Let’s be dinkum, two days to celebrate Australia

AS we recently celebrated Australia Day, I took time to reflect on whether or not to change the date we celebrate Australia Day.

It is a given that, for many First Nations people, January 26 is a day of profound trauma for a variety of reasons.

I propose that we instead have two days to celebrate Australia. January 26 could be known as First Nations Day, a day whereby all Australians celebrate and affirm First Nations people and culture exclusively and take the time to reflect on the terrible history that First Nations people have endured since the establishment of the British colony (and future nation of Australia) at Sydney Cove in 1788.

The alternative date I propose for the celebration of Australia Day is May 9.

This date is significant for three reasons:

May 9, 1901, was the date of the first sitting of the new Australian Parliament in Melbourne following federation.

May 9, 1927, was the date of the opening of the Provisional Parliament House in Canberra, signifying the official beginning of Canberra as the seat of the government of Australia.

May 9, 1988, was the date of the opening of the new Parliament House and permanent residence of the federal parliament of Australia.

May 9 is also significant because three generations of the Royal Family were present at these respective events.

The late Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather in 1901, her father in 1927, and Her Majesty in 1988.

I feel Australians could celebrate our nation and its people with a great sense of unity and dignity on these two dates and it could help towards ending the controversy and trauma in celebrating our great country on January 26.

Joel Pearce, Queanbeyan

How about February 7 for Australia Day?

HAVING looked up a reference entitled “Registrar General’s Maps and Plans”, “according to English Law, the land of an acquired colony belongs to the reigning monarch. This land is known as Crown land and this presumption was applied to NSW when Captain Arthur Phillip proclaimed the new colony on February 7, 1788. On this day all land was claimed as the possession of the reigning monarch King George III.”

So why are we continuing to have this argy-bargy about the date for the commemoration of Australia Day? If, by naming January 26 as Invasion Day will go towards solving the problem, let’s do it and transfer Australia Day to the more legally correct date of February 7.

This continual bickering over a date does not cover us in glory and is not what this country is all about. It is now more about acknowledging the traditional owners of the land, honouring them and respecting their customs and sacred places, with the more correct date for Australia Day of February 7 being about honouring our pioneers and sharing and caring for the land which they colonised.

Let us do this as part of our acceptance of the Voice to Parliament.

Patricia Watson, Red Hill

Tree replacement plan a ‘huge’ waste of money

IN Canberra’s parliamentary zone, Lombardy Poplars are planted as sentinels to key buildings and spaces.

They are dignified and tall trees with yellow autumn leaves that fall to reveal attractive white winter branches. They do not have showy blossoms or gaudy autumn colours. They do not drop big damaging branches or large cones. They are not a fire hazard and they do not propagate by seed dispersal.

But they do sucker and are a known hazard on rural watercourses. However, although sucker removal is undertaken successfully in many country towns, the ACT government has indicted the Lombardy Poplar as a “pest” in their Pest Plants and Animals Act 2005, an Act enforced by penalties that blanket-list numerous trees regardless of their management.

The NCA appears to be acquiescing to the ACT’s questionable “pest” legislation – that should not apply in the Commonwealth’s heritage-listed parliamentary zone.

The stressed Lombardy Poplars at the National Library were initially proposed for replacement with stumpy oaks, later changed to hybrid Tulip Trees that are attractive but alien to the heritage landscape design. Remarkably, recent years of flooding rains have revived the library poplars, and a small amount of pruning will return them to the dignified trees of yesteryear.

Extensive poisoning will be needed to eradicate the poplar root mass along with the roots’ mycelium, possibly leading to poisonous runoff into stormwater and the lake.

The tree replacement proposal is a huge waste of dollars at a time when earth’s warming is desperate and when protection with proper management of all Canberra’s cultural trees is critically needed.

Juliet Ramsay, via email

Government’s legacy of a ‘huge, white elephant’

WELL done, Frank Reade, of Macquarie (Letters, CN January 26), for voicing your disgust at the state of our once beautiful city.

The hypocrisy of this woeful Greens/ Labor government does not go unseen to all proud Canberrans.

For the last two decades, on all sides of the city, we have the exact same weed infestations, dead trees lining every road way, on main roads and in all our suburbs.

We now have St John’s Wort covering all of Canberra. It’s spread more and thicker than I have ever seen since 1963.

Clearly our “devoted environmentalists” have totally ignored the government legislation on noxious weed control in the ACT. Yet, across the border in NSW, land owners cop massive fines by all councils, if they dare neglect weed control.

The ACT government does not answer to anyone, not even the taxpayers that they are ripping off, blatantly wasting our taxes on “one huge white elephant” for the inner city and northside residents! Which, by the way, just happens to be Barr and Rattenbury’s electorate.

Follow the money Canberra voters, and ask yourself: do you want your whole city beautiful and maintained again, rather than a bleeding tram that only services a minority of inner-city elites and a minority of northside suburbs?

Not to mention the second, wasteful Stage 2 they are hell-bent on going ahead with.

Barr and his Greens/Labor have absolutely no shame. Instead of a legacy being a huge white elephant, it could have been funding and finding homes for all Canberra’s desperate homeless. What hypocrisy, shame and failure this Greens/Labor government has forced upon us.

Ros Thomas, Gordon