There's only one way to make Australia Day more Australian.

Australia has a tendency to identify itself through a negative lens.

To name something ‘un-Australian’ (a term borrowed from McCarthy-era America and brought into vogue in the 1990s by John Howard and Pauline Hanson) is a backwards way of defining who we are.

It’s much easier to point to something and call it ‘un-Australian’ than it is to reflect on our collective actions to get a sense of our true identity.

Around our backwards way of defining ourselves, there is only a small collection of values we idolise.

We trumpet fairness as a Great Australian Value, but where do we see it at a national level?

It’s certainly not on Nauru or Manus Island, or in the act of towing a boat full of desperate men, women and children out to sea.

And fairness is certainly not present in Australia’s response when a large section of our own society tells us how painful it is to watch the entire country celebrate and commemorate January 26 – the date of the arrival of the First Fleet, the event that led to an attempt to decimate Indigenous people and culture.

Fairness would be acknowledging that we fucked up. That maybe we’ve been dicks, and that it will take hard work (another Great Australian Value) to atone for what we did, but for the sake of fairness, we understand we should listen to and act on the wishes of those who we’re hurting.

We should change the date.

It would be un-Australian not to.