Happy Australia Week! Dec 26-Jan 1st.

I propose that this be Australia Week. 26 December to 1 January. Here's why:

Now I have nothing against the 26th of January - it was a celebration of a bunch of New South Wellians finally getting off the boat after a long voyage. It was not a national holiday until as recently as 1994, so if we're not from NSW, we shouldn't be particularly attached to it.

It is not as much of a problem as plenty of other dates. It is not as authoritarian as its complainants say it is; it is effectively an anti-authoritarian day.

If you want a problem date, look at the previous official date, the 9th of February. That was the date when the authority, Captain Phillip, raised the British flag and proclaimed the nation British. I still don't see that as much of a problem either, but others do, so let's look around.

All the other dates are more of a problem than the people's day, 26 January... except one.

Federation day is the 1st of January. On that day we got a lot of things right, and paved the way to get the rest of it right in the future. Keen observers may observe that this is already a public holiday, and Australians are loath to miss out on a day at the beach, so here is a solution:

Make every day from Boxing Day to New Year's Day a holiday, and call it Australia Week.

There are many reasons why this would be good:

We do hardly any work that week anyway, so may as well make it official.

That'll also do the tourist industry a whole lot of good - visitors moving about twice in the year instead of once. Spreading it out.

A whole week to go camping, not as much rush on the roads to get there and back.

A week to get to the MCG for a bit of the Boxing Day Test, and get patriotic while reinforcing the national sport.

But mostly, employers tend to force us to take that week off anyway, thus cutting into our Australian right to laze off when we choose. I'm surprised that the unions hadn't picked up on this corporate encroachment on our free time. But make it a holiday and the default becomes beach, and the boss has to pay you extra to come in, then you can take your holidays in September and trek to Queensland, as is the correct way for Australians.

January is usually pretty unproductive as well, but give us that week off and there will be a good chance that we'll be back to work sooner in January than we are at the moment, which for most of us is not until February. Start earlier, finish earlier.

So let's crack a tube somewhere in the Grampians, and raise it for Australia Week!