Thursday, December 07, 2017

How not to get out of politics gracefully

How much more spectacularly can Mark Latham embarrass himself?    Literally kissing up to fellow professional troll, Milo Y, and now launching a fundraising campaign to keep Australia Day on 26 January.   Fools and their money being easily parted, he's probably got a couple of thousand for that vital (ha) campaign already.

Actually, looking at that photo of Latham slobbering Milo, he (Mark) does physically resemble that Pepe frog character, no?

4 comments:

not trampis said...

Did Australia become a nation on January 26?

No it was on January 1.

Why do we celebrate it on the wrong day

Jason Soon said...

have you gone all PC on us steve??
what the hell is wrong with australia day as it is?

Steve said...

While I personally have no strong feeling about it one way or the other, I can see that it doesn't really make much sense as the date for the founding of the nation. Does any other nation celebrate the day they effectively started as a colony, instead of the day they became an independent state (or at least did an act indicative of independence) as their national day of celebration?

Actually, there is a whole Wiki page on the topic, and no, haven't really spotted a similar one in the long list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_day

As for aboriginal sensitivity to the day - it's a bit like the Rudd apology: I don't think it changes anything substantial, and I'm not a fan of PC campaigning for purely symbolic reasons.

But - I find it hard to deny the activists argument that the day represented an immediate displacement of local aborigines, so they didn't have much to celebrate (certainly not when smallpox soon followed).

If they were arguing against a day the country was genuinely independent, I would say "tough luck". But given the day doesn't make much sense per se, I'm not willing to criticise activists who say it makes no sense to them for other reasons.

I think we'll find it increasingly considered a good idea to change the day, and I won't mind. To me, it actually would make a bit more sense from a symbolic pov than the Rudd apology for the things that the current bunch of politicians didn't actually do - because each year it is an active re-celebration of the day that aborigines can legitimately see as a day of simple displacement.



Steve said...

Oh, and I forget to mention: what's the bet that Latham is just doing it as pure culture war trolling? What does it really matter to you, or anyone non-aboriginal, if the day is changed? Is it just a case (like Sinclair Davidson argued once) - don't give into Lefties on principle?

Given that it's not like the day made much historical sense in the first place, I don't see why people should die in a culture war ditch over it.