I am a proud Australian. I love our country – its people and its magnificent diversity of animals and landscapes. I am fortunate to have travelled overseas to many wonderful locations – but am always pleased and relieved to return to Australia. I can trace my heritage back to a couple of convicts who were on the First Fleet in 1788 (the same year the Brandenburg Gate was built in Berlin).

Our national anthem says that we are ‘one and free’ – so with the wonderful cultural diversity in our nation including the oldest living culture in the world, why do we continue to define our nationhood based on the date of European settlement which decimated the First Nation peoples and took away their lands based in the legal fiction of ‘terra nullius’? We were signed into law by Queen Victoria as the Commonwealth of Australia on 1st January 1901. Until that point we were a collection of states. Why isn’t 1st January Australia Day? Because New Years’ Day is already a public holiday?  

There will continue to be tension if this isn’t satisfactorily resolved. And it isn’t just an internal matter. How can Australia have any credibility in international human rights discussions if we treat our First Nations people in this way – if we are ostensibly not ‘one and free’?