STRANGE POLITICS: Change Australia Day, I need to recover

AUSTRALIA Day divides a nation, avocados cost more than diamond-laced heroin and footy boofheads cannot be trusted around beer, women, couches or dogs.

AUSTRALIA Day divides a nation, avocados cost more than diamond-laced heroin and footy boofheads cannot be trusted around beer, women, couches or dogs.

The one day of the year supposed to bring us together has, once again, achieved the diametric opposite.

Same story every year.

Indigenous Aussies call for a new date that does not commemorate the loss of Aboriginal sovereignty and the genocide that followed.

White-skinned Australians decry any change as destroying the very fabric of our society. Doom, disaster, armageddon.

But for the most part, we do not really care.

As long as we get a day off to come together over dad's inedibly charred snags and celebrate not being English, who really gives a rat's about the date?

Moving Australia Day away from the First Fleet landing's anniversary would show respect for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters, and for all intents and purposes not much else would change.

Except for one world-shattering advantage.

Every year it is a lucky dip whether January 26 will fall on a decent day.

This year it was a Tuesday. Next year, a Thursday. Both rubbish. At least 2018 will give us a Friday off work.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said about 180,000 people would do sickies after this year's celebrations, costing the country $62 million.

Imagine if it fell on a Friday every year and we had another two days to recover and get our booze-addled brains in order.

And to be fair, Australia Day did not even become a national holiday until 1994 - so not really a time-honoured tradition stretching back centuries into our heritage.

Still, no date change would have helped disgraced rugby league player and world's worst candidate for Bondi Vet celebrity appearance, Mitchell Pearce.

If you listen closely to the audio, there is also a borderline racial slur that no one has really cracked up about - something about Pearce claiming land rights over the house, refusing to be ejected and being turned down because "this isn't Redfern".

I am sure I could go further into detail and shrewdly dissect the incident on a cultural anthropological level, but my brain is operating at half strength this morning.

Having to settle for coffee and wheat biscuits instead of avocado on toast has left me reeling.

The price of those silky wonder fruits had been jacked up to $4 a pop at the shops yesterday, and there are reports some are costing as much as $8.

The alligator pear industry swears black and blue it is not a conspiracy - it was just the result of farmers selling their stock early under the misguided idea that demand would drop after Christmas.

I smell a rat.

This shady cabal of avocadoists is obviously making a threat that borders on shopping bag terrorism.

Starve us out for a couple of months until we beg to be forgiven for ever whinging about their $2 price tag.

Then bring them back with an extra 50c surcharge and perhaps some government subsidy (ransoms) under their belts.

I'm switching back to Vegemite. -APN NEWSDESK