NSW One Nation Leader Mark Latham has defended the Prime Minister’s comments about Australia Day.

Reacting to Cricket Australia’s decision to not associate the Big Bash games with Australia Day, Scott Morrison said January 26 “wasn’t a particularly flash day” for British convicts either.

Labor and the Greens condemned his comments.

Among about 750 convicts and 550 crew, about 48 died on the 252-day journey to Australia.

Mr Latham told Ben Fordham Mr Morrison “was making a statement of the obvious”.

“It was a dreadful environment, who’d want to be a convict?

“What are we into now? That we’re going to measure up the pain of the Indigenous against the pain of the convicts?

“Well maybe both groups had some issues arising out of the 26th of January but in the years since Australia has built the most magnificent, successful nation in the world and if we don’t celebrate that we’re not much of a nation at all.”

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Image: Getty/Darrian Traynor