Is Australia Day controversial?

Australia Day is controversial because the date, 26 January, marks the day in 1788 that the First Fleet raised the British flag at Sydney Cove and began the colonisation of the continent. For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, that date represents the start of dispossession, frontier violence, the removal of children, and the loss of language and country, rather than a moment to celebrate.

Indigenous Australians have used the date to mark a Day of Mourning since at least 1938, when activists William Cooper, William Ferguson, and Jack Patten organised the first formal protest at Australia Hall in Sydney to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the First Fleet landing. The 1988 bicentenary saw a protest march of 40,000 people through Sydney's streets, the largest Aboriginal demonstration in Australian history at the time. Modern Invasion Day rallies regularly draw tens of thousands of participants in capital cities.

Different proposals have been put forward to address the controversy. Some advocate moving Australia Day to a different date, such as 1 January (the anniversary of federation in 1901), 9 May (the date Parliament first sat in 1901 and reopened in Canberra in 1927), or 27 May (the date of the 1967 referendum that recognised Aboriginal people in the Constitution). Others argue for keeping 26 January but reframing the day around reconciliation rather than colonial celebration.

The debate sharpened after the defeat of the Voice to Parliament referendum on 14 October 2023, in which 60.1 per cent of Australians voted No to a constitutional change that would have created an Indigenous advisory body. Some local councils have moved their citizenship ceremonies away from 26 January, and the federal Labor government has given councils discretion to hold ceremonies on any day in the three days before, on, or after Australia Day. The official national day, however, remains 26 January.