If you're honest about Australian history one thing is clear - January 26th is invasion day.
On that date in 1788 the first fleet of British ships arrived at Port Jackson and began the invasion of the continent.
According to the Australia Day website it was not until 1935 that all states named that date as Australia Day and it was not until 1994 that it was taken up nationally as a public holiday.
So there's nothing special about the City of Yarra Council deciding that it's going to drop its Australia Day events.
There should be no hue and cry over this. Those who want to wave the flag or have a barbecue can still do so. Those who don't can please themselves.
Rather than waste valuable time discussing Yarra City Council's Australia Day policy, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his ministers should be leading the debate on the more important issue of how to change our constitution to better account for our history.
And when they do discuss our history they should get their facts right.
In addressing the House last Wednesday Mr Turnbull said on Australia Day we celebrate the fact that Australia has the oldest human civilisation in the world – our first Australians 65,000 years old.
The Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten said we have the world's oldest continuing culture.
You only have to think for a moment about such statements to realise what nonsense they are. Unless they are trying to deliver the highly insulting comment that Australia's twenty first century Indigenous people are some sort of 65,000 year old fossilised relic, the statements are false.
Yes this land has had human occupation for 65,000 years, but so has Africa.
To put it simply, it's like saying that one branch of a tree has a longer history than another.
All the Indigenous people of Africa have a history of living continuously in Africa since before all other modern humans left that continent.
If anyone can make the "oldest living in one region" claim it would be the San people of southern Africa - also known as the bushmen - who have occupied Southern Africa for at least 150, 000 years.
Many foolish statements get trotted out when Indigenous affairs are debated.
In a recently broadcast documentary, You are here: Occupation Native, we were told for example that: "We [the Indigenous people of Australia] are the only Indigenous people in the world that have never been offered a treaty."
This is simply not true.
Many Indigenous people elsewhere have not been offered a treaty and you don't have to look into ancient history or go too far from these shores to find them.
The farcical act of free choice in Western New Guinea, where a vote of 1025 selected men and women gave Indonesian control of the territory, facilitated a colonial takeover. To this day there is no treaty with the many tribes.
In both Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo the native people - generically called Dayak and consisting of many river and hill dwelling tribes - have no treaty with their Malay or Javanese overlords. Not only that, they don't have any title to the land they have occupied for generations.
Similarly many Amazonian tribal people don't have treaties with governments of this vast region.
Sometimes invaders choose to negotiate treaties, sometimes not.
And more often than not, where there is a treaty, it is something that has been imposed upon the loser of a war. They are not fair deals to compensate or protect losers.
The Treaty of Versailles brought World War I to an end but imposed such conditions on the loser, Germany, that it is often cited as the major cause of World War II.
In the San Francisco Treaty negotiated to end WWII in the Pacific, Japan renounced its claims to territories and accepted occupation.
Frequently invaders have simply taken the spoils, giving no thought to the rights of the inhabitants, who might be slaughtered or enslaved.
There is no morality in invasion, no legal justification.
Today, as the nation considers whether we should have a Makarrata or treaties with the first peoples of this land, we need honest accounts of our past.
The Uluru statement says a Makarrata would be the culmination of Indigenous peoples' agenda: the coming together after a struggle.
It would capture Indigenous people's aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and provide a better future for their children based on justice and self-determination.
If that's to happen there should be no denying the white invasion of this land, the wars and massacres, no pussy-footing around about the use of the term "invasion."
But there must be no rose-coloured glasses view of what has happened elsewhere and no negation of the goodwill of many of the descendants of the invaders.
Let's not pretend that the 700 odd tribes who inhabited this continent before 1788 all lived in blissful peaceful co-existence.
As it stands our constitution denies the prior existence of aboriginal people on this continent. That's a lie that has to be righted.
We also have to recognise that after the invasion wars, the invaders and descendants of the invaders did not all have bad intent. Rightly or wrongly many thought the proper thing to do was to have the Indigenous population assimilate or integrate into the wider population.
To this day others, including shock-jocks and members of parliament, support racist attitudes and policies.
The challenge is to come up with constructive Indigenous affairs policies and amendments to Australia's founding document.
We need the government's proposed questions to be put in a referendum to change the constitution and a clear statement on the Makarrata.
South Australia and Victoria are already addressing the treaty issue but there are many questions to be resolved.
Not least is who would be parties to any agreements and what regions and issues are covered by any agreement.
The Victorian government is planning to negotiate a treaty with 39 groups in the state but who's to say if these are the appropriate representatives?
We now have a mixed race population with inter-marriage between descendants of the invaders and later migrants and descendants of the various tribes.
Many people who identify as Indigenous also have a non-indigenous heritage. They should acknowledge this when they critique the issues and stand as Indigenous representatives and negotiators.