‘More pressing issues for indigenous than Australia Day’, Warren Mundine says

Warren Mundine plays down push to change date of Australia Day, saying there are more pressing issues for Aboriginal people.

Liberal candidate for Gilmore Warren Mundine and Prime Minister Scott Morrison speak to media at Nowra Golf Club. Picture: AAP

The Liberal Party’s candidate for Gilmore, Warren Mundine, has played down his support for changing the date of Australia Day, declaring there were more pressing issues for Aboriginal people that needed to be addressed.

Mr Mundine said he did not find Scott Morrison’s Australia Day crusade frustrating, despite acknowledging he wanted the date to be changed from January 26.

“My argument is I’ve got 100 different things in front of that before I even get to that stage. I want to deal with those five suicides of those young girls that happened in the last few weeks,” Mr Mundine said.

“When I was their age, I wanted to kick the football around the backyard, I saw the world as my oyster, and wanted to get out there and get a job, get educated, and have a great life. These kids are choosing death before life. We’ve got to deal with those issues before we start talking about changing Australia Day.

“We’ve got to deal with jobs in those rural and remote communities, where people are trapped in welfare traps. We’ve got to deal with incarceration rates of Aboriginal people in juvenile detention and jail. These are my priorities. That’s what I’ll be working on.”

Two years ago, Mundine, a former ALP president, wrote an opinion piece in The Daily Telegraph outlining his reasons why the date should change from January 26.

“The 26th of January is the wrong day to celebrate Australia Day,” Mr Mundine wrote.

“Most indigenous people will never celebrate January 26.”

Mr Mundine wrote it was a day when indigenous people “overwhelmingly feel anger, sadness and grief”.

“That was when our ancestors began losing their lands and their ability to speak their languages, practice ceremony and live under their kinship systems,” he wrote.

“And we, their descendants, lost our birthright. That chain of events continued to bring hardship and loss for many decades. For as long as I can remember, indigenous people have referred to January 26 as ‘Invasion Day’. More recently we’ve also used the term ‘Survival Day’, to commemorate our achievements and survival of our nations against the odds.”

He softened his support for a change last year, agreeing with Malcolm Turnbull the debate had become too divisive.