A treaty would help

Quite possibly, the disagreement about the appropriateness of January 26 will never be resolved ... The date is unlikely to change ... Instead, we should get on with having a national day of contention, rather than the pretence of unity ... Anna Kretowicz blogs

This item contains the name of an Indigenous man who has died.

What do Yarra City, Darebin, Moreland, Inner West, Fremantle, Flinders Island, Launceston and Byron Shire all have in common? Since 2017, these local government areas around Australia have thrown their weight behind the Change the Date movement and shifted their Australia Day celebrations away from January 26.

As the Nile River can be relied on to flood every year, so too can Australians be counted to flood public discourse every January 26 with arguments about the proper date for our annual national "celebration".

It almost seems that the framers of our Constitution had an easier time getting the job done (even accounting for Western Australia's foot-dragging). 

The present question is, arguably, much weightier: do we move the date of Australia Day and, if so, to where does it move?

Scott Morrison describes date shifting discussions as “indulgent self-loathing" . Minister for Indigenous Affairs Ken Wyatt, straddling a barbed-wire fence, says he's still opposed, but hopes people use the day to reflect on First Nations history. 

And reflecting they are, with increased passion. South Australia's 2021 Australian of the Year finalist, Tanya Hosch, considers changing the date as an important opportunity to build our nation, make it stronger, and address a source of pain. 

The ubiquitous, Stan Grant wrote that January 26 is a reminder that Australia still hasn't reckoned with its original sin.

More and more it is the case that protests for the day are scheduled in every capital city around the country, to significant turnout. Momentum builds - painfully and slowly. 

Grant wrote, "We will change the date when we have earned it, when it means something. Until then [Indigenous people] stand diminished". 

To this day we have failed to learn from and recognise Australia's history of dispossession. The tokenism is pathetic - the national dirge now says "we are one and free" and Coon cheese gets a new name.

Racial tension has never been adequately resolved in the United States - and we can see the ongoing national trauma as a consequence. 

It's a process of small steps. For example, a coronial inquest was recently completed in the Alice Springs Coroners Court into the death of Robert Curtis, an elderly man of Aboriginal descent. 

Curtis was in custody at Alice Springs Correctional Facility for an offence relating to driving while disqualified, but he was moved in and out of the facility due to ill health. 

He suffered from end-stage renal failure and end-stage liver disease, and he died at Mutitjulu Aged Care Facility on March 26, 2019.

The coroner found that blame should not be attributed to either Corrections or the Department of Health. Rather, they were commended for "their compassion, understanding and efforts to return Mr Curtis to Mutitjulu so that he could die on his country surrounded by family and friends". 

Curtis regularly expressed these wishes to authorities and his carers. It was an instance where, for once, the traditional Us versus Them approach was put to one side, and authorities listened and responded humanely. 

Our neighbours across the Tasman show what is possible. Signed on February 6, 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was a formal recognition of Maori land sovereignty and a major step in working towards a relationship of peace and order between the Indigenous inhabitants and the colonising Europeans. 

It hasn't been without its problems, even from day one. Not all Maori chiefs signed the treaty when it was first proposed, they were concerned the Crown would not uphold its obligations. 

The Treaty stands to this day and New Zealand is a better place for it, as Laura Tingle in her Quarterly Essay, The High Road, observes. 

Maybe, Australia is consigned forever to unresolved about who we are and what matters. Frank Bongiorno, the professor of history at the ANU, says: 

"The time might come when the day is no longer observed at all, although I think that unlikely for many years. In the meantime, we are a better society and better democracy for having a national day of contention rather than of unity. Long may that last."