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Does Australia Day mean anything to you?

Damn nationalism, its my second least favourite public holiday, next to the queens b'day. How bout internationalist day ? Australia hey , the country that locks up asylum seekers, goes to war with crippled middle eastern countries, draconian police laws,i could go on and on, the lucky country? anyway theres my rant for this morning. Im off to bed...
 
Originally posted by Pleonastic:
The big irony of the day is that it's very Australian to consider doing those sorts of things an absolute wank. So by not celebrating Australia Day are we actually celebrating it in our own special and very Australian way?

Well said.
I must say that I'd become much more enthused if we celebrated "Not America" day.
 
^^ I'd celebrate that... ;)
But seriously, i woke up this morning and the fact that it was Australia Day was hte furthest thing from my mind (i woke up hung over and had to rush my puppy to the vet to have a spider bite treated)... It only occured to me just now, when i saw this thread at the top of the page.
There's nothing wrong with liking the country you live in, and identifying with it. Personlly i don't identify very much with the culture the stereotype is portraying, but i do love this country... as i have loved all the countries i have lived in... :)
 
it's hottest one hundred day...that's about it for me - i like where i live, and i'm proud of certain aspects of it/us, but there's plenty of things i'm not really happy about...particularly the government :/ so it's not like i'm mr patriotic or anything..
!brad
 
Totally agree, once you see other countries it becomes obvious that this is the best farkin country in the world. So Australia farkin rawks and you should be all saying oi oi aussie aussie or something like that on Australia day.
Amen to that.
 
Australia is just all image and no application. Where is the thriving education system or R&D sector that is going to Advance Australia Fair?
But in many ways, we are just lapdogs to the outside world who are too gutless to stand and be counted for.
No one is keeping you here. Fuck off if you aren't happy.
 
if you've been overseas you realise how bloody awesome living in Australia really is...but hey if you dont like it you dont have to be here, we wont mind if you move :P
as for australia day its all about sitting around with friends, appreciating a nice beverage ;) and having a barbie is a must...plus the beach is usually paid a visit
one day aus day will mean BDO for me, i will get there one day when im not working and actually have money to go
basically i think us aussies celebrate aus day in a very aus way...without even realising what we're celebrating, we just do the aus thing and *chill*
...aus day also means one more sleep til ma birfday *yay*
 
Let's keep the hostility out of here,
It's a thread to express your feelings towards this special day, of course there are going to be many different perspectives and naturally some of these will clash.
That DOES NOT mean you can flame someone.
If you don't agree with someone else, maybe try to get your feelings across in a more civilised manner.
Having said that,
What does Australia Day mean to me?
Well, celebrating, remembering the fallen heroes that fought til the death to make this great country what it is today.
I take this all for granted really, but not a day goes by when i'm not thankful i'm in this beautiful country :)
Happy Australia Day people.
 
wait a second, i just realised Australia Day is today...but there's a holiday tomorrow?
I hope Australia Day doesn't just mean we get a day off school or work or whatever.
ummm...merry australia day everybody.
 
Originally posted by Raving Loony:
Australia day is just like Christmas without presents and decorations. I haven't ever bought an Australian flag and never reflected back on the great things of this country. In fact, I look back and reflect on the number of opportunities Australia had and how we constantly threw them away. I look back at our cruel past and see that little has changed. In many ways, being Australian stinks.
Probably the stupidist comment I have ever read on this forum (except for my own comments)
Its stinks here? Fine. Fuck off else where. May I suggest Iraq, but you may want to take your SPF 50000 with you though, looks as though its going to be a warm Autum for them.
 
australia day really means nothing to me except that its a bit of a slap in the face 4 the aboriginal ppl as this was their australia first b4 it got taken over
 
In Perth, Australia day is a big thing - there's a huge fireworks display that draws a crowd of between 300,000 and 400,000... so everyone here knows what day it is.
For those who only think of negative things when it comes to Australia on Australia Day, I think you're probably missing the point here. It is to me a celebration of the fact that I am here, rather than of the history of the country itself. And no matter how you look at it, it is a nice place to live. If you disagree with that, then you need to travel more.
 
