There’s plenty to celebrate about being Australian, and there’s plenty not to celebrate too. A national day should acknowledge all of it

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s I was, typically for many Australian children, usually at the beach when most Australia Days rolled around.

I can’t remember my family and friends ever making much of a fuss about it.

There are several symbolic and easily achieved ways in which the nature of Australia Day celebrations could be re-oriented. There should be public recognition of British legal usurpation and the disasters that followed. Even more potent would be the nationwide call for a minute’s silence to remember the thousands of Aborigines and hundreds of Europeans who died in the frontier wars.

If they are too difficult to institute, it would clearly suggest that we need a new national day.

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