Conservative politicians are dominating Facebook advertising about changing the date of Australia Day, analysis shows.
After Woolworths announced last week that it would no longer stock Australia Day merchandise due to declining demand, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, condemned the move as an “outrage” born from the retailer’s “woke agenda” and said most Australians likely thought the same.
Now several conservative politicians are paying for advertisements on social media platforms lobbying against changing the date.
I’ve got a few dates I came up with a few years ago around this time:
3 March as the day of commencement of the Australia Act (1986), which saw the last vestiges of Australia’s status as a British dominion ended.
3 September as the day Australia adopted the Statute of Westminster with the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, which removed the United Kingdom’s ability to legislate over the Commonwealth of Australia and making Australia truly a legally independent nation in a de jure sense.
9 July as the date the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 became law, enabling the constitution to actually take effect on 1 January 1901.