ANOTHER DAY A POOR CALL

SCOTT Morrison is already backing off his mad plan to save Australia Day by creating yet another national day to “celebrate” Aborigines.

No wonder. How could the Prime Minister suggest something so divisive and useless that within 24 hours he was playing it down?

“I haven’t said it’s a public holiday or not a public holiday,” Morrison flustered yesterday.

“I just think we should have a chat about it. I simply said that I think it would be good.” Wrong. It would be bad. Morrison floated his thought bubble on Tuesday in response to yet another Greens-dominated council – this time Byron Shire – moving its Australia Day celebrations from January 26.

The council wants to celebrate Australia Day a day earlier, to spare local Aborigines the “pain” of thinking about the arrival of English Captain Arthur Phillip and his white convicts.

Yet Byron Shire has just 88 people who identify as Aboriginal, says the Census. Byron Mayor Simon Richardson three times refused to tell me how many of those 88 locals actually asked him to shift Australia Day.

Yet Morrison thinks such deliberate offence-taking at Australia Day can be bought off by creating a separate day for Aborigines.

But how would that stop activists complaining about Australia Day when they’re still complaining after getting weeks of national days to celebrate Aborigines or apologise to them?

We already have NAIDOC Week to celebrate Aboriginal culture, National Sorry Day and National Reconciliation Week, which plainly hasn’t worked.

Then there’s the anniversary of the apology to the alleged “Stolen Generations”, National Close the Gap Day, the anniversary of the 1967 Referendum, Mabo Day, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day and the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.