Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia Day is an important national day. It's a source of great celebration for Australians. But it's also a day of reflection. For First Nations peoples, 26 January speaks of injustice, dispossession and sorrow. On Australia Day, we should acknowledge that the British assertion of possession was without the consent of First Nations people already here. Australia Day should give us pause to reflect on the need for truth-telling, not the one-upmanship that we see from Senator Bernardi—truth-telling about our history, the good and the bad. Hearing the truth is necessary if we are to heal trauma and purge the guilt from our national psyche. Our history has its fault-lines, like other countries. We have our share of triumphs and successes and our share of scars and stains, just as other countries do.