Melbourne Council Scraps Australia Day

To be known as January 26.


Article heading image for Melbourne Council Scraps Australia Day

A Melbourne Council will move Australia Day from January 26 out of respect to the Indigenous community.

While it's not able to officially change the date of national day the City of Yarra will remove any mention of Australia Day from its signage, simply referring to it as "January 26".

Citizenship ceremonies will be replaced with a small, culturally sensitive smoking ceremony on January 26 – known to many Aboriginal Australians as Invasion Day or Survival Day – with the council to decide on another date to celebrate the country.

"[It will be] something that acknowledges what that date means in terms of the loss of culture and language and identity felt by the Indigenous community," says Mayor Amanda Stone.

However there are already questions about the accuracy of the survey which drove the change with only 369 people surveyed in a municipality which is estimated at around 93,080.

That means roughly 0.0039 per cent of the population was polled during respective online and street questionnaires, with less than half of those actually residing in the area.

It's a problematic fact which the 2017 Australia Day Attitudes Survey admits.

"The sample does not reflect the underlying population of the City of Yarra," it says. "But is likely to reflect the underlying population of visitors to the six locations across the city of Yarra."

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he's "deeply disappointed" by the decision.

15 August 2017




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