On Saturday, Greens Candidate for Kiama Nina Digiglio empathised with many local Indigenous people who, instead of draping themselves in the flag on Australia Day, mourned the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet to Port Jackson in 1788.
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Ms Digiglio released a press statement endorsing the widespread push for a date change.
“January 26 is the beginning of the period where an estimated 90 per cent of Aboriginal people died from introduced diseases and genocide,” she said.
“It was when cultural connections to the land were severed and loss of language identity and hope began. This was an invasion that had catastrophic and tragic consequences for all the peoples and nations who had lived here and their descendants. It created havoc and the dislocation and loss it created is still reverberating through Indigenous communities today.
“It is time to change the date or at least have a conversation about altering the date of Australia Day to better reflect an inclusive day for all Australians to celebrate this wonderful land we live on.”
On January 26, 1788, Arthur Phillip raised the Union Jack, marking the beginning of European colonisation.
“This is just a small part of Australia’s 65,000 years of human settlement,” Ms Digiglio said.
“We need to reflect our deep, unique human history and be sensitive to the date where emotional and physical trauma, dispossession and loss of immense scale for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples started.”
She affirmed Australia Day has been an important tradition.
“As Australians, we need a day on which we can come together as an inclusive community, to reflect on where we’re at and to celebrate who we are: a wonderfully diverse, open and free society,” Mr Digiglio said.
“But January 26 is not that day.”
However, Jerrinja tribe spokesman Ron Carberry wants to leave Australia Day as is, on January 26.
“A lot of our people don’t want to change the date,” he said.
“We can't change history. We can educate people on Australia Day. The good and the bad go together, how are we going to learn from our mistakes from the past if we can’t learn from the bad?
“The good thing is, we have survived and we’re all living together as one.”
Mr Carberry said well-intended people who have been pushing for a date change may be doing more harm than good.
“It’s only inciting racism and hatred by bringing it up,” he said.
