American date or: Marital crisis

First of all, it's important to note the following: I live in Australia, and in Australia, like in most of the world, the date format is day - month - year.
My husband had asked me this week how should he change the format of the date and then get the day out of the data.
Simple, I said, use the TEXT function to change the format, and use the day () function on the date.
"I get #value! error" he winged, and I thought I needed to help him, only to find out that he was right (see below use of functions and results):
The formulas:

Excel date formulas

Excel date results

I thought maybe to use Google Spreadsheet, but unfortunately and surprisingly enough, they are not better:

Formulas are below:

Google docs formulas

Google Docs values