City of Port Phillip to consider proposal to include nod to indigenous massacres in Australia Day events

INDIGENOUS massacres would be acknowledged under a plan to change Australia Day activities, with an inner city council considering the proposed change.

MASSACRES against Aborigines would be acknowledged in a special ceremony under a push to transform Australia Day activities in the inner city.

Port Phillip Council will consider the issue as a way of accommodating the views of those who see January 26, 1788, as “Invasion Day” with traditional celebrations of European settlement.

A similar proposal has previously been flagged by a senior City of Melbourne councillor, but a think tank described the idea as “more empty posturing by social justice warriors”.

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Protesters at ‘Invasion Day’ rally in Melbourne this year.

Last year, Greens-dominated councils like Yarra and Darebin controversially dumped Australia Day events which led to the federal government stripping them of the right to hold citizenship ceremonies.

But Port Phillip Deputy Mayor Dick Gross, an ALP member, said there was no political appetite to change the date among the main political parties.

Port Phillip Deputy Mayor Dick Gross.

Cr Gross has proposed retaining Australia Day on January 26, but to include a “morning of mourning” ceremony that acknowledged “contrition and atonement of the impacts of colonial settlement on indigenous people, including a rite based upon the recitation of massacres”.

“A reformed Australia Day could be a profound act of reconciliation, education and atonement,” he said in a motion to go before a council meeting on Wednesday.

Cr Gross said Australia Day could be divided in two, similar to Anzac Day starting with “a serious dawn service and the rest of the day more celebratory”.

An Aboriginal smoking ceremony during the 2018 Moomba Parade.

Local indigenous group the Boon Wurrung backs Port Phillip’s current national day celebrations, and has given provisional support for Cr Gross’s proposal.

It’s envisaged the morning ceremony would have very few speeches “but involve non-verbal rites including by way of example fire, candles, costume, music, group singing, parading and

prayer”.

Gideon Rozner, from free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, said: “This is just more empty posturing by the social justice warriors on inner city councils.”

“Australia Day is, and always should be, a day of celebration … the day on which the values of western civilisation reached our shores.”

Earlier this year, Deputy Lord Mayor Arron Wood suggested the City of Melbourne could commemorate “atrocities” against Aborigines under an Australia Day revamp.

“My concern is if you change the date … what you’re doing is actually potentially playing to the divisive nature of the debate,” he said then.

Last January, the federal Greens announced a national campaign to change the date of Australia Day as a top priority.

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