needs to place all Morrison's digital devices under lock and key, as his wide streak of historical ignorance and intolerance is showing in his tweets and photo opportunities.

This obviously has not happened to date, because faced with an inevitable backlash (a good many Australians having a level of maturity Morrison lacks), this dismal prime minister then decided that our collective history should be split into two separate streams:

The PM is cracking down on councils that move Australia Day and wants to create a new Indigenous day.@ScottMorrisonMP: We don’t have to pull Australia Day down to recognise the achievements of Indigenous Australians.#auspol #sun7 pic.twitter.com/amhQ5H3JsH

— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) September 24, 2018

In his tweets there is no indication that he had met with Aboriginal representative organisations to ask what their wishes might be before making his rather vague announcement.

Morrison has stated an intention to strip Byron Shire Council of its right to hold citizenship ceremonies after the local government moved its Australia Day ceremony forward by a day commencing January 2019.

BACKGROUND

January 2018 - It's Australia Day and......

January 2017 - Australia Day: what's in a date?