Category Archives: History

Australia, Australia Colonial history, Culture, History, Politics, radicalism

The Voice – be sure of what you wish for

The vote for the Aboriginal Voice in Parliament is the most critical vote living Australians will make in their lifetime. One should be absolutely sure of what one is voting for. David Barton has written one of the clearest articles I have come across on what’s at stake.

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As Lidia Thorpe so Eloquently Said, ‘It’s War’

David Barton, Quadrant, 6 April 2023

Most people don’t realise that Australia is at war – with itself. In a sense we are already engaged in an internal ‘us and them’ civil war which shows every sign of becoming much worse. This will be especially true if the ‘Voice’ referendum is successful. Indeed, the democracy of Australia has not been under such threat since World War II.

In 1940 Great Britain was under attack by Germany and losing heavily on all fronts. British forces hastily evacuated the beaches of Dunkirk, and France surrendered. The great battleship Hood was sunk by the Bismarck in early 1941 and with Japan entering the war in late 1941 the Prince of Wales and Repulse were both sunk and Singapore fell in early 1942. Things could not have looked worse. It was not until the Battle of El Alamein in November 1942 that the British had their first serious win and from then on there were many victories.

The ‘Voice’ referendum is Australia’s El Alamein. Let me explain why.

In many respects, Aboriginal activists have declared war on the rest of Australia and they did so many years ago. Senator Lidia Thorpe made this clear by declaring on January 26 “this is war” to the crowd at the Melbourne ‘Invasion Day’ Rally.1  Arguably, she is right. We, the citizens of Australia ought to consider ourselves at war with those who would seek to take over and reshape Australia in their own image and for their own purposes. Most Australians probably haven’t noticed, but we’ve been at war with ‘Aboriginal interests’ for a long time now, and over the last few decades it’s not been going well, to name but a few here:

♦ We have lost and given up vast tracts of land under spurious ‘Native Title’ legislation, now “formally recognised to be about 50% of Australia’s land mass”.2

♦ We have lost and given up to the now obligatory ‘Welcome to Country’, which in reality is a statement about who really owns Australia.

♦ We are now surrendering our language so that many English place names are being replaced with Aboriginal names.

♦ We have lost and given up to mountains, beaches and waterways being closed and ‘non-indigenous’ access denied or new access fees charged.

♦ We have lost and given up freehold title to National Parks now handed over to localised Aboriginal Corporations.

♦ We have lost and given up to having our children’s education about early Australian history now revised, distorted and perverted into self-loathing.

♦ We have lost and given up to our universities being run by socialist academics hell-bent on revising our history, society and culture.

We have lost so much, especially in the last five years; we have voluntarily given up so much at the hands of black and white racial oppressors. And they are oppressors, because no-one has ever asked us if we wanted any of this stifling treatment. All of what we have lost, of what has been forced upon us, has all been done to us without any consultation and without our permission or consent. Who gave them the right to do that?

Read the rest here …

Australia, Culture, History, Politics

No divisions – no separatism – one people under one law

I am firmly behind Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her fellow Aboriginal Australians. It is not racist to see the Voice as a retrograde step for all Australians.

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‘We are one Australia’: Fair Australia Indigenous delegation demands to be heard in Canberra

 Fair Australia, March 22, 2023 Matthew Sheahan 

A delegation of Aboriginal Australians have travelled to Canberra thanks to the Fair Australia (powered by ADVANCE) campaign, to ask the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader to hear their ‘no’ case in opposition to the Voice.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price hosted the 22 community leaders, including 11 from Ngukurr in Roper River.

Organised by ‘no’ campaign Fair Australia, they are seeking meetings with Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton to offer their simple message: the Voice will divide Australians by race, rather than uniting us as a nation.

Nationals senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has warned the PM not to expect First Nations people to vote “yes” on the Voice to parliament referendum.

Senator Nampijinpa Price introduced the Indigenous community representatives from across the country to politicians from different parties.

Senator Price said Aboriginal people did not want to be divided or segregated, as the divisive Voice will do.

“We stand as one under this flag as Australians – whether we are from the first peoples of this country, whether we’re from those who came on the first fleet, and the settlers and the migrants that come to this country,” she said.

