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.
The garb worn by the radical indigenous politician, Lidia Thorpe, during her protests on Australia Day this year had a much greater impact than she could have hoped. Waving her fake sword in the air and sporting the T-shirt slogan “Sovereignty Never Ceded: Speak the Truth”, Thorpe posed for photographs that were later used by almost every newspaper and television news bulletin in the country to accompany stories of her unexpected desertion of The Greens in the Senate. However, the proponents of a constitutional amendment for the Aboriginal Voice were less enthusiastic. They quickly recognized the threat these images represented. They have since tried to play down the concept Thorpe was advertising and to treat her as an isolated extremist rather than an accurate spokesperson for her cause.
In his article in The Australian (February 9 2023) the legal academic George Williams claimed that the referendum on the Voice promised by the Albanese government “has nothing to do with sovereignty”. This was, he argued, because the Constitutional Expert Group of which he was a member said so. The group was appointed by the Albanese government last year to advise on the issue and, predictably, it supported the line the government wanted it to take. Albanese was advised to take a position that Aboriginal activists had long supported in order to cover up the real agenda behind their demands.
Twenty years ago, in the book Treaty: Let’s Get it Right!, Mick Dodson had recommended that the term “sovereignty” be left out of any debate over constitutional amendment. Given the well-known failure of other referenda to be passed in Australia, Dodson said the Aborigines’ best hope of success would be if their wording kept to broad and less contentious principles such as “the right to self-determination” and ”the protection of indigenous laws and culture”.
Within the ranks of the educated Aboriginal elite, however, there has never been any hesitation about stating, both among themselves and in appeals to their white political supporters, what they really want. Here are some of the highlights from a campaign that goes back for more than forty years.
In April 1979, when Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister, the then existing Aboriginal body advising the minister, the National Aboriginal Conference, began to publicly endorse the notion of sovereignty and a treaty between Aboriginal people and the government. The government referred these arguments to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs which from 1980–82 conducted an inquiry into what it called a “Makarrata” or treaty agreement. The submission to this committee made by the National Aboriginal Conference declared:
In pursuing the Makarrata (Treaty) we assert our basic rights as sovereign Aboriginal nations who are equal in political status with the Commonwealth of Australia in accordance with the principal espoused by the International Court of Justice in the Western Sahara Case that sovereignty has always resided in the Aboriginal people.
School library discards outdated and offensive books on colonisation
Adam Carey, 18 February 2023
Dozens of 20th century non-fiction titles deemed historically inaccurate or offensive have been removed from the Northcote High School library as part of a push to decolonise the school’s book collection.
Texts that refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as nomads or hunter-gatherers, or that depict European colonisation as peaceful and omit reference to frontier conflict, are among those that were cut from the school’s collection.
The audit resulted in 36 books being removed from the library and a further 12 titles being filed under a new restricted category.
Victoria’s school librarians’ association, which is developing a “diversity toolkit” for schools seeking to update their collections, said Northcote had set an example for other schools to follow. Northcote has also encouraged other schools to follow its lead.
The large government school in Melbourne’s north leaned heavily on the guidance of Dr Al Fricker, a Dja Dja Wurrung man and expert in Indigenous education with Deakin University, in auditing all 7000 titles on its library shelves.
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’.
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.
Once upon a time, as fables used to begin, Australians could rely on established Australian companies and the corporate world in general to defend Australia and its history. Not any more. The corporate world is showing its lost its backbone. It’s now filled with weak men and wokist women. The companies and individuals below have chosen to destroy the Australia nation, as it originated in Sydney Cove, erase its history, and replace it with a reinvented Aboriginal culture with its accompanying myths. An Aboriginal Frankenstein.
These culturally empty people stink of self-loathing.
P & O Australia The cruise ship operator sent an internal memo to staff last week prohibiting the use of the flag or playing of the national anthem as well as banning any Australia Day paraphernalia. They said they wanted to ‘include’ everyone. What nonsense. They were too gutless to go against the woke activists. P&O Cruises overturn Australia Day ban following community backlash | Sky News Australia
Telstra – CEO Vicki Brady The Coalition has accused Labor of encouraging corporate Australia “to change our national day by stealth” after Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady revealed she would work on Thursday, declaring that for many First Nations people January 26 was a “painful reminder of discrimination and exclusion”.
Ms Brady is, to date, the highest profile corporate figure who has chosen to publicly announce they will be working on Thursday, as the national debate continues about the appropriateness of celebrating the day when Sir Arthur Phillip arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788. (The Australian, 25 January)
Canva
Lawyers Herbert Smith Freehills and Gilbert + Tobin
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.
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.
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
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT was determined to end the Colony’s chronic problems that only an energetic authority, they seemed to think, could overcome. An energetic authority, in their terms, was an authority that secured obedience. Fortunately, the man they chose was not one to come with a big stick to beat the people into submission no matter what. It was Colonel Lachlan Macquarie who arrived with his wife in 1810. He has been given the title ‘Father of Australia.’ The title is not at all undeserved. Though interrupted and bent at times, the basic lines of his regime would carry on into the future and be the foundation of the nation that would officially bear the name Australia before his return to the mother country. He was conscious of his supreme authority and the administrative and moral tasks ahead but was determined to be just to all. Above all, he accurately sized up the cultural groups that were jostling each other. He set about calibrating their power position.
