Australia Day Date
TO MY knowledge I have no Indigenous ancestry.
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As far as I can ascertain I am one of the many contemporary Australians of European descent. My family, in particular, my mother's family has been a profound influence on my life. I am proud of them and I have a deep interest in and respect for the communities they grew up in. Notably the mining towns of the West Coast.
At the same time, I understand that they were not perfect and were of their time.
I was born before the 1967 referendum which gave our Indigenous people the right to vote. I remember the derogatory terms and genuinely held views that white culture and people were superior. Much has changed, but not enough. To indulge in the love and respect for my family and their Australian heritage I do not wish to defend who they were and what they stood for.
I just want them to be accepted and remembered in the same way as our Indigenous Australians want their ancestry and culture acknowledged and respected.
For this to occur, for us to be truly inclusive we must embrace our past to the Dreamtime and our human connection with our country. This is why Australia Day represents such a significant moment in our short white history.
We are much more and we need to be bigger in our hearts and ourselves to share the history of the continent, wisely and respectfully. We cannot and I believe must not, ignore January 26.
We can and should be proud of our pioneering forebears, the hardships they endured and their many achievements that have contributed to the country we are. At the same time, we have to acknowledge the impact, the massacres, the acquisition of land and the marginalisation of our Indigenous people. I would much prefer that January 26 remains a holiday and we call it First Fleet Day and just like Anzac Day we can both mourn and commemorate and celebrate according to how we identify with the events this day symbolises.
As a mature country, we can and ought to be able to do both. January 1 will always be the most suitable and neutral day for celebrating Australia Day. It is the day that modern Australia came into being as a single nation. The Queen's Birthday is fast becoming an anachronism. We can and should replace it with Mabo Day. A holiday just like Martin Luther King Day in the US where we can celebrate our Indigenous people and their heritage. We are at heart pragmatic people. We can retain all of our holidays and in all the seasons that they are allotted. We cannot do this soon enough.
Tony Newport, Hillwood.
Bushfire Appeal Funds
AS A contributor to the bushfire appeal I was appalled to hear some charities are withholding donated monies for use in the future.
When I donated, I expected that money to be spent now.
Brian Habner, Kings Meadows.
Local Council Amalgamations
MY research indicates many thousands of Tasmanian ratepayers are eager for the reduction of the state's 29 councils to suit modern times, thus saving ratepayers heaps of money in rates annually.
Councils today are a product of the horse and buggy days when transport was absent and geography made the attendance of council meetings challenging.
In 2020, these restraints have been removed, indeed meetings can now be conducted electronically by Skype or similar technology.
Local council numbers were last modernised in 1993, almost 30 years ago.
The mechanism for change is still in place making further modifications simple and easy for state parliament to implement.
Time to update, bring councils into the 2020s.
Barry Campbell, Blackmans Bay.
Container Refund Scheme
THE former romance of a container refund scheme being one of returning containers to retailers of purchase is not an existing interstate paradigm.
Whilst the CRS is a fine concept, interstate examples illustrate that few and inconveniently placed collection points are provided for disposal.
Hopefully, the proposed Tasmanian CRS bill will contain conveniently located collection points or separate means of disposal, that will eliminate the indignity for disadvantaged people to rummage through existing public litter bins seeking to recover returnable items for minimal deposit, principally imposed by the finger-wagging aspirants of the lower-middle class.
Kenneth Gregson, Swansea.
Fires and Forests
GIVEN the millions of hectares of Australian bushland; its vegetation, animals and soil biota, alarmingly decimated this summer, the particular infernos arising from plantations and clear-fell regrowth as on Kangaroo Island and the extensive land behind Eden in Eastern Victoria.
The ticking firebombs of the same in Tasmania right up into the treeline of our highlands and beside our national parks.
Why on heating earth would our government even think for second of reincorporating the 350,000 hectares of the reserved high-conservation natural forest back into land for logging?
I sincerely hope that our new premier understands the critical need to drop that cruel betrayal in tearing up the good sense and goodwill of the last forest agreement.