- The Daily Telegraph
- January 10, 2014
DISCOUNT supermarket chain Aldi was correct to pull an Australia Day T-shirt and singlet carrying the message “Australia Est. 1788” from its stores.
It was inaccurate, though that was not the point the Twitterati hoped to make. Australia wasn’t officially branded as such until navigator Matthew Flinders decided to give the landmass the name in 1804. As he wrote to his brother: “I call the whole island Australia, or Terra Australis.”
Australia the independent nation wasn’t established until 1901, but that’s hardly the point. Those who have been protesting to Aldi via knee-jerk antisocial media are the usual attention-seeking rabble who come out around Australia Day to reiterate the never disputed point that there were people living on the continent before 1788.
No one has argued with that – no one – but as usual the professional activists get their moment…
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