Australia Day is on the nose – it’s becoming harder to defend celebrating the date of an apocalypse

‘Even conservative Cricket Australia has been progressively dropping references to “Australia Day’’ (beginning in 2001) on its 26 January fixtures.’ Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

With each passing year, this one fraught day of the year becomes harder for politicians, especially progressives, to defend as that on which Australia self-congratulates itself and celebrates nationhood.

Progressive leaders concerned about the potential cultural pushback of altogether abandoning 26 January as the national moment have long been recasting it from one of celebratory hubris into a far more sombre memorialisation of how the first fleet so detrimentally collided with a timeless First Nations civilisation.