Kevin V. Russell's Article On Australia Day

January 26th represents the national public holiday, Australia Day. It is a day of celebration of the establishment of the country and at the same time marks the day a mass invasion begun on the Indigenous Australian population, resulting in deaths among their population. Ben Roberts-Smith’s opinion article, ‘We are one but we are many’ featured in the Herald Sun on January 26th, 2017; expresses optimistically that, Australian’s differences are what makes Australia great. He attempts to make the reader to reflect upon how lucky they are to live in ‘such a lucky country’. However, Kevin V. Russell’s letter to the editor entitled, ‘End Australia Day’ was also published in the Herald Sun on January 26th, 2017. Contradicting Robert-Smiths article,

He continues on passionately and fades into a proud tone as he explains that Australia Day is a day to celebrate the country’s unique diversity, and multicultural nation. Through his use of inclusive language such as ‘we’ and ‘our’, Roberts-Smith is able to create a sense of inclusion for the reader and makes them realise that they should be celebrating their country’s unique diversity. Coupling this with the reinforcement from facts and statistics such as ’65 percent of Aussies marked the day in some way last year’ and ‘16,000 new Aussies chose Australia Day of all days to become Australia Citizens’, shows the reader the amount of pride the people in Australia have for their country. It is clear that Roberts-Smith is passionate about his point of view and arguments similar to Russell who is equally passionate about his arguments and point of view. In which each writers passion assists them in making their individual pieces more succinct and

He argues in an annoyed tone, that switches to a blunt tone that Australia Day has outlived its usefulness. Being a clear a different standpoint to Roberts-Smith, Russell manipulated the use of rhetorical questions such as ‘just what is there to celebrate?’ and ‘can we find a day all Australians can acknowledge as significant to our nations history?’. This tears down and mocks the uselessness of Australia Day being on the 26th of January unlike Roberts-Smith who praises Australia’s achievements. This causes the reader to feel angered that such a symbolic holiday is rostered on such a pointless date. Similarlily Russell also incorporates facts and statistics such as ‘Australia didn’t come into existence until 1901’ and ‘New South Wales had already been inhabited for 40,000 years’. However Russell uses these facts pull back the curtain on the misinterpreted facts about Australia Day and the establishment of Australia as a country. This results in the reader feeling disappointed that the date has yet to be