Libs’ ‘daring experiment’ call an insult to all First Nations People

As tens of thousands of Australians called for the national day to be changed as a mark of respect to First Nations People, Liberal deputy leader Sussan Ley claimed the British fleet arrival in 1788 was a “daring experiment” to colonise Australia, and not an “invasion”.

Ms Ley then bizarrely compared the arrival of the Fleet with Elon Musk’s efforts to build a colony on Mars in an Australia Day speech delivered at a local church service in Albury.

The right wing politician insisted that the British did not land at Sydney Cove “to destroy or to pillage”, but that it was an experiment to establish a new society.

“In what could be compared to Elon Musk’s Space X’s efforts to build a new colony on Mars, men in boats arrived on the edge of the known world to embark on that new experiment,” Ms Ley said.

“And just like astronauts arriving on Mars those first settlers would be confronted with a different and strange world, full of danger, adventure and potential.”

Ms Ley forgot to mention the crimes then committed by the settlers in the name of the British crown, against the traditional owners of the land that many argue continue to this day.

Ms Ley’s comments are all part of Liberal leader Peter Dutton’s attempts to once again both ignore the past and rewrite the narrative of the future.

Removing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags – official flash of Australia – from public use and sight, is another act of colonialism that has no place today.

And the disgraceful actions and comments of former AFL star Sam Newman recently, turning his back on a Welcome to Country ceremony at Victoria’s Government House, shows how wrong one side of politics clearly is.

Newman, who urged the crowd at the 2023 AFL Grand final to boo during a ceremony, called the welcome a ‘fraud’ and an ‘absolute nonsense’.

He then claimed Australia was not a racist country. Yet his comments can only be described as that.

Quote: “If someone hadn’t turned up all those years ago there would be nothing here.”

But there was something here – the world’s oldest living culture – and it’s still here today.

For First Nations people January 26 marks the day when lives and culture changed forever.

‘You don’t matter, You don’t exist’.

Well, we do matter and we do exist – and we will continue to stand up and fight for for the marginalised, the forgotten and the abused – for the proud Indigenous communities who were here many centuries before people like Newman turned up.