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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 5155 ..

MR CORNWELL (continuing):

the game away a bit when she referred to 26 January as invasion day. I think underlying this government's attitude is something along those lines.

I ask members to bear in mind that it was Mr Stanhope, the Chief Minister, who talked about illegal refugees, who talked about the two possible terrorists locked up in Cuba. It was Mr Stanhope, the Chief Minister, who included those people and who said that some people were not proud to be Australians because of those circumstances.

Mrs Cross exposed this. We are dealing in fact with a political direction. I am not obviously one of the black armband people. I do not accept that. But I do accept that the country needs to be united and we will not achieve that unless we have some purpose, some reason for which to unite. And Australia Day happens to be an opportunity to do that. Anzac Day might be another. But as Mrs Dunne has said, that is a different type of celebration. In fact, I would say it is a memorial rather than celebration.

We do need a reason to unite. Mr Pratt earlier referred to this matter. I would go further. I think that we need a national day, and we have Australia Day, because I think we do still need to build a lot more pride in this country. Australians do not have a great deal of pride. We do not necessarily stand up with our hands on our hearts as some people elsewhere in the world may do. We do not necessarily stand up and sing an anthem first thing in the morning at school. There are those who say that we should be doing this, Mr Speaker. I do not want to enter into that debate, because it is not really germane to this motion.

What I do want to say, however, is that it does require more pride in who and what we are. Anything that can engender that I think is worth while. Hence, the focus of one day in the year, Australia Day, that I believe can be used for this purpose. Why, Mr Hargreaves, should the people of the ACT be denied that day?

Mr Hargreaves: They're not.

MR CORNWELL: They are; 320,000 people, thanks to your government, are excluded from this national event. Why? It is because this government, with its black armband view, with its political worries about Cuba and illegal boat people, et cetera, is seeking to remove the responsibility for celebrating a national day. If they do not like it, at least they should have the honesty to come out and say so. But tell me this: what do you propose to replace it with? This is the same crowd-

Mr Pratt: International solidarity.

MR CORNWELL: Socialist international, did you say, Mr Pratt? This is the same crowd that was all in favour of supporting a republic. The problem was that the republicans could not even get one particular republican model up. I therefore believe it would be extremely difficult to replace something that we have already-such as 26 January-with something else. Apart from that, it may surprise members of the government to realise that we would be totally out of step with the rest of the country.

The rest of Australia is quite happy celebrating Australia Day on 26 January. They do not see that there should be any change. May I say that those people in the ACT that Mr Hargreaves suggests have not been consulted are quite happy to celebrate Australia

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