PHL137 Critical Thinking | Public Response Research

Social tensions are rising in your local area, in response to recent clashes over whether celebrations should be held to mark Australia Day on January 26, in your area and more generally. You are employed by a local councillor, Harriet Lee, who has been asked to chair a meeting of community groups to discuss the issue. It has been hoped that this would be a peaceful and constructive meeting, and it is anticipated that most who attend will do so in good faith, but recently, two local lobby groups on opposing sides of this debate (‘Change for our future’ and ‘Pride in Australia’) have been distributing leaflets in the area and agitating on social media to push for protests at the meeting, encouraging their supporters to engage in demonstrations to disrupt proceedings and prevent their opponents from speaking. Both groups have been distributing their arguments widely, and Lee is concerned that they appear unwilling to consider their opponents’ perspectives.

You have been asked by Councillor Lee to analyse the arguments these groups are presenting in the leaflets they have been distributing, and provide her with a clear understanding of their claims, and guidance on how it would be best to respond to facilitate a constructive and respectful discussion.

The Australia Day

The Australia Day is a famous national day of Australia which is normally celebrated on 26^th January every year. This day marks the anniversary of the arrival of the very first fleet of the British ships at Port Jackson in New South Wales and also marks the raising of Great Britain’s flag at Sydney Cove by the famous governor Arthur Philip (Measham and Johnston, 2016, pp.39-44). Today, the celebrations of the Australia Day reflect the diverse societies and the landscape of Australia and are mainly marked by some family and community events, the reflections on the Australian history, some official community awards, and some citizenship ceremonies which welcome the new members in the Australian community (Darian-Smith, 2018).

Despite being a very famous day, there have been some hot debates on whether the Australia day should be celebrated and whether it should be celebrated on 26^th January or on another date (Wainwright, 2017, pp.5-7). This debate forms the basis of our paper where we see two major groups namely “Change for our Future” and “Pride in Australia” encouraging their supporters to disrupt a meeting organized by councilor Harriet Lee to address some of the major issues and differences between the people who support the Australia Day and those who don’t the day. The “Change for our Future” group don’t support the Australia day and has come up with a leaflet to air their views why they don’t support the day and encourage their supporters not to support the day while the “Pride in Australia” group supports the day and has also come up with a leaflet to air their views and reasons why they support the day and encourages their people to support the day. This paper will consider the views and the reasons for these two groups as discussed in their leaflets in details.

Leaflet 1 – the leaflet of the “Change for our Future” group

According to this group and their supporters, the Australia Day is not worth and should not be celebrated at all. This group argues that the Australians should be free people and whose will should be respected by the leaders and argues that the leaders are supposed to strive to meet the will and the demands of the people but instead of doing so these leaders have remained silent and never responds to the will and the demands of the people. This group feels that the people especially their supporters should no longer remain silent but should wake up and fight for their will and demands (rights) firstly by resisting these celebrations of the Australia Day which will be very helpful in airing their concerns to the leaders of the nation. Failing to cooperate with the other people being led is usually one of the most effective ways of expressing your dissatisfaction to your leaders and this makes them consider your concerns or your demands (Grieco, Braga, and Bripi, 2016).

Another major reason given by this group to oppose the celebrations of the Australia Day on 26^th January is that these celebrations are just meant to remind the people of the British invasion which is very painful. According to this group, celebrating the Australia Day is a painful reminder of the British invasion which forms part of the tainted or the ‘dark history’ of Australia and in a way celebrates the British invaders and fails to recognize the original owners of the land of Australia. This group supports this argument by saying arguing that this same argument has been raised and supported by some other major and famous Australians including one of the Socialist Alliance councilor of Melbourne who compared the celebration of the Australia Day to the Nazi Holocaust celebrations which remind of the deaths of many millions of people (Landau, 2016).

Another main reason given by the group to show their dissatisfaction with the celebrations of the Australia Day is that the Australia of today has broad multicultural populations and the Australian citizens come from different regions of the world. According to the “Change for our Future” group, celebrating the Australia Day on 26^th January every year is just like celebrating the British invaders or the British settlements which is irrelevant to the modern Australia since modern Australia is occupied by not only the British but also many other different people with different cultural backgrounds who have come from different regions of the world (Ziaian and De-Antiss, 2016, pp.244-245). Australia is one of the most developed countries in the world and is usually very friendly and attractive to visitors or refugees and this has encouraged immigration in Australia where different people come to Australia with different aims such studying, investing, researching, among other aims and most of these people have ended up settling in Australia even after the accomplishment of the aims which brought them in Australia (Cahill and Taft, 2017, pp.16-46).

Lastly, the “Change for our Future” group opposed the Australia Day celebrations citing the reason that the day has no popular backing and most people don’t know what’s usually commemorated during this day. The group supported this claim by giving the results of the poll which was done by Research Now and released by the Australia Institute in January 2018. According to the poll, most of the Australians don’t know what’s normally celebrated in January 26^th and don’t even care to know more about the day (The Australia Institute, 2018). The results of this poll formed one of the major reasons given by the “Change for our Future” group and its supporters to oppose the celebrations of the Australia Day which seem insignificant and unknown to many of the citizens of Australia.

The four major reasons discussed above ate the major reasons which made the “Change for our Future” group and its supporters to strongly oppose the celebrations of Australia and the group worked very hard and organized demonstrations to convince more people to resist the celebrations of the day.

