Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she believed Australia was invaded by Europeans, and backed universities teaching "the truth" about the nation's history.
Ms Palaszczuk said it was a problem that "people have not explained the full details of Australian history" and "as far as she was concerned", Australia was invaded.
"For many years Australian schools and Australian institutions have not told the truth about the way in which Australia was settled," she said.
"A lot of Indigenous people lost their lives, there were massacres and the truth always must be told."
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The dispossession and massacre of Aboriginal Australians is part of our history. It must be taught and appreciated by all Australians.
— AnnastaciaPalaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) March 30, 2016
When asked if that meant she believed Australia to have been invaded, Ms Palaszczuk answered "yes".
The Queensland University of Technology is among a number of institutions which teach Australia was not settled, as is commonly taught in schools, but was invaded or occupied by British colonists.
It also teaches that claiming Captain James Cook "discovered" Australia was also incorrect, given that an estimated 750,000 to 800,000 Indigenous people were believed to be living across the nation for up to 60,000 years before British convict fleets arrived in 1788.
In 1770, Cook had declared Australia "terra nullius", or no one's land, despite the Indigenous population, and claimed the east coast for Britain.
In 1992, after a decade-long legal case, the High Court overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius in a historic decision known as the Mabo case, after Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander who had challenged the state's ownership of traditional Indigenous lands.
The decision led to the Native Title Act being passed the next year.
Legally, Australia is considered to have been settled, and not conquered, which allowed for British common law to be applied to the colony from the start.
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