Changing the date is not the question any more. What we should be talking about is developing a national character that we can be proud to celebrate.

My birthday is on New Year’s Eve.

I was born by Caesarean section at 8am on December 31, 1986. The c-section wasn’t optional and nor was the time and date. My Mum was booked in for a surgery that fitted around the doctor’s summer golfing schedule.

Farrin is CityMag and City Standard’s editor

Celebrating a birthday is a little strange in a lot of ways, but I always think particularly about that (unnamed) doctor on my birthday. In some senses, celebrating the day of my birth is akin to celebrating a break in his time on the fairways.

But there’s a level of automation in our approach to birthdays. Of course I celebrate. I like an excuse to drink Campari on a beach in the morning and do no work all day as much as the next self-employed freelancer does.

And there’s a similar level of automation in the way our country approaches Australia Day.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi, oi, oi. Let’s shotgun a beer before 9am. Play some backyard cricket. Vote an American artist to number one in a national poll of the year’s best music (yes yes, you’re right, it no longer takes place on Australia Day). Throw people in pools. Throw another shrimp on the barbie. Throw another Southern Cross tattoo on a shin bone.

And while we’re doing all that, let’s pay no mind to what it is we’re celebrating.

The debate about changing the date of Australia Day has become cyclical and repetitive

Of course we should change the date. Many of our First Nations people associate the date with trauma, invasion, intolerable cruelty, and ongoing (and unsuccessful) attempts to deny their sovereignty.

Other Australians – even those who vehemently argue against changing the bloody date – associate January 26 with, well, pretty much nothing.

Very few people know what events Australia Day is supposed to commemorate and celebrate. Was it the landing of one of the first colonising ships? Something something Captain Cook? Or was it federation? Or the declaration that this land suddenly and inexplicably belonged to Britain? Or all of those things?

A lot of people don’t know what happened on that date, but still they argue that the date shouldn’t be changed because they don’t want it to be. This is beyond stubborn. It’s silly.

So, yes, we should change the date. We should not have a national day of celebration on a date associated with massacres and other atrocities.

The debate should move on. Instead of talking about changing the date, we should be talking about (and increasingly are talking about) whether we have anything to celebrate at all.

Our national identity – in the popular imagination – is often built on a sanitised version of colonisation. We’re a frontier people – hard bitten, tough, always up for a joke, a drink, or a laugh, but community-minded enough to tighten ranks when someone needs a hand.

This vision of early Australia as a place of hard work and mateship is only a partial vision. It was a place of terrible violence too, and the violence that started when colonisers arrived here continues today.

That Australia should not be celebrated.

An Australia that recognises the violence and makes attempts to halt it might be worth celebrating. But I don’t think that’s the country we live in. Not yet.