Australia

3588 readers

109 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
Politics, post it to Australian Politics
World News/Events, post it to World News
A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Is the 'Change the Date' movement gathering momentum? (aussie.zone)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Normally I tune out to this annual debate since it feels so polarised and stale, but the messaging from Woolworths, Cricket Australia, the Australian Open and others this year suggests big companies are concerned about an attitude shift within Australian society. It seems they've decided the inevitable backlash is now worth it because the silent majority has begun leaning in favour of change.

Is this just a natural result of this being the first post-referendum Australia Day or is there a longer-term change unfolding here?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's part of it, but it's not the end of it. If that were all it was, then Woolworths, Cricket Australia etc, wouldn't be actively avoiding it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Well if less people care for it, those companies would also have less reason to do it, no?

Chief executive Brad Banducci told Today that a declining demand in sales of the merchandise was behind the move.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/woolworths-boss-defends-decision-on-stocking-australia-day-merchandise/b0e75afc-6b06-47c1-b817-36c1ab57e42d

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

They don't want to get caught in the middle. If it were just declining sales, they'd gradually fade it out.

But they don't want turn off people who are upset by it, and they're not invested in selling it, especially given declining sales, so they silently remove it in one go. Then when they get caught up in the middle of it anyway, they claim it's just declining sales, because literally anything else will make them the centre of a news cycle about a topic they're trying to stay out of

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

In the case of Woolworths, yes, but I'm not sure rising ambivalence is the reason why sporting events are avoiding it. In this situation, outcry following change is generally louder than outcry for change so it would make more sense to just proceed as usual if ambivalence was actually the consideration here. Either way, diminishing support for Australia Day will only strengthen the cause of its detractors.