Sussan Ley likens First Fleet to Elon Musk’s Mars mission

Sussan Ley has compared the First Fleet’s arrival to Elon Musk’s mission to colonise Mars during an Australia Day speech in her electorate.

Speaking at a church in Albury following Australia Day mass, the Deputy Opposition Leader said the British settlers aboard the ships faced uncertainty when they landed 237 years ago.

“That endeavour was not assured success,” Ms Ley said.

“All those years ago those ships did not arrive, as some would have you believe, as invaders.

“They did not come to destroy or to pillage.

“In what could be compared to Elon Musk’s Space X’s efforts to build a new colony on Mars, men in boats arrived on the edge of the known world to embark on that new experiment.

“A new experiment and a new society.

“And just like astronauts arriving on Mars, those first settlers would be confronted with a different and strange world, full of danger, adventure and potential.”

January 26 marks the date the First Fleet established a settlement at Sydney Cove, beginning Britain’s colonisation of Australia.

For many First Nations Australians, it is a day of mourning.

Researches have estimated as many as 1.5 million Indigenous Australians lived on the continent prior to colonisation.

The population was a little over 100,000 as of the 1900s, largely due to massacres and new diseases brought by colonists.

Unlike Australia, there is no evidence of past or present life on Mars.

Last year, Mr Musk, who owns Space X, outlined his plan to launch the first crewed Mars mission in four years.

The tech baron said more aspiring Martians would be ferried to the planet with the “goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years”.