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The Australian Museum hosted a debate on January 23 on the topic: “Is the 26th of January the most appropriate date to celebrate our national identity?”

Sixty people attended the debate, which pitted historian and educator Nigel Parbury against Brisbane indigenous leader and Socialist Alliance member Sam Watson.

Parbury put the affirmative case and said that Australia Day had changed over the decades to better reflect the country's multicultural community. But he conceded that much more change was needed in future.

Watson argued Australia Day should be abandoned. “January 26 is a monumental fraud, a lie and a travesty,” he said. “The land of Australia was never purchased, nor was a treaty ever made between the British colonial power and the Aboriginal nations.

“Now, 223 years after the original landing, Aboriginal people will again rally on Invasion Day to face the same challenge of the unfinished business flowing from that legacy of colonial dispossession and racial discrimination.”

He said the area of Sydney near the museum was “very significant to us Aboriginal people, because it was here that a rally was organised by Indigenous elders on January 26, 1938, to mark the 150th anniversary of the landing of Captain Cook that day in 1788.

“The organisers issued an important statement, which said in part: ‘This is not a day of rejoicing, but a day of mourning' for Aboriginal Australians.

"We should suspend January 26 as Australia Day until a treaty is signed with Aboriginal people; until an unqualified apology is issued for our dispossession; until a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is established (as in post-Apartheid South Africa); until full reparations are paid to Aboriginal people; and until a new name is given to the country, with a new flag and a new national identity."