“We are one Australia.”

Senator Nampijinpa Price said there was a legitimate fear in communities that the Voice would stoke division and undo any work to close the gap.

“We’ve overcome segregation in our country, to then go ahead and put it in our founding document, that is not the right thing to do going forward,” she said.

Fair Australia delegation member and social worker Molisa Carney said existing representative bodies that were supposed to be representing Indigenous people were “ignoring” them.

“Why aren’t our politicians … going out to the remote communities. In those communities, no one knows about the Voice,” she said.

“And what about our poor children, the next generation – what are you going to provide for them? Division? Segregation, you’ve already done segregation.

“We’re all Australians here, we’re meant to be working together – not against each other.”

Australia Colonial history, Culture, History

The truth about colonialism

It is high time for some sense and historical accuracy to enter the vigorous ‘debate’ about colonialism in general and Great Britain’s colonial past in particular. Nigel Biggar Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House, Oxford has done just that with his just published ‘Colonialism’. From Triggernometry’s description of the their interview with Biggar:

‘Nigel Biggar CBE was Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House, Oxford. He holds a BA in Modern History from Oxford and a PhD in Christian Theology & Ethics from the University of Chicago. His most recent book ‘Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning’ was initially accepted by Bloomsbury, who later changed their mind claiming “public feeling on the subject does not currently support the publication of the book”. The book was ultimately published by William Collins and has become a Sunday Times Bestseller.’

See the final 10 minutes of the video to hear who at Bloomsbury kicked up the fuss, forcing the publisher to run away from the contract and the author to take it back.

The interview here: (1313) The Truth About Colonialism with Nigel Biggar – YouTube

Buy the book here: Amazon.com: Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning eBook : Biggar, Nigel: Kindle Store

Australia, Culture, History, Law, radicalism

The Voice – Unanswered questions

‘Unanswered questions’ about consulting the Voice if Australia goes to war

Sky News, 14 March 2023

There are “unanswered questions” surrounding the Voice over whether the proposed representative body will need to be consulted if Australia potentially goes to war, says former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger.

His comments come after Sydney barrister Brett Walker SC labelled arguments made against the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament model as “racist”.

“Do we have to consult the Voice if Australia is to go to war,” Mr Kroger told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

“The Executive decides whether our country goes to war, but if the Voice is passed what it means is the Parliament and the Australian public do not need to be consulted, but you’ll have to consult the Aboriginal community about whether we go to war?

“That couldn’t be right – that couldn’t be the law in this country.

“Can they stop us going to war until there’s a High Court decision on that issue?”

Australia, Culture, History, Racism, radicalism

The Voice – It’s about sedition

NZ’s experience proves the Voice is not a ‘simple request’

How best to understand the danger of the activists’ divisive Voice to Parliament?

Ask a Kiwi like Casey Costello, an equality campaigner with Maori and Irish/English heritage, who as spokesperson of Hobson’s Pledge, knows the grave consequences of dividing our democratic system by race.

She joined Fair Australia spokeswoman Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in Canberra this week to issue a grim warning about what Australians can expect if New Zealand’s version of the Voice is a guide.

Remember this is what is coming if the dangerous and divisive Voice gets up.

In an interview with former Senator Amanda Stoker on Sky News, Casey spoke about how New Zealand’s government has given the Maori “a special kind of constitutional status”.

She said New Zealand’s Voice and Treaty for the Maori – in the form of the Waitangi Tribunal – has become a “co-governance” model.

This means there are two governments in New Zealand, one for Maori, one for non-Maori.

And they are constantly in conflict.

Casey said this system has divided New Zealand by race on the assumption that “better decisions will be made because the Maori’s will have a voice”.

The reality?

“Instead, it is a self-appointed, elitist minority advocating that they speak for all Maori, and the outcomes aren’t being achieved. In fact, in some areas we’ve gotten worse outcomes,” she said.

The specifics are terrifying.

Read the rest here …

Australia, Australia Colonial history, Conservatism, Culture, History, Philosophy

British Colonialism – was it good or bad?

