Kevin Rudd: ‘Preserve the date, but redefine the significance’

FORMER Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd today backed January 26 as Australia Day — but with a “redefined significance”.

FORMER prime minister Kevin Rudd has thrown his support behind preserving January 26 as Australia Day but with a “redefined significance”.

Mr Rudd praised first Governor Arthur Phillips and highlighted his own convict heritage.

Thousands rally in Tasmania to change the date

He proposed a new set of interpretations of what happened in 1788 with an emphasis on the positives, against the worse possibilities.

“As I listened to all the arguments for and against, I think there’s an intelligent way through, which is to preserve the date, but redefine the significance (of Australia Day),” Mr Rudd told the National Press Club today.

“I mean, this was a day of first encounter between Arthur Phillip, the captain governor of the penal colony when we set to establish the great Australian gulag.

“I can say that, given my undiluted convict heritage.

“But the captain governor was a product of an enlightened age, if you look at his letters, patent as to how he was to engage indigenous Australians, and how he executed the patent, given all the problems of trying to carve out a living and an existence on the barren shores of Port Jackson at the time.

“And having been speared himself, he got on with the job. I think that given all of those conflicting realities, the ethos of colonial exploration and exploitation at the time, and how he exercised his mandate within that, the encounter with indigenous Australians, that could have proceeded in an entirely different manner ...”

Mr Rudd added: “And on top of that, mindful that a lot of us are descendants of crimes, who didn’t have such a great time with this, the date can be opened up in a set of new interpretations in a way that is sensitive to the deep interests of indigenous Australians.

“I note it wasn’t in the list of top priorities put by our indigenous brothers and sisters.”