Australia’s prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said last week that “a free country debates its history, it does not deny it.” He was right. But he did not appear to be listening to himself. With his next breath he sought to dismiss the growing discussions about whether Australia Day should be moved, portraying advocates as sowers of discord. Yet to ask whether the anniversary of the first fleet’s arrival in Sydney Cove in 1788 is appropriate for the national celebration is precisely to address the most consequential questions about the country’s past. The meaning of 26 January has to be part of the big, honest discussion that just might lead to a lasting reconciliation.

Mr Turnbull acknowledged that, for Indigenous Australians, European settlement has been “complex and tragic” – but insisted it was “divisive” to suggest that they might not want to celebrate the date of their colonisation, as if the conversation itself is the problem rather than the historical facts about massacre and dispossession. He appeared to imply that it is somehow unpatriotic to advocate for #changethedate, as if it were impossible to be both a proud Australian and also painfully aware that some kind of reconciliation with Indigenous Australia is the nation’s most chafing piece of unfinished business.



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He has even tried to deny that this debate was happening in any significant way at all. He claimed that it was the preoccupation of “a tiny handful of people”. The truth is that it is happening in spite of the major parties. The discussion is playing out across news sites and radio stations and at water coolers around the country.

Despite predictable attempts to turn it into a tedious culture war by tabloid columnists and desperate attention-seeking provocateurs, this is not a new discussion, but one that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have long been seeking: “When it comes to the subject of 26 January, the overwhelming sentiment among First Nations people is an uneasy blend of melancholy approaching outright grief, of profound despair, of opposition and antipathy, and always of staunch defiance,” writes Jack Latimore, co-editor of the collaborative Twitter account IndigenousX. Protests about 26 January trace back to 1938. The national strategy that followed the 1990s’ decade-long process to achieve reconciliation also recommended the date be changed.

Indigenous leaders and advisers mostly back a shift. They include the co-chair of the prime minister’s own Indigenous advisory council, Chris Sarra, as well as Reconciliation Australia and the Healing Foundation. There are those who support change but argue that it is not a priority. Some, like the academic and author Tony Birch, say it’s more important to have a deeper conversation, because changing the date won’t make the history of violence against Aboriginal people any less offensive, or forgotten. Others, like the Indigenous leader Noel Pearson, have suggested changing and broadening our understanding of exactly what we are celebrating on 26 January.

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Polls suggest that the movement to #changethedate is not yet backed by a majority of Australians, but every year the momentum builds – including among non-Indigenous Australians, from Mr Turnbull’s former cabinet colleague Ian Macfarlane to the former tennis champion Pat Cash to the TV host Eddie McGuire. Today, 26 January, is simply the wrong day for national festivities, and that means we need a respectful conversation – about changing the date and the meaning of the celebration – without cartoonish campaigns trying to whip it into a left/right fight or a chest-beating test of patriotism. The prime minister had it exactly right before he undermined his own argument. Australia needs to debate its history, not deny it.