Stuff's NZ Made/Nā Nīu Tīreni project: When the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, Māori owned more than 66 million acres of land. By 1975, almost 97 per cent had been sold or taken.

OPINION: It's around this time I start to feel a strange clash of excitement and dread. I call it "that Waitangi feeling".

You see, Waitangi Day is my favourite day of the year. Our national day is, hands down, the best public holiday in the world.

Yet year after year, the grinches try to convince us our day is some sort of cruel concoction designed to bring them pain.

People like Duncan Garner and Mike Hosking, those high-profile media personalities who have made it their missions to grunt and grumble with the "everyday Kiwi", claim Waitangi Day has been "hijacked".

SPECIAL PROJECT: The unsettling truth about the Treaty

Those poor, privileged men use their large platforms to lash out at activists and naysayers who dare question the status quo.

To the activists at Te Tii Marae, Hosking said they should be grateful for all the "good" that colonisation has delivered.

"The Far North is still as big a mess as it's always been," he wrote. What a way to speak of people who volunteer their days to host the Crown each year, which has ignored and almost crippled Northland's economy and Ngāpuhi​.

PHIL WALTER/GETTY IMAGES Flags of Aotearoa fly under trees on the Waitangi Treaty Grounds.

Garner simply called those naysayers "dickheads" in his Stuff column.

Commentary such as this undoubtedly leads many New Zealanders to the conclusion that Waitangi Day is too much hassle.

I've heard far too many friends start Waitangi Day conversations by saying "look at Australia". That's how you do it, they say. Australia Day, when the sun shines, everyone's happy and the beers are plentiful. That's what a national day should be, they reckon.

"Why can't we be like them?"

So this week I travelled to Sydney, to see how they do it. They had a three-day weekend, complete with blistering temperatures, to celebrate Australia Day.

PHIL WALTER/GETTY IMAGES The sun rises over the Waitangi Treaty Grounds.

Now, I can tell you the secret to a successful Australia Day. They pull it off thanks to a heap of ignorance, a whitewashed media and eskies​ packed with booze.

After all, you'd need to sink a few Victoria Bitters to be comfortable with what is a sick celebration.

The Australian media would have you believe it is just a few outsiders who are uncomfortable with Australia Day. The day was marked with protests across the country, with thousands flooding into Melbourne's CBD to commiserate Invasion Day.

Commiseration is a far more appropriate way to remember what Australia Day really is. It's the day British warmongers started nothing short of a genocide attempt. Yet here I am, watching white Australians celebrate with drinks on the beach.

The newsreaders on Sunrise tried tarnishing Melbourne's protesters as "violent", when it seems a few pro-Australia Day extremists tried to agitate the peaceful crowd. The presenters said this while sitting in front of Australian flags.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Melbourne and Sydney to protest in favour of changing the date of Australia Day.

It's hard to describe just how disturbing the scene is. I call it "that Australia Day feeling", when my gut churns with concern, revulsion and fear. It's a nauseating mix of emotion, which recalls that question: "Why can't we be like them?"

I wonder, why would we want to be like them?

Australia is a country that has failed to come to grips with reality. It is a country that celebrates its ignorance. Even those who are tasked with informing us – journalists and newsreaders – revel in this blind celebration. It's a sickening display.

What worries me is our starry-eyed glorification of their jingoistic day. It shows we have a long way to go.

Still, I'm grateful we have Waitangi Day.

Unlike Australia, our day doesn't ignore history in favour of mindless celebration. To the contrary, Te Rā o Waitangi marks the day New Zealand was formed thanks to the northern tribes' welcoming of pākehā. (Hosking calls those tribes "a mess".)

It's a day which, while celebrating the muticulturalism of New Zealand, is rife with troubles.

The promises of Te Tiriti were flagrantly ignored. Those who had extended a warm welcome to foreign cultures were battered and abused. They were slapped in the face, thrown from their homes. Those wrongs are yet to be righted, but at least we talk about it.

What's most exciting is Te Rā o Waitangi's future focus. It sparks discussion about what we want our future to be, together. When Māori signed Te Tiriti, they partnered with new people and cultures to carve the future of Aotearoa.

National Library of New Zealand Te Tiriti welcomes new people to Aotearoa.

Come February 6, we have those same conversations again. What can Aotearoa be? What do we want for our whānau? How can we live together? What is just and fair?

There's a whakatuakī​ to explain Māori thinking: "ka mua, ka muri"; go forward looking backwards.

To me, that's what Waitangi Day is. It's a day to celebrate progress, and fight for what is right.

It's a day when we remember who we are and where we've come from, while we walk back into the future.

That we can talk, think and remember makes me proud to be a Kiwi. That's why I'm excited.