As someone who chose to move to Australia 4 years ago after a long time travelling and living all over the world, I have mixed feelings. I see myself living here for a long time and truly appreciate much of what Australia is (the multiculturalsm, the bush and beach lifestyle etc), especially in contrast to many other places I've been. BUT at the same time there's stuff I don't like - and in the last couple of years Australia seems to have been taking steps backward. The wedge politics Howard plays, the treatment of refugees and the diminishing of tolerance that I see is dispiriting.
On the Australia Day theme, this article on Timor was published in the Guardian (UK) on Monday. I remember how proud I was of Australia when it went up there (and I was also involved work-wise with some infrastructure projects up there - the stories that friends who were there right after the Indonesians left had to tell were hair-raising). This article saddens and annoys (but doesn't surprise) me - this is not the Australia that I want to be a part of... If there wasn't so much good and great about this country I wouldn't be upset, it's just seeing the missed chances and opportunities to make it even better :/
Drawing a line on the Timor Gap
East Timor is embroiled in a territorial dispute with Australia over the oil-rich seabeds that lie between them, says David Fickling
Monday January 27, 2003
The spectacle of someone large and powerful picking on a weak and desperate neighbour passes as bullying in the average playground. International politics, however, has a better name for it: diplomacy.
Government bureaucrats leap easily to the standard platitudes about how no one wants a poor, unstable neighbour dependent on aid, but when it comes to the crunch this is so much hogwash. If the financial benefits of impoverishing a neighbour outweigh the costs of propping them up, then it's time to call out the heavy diplomacy.
The subject of Canberra's latest round with the knuckle-punch and Chinese burn is the most famous bastardised kid in the Asia-Pacific playground. East Timor, less than a year old and struggling to escape from the effects of its 25-year occupation by Indonesia, has got in a fight with its powerful southern neighbour over those most coveted of commodities, oil and gas.
The focus of the argument has been billions of pounds worth of fossil fuel which lie in the torrid waters of the Timor sea, which is closer to Timor than Australia but strung along a disputed area of ocean whose history has been intimately bound up in East Timor's own struggle for independence.
The so-called Timor Gap first became an issue back in 1972, when East Timor was still a Portuguese colony. Ocean boundaries had never been demarcated northwest of Darwin, but governments were quickly becoming aware of the mineral wealth beneath the sea.
At the time, there were no hard and fast rules about how sea boundaries should be drawn. Canberra decided that its border should extend to the edge of Australia's continental shelf, a formula that would give it 85% of the sea territory; East Timor's Portuguese rulers, understandably, preferred to site the border on the middle line between the two countries. Matters were left at a stalemate until 1975, when Indonesia invaded the new country after just 10 days of independence from Portugal.
Australia's response to this gross violation on its doorstep was famously nonchalant: then prime minister Gough Whitlam even offered Jakarta tactical advice on how to make the invasion look like the result of the Timorese popular will.
Australia's ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, could barely hold back his glee as the invasion approached. "Closing the present gap in the agreed sea border could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia ... than with Portugal or an independent Portuguese Timor," he wrote in a confidential telegram to his superiors.
That closure of the gap was finally brought about in the 1989 Timor Gap treaty between Jakarta and Canberra. Australia got what it had been wanting since 1972: a border following the rough lines of the continental shelf, whose existence should have been an absurd anomaly.
The UN convention on the law of the sea says that such boundaries should pass along the median line, and Australia's boundary with Indonesia follows the same rule. Even the two countries' fishing zones stop on the median line. Only the seabed, and its precious oil and gas, is excepted.
This concession cost Indonesia a great deal in potential oil and gas revenues, but what it got in return was a valuable Australian recognition of its de jure sovereignty over East Timor. Naturally, East Timorese view the Timor Gap treaty as irredeemably tainted.
Now, more than three years after East Timor's independence vote and less than a year after it formally joined the community of nations, Australia is once again trying to force multimillion-pound concessions at Dili's expense.
The status of the Timor sea border still lies undecided, although neither the Australian government nor the opposition show any interest in following the overwhelming opinion of international law and agreeing a median border.
The replacement to the Timor Gap treaty has been named the Timor sea treaty. Oil and gas revenues from the already active Bayu-Undan field are being held in limbo until both nations ratify the treaty, something which Dili jumped to do but about which Canberra is showing some reluctance.
The reason for this reluctance, according to several people close to the negotiations, is that every month East Timor goes without the £1bn that is waiting for it in escrow, the young country becomes poorer and more desperate to agree to Canberra's demands.
Those demands centre around the neighbouring Greater Sunrise gas field, whose £25bn reserves are currently split vastly in Australia's favour. If the median line were to be taken as the boundary between the two countries, Dili's earnings from Greater Sunrise would rise from £5bn to £22.5bn, enough to transform the country and its broken economy.
Naturally enough, Australia is playing it hard. Talks in Canberra about the Greater Sunrise field broke down last week, to the bafflement of Timorese negotiators. "We were shown the door for reasons which we frankly don't understand, " said Jonathan Morrow, coordinator of Dili's Timor sea office.
"Australia has the opportunity to demonstrate that it is not trying to extract unfair concessions from this new country. It has the power of life and death over East Timor," he said. Foreign ministry officials in Canberra professed surprise at the Timorese response, and said that talks were still fully on track. In any case, an agreement must be reached by March 11, when potential buyers will be free to walk away from the deal.
Dili has already been knocked down to a weakened position. Just two months before East Timor's independence day last May, Canberra announced that it would not recognise decisions of the international court of justice on maritime boundary issues.
The announcement meant that the UN convention rules, which favour East Timor, would not influence discussions between the two countries.
Officials in Canberra's department of foreign affairs and trade say that such matters are better handled through negotiation than court litigation, but this claim has the familiar aura of diplomatic platitude to it.
When the school bully decides to negotiate with the class weed over ownership of a pencil case, you know what is coming.
[ 28 January 2003: Message edited by: trog ]
 
Australia, the continent, is great. Love it to death. Australia, the state is rooted in racism and is little to be proud of.
 
I think its interesting that most nations celebrate the day they threw off colonial rule and acheived independance... USA, et al. However, we for some reason, cling to it and celebrate it even with our somewhat shameful treatment of the people who lived here first... I don't know, its kind of odd. Australia day, the day we well, kind of invaded.
 
Backing Trog and -Thoth right up here.
Australia is on the surface a lovely repositry of democracy, truth and freedom. Its such a pity that its foundations are rotten and built from exploitation and discrimination.
-plaz out-
 
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