Leaflet 2 – the leaflet of the “Pride in Australia” group

This group supports the celebrations of the Australia Day in January 26^th every year. According to this group, the celebrations of the day are worth and the group would like to see all the Australians celebrating the day as it’s one of the most important days in the life of all the Australians. This group and its supporters have some major reasons why they feel this day is special to the lives of all the Australians and should be highly respected and celebrated by all the people.

One of the major reasons given by this group to show its support for the celebrations of the Australia Day is that the celebrations of the Australia Day help to maintain the proud tradition of the Australians. By celebrating the day, the Australians celebrate their proud tradition and this helps to bind them together and enhance their unity and solidarity which is very beneficial in their lives. The Australians come together in the celebrations of the Australia Day and do many activities together and this help to enhance their bondage, their solidarity, and their unity and this consequently strengthens their relationships which means they can help each other in the future when need be even when there are no celebrations going on (Bauer and Agbe-Davies, 2016).

Another major reason given by this group to support the Australia Day celebrations is that most of the Australians are aware of the importance of the day in their lives and that’s the reason they celebrate the day happily. To support the point that most Australians know the importance of the day and support the celebrations of the day, this group gives the results of the nationwide survey which was done by the Institute of the Public Affairs which showed that 70% of the Australians wanted the people who were pushing for the change of the Australia Day celebrations to stop pushing and leave the Australia Day celebrations as they are (The Institute of Public Affairs, 2018). This group went further to reason that the people who were pushing for the change of the Australian Day were just doing so for the sake of their own interests and therefore should not be entertained.

Another main reason given by this group and its supporters for their support of the Australia Day celebrations is that the day allows them to salute the Australian flag and also allows them to identify themselves as Australians without any fear. This group argues that recognizing and celebrating the Australia Day helps the Australians to identify themselves publicly when with the people of the other nations and this helps them to be recognized, respected, and not being called bigots by these people who come from the other independent countries.

Lastly, this group and its supporters argued that the Australia Day should be celebrated and the demands of those people who wanted the day to be changed ignored as these people had no specific day they gave to be celebrated. They were just after the termination of the Australia Day which could do a great harm to the great Australia nation. To support this argument, this group used the results of the survey which was conducted by the leftist radicals of the Australia Institute which showed that these non-supporters of the Australia Day celebrations didn’t have any appropriate and reasonable suggestion of the day to be celebrated.

The reasons discussed above are the major reasons which were given by the “Pride in Australia” group and its supporters to show their great support for the Australia Day celebrations which are normally held on 26^th January every year. This group insisted that the celebrations were worth and very important as they would bring the best results to the Australians and so they urged the other people to stand and fight for their Australia Day celebrations which have many benefits to the Australians (Richmond, 2015).

The recommendations

Having discussed the arguments of both groups, it’s good to come up with some recommendations which can help the councilor when trying to offer some solutions to end the hot debates and the demonstrations shown by these two antagonizing groups. Some of the recommendations which can help to address the demands of these two rival groups and their supporters include:

Listening and understanding the arguments of each of the groups keenly before you can address the groups (Petronio, 2017, pp.107-117). Having listened and understood arguments and the demands of each of the groups, the councilor will be in a better position to come with some ways to address the demands of these groups.

Both the councilor and the two groups should participate in coming up with some solutions which they feel will be appropriate and fair to each of the groups. In doing so, each of the groups should table its demands and propose the solutions which it feels will be appropriate to fulfill the demands. After raising the demands and the proposed solutions, the councilor, her team (including the legal team and the mediators), and the members of both groups should sit down to analyze the demands and the proposed solutions to see their validity and applicability for them to see how they should implement them in a way which should be fair to each of the groups (Bardach and Patashnik, 2015).

The groups should be ready to listen and abide by the solutions which will be given by the councilor and her team having included their views addressing the differences. In case any of the teams fail to abide by the agreed solutions or recommendations, the councilor can take a legal action against the group for going against the agreed solutions after solving their problems (Baker, 2017, pp.107-116).

References

Baker, R. (2017). Problem-solving. In Agile UX Storytelling (pp. 107-116). Apress, Berkeley, CA.

Bardach, E., & Patashnik, E. M. (2015). A practical guide for policy analysis: The eightfold path to more effective problem-solving. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

Bauer, A. A., & Agbe-Davies, A. S. (Eds.). (2016). Social archaeology of trade and exchange: Exploring relationships among people, places, and things. London: Routledge.

Cahill, D., & Taft, R. (2017). Education of immigrants in Australia. In Educating immigrants (pp. 16-46). London: Routledge.

Darian-Smith, K. (2018). Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day: A long history of celebration and contestation. The Conversation.

Grieco, D., Braga, M., & Bripi, F. (2016). Cooperation and leadership in a segregated community: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in a South African township (No. 2016/76). WIDER Working Paper.

Landau, R. S. (2016). The Nazi Holocaust: Its History and Meaning. IB Tauris.

Measham, F., & Johnston, C. (2016). Whose Australia day? Eureka Street, 26(1), pp.39-44.

Petronio, S. (2017). Communication privacy management theory: Understanding families. In Engaging theories in family communication (pp. 107-117). London: Routledge.

Richmond, R. (2015). Australia Day honors 2015.

The Australia Institute. (2018). Polling brief: Australia Day. Canberra: The Australia Institute.

The Institute of Public Affairs. (2018). Majority of Australians support Australia Day on 26

January. Melbourne: The Institute of Public Affairs. 

Wainwright, S. (2017). Australia day-change the date. Green Left Weekly, (1122), pp.5-7.

Ziaian, T., & De-Antiss, H. (2016). Exploring socio-cultural adjustment and wellbeing among young Australians of refugee background. International Journal of Psychology, 51, pp.244-245.