Having just finished reading historian Keith Windschuttle’s 2016 book The Breakup of Australia: the real agenda behind Aboriginal recognition, I have been astounded by his forensic analysis, providing as it does the context for the multi-front assertions of aboriginality into every aspect of our lives.
Publication of Windschuttle’s book predates the October 2023 referendum for Voice, Treaty, Truth, which was defeated by the majority of people in a majority of states. Still Victoria and South Australia undemocratically proceed towards what has been profoundly defeated by the majority. In an exercise of state self-harm, Victoria has already spent $millions to produce the Yoorrook Report towards Treaty with the few Aboriginals in that state, to be followed by compensation.
None of this Aboriginal activism has improved the wellbeing of remote Aborigines, their education, prosperity or incarceration rates. One could ask why. A teacher who invested years on the Homelands in NT trying to improve the literacy rate of Aboriginal children and their attendance at school provides a feasible answer out of her experience: “It’s all lies,” she said, “all based on lies”. Erudite commentator Henry Ergas agrees, questioning the “Truth” of the one-sided Yoorrook Report. Windschuttle forensically debunks the lies upon which claims of Aboriginal sovereignty are based, as well as the claims of victimhood, racism and exclusion of Aborigines from participation in the life and governance of the country.
Dishonesty of activist narratives are a major barrier to reconciliation, as no coherent future can be built on delusion and lies in this or any other matter. As demonstrated in my Maturity Model, truth (fact) is crucial to harmony; while choice, responsibility and expectations comprise generative decision-making. Constantly blaming others for their plight renders Aborigines immature, infantalising them as without agency over their lives, which is not true; they managed for 50,000 years. Realists working in homelands know the tail wags the dog. Bureaucrats and compassionistas keep infantalisation alive to maintain the Aboriginal industry, a great and increasing drain on productivity of the country on the way to Aboriginal claims of sovereignty over their own country.
Debunking the myths preventing reconciliation
Myth 1: Exclusion from the beginning
What is well documented in both Windschuttle’s book and Margaret Cameron-Ash’s brilliant historical treatise Beating France to Botany Bay: The race to found Australia, is the fact that the first Governor, Captain Arthur Philip, was commanded by George III to establish a settlement in which all people would be equal. Natives were to be included. Mercifully for all of us, Philip governed for five years, giving this country a sound foundation for governance.
Britain had barely recovered from expending enormous treasure and lives bringing global slavery to an end. It resolved not to repeat the great injustice, just as it had seen the fledgling United States fight a brutal civil war on the issue of slavery. Contrary to myths promulgated, Australian Aborigines were treated as equals from the start.
On settlement, Philip tried unsuccessfully to reach out to communicate with the natives. He then resorted to having two kidnapped to begin talking with them, but they escaped. Next he travelled to what is now Manly where once more he confronted the same two, who responded by spearing him in the shoulder. Understanding that his wounding was “payback” for the kidnapping, Philip ordered his soldiers not to retaliate.
Matter settled, thereafter friendlier relationships opened with Bennelong and the extended tribe, facilitated by sharing of food. On one occasion when soldiers reaped a large harvest of fish from the harbour in winter when food was sparse for the Aborigines, 40 baskets of fish were gifted to them. The event is marked in the naming of 40 Baskets Beach in Manly.
Bennelong became a close confidant of Philip and a channel to the wider native community, so much so that Philp built him a cottage on the grounds of government house.
Bennelong’s name is remembered in the site for Australia’s iconic opera house and the name of his wife Barangaroo in the major harborside development nearby. Recognition, value and equality established from the very beginning.
Myth 2: Invasion vs ‘Coming In’
Activists promote the myth of brutal invasion of the continent where Aborigines were mercilessly slaughtered. Again this is largely untrue. What Windschuttle demonstrates, contrary to other historians, is that Aborigines tended to tolerate expanding settlements, choosing to live on the fringe, ‘Coming In’ to benefit from settlers’ food supplies for which they gained liking. Flour, tea and tobacco were prized, just as Bennelong was won over by gifts of food and fish. For the Aborigines living a spartan existence having daily to hunt and gather food, settler largesse was preferable. Over time, proximity to settlers also provided opportunities for work as well as food.
That is not to say there were no skirmishes between the cultures. However, rather than a full scale invasion war against collective tribes, flare-ups appeared to be isolated, though not unexpected amongst contrasting cultures trying to come to understanding each other in that era.
Fifty years after the first settlement, the 1838 Myall Creek Massacre is remembered for the brutality of the crime committed by white settlers against innocent Aboriginal men, women and children, but also because eleven of the twelve assassins were arrested and brought to trial. Amid tremendous controversy, seven were hanged. Myall Creek was not the last time the colonial administration sought to apply the law equally to Aboriginal people and settlers, but it was the last time perpetrators of a massacre were convicted and hanged. Almost 200 years on, grudges still run deep despite the justice administered. How long a grudge? A dose of Bennelong’s practicality would help.