First, he disbanded the New South Wales Corps and absorbed those staying in the Colony into the 73rd Regiment, which he had brought with him as their commander. The rest of the New South Wales Corps returned to the mother country. He had thereby considerably reduced the power of one class. He then embarked on an extensive infrastructure building program. Schools, churches, courthouses, hospitals, and army barracks rose everywhere. Towns and roads were improved, and new roads laid. Each district was to have a new town with a church, a school, and a courthouse. At the end of his tenure as governor, he could look with pride on 265 buildings, some of which one can only describe as imposing today, particularly those designed and built by the convict architect Francis Greenway.
At the same time, he took measures to raise the community’s moral standards. His Christian faith was of the first importance to him, so he was eager to uphold Christian morality as well as the requirements of gentility and civility. Accordingly, he combated the easy tendency of cohabitation between couples, enforced the Sabbath, prohibited drunkenness, and promoted Bible study. The truly ground-breaking policy, however, was his treatment of convicts, ex-convicts, and their children. And this is where his regime, highly regarded in London as well as in the Colony, met resistance. It would be his undoing. That warhorse, that monstrous troublemaker and despiser of all authority except his own, John Macarthur, would be back in town by 1817 to take his place in the vanguard of attempting to get rid of Macquarie.
GovernorLachlan Macquarie was called the ‘Father of Australia’. The title is just. It was his governorship that corrected many of the inveterate problems caused by troublemaker John Macarthur, the ‘exclusives’, and the NSW Corps who instigated the Rum Rebellion and removed Governor Bligh. Below is a short piece about Macquarie by Dennis Hill on his Facebook page. As is currently the trend, Hill gives too much space in such a short piece to the inevitable conflict with the Aborigines. See my next posting which has the section on Governor Macquarie from my book PRISON HULK TO REDEMPTION. I concentrate on Macquarie’s determining role as a nation builder.
Major General Lachlan Macquarie, CB ( 31 January 1762 – 1 July 1824) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Scotland. Macquarie served as the fifth Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, and had a leading role in the social, economic, and architectural development of the colony. He is considered by historians to have had a crucial influence on the transition of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settlement and therefore to have played a major role in the shaping of Australian society in the early nineteenth century. Macquarie expressing a desire for Aboriginal peoples to be treated kindly, in 1816 he gave orders that led to the Appin Massacre of Gundungurra and Dharawal people during the Hawkesbury and Napean Rivers
On 8 May 1809 Macquarie was appointed to the position of Governor of New South Wales and its dependencies. He left for the colony on 22 May 1809, on HMS Dromedary, accompanied by HMS Hindostan. The 73rd Regiment of Foot came with him on the two ships. He arrived on 28 December at Sydney Cove and landed officially on 31 December, taking up his duties on the following day. In making this appointment, the British government changed its practice of appointing naval officers as governor and chose an army commander in the hope that he could secure the co-operation of the corrupt and insubordinate New South Wales Corps. Aided by the fact he arrived in New South Wales at the head of his own unit of regular troops, Macquarie was unchallenged by the New South Wales Corps, whose officers led by John Macarthur had mutinied against and imprisoned the previous governor, William Bligh.
On 7 June 2022, The Guardian reported that the Andrews Government was establishing ‘an independent authority to help oversee the nation’s first treaty negotiations between a government and First Nations people. They were to introduce the Treaty Authority Bill after they ‘struck an agreement with the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, the body elected by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to help develop a treaty framework.’ In the meantime, one must assume that the authority is in full working order and the Bill is making its way through parliament.
The Guardian also reported that ‘First Peoples’ Assembly co-chair, Marcus Stewart, a ‘Nira illim bulluk man’, said the creation of the authority ensures treaty negotiations aren’t restrained by western concepts.’
Below is a photo of ‘Aboriginal’ Marcus Stewart. Now one would be struggling to find a more European-looking white skinned man than Marcus. Marcus evidently has no problem with the disjunction between his appearance and his claim to be an Aboriginal man. Unblushing, he presents himself everywhere with an animal skin draped around his shoulders. Of course, I’m assuming the animal skin is genuine and not fake like his pretensions.
But the disjunction between appearance and claim is not the only one. There is an even greater disjunction in his rhetoric about decolonization and treaty that leads into betrayal and treason by the Andrews Government.
Marcus explained: “This is about stepping outside of the colonial system. We’ve said to government, if you’re serious about treaty, you’ll do it our way, and to their credit, that’s what they’re doing. This is decolonisation in action.”
“The government is relinquishing some of its control and power and together we are creating new institutions that will be guided by Aboriginal lore, law and cultural authority that has been practised on these lands for countless generations.”
Marcus is guilty of spouting arrant nonsense. First, he invokes the categories of Western/European political discourse to justify the incoherent demand to regard his political faction as a separate nation. Second, there is no existing colonial entity in Australia. Australia (see my definition of what constitutes a nation) ceased to be a colony, de facto in the mid-19th century, and formally at Federation in 1901.
Third, Australia, whose development had absolutely no input from the sparse Aboriginal tribes pre-settlement, is a fully fledged nation with the complex of laws, government, science, technology, and so on, that one understands under the concept nation. Whereas the groups of Aboriginals (a European designation) pre-settlement were primitive tribes that continually warred with each other. Violence was a way of life within tribes and between tribes. Traditional tribal aboriginal life ceased in the 19th century – except perhaps for small groups in Northern Australia.
Finally, the is no direct line of development from pre-settlement Aboriginal life to a group like Marcus’s. Marcus, and those pretend Aboriginals like him, are engaged in crude cultural reinvention and mythmaking. And the Andrews government is supporting it – supporting a virtual insurgency.
Political prudence aims at ‘combining the principles of original justice with the infinite variety of human concerns.’
