In the celebrated biopic Darkest Hour in cinemas now, Churchill, on route to Westminster, abandons a war cabinet meeting to step out of his Rolls Royce and take a London Underground train. On the train, he introduces himself to citizens, communing deeply with each one across the carriage, attentively listening.

Like Churchill, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull can be a charismatic orator. Like Churchill, he has enjoyed great wealth. Unlike Churchill, he is no stranger to public transport. He loves it, at least he did while he was a backbencher. If only he got out of his ComCar and started listening, travelling this vast continent and hearing what people had to say about Australia Day.

Most don't know what happened on January 26, according to this week's Australia Institute poll. Most don't appear to mind what day is used for the celebration. But a significant minority (21 per cent) feel "strongly" that the date should be moved to one that isn't offensive to the first Australians. Former Coalition MP Ian McFarlane is one of them.

"We wouldn't celebrate Scottish national day on the day of Cullodin, when my mother's side were absolutely slaughtered by the British, hunted down, women and children along with the warriors were murdered," he said this week.

"This is an issue for me. I wouldn't like to celebrate on that day, that's my history. And so I can understand those who have some sensitivity about Australia Day being on January 26."

Had Turnbull's ancestors been chained like cattle, had his children been taken away, had he needed to fight to show ancestral title, had members of his family been jailed for petty crime, locked in a stinking-hot paddy wagon risking more deaths in custody, then maybe he would want to generate a conversation and have the heart to acknowledge why many want to change the date. You don't need the scars of dispossession and poverty to see the case for a change of date, but you do need to listen.

Our angst about Australian Day is driven by bigger questions about Australian identity. In his video post this week, Turnbull said: "A free country debates its history, it does not deny it. It builds new monuments as it preserves old ones, writes new books, not burns old ones."

Yes, indeed. Let's write a new chapter with a new unifying date that draws a line in the sand under what went before, just as Turnbull wanted to when he was running the Australian Republic Movement. It's not about rejecting the past, it's about being ready to start a new chapter.

Former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash was among those who also joined the chorus, begging for a new beginning, one that Turnbull might also want if he got out more.

"I got to the stage [where] I cannot celebrate Australia Day. I'm sorry," he said.

"As an Australian who brought two Davis Cups home, representing my country, January 26 is not a day of celebration for me. People who really look into it would question that.

"It has changed my life. Seeing what has gone on up there."

Cash was introduced to the Northern Territory charity Children's Ground, by his niece.

"I always thought things were getting better, and I realised it wasn't. It's getting worse. I thought, is this really Australia?," he told the ABC.

"Felicity Hayes, one of the elders in Alice Springs, she has money to buy a house but hasn't been allowed to buy a house for 30 years. She has no electricity. She lives in a caravan, a broken old caravan.

"Having spoken to a lot of the elders out there and in South Australia, I realised there are serious open wounds. The idea that Australia Day is a day where we can join together, is just ridiculous."

There's nothing sacred about celebrating and trying to unify Australia on January 26. As Professor Marcia Langton and others pointed out this week, with images of wartime badges and posters, several dates in July marked Australia Day in the early 1900s, among them July 27 and July 30. It was only from 1946 that January 26 was called Australia Day in all states and territories, and only since 1994 that it became a public holiday across the country.

"The British brought a lot of good things, there's no doubt about that," Cash said. "But there is a problem with January 26. It brings a lot of pain to a lot of people. Surely we can find a day that the first Australians can celebrate."

As King George VI, "Bertie", encouraged his prime minister to do when he was considering negotiating with Germany rather than fighting, it's always a good idea to take soundings.

Cash asked: "When was the last time the Prime Minister went and saw the poverty?"

It's a good question. He is capable of taking soundings. He would be a better prime minister if he did.

But you get the sense that the real Malcolm is in a holding pattern, too spineless or simply trying to manage the hard right, to do or say what he really thinks, which is perhaps that change is inevitable and necessary.

Toni Hassan is a writer and an adjunct research fellow at Charles Sturt University's Australian centre for Christianity and culture in Canberra.