City of Melbourne knocked back Australia Day funding to honour Aboriginal culture

City of Melbourne failed to accept Australia Day funding that would’ve paid for events honouring Aboriginal culture, it’s been revealed.

The City of Melbourne failed to accept funding that would help fund programs more inclusive of Aboriginal culture on Australia Day. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

The City of Melbourne has been criticised for failing to accept big funding for Australia Day events that could have included honouring Aboriginal culture.

National Australia Day Council (NADC) said in a submission to council that over the past few years it had introduced a new approach to celebrating January 26 that was more inclusive of the perspectives and experiences of Indigenous people.

Councils like Port Phillip had received funding in partnership with local Aboriginal groups to hold a “morning of mourning” dawn service on the bay.

“Despite several invitations in recent years, the City of Melbourne has engaged with neither NADC’s community events program, nor its major events partnerships funding program, which provided up to $1m to capital city councils or event hosts for state-significant Australia Day events,” said the submission seen by the Herald Sun.

“The NADC would welcome the opportunity to work with council and its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders to develop a uniquely Melbourne event in a similar vein to (Port Phillip’s morning of mourning).”

However, the council this week opted to campaign for the date of Australia Day to be changed, saying that traditional owner groups and a majority of 1600 residents and businesses surveyed supported the move.

Crowds at the Invasion Day Dawn Service in St Kilda. Picture: Getty Images

At a meeting on Tuesday, City of Melbourne CEO Justin Hanney was unable to say why the council had not applied for the NADC grants.

“What I do know, there is an option there for us to continue to make application for funds to both the Commonwealth, (and) there’s a question as well in relation to state government,” he said.

City activation lead councillor Roshena Campbell questioned why the council hadn’t applied for the Australia Day grants, and also took issue with the council’s survey of residents and businesses by pollster Redbridge.

“We only surveyed 1600 of them, (yet) there are almost 140,000 people enrolled in the City of Melbourne — we don’t know what the majority thinks, because we haven’t asked them,” she said.

“The Prime Minister (Anthony Albanese) has made it clear (changing the date) is not a priority of the federal government. (Resident and business owner) rates are going to be wasted for advocacy that is clearly going to fall on deaf ears.”

Lord Mayor Sally Capp defended the council’s survey.

“We have listened to what our traditional owners say, to what our constituents say, we have had a significant sample size in the survey that we’ve done, and we have the results,” she said.

“It’s a Commonwealth government decision to change the date, and we will be advocating to the Commonwealth government representing the views of our constituents, this is local government leadership.”