The Prime Minister and some commentators misconstrue the proposal to change the date of Australia Day as anti-Australian or, with predictable hypocrisy, as intentionally divisive. This from a Government that survives on dividing us and frightening us in as many ways as it can contrive.

Their most recent effort is the fabricated ‘African gangs’ scaremongering, aimed simply at unseating an elected government in Victoria that is not of their preferred kind. Some of these people seem willing to destroy anything and everything good and generous about Australia in their quest for power.

A recent survey reveals that most of us are not actually very attached to 26th of January, and over a third don’t even know what that date signifies. It signifies, simply, the beginning of European colonisation and therefore also the beginning of the dispossession and near-annihilation of Australia’s first peoples.

My experience is that many Aboriginal people are remarkably generous in their willingness to join together, so long as we acknowledge fully the history on which modern Australia is built.

I would hope most  people will see through the narrow political agendas of the few and choose the generous option of finding a mutually acceptable date on which to celebrate this remarkable country.