Until we agree on what we are celebrating, it’s hard to have a sensible discussion about the date of Australia Day

If you want a precursor to the political year ahead strap yourself in for the latest iteration of the annual showdown over the timing of our national day.

With the looming referendum to embed in our constitution an obligation to recognise First Nations people by actively listening to them, the tone of the debate over Australia Day takes on added significance.

Advocates for changing the date will rightly point to the injustice and dispossession that 26 January represents, a truth recognised by the high court and acknowledged at any public event worth its social licence.

Defenders of the status quo will accuse them of woke symbolism, asserting their own superior love for the land we call Australia in their defence of the date and actively embracing the fairytale retelling of the European invasion as a nation-building endeavour.

But as the rhetoric is turned up to 11, the latest Guardian Essential Report suggests the vast majority of Australians see merit in both positions.

It has been suggested that Australia should have a separate national day to recognise Indigenous Australians. Do you…?

These results will be interpreted in different ways depending on where you are coming from. They show a majority of Australians (59%) want to find a way of recognising Indigenous Australians, but the same number also want to continue to observe an Australia Day.

The support for an Indigenous day broadly reflects the majority levels of support for the voice to parliament, a growing consensus that First Nations people have a particular unmet claim for recognition and respect.

But the brouhaha over changing the date also provides a rare opportunity for the angry right to play to what they interpret as a majority view ready to be leveraged to defeat the voice vote.

A quick survey of the Sky News social media ecosystem shows how this is playing off-Broadway: a constant stream of After Dark video grabs erroneously claiming special racial preference, legislated apartheid and secret agenda.

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, is ruthlessly feeding these dynamics, dispensing the angry pills with his disingenuous demands for detail on what is meant to be a simple vote on general enabling provisions.

Like his vanquished predecessor, he appears hellbent on using his time in leadership to divide rather than build.

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But as important as the date of Australia Day, is the question of what we are celebrating when we choose to celebrate a national date. Indeed, until we agree on this it’s hard to have a sensible discussion about anything.

This second question illustrates the extent to which the very idea of Australia and a sense of national identity means different things to different generations.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements about Australia?

Growing up in the 1970s my generation’s sense of national pride was anchored around the notion of striving for success, winning the Ashes or a rare Olympic gold medal, seeing an Aussie star like Paul Hogan and a band like Men at Work make it in the US, our proxy for a world stage.

This was a more active aspiration than that of my parents’ generation, trapped in the cultural cringe that simply yearned to be seen by the mother country, so when the Queen or the Beatles visited it was enough.

For me the flip in my sense of national identity was the 1988 bicentenary of the First Fleet, a moment that embedded the 26 January date; the garish harbour celebrations counterpunched by the Invasion Day march that I joined through the streets of Redfern.

Over the next decade Australia seemed to be reaching a new consensus fuelled by Keating’s Redfern speech and a broader sense of independence that sought security in our region, not from it, as the nation danced to Yothu Yindi’s call for a treaty.

Thirty years later we find ourselves making up for lost time, after the history wars around the straw man’s black armband argument saw self-reflection wrongfully portrayed as self-loathing.

My children’s generation is something different altogether, their social media feeds flitting between the global and the hyper-local creating a sense of place no longer defined by its relationship to other nations.

More than older Australians, it is these young people who are most willing to think critically about their nation’s history, even though they are another generation removed from the injustices that continue to define us.

The truth is Australia’s story is way more complex than either a triumphal colonisation or a crude act of dispossession. The real story of Australia is the contradiction at the heart of this false binary.

Australia is home to both the oldest living culture on earth and one of the youngest democratic nations, one that is still legally tied to a fading European colonial power.

We are a nation born of both bloody frontier wars and a world-leading experiment in social democracy, driven by a workers-led government which pioneered female suffrage and a living wage.

We are the nation of the transformative Snowy Hydro scheme built by migrants escaping war and poverty, but also the architects of the openly racist White Australia policy.

We are a nation at once the most highly urbanised and most sparsely populated continent on earth, seeking national security from one global super-power while deriving economic security from trade with their rival.

We zealously guard our borders while building our national wealth by digging up our land and offering it to the highest bidder.

We aim to protect our own with Medicare and the NDIS, while tolerating the cruelty of boat turn-backs and children in detention.

In 2023 we are a nation that has a chance to resolve the silence that lies at the heart of so many of these contradictions by accepting the generous invitation embedded in the Uluru statement from the heart to walk forward on common ground.

Thankfully, the passage of this referendum won’t be determined by the angry voices on either extreme but by the majority of Australians who are capable of reconciling their own regard for this nation, the reality of our shared heritage.

Peter Lewis is an executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company