News flash: Australia Day isn’t a ye olde tradition It’s a strange, brutal and relatively recent quirk of Australia’s colonial history that January 26, a day that marks an invasion rather than independence, has even become our national day. It wasn’t until 1994 ― less than 30 years ago ― that all states and territories declared it a holiday. “People love to say, ‘Oh, but it’s tradition’, and I say, ‘No, it’s not. It’s in my lifetime.’” NITV’s ’The Whole Table’ panelist Wesley Enoch told HuffPost. “It reminds us that this country loves to forget history… “I had graduated from university and got my first job, and toured the world before they said Australia Day had to be on January 26.”