Amid the false history over 26 January, it pays to consider what Australia was really built on | Paul Daley

Trolls and Indigenous-baiters got a gift from the PM this year, but in the midst of all the stories you’ll hear today it is real history that matters most

As the Australian summer yawns into late January and the first hint of russet kisses the treetops, languor quickly gives way to pain and anger as that day comes around. You could set your calendar by that fusillade of incendiary, hurtful words that inevitably comes in defence of marking a national day on the date that ushered in Indigenous dispossession.

The trolls are always out and baiting Indigenous people and those who support their sentiments, well before 26 January. They are waiting for that they can be certain will arrive, hardily, perennially: conservative voices – more often politicians – promoting as a virtue the fact that Australia is the only former settler colony to tie its national day of self-adoration to the beginning of attempted Aboriginal annihilation.

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