Critical Thinking on the Australia Day Celebrations Debate

This paper discusses the hot debates on whether the Australia Day should be celebrated and whether it should be celebrated on 26th January or on another date. It analyzes the arguments of two major groups, 'Change for our Future' and 'Pride in Australia', and provides recommendations to address their demands.

Running head: CRITICAL THINKING
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Critical Thinking
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The Australia Day
The Australia Day is a famous national day of Australia which is normally celebrated on
26th January every year. This day marks the anniversary of the arrival of the very first fleet of the
British ships at Port Jackson in New South Wales and also marks the raising of Great Britain’s
flag at Sydney Cove by the famous governor Arthur Philip (Measham and Johnston, 2016,
pp.39-44). Today, the celebrations of the Australia Day reflect the diverse societies and the
landscape of Australia and are mainly marked by some family and community events, the
reflections on the Australian history, some official community awards, and some citizenship
ceremonies which welcome the new members in the Australian community (Darian-Smith,
2018).
Despite being a very famous day, there have been some hot debates on whether the
Australia day should be celebrated and whether it should be celebrated on 26th January or on
another date (Wainwright, 2017, pp.5-7). This debate forms the basis of our paper where we see
two major groups namely “Change for our Future” and “Pride in Australia” encouraging their
supporters to disrupt a meeting organized by councilor Harriet Lee to address some of the major
issues and differences between the people who support the Australia Day and those who don’t
the day. The “Change for our Future” group don’t support the Australia day and has come up
with a leaflet to air their views why they don’t support the day and encourage their supporters
not to support the day while the “Pride in Australia” group supports the day and has also come
up with a leaflet to air their views and reasons why they support the day and encourages their
people to support the day. This paper will consider the views and the reasons for these two
groups as discussed in their leaflets in details.

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Leaflet 1 – the leaflet of the “Change for our Future” group
According to this group and their supporters, the Australia Day is not worth and should
not be celebrated at all. This group argues that the Australians should be free people and whose
will should be respected by the leaders and argues that the leaders are supposed to strive to meet
the will and the demands of the people but instead of doing so these leaders have remained silent
and never responds to the will and the demands of the people. This group feels that the people
especially their supporters should no longer remain silent but should wake up and fight for their
will and demands (rights) firstly by resisting these celebrations of the Australia Day which will
be very helpful in airing their concerns to the leaders of the nation. Failing to cooperate with the
other people being led is usually one of the most effective ways of expressing your
dissatisfaction to your leaders and this makes them consider your concerns or your demands
(Grieco, Braga, and Bripi, 2016).
Another major reason given by this group to oppose the celebrations of the Australia Day
on 26th January is that these celebrations are just meant to remind the people of the British
invasion which is very painful. According to this group, celebrating the Australia Day is a
painful reminder of the British invasion which forms part of the tainted or the ‘dark history’ of
Australia and in a way celebrates the British invaders and fails to recognize the original owners
of the land of Australia. This group supports this argument by saying arguing that this same
argument has been raised and supported by some other major and famous Australians including
one of the Socialist Alliance councilor of Melbourne who compared the celebration of the

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Australia Day to the Nazi Holocaust celebrations which remind of the deaths of many millions of
people (Landau, 2016).
Another main reason given by the group to show their dissatisfaction with the
celebrations of the Australia Day is that the Australia of today has broad multicultural
populations and the Australian citizens come from different regions of the world. According to
the “Change for our Future” group, celebrating the Australia Day on 26th January every year is
just like celebrating the British invaders or the British settlements which is irrelevant to the
modern Australia since modern Australia is occupied by not only the British but also many other
different people with different cultural backgrounds who have come from different regions of the
world (Ziaian and De-Antiss, 2016, pp.244-245). Australia is one of the most developed
countries in the world and is usually very friendly and attractive to visitors or refugees and this
has encouraged immigration in Australia where different people come to Australia with different
aims such studying, investing, researching, among other aims and most of these people have
ended up settling in Australia even after the accomplishment of the aims which brought them in
Australia (Cahill and Taft, 2017, pp.16-46).
Lastly, the “Change for our Future” group opposed the Australia Day celebrations citing
the reason that the day has no popular backing and most people don’t know what’s usually
commemorated during this day. The group supported this claim by giving the results of the poll
which was done by Research Now and released by the Australia Institute in January 2018.
According to the poll, most of the Australians don’t know what’s normally celebrated in January
26th and don’t even care to know more about the day (The Australia Institute, 2018). The results
of this poll formed one of the major reasons given by the “Change for our Future” group and its

