Why I will be working Australia Day 2017

Next month, Loud&Clear will be open for business on January 26. For indigenous Australians, this date is cruel and traumatic so we’re boycotting it to support #changethedate.

This country’s relationship with our First People is a gaping wound that has festered for far too long. Changing the date won’t fix this alone, but if we mean our national day to be a celebration, we need to choose a date that promotes healing and understanding for all Australians.

As an agency, we are influencers. As an independent, we must do what’s right rather than what is merely profitable. And because of who we are, we are collectively less frightened about “what comes next” and able to challenge the status quo.

Our industry is all about making change; changing ideas, changing mindset, changing behaviour. It should not fall to Indigenous Australians to have this conversation, to repair the lazy cruelty forced on them. We are calling on our agency colleagues across Australia to join us and make a stand.

In the words of Erik Jensen, Editor of The Saturday Paper: “Australia is not its white settlement. Australia is its First Peoples and their thousands of years of history and present; it is its convicts and squatters, its migrants, its refugees; it is its shared history and its contemporary harmony.”

There is no commercial benefit to Loud&Clear in this. Taking the lead from Floate Design Partners, the agency will be open for business as usual on the January 26 and staff who choose to work this day will receive two days off in return.

Grateful thanks to Ross Floate for bringing this idea to life: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2016/12/10/the-date-changing/14812884004068

We don’t need to wait for Turnbull and Co to make this right. Let’s stop celebrating Australia Day until it is a day for all Australians.

#changethedate changedate.com.au