A long review of one’s cultural antecedents would reveal that the past has been a process of growth, adjustments, defeats, revival, consolidations until the present time. Take what I regard as Australian history. Time travel would take the majority of Australians back to the United Kingdom. From there, we would go back through the centuries, through migrations, invasions, colonization, and consolidation to the tribes of Northwestern Europe. From there one goes into the haze of pre-history or unrecorded history.

The point is that the above phases are a natural part of human history, a part of the nation into which one is born at a particular time. A country, a nation or a people is not illegitimate because it was the result of colonization and migration. Indeed, the new stable consolidation erases and supersedes whatever was prior to it.

However, one can make a moral and social judgment about a particular phase of migration and colonization. Prof. Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford and canon of Christ Church Cathedral does so in his new book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning . Professor Biggar is interviewed by Peter Whittle on The New Culture Forum.

Australia, Australia Colonial history, History, Politics, radicalism

The Voice – propagating fundamental errors

The left – from mild to far left – have an ideology to propagate. The ideology is central. Propositions that are contrary to the Marxist vision of 99% of the left are simply rejected. This causes anxiety or embarrassment among some when they appear to be defying reason or plain observation, but little concern for most. They simply skip over the blaring problems when applying their ideological vision to the major issues of our time. Louise Milligan is a good example of this blissful evasion as Professor Gans pointed out recently.

Other common ways for the leftist mind to deal with objections rational people raise are to distort, misrepresent or create a myth. In the issue of the day – the Voice – mythmaking is running out of control. Gerard Henderson in an article in today’s Australian brings up a favourite. In this case, he was responding to a claim made by ABC journalist Dan Bourchier about the 1967 referendum. Here are the relevant paragraphs.

‘However, my interest was sparked as Bourchier wound up the segment [on the Drum]. He stated that Australians “don’t like changing the Constitution” and added “there have been 44 attempts, only eight successful”. Correct. And added: “Coincidentally, the most successful (referendum was) in ’67 to count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as Australian ­citizens.”

‘This is wrong – and is one of the many myths of Australian history. Two referendum proposals were put to Australian electors by the Holt Coalition government in May 1967.

‘The first concerned the nexus between the number of parliamentarians in the House of Representatives compared with the Senate …

‘The second proposal sought to give the commonwealth parliament power to make laws with respect to Aboriginal people wherever they lived in Australia. And also to make it possible to include Aboriginal people in the national census. This was a great success, with 91 per cent of Australians voting “yes” across the nation and obtaining majority support in all states …

‘The 1967 referendum had nothing to do with citizenship. All Indigenous Australians were classified as citizens – along with all other Australians – by no later than 1948 when Australian citizenship was introduced. Formerly, Australians were classified as British subjects.

‘In 1962, commonwealth legislation provided that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders could vote in federal elections. Before that, Indigenous Australians who had voting rights in some states were also able to vote at the federal level but their number was limited. Both changes were in place before the 1967 referendum …’

I suppose I could not blame Bouchier in one way. He was repeating a long propagated myth. I remember the 1967 referendum well. I was present at one of Charles Perkins’ rallies. (I was twenty-one.) The impression I had from Perkins’ fiery performance was that for Australia Aboriginal people were invisible. They were of no account. They weren’t even citizens. Of course, I voted ‘yes’.

If one wants to have an idea of the body of myths that Aboriginal activists are spreading, I refer you to Keith Windschuttle’s comprehensive The Break-Up of Australia: The Real agenda behind Aboriginal Recognition.

Australia, Australia Colonial history, Culture, History

Edmund Burke on what it means to be people

Gerard Charles Wilson

This essay should be read with the post, Australia did not exist before 26 January 1788, to appreciate the full argument.

When Edmund Burke claimed in An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs that the French Revolution ‘was a wild attempt to methodise anarchy; to perpetuate and fix disorder … that it was a foul, impious, monstrous thing, wholly out of the course of moral nature,’[1] he was targeting a particular theory of political organisation now known as ‘social contract theory’. It is essential to understand that in Burke’s understanding, social contract theory not only determines the form of political organisation of a particular people but the accompanying social organisation as well.[2]

The early theorists of social contract were Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Hobbes is considered the first to introduce the idea. Burke was clearly familiar with the writings of these political philosophers. There are recognisable references to Hobbes (Leviathan) and Locke (The Second Treatise of Government) in his speeches and writings, although he does not name them. He was scathing about Rousseau, reducing his entire philosophy (including the Social Contract) to one of vanity, claiming that ‘with this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness,’ and that ‘it is plain that the present rebellion [in France] was its legitimate offspring.’ [3] In other words, he attributed the ‘wild attempt to methodise anarchy [and] to perpetuate and fix disorder’ in France to Rousseau as a major influence.