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supporters to oppose the celebrations of the Australia Day which seem insignificant and
unknown to many of the citizens of Australia.
The four major reasons discussed above ate the major reasons which made the “Change
for our Future” group and its supporters to strongly oppose the celebrations of Australia and the
group worked very hard and organized demonstrations to convince more people to resist the
celebrations of the day.
Leaflet 2 – the leaflet of the “Pride in Australia” group
This group supports the celebrations of the Australia Day in January 26th every year.
According to this group, the celebrations of the day are worth and the group would like to see all
the Australians celebrating the day as it’s one of the most important days in the life of all the
Australians. This group and its supporters have some major reasons why they feel this day is
special to the lives of all the Australians and should be highly respected and celebrated by all the
people.
One of the major reasons given by this group to show its support for the celebrations of
the Australia Day is that the celebrations of the Australia Day help to maintain the proud
tradition of the Australians. By celebrating the day, the Australians celebrate their proud tradition
and this helps to bind them together and enhance their unity and solidarity which is very
beneficial in their lives. The Australians come together in the celebrations of the Australia Day
and do many activities together and this help to enhance their bondage, their solidarity, and their
unity and this consequently strengthens their relationships which means they can help each other
in the future when need be even when there are no celebrations going on (Bauer and Agbe-
Davies, 2016).

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Another major reason given by this group to support the Australia Day celebrations is
that most of the Australians are aware of the importance of the day in their lives and that’s the
reason they celebrate the day happily. To support the point that most Australians know the
importance of the day and support the celebrations of the day, this group gives the results of the
nationwide survey which was done by the Institute of the Public Affairs which showed that 70%
of the Australians wanted the people who were pushing for the change of the Australia Day
celebrations to stop pushing and leave the Australia Day celebrations as they are (The Institute of
Public Affairs, 2018). This group went further to reason that the people who were pushing for the
change of the Australian Day were just doing so for the sake of their own interests and therefore
should not be entertained.
Another main reason given by this group and its supporters for their support of the
Australia Day celebrations is that the day allows them to salute the Australian flag and also
allows them to identify themselves as Australians without any fear. This group argues that
recognizing and celebrating the Australia Day helps the Australians to identify themselves
publicly when with the people of the other nations and this helps them to be recognized,
respected, and not being called bigots by these people who come from the other independent
countries.
Lastly, this group and its supporters argued that the Australia Day should be celebrated
and the demands of those people who wanted the day to be changed ignored as these people had
no specific day they gave to be celebrated. They were just after the termination of the Australia
Day which could do a great harm to the great Australia nation. To support this argument, this
group used the results of the survey which was conducted by the leftist radicals of the Australia

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Institute which showed that these non-supporters of the Australia Day celebrations didn’t have
any appropriate and reasonable suggestion of the day to be celebrated.
The reasons discussed above are the major reasons which were given by the “Pride in
Australia” group and its supporters to show their great support for the Australia Day celebrations
which are normally held on 26th January every year. This group insisted that the celebrations
were worth and very important as they would bring the best results to the Australians and so they
urged the other people to stand and fight for their Australia Day celebrations which have many
benefits to the Australians (Richmond, 2015).
The recommendations
Having discussed the arguments of both groups, it’s good to come up with some
recommendations which can help the councilor when trying to offer some solutions to end the
hot debates and the demonstrations shown by these two antagonizing groups. Some of the
recommendations which can help to address the demands of these two rival groups and their
supporters include:
Listening and understanding the arguments of each of the groups keenly before you can
address the groups (Petronio, 2017, pp.107-117). Having listened and understood arguments and
the demands of each of the groups, the councilor will be in a better position to come with some
ways to address the demands of these groups.
Both the councilor and the two groups should participate in coming up with some
solutions which they feel will be appropriate and fair to each of the groups. In doing so, each of

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the groups should table its demands and propose the solutions which it feels will be appropriate
to fulfill the demands. After raising the demands and the proposed solutions, the councilor, her
team (including the legal team and the mediators), and the members of both groups should sit
down to analyze the demands and the proposed solutions to see their validity and applicability
for them to see how they should implement them in a way which should be fair to each of the
groups (Bardach and Patashnik, 2015).
The groups should be ready to listen and abide by the solutions which will be given by
the councilor and her team having included their views addressing the differences. In case any of
the teams fail to abide by the agreed solutions or recommendations, the councilor can take a legal
action against the group for going against the agreed solutions after solving their problems
(Baker, 2017, pp.107-116).

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