Celebrating a day each year to mark a country's nationhood, achievements and quest for shared values and unity is widely recognised as important for a sense of national identity and belonging.

It sounds simple and uncomplicated.

Our national day, however, has become complex and its celebration, troubled ground. Each year there is a growing discomfort and unease, as we have so much unfinished business regarding our First Peoples.

The first problem is the date for that celebration. January 26 is the anniversary of the 1788 British invasion of unceded lands and subsequent colonisation, dispossession of First Peoples and the start of intergenerational trauma. It is a terrible date to celebrate Australian unity.

An honest interrogation of our past highlights myriad tragic events including massacres, land theft, family dislocation, theft of children and systemic violence and marginalisation of First Peoples.

This history calls for 26 January to be a day for Truth-Telling and Truth-Listening. Indeed, it should be a day for National Mourning. How we learn to mourn as a nation over the murder and dispossession of our First Peoples requires deep honesty and collaboration.

When our country can accept its violent beginnings, the wrongs of its past and see the ongoing impact of inequality and injustice, perhaps then we can journey to genuine unity and reconciliation.

"Makarrata" - a Yolngu word meaning a coming together after a struggle - is part of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart and provides the foundation for us to do this.

Positioning Australia as a unified country while its First Peoples experience poverty, blatant racism, and a lack of access to quality health care and housing is challenging.

Add to this lower life expectancy, the over-representation of First Peoples in prison or detention, their deaths in custody, the high suicide rate of young First Peoples and the ongoing removal of children from their families and we are far from a unified country.

Equally challenging then is supporting the anniversary of the British invasion of this continent – the catalyst for dispossession of our First Peoples - as a day of national celebration.

Change the Date Campaign

Amnesty International Australia first led the 'Change the Date' campaign, however since 2018 it has taken a different position, arguing a date change alone will not impact the systemic issues faced by our First Peoples.

Aboriginal Human Rights and Constitutional lawyer Professor Megan Davis agrees, saying that changing the date, while symbolic, should be part of other substantive reforms.

Tasmanian palawa leader Rodney Dillon has also long argued: "Our problems are Australian problems, not Aboriginal ones, and we all need to work together...So let's find a day to celebrate the Australia that we can be, that we should be. A day that brings us together and doesn't keep tearing us apart."

Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) leader Nala Mansell also maintains that "Australia was possibly the only country in the world that still held its national day of celebration on the day marking the invasion or colonisation of that country."

The annual Invasion Day marches and rallies organised by the TAC have grown in numbers with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people joining the mantra: Change the Date.

Local councils are also making changes, following the lead of the Flinders Island Council who held their last Australia Day celebration in 2013. They now host a Furneaux Island Festival community BBQ and concert.

Other councils, such as Launceston, Hobart, Glenorchy, Clarence, Kingborough, Brighton and Break O'Day, have shifted their citizenship ceremonies and community leader awards to alternative days.

In another significant move, the Tasmanian State Services Act was amended in 2023 to allow public servants to take their Australia Day holiday on a different date.

There is clearly momentum to change our national day as an important step to recognise invasion, support healing and solidarity and open a window to truth-telling.

The suggestion by Uncle Rodney that we 'celebrate the Australia that we can be, that we should be', is very appealing for changing our country's national day.

We urge all Tasmanians to reflect on how they acknowledge 26 January and in particular how they might walk with our First Peoples on this day of mourning.

Associate Professor Clair Andersen and Beth Gilligan are the co-chairs of Reconciliation Tasmania.

Ms Andersen has Yanuwa and Gangalidda clan connections in the Gulf country of Northern Australia. She grew up and began her education on Warumunga country in the Northern Territory before coming to Tasmania.

Ms Andersen is also the Aboriginal Higher Education Advisor at the University of Tasmania.

Ms Gilligan is a former Tasmanian school principal and freelance education consultant.