Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We come together as a nation on 26 January to celebrate what is great about being Australian. It never crowds out a conversation that we can have about what we've got wrong in the past and how we will improve. Like any nation, we are not perfect, nor do we pretend to be so. But Yarra City Council's decision to axe Australia Day is using this great day that should unite Australians to simply divide us. Sorrow and mourning must be addressed, but Yarra's symbolic axing achieves nothing. It moves us further from the practical improvements that young, vulnerable Indigenous children in remote Australia have waited a generation for. It's okay to deeply regret and to be sorry about actions of the past, but the privilege of blaming is one that is exclusively earned by first making sure you're not party to your own injustices in the present.

Australia Day can heal the past, unify the present and secure the future. It can be about forgiveness and about reconciliation. Whatever the past, Aboriginal Australians would never seek to deny a young family's celebration of becoming citizens on Australia Day. Yarra has just deepened wounds. They handed a small victory to haters. They renounced that one day of the year for their city—there will be no mature and inclusive conversation—and replaced it with institutionalised protest. Do not be surprised if, on Australia Day next year, we see on the steps of Yarra council the biggest Australia Day celebration of the year.