Leigh Matthews, Tanya Hosch calls for Australia Day to be moved
Leigh Matthews has thrown his weight behind the push to shift Australia Day after AFL executive Tanya Hosch said a new date would unify the country.
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Legendary footballer and coach Leigh Matthews is backing calls to change the date of Australia Day.
Matthews, a legendary player with Hawthorn and then four-time premiership coach with Collingwood and Brisbane, tweeted his support for the push to shift Australia Day from January 26.
“Got to agree that January 1st, the anniversary of Federation is the most appropriate day for Australia Day,” Matthews posted.
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It came after a top AFL executive has called for Australia Day to be shifted away from January 26.
Tanya Hosch, the AFL’s executive general manager of inclusion and social policy, said it was time to consider a new national date that could be celebrated by all Australians.
Hosch has also revealed she considered rejecting her nomination as South Australia’s finalist for Australian of the Year.
“I’m definitely one of those Australians who think we’ve got an opportunity for a nation-building moment to change the date that we hold Australia Day on,” Hosch told the ABC.
“We haven’t celebrated Australia Day on this date for decades and decades and decades — it’s only been about 20 years — so we definitely have an opportunity, I think, to revisit that date.
“Because we have the conversation perennially — like every 12 months, we have the conversation — we have the same debates and the same ideas, but we don’t ever seem to resolve it.”
Got to agree that January 1st , the anniversary of Federation is the most appropriate date for Australia Day
— Leigh Matthews (@LeighRMatthews) January 20, 2021
Hosch was adopted by Aboriginal father and white mother when she was just three weeks old and grew up in the north eastern suburb of Gilles Plains in Adelaide.
Last year she told The Advertiser’s Black Australia Podcast she was yet to find her biological mother who is Welsh or her father, a Torres Strait Islander, but she did have an emotional trip to the Islands in 2015.
In 2016 she became the first Indigenous person, and second woman, on the AFL’s executive leadership team.
She championed the first statue of an Indigenous AFL player, Nicky Winmar, and instigated a review of an anti-vilification policy within the sporting code.
Hosch also helped secure an apology from the AFL for former Sydney Swans player Adam Goodes for the racial vilification he endured throughout the final years of his career.
During the 2020 season her position at the AFL was reported to be on shaky ground, especially after a league directive that Indigenous players receive injections for pneumococcal disease before entering Queensland hubs.
But in October the Adelaide-based Hosch was named as the 2021 SA Australian of the Year for her “change-making” and “visionary” role in the AFL.
She has also held leadership roles in sport, the arts, culture, social justice and public policy.
Hosch said she thought twice about the Australian of the Year nomination because of the strong feelings many have about Australia Day being on January 26.
“The reason that I did is I like to be in the room having the conversation and this is going to give me the opportunity — and has given me an opportunity — to do that,” she said.
“But I think as a mature nation there’s a whole lot of things we have the opportunity to do to build our nation — to make it stronger, to address the sorts of things that often create dissent and pain for people and tap into some significant trauma.
“I think as a country, if we want Australia Day to be a day that is truly unifying for all the stories that make up our nation, then reviewing the date — thinking about it differently — I don’t think there’s anything to fear in that, there’s just some great opportunities.”
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Originally published as Leigh Matthews, Tanya Hosch calls for Australia Day to be moved
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