Sunday, 24 January 2016

How Anthony Mundine would change Australia Day

The boxer said the national public holiday should have two parts: one to celebrate what Australia has become today; but another mourning period to remember how we got here.
“There has to be a remembrance,” Mundine said on Triple M Brisbane’s Marto & Ed Kavalee for Breakfast.

“There has to be a remembrance in the morning till about 12pm of the truth of the past and what did happen to the indigenous people, and how the genocide and everything else took place in order to claim this land and in the afternoon we celebrate the unity and the harmony of where we are at today.

“There has to be some kind of mourning before there is celebration. We celebrate today because we have made it this far and we’re still here and living together and trying to harmonise together but you know the rules are different pretty much.”

Asked what Australia Day — a day to mark the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet — meant to him, Mundine said: “It depends how you’re talking and what you’re looking at.

“As far as Australia Day, we’ve had a really bad history as a country and what has happened to indigenous people but you know we’re here and we are united and we need to try and live in harmony.

“When I was at school and growing up and evolving into a young man, my uncle use to always tell me the national flag, that’s not your flag it doesn’t represent who you are.

“I didn’t understand until I was a little bit older, but Australia Day it sort of represents white Australia, you know Anglo-Saxon and Caucasian people.

“That’s why I always speak about changing the flag, having it for everybody, not just for one certain people.”

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