Just when you thought the Australian Day debate was done and dusted, the company that set the January 26 date more than 125 years ago says it's time to change it.
The City of Fremantle and the Turnbull government were involved in a very ugly public spat for days after the council said it wanted to move its January 26 celebrations forward two days to a "culturally-inclusive alternative event".
The federal government eventually won the battle, after the Assistant Minister for Immigration Alex Hawke banned the city from holding citizenship ceremonies on its One Day in Fremantle event on January 28 because it breached the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 by "politicising" its fireworks ban.
Now Rohan Mead, the Managing Director of Australian Unity, whose organisation back in the late 1880s was responsible for creating what would become Australia Day, says it's time to look at an alternative date.
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"Surely in reaching for a national day for a nation we would seek a date that is capable of celebration for all its people," he told ABC's Radio National on Tuesday after the launch of its Reconciliation Action Plan.
"And picking this particular date (January 26) we certainly discomfort all of our first peoples and I think that's something we need to reflect on.
"As a company we have been considering our own actions.
"In all of that context and with our special history we have come to the view this is the time for us to look at the complete lack of appreciation of the complex and enormously valuable culture that was displaced on European settlement through profound ignorance of 50,000 years of human existence.
"A wonderful set of cultures spread across deserts, coastal areas right through to temperate zones, this was an enormously valuable set of cultures widely distributed and largely displaced in ignorance."
Mr Mead said even though the group's previous incarnation, the Australian Natives' Association, created our "national day" in 1888 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet in January 1788, to say it had existed since European settlement was incorrect.
He said it wasn't even until 1994 that the day became a "coherent national holiday for all".
"For many decades the actual proposed date for the national day was argued and contested and moved around right up until 1915," he said.
"There were dates in July and June and August and in different geographies there were different dates, but finally in 1935 there was agreement in the states to move towards January 26.
"But even then that remained strangely contested as New South Wales itself stepped outside of that agreement, only to return and confirm to the 26 January post war, 1945."
It wasn't for another nearly 50 years before it became a national holiday 22 years back in 1994.
Mr Mead, whose group originally helped push for federation in the late 1880's when the country was still divided into colonies, said it had not yet settled on an alternative date.
He said much like Fremantle council, the group just wanted to start a "national conversation".
"We are not suggesting an alternative day, we are just calling on the nation to have a conversation about this date and seek to determine perhaps an alternative or better date," he said.
"We are not propounding a particular approach... we are not trying to say to people there isn't any real attachment to the current date. We understand there is, but we wonder whether or not there is a better alternative and we should turn ourselves to that thought with warm-hearted reconciliation in mind."
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