In his writings on the influence of social contract theory in Britain, however, he had several contemporaries foremost in mind, notably Joseph Priestly (1733-1804),[4] Dr Richard Price (1723-1791)[5] and Thomas Paine (1737-1809).[6] He did not name Priestley or Paine but openly attacked Price in the Reflections on the Revolution in France, precisely on his understanding of the social contract.

Continue reading Edmund Burke on what it means to be people →
Australia, Australia Colonial history, Culture, History

Australia did not exist before 26 January 1788

The historical detail for my claim that Australia did not exist before the 26th of January 1788 is in chapter 1 ‘Foundations of a New Nation’ of my book Prison Hulk to Redemption. The key issue is the concept of nation. I use the text (below) from my book for my two-part youtube presentation. I include helpful illustrations in the videos.

(699) Australia did not exist before 26 January 1788 – Part 1: The Voyage Out – YouTube

(699) Australia did not exist before 26 January 1788 – Part 2: Establishing the settlement. – YouTube

The philosophical arguments about what it means to be a people or nation are in my presentation ‘Edmund Burke on what it means to be a people’. Both should be read or heard in combination to appreciate the full argument.

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Prison Hulk to Redemption

Chapter 1

Foundations of a new nation

ON 28 APRIL 1770, Lieutenant James Cook steered his ship, the Endeavour, into a broad open bay and dropped anchor at its southern shore. He named it Stingray Bay because of the abundance of stingrays in its waters on which his crew gorged. He later crossed out Stingray Bay in the ship’s logs and entered Botany Bay in tribute to Botanist Joseph Banks, the ship’s eager scientist. Banks had put together an impressive collection of specimens of unknown plants and animals after trekking around the land bordering the bay’s shores.

Cook and the Endeavour were on their way back to England after carrying out the official task of observing the transit of Venus from the island of Tahiti. There were also unofficial tasks, one of which was to investigate the existence of the South Land, whose ancient mythology promised great riches. From Roman times, it had been called Terra Australis Incognita—Unknown South Land. The search for the mysterious land of the south had occupied the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Spanish, and later Englishman William Dampier (1688 and 1689). Dampier added little to the findings of the Dutch seamen.

Until Cook’s voyage, the most successful effort to map whatever was south of present-day Indonesia and New Guinea was Dutchman Abel Tasman’s voyage in 1642 and 1643. The Governor of Batavia had ordered Tasman to find the unknown South Land. On his eight-month voyage, Tasman sailed west from Batavia (today’s Jakarta). Keeping the Indonesian islands to the north, he eventually turned and sailed far to the south before turning east. After navigating a great distance, he hit landfall. He followed the shoreline south, mapping it as he went, turned east, then north, but left the coast to head east again. He named this bushy landmass Anthoni Van Diemens Landt after Batavia’s governor. After some days, he made landfall again. Thinking he had sailed as far as Tierra Del Fuego in South America, he noted Staten Landt in his logbook. Staten Landt was the Dutch for the Spanish name of Argentine’s Isla de Los Estados. But Tasman was well short of Staten Landt

Continue reading Australia did not exist before 26 January 1788 →
Australia, Culture, History

Welcome to Country ‘virtue signaling’

Aboriginal Elder of the Narungga People Kerry White says the Aboriginal Welcome to Country used to be a ceremonial process and the overuse of it is “virtue signalling”.

She said Acknowledgement to Country, which is Aboriginal Welcome to Country, was only used when Aboriginal elders welcomed other Aboriginals onto their land for negotiation talks.

“They didn’t use it every day, it was a ceremonial process, so they’ve taken our ceremonial process and demeaned it by throwing it out there every day in every aspect of what Australian people do,” Ms White told Sky News Australia.