Whereas ‘Coming In’ in the early days opened opportunities to get to know Aborigines and have them share in the bounty, reliance on ‘Coming In’ has expanded to industrial scale today, resulting in wholesale welfare dependency of around 20%. Sadly, no expectation of gratitude, work, reciprocity or self-reliance prevails, just blame, hostility and ever greater demands that are unsustainable.
Windschuttle’s comprehensive dismissal of claims of ‘invasion’ puts paid to protests about offence Australia Day allegedly causes Aborigines now well and truly habituated to ‘Coming In’ by so many beneficiaries of welfare from the very people they disparage, Australian taxpayers.
Seems plenty of non-Aborigines have drunk the same Koolaid, adopting ‘Coming In’ as a lifestyle of dependency while righteously soaking the rich.
Myth 3: Constitution exclusion
Myths about the Constitution Aboriginal activists push to advance claims for special consideration in the move for sovereignty are systematically discredited by Windschuttle, who proves that:
- Aborigines were included in the political settlement that produced the Constitution in the 1890s and voted to approve the eventual Constitution, when in 1899 it was put to the people for final consent.
- In the Australian colonies before 1901 and in the nation and states after Federation, the great majority of Aborigines had the same political rights as other Australians, including the right to vote, which the Constitution guaranteed them under Section 41.
- The Constitution is a compact between six former colonies to form a nation with principal function to distribute powers between the Commonwealth and the states. It is not a history of the continent. Aboriginal ancient laws were not included because they were inapplicable to a modern industrial society, being customary, unwritten and secret.
- Activists’ attempts to transfer decision-making about Aboriginal affairs from parliaments to the High Court are based on a false ploy that the Constitution discriminates against Aborigines (untrue) and the belief that activist judges will favour concessions to Aborigines (more likely).
Myth 4: Voting inequality
Following upon the first Governor Philip’s mandate at establishment, no distinction was made between settlers and Aborigines in granting rights to vote. Some states initially were hampered by logistics of covering vast distances to remote locations and early conditions of land ownership, which came into line with Federation and passing of the Constitution. Eleven Aborigines are now represented in the federal parliament. They also run Land Councils, and participate in State and Local government.
Maintaining rage based on falsehoods stirs passion towards activist objectives to attain a separate sovereign state for Aborigines, under their own flag, self-governed, and of course funded by productive taxpayers from the rest of Australia. That will work! About as well as every other productive land, business or privilege ceded back to indigenous populations globally, abject failure, like every experiment of communism.
Their own country
Already Aborigines have dominion over around 54% of the country landmass, denying entry to non-Aborigines to many sites. While claiming they have been excluded, Aborigines now become the excluders, who want continuous unaccountable investment in their specialness, without any concomitant forgiveness for perceived wrongs, acceptance of apologies or gratitude for over $34b invested in them annually.
Non-Aborigines earnestly seek reconciliation. This can never be achieved while Aboriginal activists maintain rage in actively seeking division based on lies and non-factual myths in aggressive pursuit of separation and sovereignty over their own country in this continent.
Champions for good sense
All is not lost. People are beginning to ark up about the ubiquitous intrusion of welcome to country, recognition of elders, flying of three flags, renaming of cities and towns that did not exist before 1788, and immersion into education. They are speaking up.
At the opening of parliament this week, in disdain, One Nation Senators turned their back on the smoking ceremony and welcome to country. Michaelia Cash passionately stated that the rituals did nothing for reconciliation. For reconciliation Cash believed we should look to people who live it like former Aboriginal representative Bess Price who is married to a white man. She emphasized that parliamentary systems are based on Judeo-Christian beliefs and traditionally began with a prayer, not some fabricated mumbo jumbo chanted over smoking gum leaves.
Aboriginal Senator for the Northern Territory, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a true champion of reconciliation married to a white man is a fervent advocate for greater integrity in Aboriginal services, auditing of programs and Land Councils and greater concern for addressing alcoholism, sexual and physical violence prevalent towards women and children in cultural settings.
Dividing the continent into a separate nation (a term culturally appropriated from Canadian indigenous) may deliver power to elite Aboriginal activists who have already made their mark amongst global bureaucrats in Geneva and the United Nations. No merit whatsoever accrues to the mobs captured in 4th world squalor of separation, rather than assimilation, lives diminished by indolence, violence, alcoholism and FASD (foetal alcohol syndrome disorder).
Were we to ask who’s country we are being welcomed to, it may no longer be ours unless more speak up.