Rita Panahi: Woke councils’ grandstanding on national issues a gross overstep

Victorians are overgoverned by local councils populated by activists and low-quality candidates not fit for state or federal parliament.

Merri-bek Council has boldly made its case for why local government should be abolished.

The Greens-led clown council, formerly known as Moreland, has followed two other Greens-led clown councils, Yarra and Darebin, to abolish Australia Day celebrations and citizenship ceremonies and instead wallow in a “day of mourning”.

Never mind that the overwhelming majority of Australians, including the migrant community, are very much supportive of the national holiday and want it to remain on January 26.

Merri-bek has taken it upon itself to deny new Australians the opportunity to be naturalised on the national holiday.

This is what happens when people unwittingly elect councillors with delusions of grandeur who want to grandstand on national and international issues instead of focusing on the business of local government centred around the decidedly unglamorous trio of rates, roads and rubbish.

Merri-bek Council will hold a ‘day of mourning’ for Indigenous Australians on Australia Day.

Compulsory voting is a mistake, as is having three tiers of government.

We are overgoverned with local councils populated by activists and low quality candidates who are not good enough to be sitting in state or federal parliament.

We generally have an idea who we are voting for in federal and state elections, but most Victorians would be hard pressed to name the mayor of their local council let alone any councillors and what policies they represent.

Of course there are capable community-minded councillors but they seem to be outnumbered in local government ranks.

You know a local government municipality has gone off the deep end of race politics when even the Victorian premier from Labor’s socialist left faction is cautioning against their divisive policies.

On Thursday Dan Andrews cautioned far-left councils against demonising Australia Day. “My position on this has been very clear over a long period of time,” the Premier said. “I think we can respectfully acknowledge our past, but also come together and celebrate what modern Australia is all about ... we can be embracing and accepting and show proper respect to that oldest culture in human history, and. at the same time, celebrate the values that unite us today.”

But we are talking about a council here that is willing to spend millions of dollars to needlessly change its name from Moreland to Merri-bek because of some tenuous link to a plantation in Jamaica which once held slaves. Seriously.

Merri-bek was formerly known as Moreland Council.

No one would connect the word ‘Moreland’ with slavery except the councillors and activists with too much time on their hands.

Ratepayers were told the name change would cost upwards of $500,000 but the real figure is expected to be in the millions, according to independent councillor Oscar Yildiz.

But that bit of gratuitous, race-based grandstanding wasn’t enough for the council that is now attacking Australia Day.

They can claim that some mickey-mouse poll taken in the City of Melbourne, not even their municipality, shows 59.8 per cent favour a date change but that survey is an outlier; most polls show a clear majority back the national holiday and want it to remain on January 26 including one published by Deakin University earlier this year.

The random representative poll of more than 5000 Australians undertaken as part of the Deakin Contemporary History Survey showed that “60 per cent of respondents want to continue celebrating Australia Day on January 26.”

The poll finding was in line with others taken by Roy Morgan, CoreData and Dynata.

Successive surveys have shown that support for changing the date is as low as 15 per cent, with support for Australia Day particularly strong among older Australians and migrants.

The support for Australia Day is all the more extraordinary given the sustained activism of the media, academia and activist class to paint the day as harmful and divisive, with some extremists describing it as a celebration of genocide.

A majority of Australians want to continue celebrating Australia Day on January 26.

This assault against Australian values, indeed Western values and civilisation, is a determined effort to delegitimise, degrade and demoralise our country.

It’s a narrative our children are exposed to from preschool to postgraduate studies.

It’s a warped view of our history that paints everything from white settlement onwards as violent and delegitimate and everything before as noble and beyond reproach.

It’s unrelenting propaganda that’s as destructive as it is historically illiterate.

Australia Day is just a focal point for this self-loathing agenda.

Next it’ll be the flag, Anzac Day or anything else that is imbued with a sense of reverence and engenders pride in the country.

If Merri-bek Council wants to abolish Australia Day citizenship ceremonies then it should be stripped of the honour of holding the ceremonies for the remainder of the year.

And one hopes that the councillors and all those who support this move will be reporting for work on January 26.