Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has a message for people planning to protest on January 26 – they must abide by the law.
Protesters planning to march in nationwide “Invasion Day” rallies have been told police will not tolerate criminal behaviour and will enforce coronavirus restrictions.
“If people are going to protest, then they need to do it within the law,” Mr Dutton told the Nine Network on Friday.
“They need to do it peacefully and people need to abide by the health directions.”
Mr Dutton said state and federal governments had spent the past year trying to protect remote Indigenous communities from coronavirus.
“We don’t want to see an outbreak, and particularly amongst Indigenous Australians,” he said.
“A lot of us have put in a lot of work over the course of this last 12 months to make sure that Indigenous Australians are protected from the virus.
“We don’t want all that success unwound.”
Meanwhile, one of his cabinet colleagues has leapt to the Prime Minister’s defence over controversial Australia Day comments.
Scott Morrison has come under fire after comparing the experience of First Fleet convicts to that of Indigenous Australians.
Mr Morrison raised the experience of those aboard the First Fleet while explaining why January 26 is a difficult day for some people.
“You know, when those 12 ships turned up in Sydney, it wasn’t a particularly flash day for the people on those vessels either,” he said on Thursday.
Asked whether it was fair to compare scurvy to genocide, Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said he did not want to focus on the past.
“That was more than 200 years ago, convicts being brought out under forced orders from the United Kingdom,” he told the ABC.
“I don’t want to reflect on what was happening more than 200 years ago in terms of the individual circumstances for many individuals.
“They were pretty rough times for lots of people.”
Senator Birmingham said he wanted people to concentrate on what Australia had achieved and the potential for greater success.
“We will achieve that greater success by bringing people together not by dividing them, by embracing the Indigenous heritage of this national and the multicultural heritage of this nation, and by celebrating it together and not trying to segment one over the other.”
January 26 marks the raising of the Union Jack for the first time in 1788 after the British First Fleet’s arrival in Botany Bay the previous week.
For many, it is a day of mourning that signals the European invasion of the continent after more than 60,000 years of Indigenous occupation.
-with AAP
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