A Liberal Party powerbroker is leading a campaign to replace Labour Day with a new public holiday celebrating indigenous achievements.
A week after Prime Minister Scott Morrison proposed a new Indigenous Day to settle the debate about Australia Day, New South Wales minister David Elliott has suggested replacing state Labour Day with a new ‘Corroboree Day’.
Mr Elliott, a leader of the Liberal Party’s centre-right faction which was instrumental in making Mr Morrison PM in August, said his public holiday idea was ‘about celebrating success and achievement for indigenous Australians who in the past have had to face adversity’.
A Liberal Party powerbroker is leading a campaign to replace Labour Day with a new public holiday celebrating indigenous achievements. Pictured is a Yugambeh Aboriginal man
‘Instead of focusing on the negative over indigenous affairs over the last 200 years, it would be a day we’d focus on the positives,’ he told Sydney radio 2GB broadcaster Steve Price on Monday.
Mr Elliott, who holds the Veterans Affairs and Corrections portfolios, insisted his proposal was ‘about trying to bring people together’ and claimed Labour Day on October 1 had lost relevance.
‘I don’t think there’s anything on today at all which says to the Australian community this is a day for commemoration,’ he said.
Price shot back, asking why Mr Elliott and the Prime Minister were seeking to ‘divide the country rather than join it?’.
New South Wales minister David Elliott has suggested replacing state Labour Day with a new ‘Corroboree Day’
The minister suggested remembering greats from tennis to indigenous leaders who interacted with the first British settlers during the late 18th century.
‘We would focus on the Evonne Goolagongs and the Bennelongs and the Pemulwuys,’ he said.
The 2GB presenter was unconvinced, with Price pointing out Australia already had Sorry Day and NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee) Week, which aren’t public holidays.
‘But David, we’re all Australians. We don’t need more than one day,’ he said.
Mr Morrison last week suggested creating a new day to celebrate 60,000 years of Australia’s indigenous heritage as a way of keeping Australia Day on January 26, the day in 1788 when the British First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove.
The Liberal Party powerbroker suggested Labour Day was no longer relevant. Pictured are Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union marchers in Brisbane
Left-wing activists, indigenous rights protesters and local councils in Melbourne and Byron Bay in northern New South Wales are campaigning to change the date of Australia Day.
With only nine per cent of private sector workers belonging to a trade union in Australia, Mr Elliott said Labour Day was less relevant than it was in previous generations, when people like his grandfather went on picnics to commemorate the eight-hour working day.
He clashed with Price’s suggestion that not everyone who took a day off during Easter and Christmas were necessarily Christians.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Mr Elliott said.
The conservative minister also pointed out that indigenous first and second World War veterans were denied the right to drink in a pub with their army comrades.
Labour Day is held on the first Monday of October in NSW, the Australian Capital Territory and South Australia.