TikTok user suggests Australia Day workers could donate public holiday pay
A TikToker has suggested that people working on Australia Day that don’t want to profit off the controversial public holiday could donate part of their pay.
As the debate around Australia Day continues to rage on, TikTok users have begun offering their followers advice on what to do when faced with different situations on the day.
While January 26 is a public holiday, thousands of people will still be heading to work.
This week, prominent Indigenous TikToker, Meissa Mason, revealed some of her followers had raised concerns about receiving public holiday rates for working on January 26 and profiting off what is a day of mourning for many people.
Meissa, a 21-year-old Wiradjuri, Gomeroi and Awabakal woman, suggested people who held these concerns could donate their extra pay to helping further Indigenous causes.
January 26 is not a day for celebration – that’s why news.com.au is campaigning to change the date of Australia Day, so we can celebrate the best country in the world, without leaving anyone behind.
“I’ve had a couple of people DM me and say that they don’t celebrate Invasion Day and they’d rather work, but they also feel uncomfortable profiting off Invasion Day by getting time-and-a-half or double rates,” she said.
“Something you can do is working out your pay slips to see what you got on your regular rates, and then taking that percentage that you got for double pay or pay-and-a-half and donating it to an Indigenous organisation, movement or group.
“That way, you are not profiting off Invasion Day and you are actually directly supporting Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander communities.”
Meissa then directed viewers to a link in her bio that had a list of different charities dedicated to helping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Her suggestion was met with hundreds of positive comments, with people praising it as a “brilliant idea”.
“Why didn’t I think of that? Thanks for the suggestion! I’m going to do that this year and for years and years to come until that date is changed,” one person said.
Another wrote: “Thank you so much! My partner was just having this moral dilemma”.
Another TikTok user, Barkindji, Wakawaka and Birrigubba woman Emily Johnson also created a tutorial for her followers on what to do if they are invited to an Australia Day party.
The video was titled “No Pride in Genocide: A tutorial”.
In the video Emily acts out being given an invite to an Australia Day pool party and declining the invite.
“For me personally it’s OK if you want to enjoy the public holiday but titling your event #invasionday is just yuck #nothankyou,” she wrote in the caption of the video.
Why is the January 26 date so controversial?
January 26 marks the 1788 landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove – a day that for our First Nations people carries so much trauma, grief and suffering.
“January 26 represents where it all started to change for our people for the worst, the beginning of intergenerational pain and suffering for our people,” proud Butchulla and Gawara saltwater man, Isaiah Dawe told news.com.au.
“It reminds me of the pain my own people have had to endure, what all my family, community and generations before me have had to go through since that day.”
This is why January 26 cannot be seen as a day of celebration, as it marks the beginning of the brutal colonisation of Indigenous Australians, which resulted in massacres, land theft and children being stolen from their families.
This is the basis for the Change the Date debate, with the argument being Australia Day should fall on a day that everyone can celebrate.
These are some of the alternative Australia Day dates that have been put forward:
January 1: This is when the Commonwealth of Australia came into being in 1901 and Australia, as one “united” nation, was technically born.
January 31: Moving the date to the last day of the month keeps it in January, but five days on from January 26.
First Monday in February: One of the best part of any public holiday is when it falls on a Friday or Monday, resulting in the most blessed of three-day events: a long weekend.
May 8: Unlike some of the other options here, this date has no real significance … except that it looks and sounds like “May8” (mate).
May 9: This marks the day in 1901 when we became a self-governing federation.
May 26: This is National Sorry Day which “remembers and acknowledges the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families and communities”.
May 27: This is the day in 1967 when Australians voted to allow the Federal Government to make laws for Indigenous Australians, and for them to be included in the census count.
July 30: The first Australia Day was celebrated on July 30 in 1915.
September 17: The last vestiges of the White Australia policy were removed on this day in 1973.