by KEVIN DONNELLY – THE announcement by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to overturn the decision by the Scott Morrison government to punish local councils for refusing to hold citizenship ceremonies on the January 26 has reignited the debate about the significance of Australia Day.
Indigenous activists condemn the arrival of the First Fleet as an invasion leading to genocide.
- It’s wrong to describe European settlement as an invasion.
- One of the mantras employed by Aboriginal activists is that now is the time for truth telling.
- Western societies like Australia are beacons of freedom in an increasingly hostile world.
ABC broadcaster Stan Grant, who describes himself as a “proud Wiradjuri man”, describes the arrival of Europeans as the nation’s “original sin”. A sin that still exists after hundreds of years and that will continue to stain innocent generations for years to come.
In the Australian national curriculum students are told the convict settlement “was viewed by First Nations Australians as an invasion” leading to “dispossession and the loss of lives through frontier conflict, disease and loss of food sources and medicine”.
REALITY
While there is no doubt the establishment of the penal colony and its gradual expansion led to Aborigines suffering dislocation, disease and violence at the same time the reality, compared to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, is that it’s wrong to describe European settlement as an invasion.
The Admiralty’s orders to Captain Arthur Phillip stated, “You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an Intercourse with the Natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all Our Subjects to live in amity and kindness with them”.
The fact Phillip took no reprisal after being speared and that convicts were punished when they ignored Phillip’s orders to treat any Aborigines encountered with respect also prove how wrong it is to describe the penal colony as an invasion.
As noted by Watkin Tench, one of the marines who arrived with the First Fleet, “all ranks of men have tried to effect it (to coexist peacefully with the Aborigines) by every reasonable effort from which success might have been expected I can testify”.
It’s wrong to emphasise what the historian Geoffrey Blainey describes as a black armband view of history where future generations and recent immigrants are held morally responsible for a supposed invasion they had nothing to do with.
While many denounce Australia Day as Sorry Day and argue there is nothing beneficial or worthwhile about January 26, the reality is that was the day Phillip raised the British flag in Sydney Cove proving to the French, who had recently arrived in Botany Bay, this was a British colony.
Unlike the French, who were soon to experience the violence and terror of the 1789 revolution, we were a colony that inherited a political and legal system drawing on the Magna Carta and Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England that embodied essential rights and freedoms.
A colony that also drew on Enlightenment values such as liberty, reason and tolerance that help explain why the British were the first to abolish slavery. Such was the strength of the anti-slavery movement Phillip argued in the new colony “there can be no slavery in a free land, and consequently no slaves”.
REVEREND
Proven by the arrival of the King James Bible and the first church service held on the February 3, 1788 by the Reverend Richard Johnson, Australia’s foundation is also deeply imbued with Christianity.
Central to Jesus’ teachings is what St Paul describes as the belief “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”.
Concepts like the inherent dignity of the person, the right to freedom and liberty and a commitment to social justice and serving the common good are biblical in origin. While not always followed, over time such Christian teachings have ensured Western societies like Australia are beacons of freedom in an increasingly hostile world.
One of the mantras employed by Aboriginal activists is that now is the time for truth telling. The same applies to both sides of the debate. Rather than condemning the arrival of the First Fleet as an invasion leading to genocide, it’s time to tell the truth.
The evidence proves, notwithstanding the eventual violence, dispossession and disease following the colony’s expansion across the Blue Mountains, the original intention was to treat the Aborigines fairly.
EQUALLY
It’s also true since January 26 1788 Aborigines have benefited from European settlement proven by the right to vote, to be treated equally before the law and decisions like Mabo guaranteeing land rights.
While representing 3.8 per cent of the population, it’s also true Aborigines receive approximately $30b annually in government grants, subsidies and payments.
It should not be ignored before European settlement, instead of being the First Nations, there were hundreds of different Aboriginal tribes and violence and warfare existed as it always has among other cultures and throughout history.PC
Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior fellow at the ACU’s PM Glynn Institute and the editor of Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March.
There’s no need to explain. It doesn’t matter, because:
(a) If it was not an invasion, there is nothing to be said about it.
(b) If it *was* an invasion, the aborigines well and truly lost the battle (as has been pointed out, they were extremely lucky that it was the English who came here, rather than one of the less morally-minded colonising powers of those times).
When will conservatives show enough wisdom to refuse to engage with left-wing morons on terms that are dictated by said morons? (The aphorism that is apropos is this: “Never wrestle with a pig, because you both get dirty, and the pig likes it”).
Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should consider themselves very lucky that they weren’t invaded because if they had been there wouldn’t be many – if any – left now. They should also be extremely grateful that a man like Arthur Phillip was in command because he was clearly a very caring and compassionate person. They should also be grateful that it was the British and not the Germans or Spanish who colonised Australia because there would otherwise have been a very different outcome.
I think many of us are getting sick and tired of hearing the whingeing and whining. There are colonised people all round the world who suffered far more greatly then our indigenous people but have just got on with their lives instead of playing the ‘victim’ game.
excellent article by Kevin Donnelly and quality informed comments
Love that expression: Truth-telling; like every leftie trope it is both ironic and deceptive. The left never tell the truth and the history of Australia is a classic case. Facts:
1 There were at least 3 waves of peoples coming to Australia before Captain Cook. The current mob were the third (see Manning Clark, Josephine Flood, Nathan Tindale and joseph Birdsell etc)
2 The first wave arrived 47000 bya ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312577659_Humans_rather_than_climate_the_primary_cause_of_Pleistocene_megafaunal_extinction_in_Australia )
3 All 3 waves hunted and exterminated the Mega Fauna, the biggest man-made extinction by humans, burnt the flora continually and fought continually with each other.
4 Each separate wave was in fact a real invasion
5 Each wave was a pure hunting and gathering culture with a ferocious patriarchal hierarchy.
6 None of these waves have left any cultural heritage or contributed to the current society
7 Mostly left wing policies have seen the current aboriginals infantilised and made into victims with little personal responsibility
8 $billions of aid have seen a massive decline in aboriginal lifestyles with rates of crime and domestic violence many times the rate of other Australians
9 The Voice is merely a means by which ATSIC can be re-established without any parliamentary control
Excellent article. It should be compulsory reading for all school children; Liberal Party members and politicians.
The British Empire of colonies in many countries was the most powerful nation of all and had a formidable naval force of ships and other well equipped military force. The hundreds of separate tribal groups or clans occupying to country now known as Australia were scattered far and wide and most had different languages and dialects, etc. They were by no stretch of the over active Aboriginal industry activist story tellers “First Nations”.
However the choice of the description First Nations provides a clue to the global activism and attempts to divide nations via UN organisations and associates. POTUS Trump addressed the UN in New York and requested them to stop interfering in the affairs of UN member nations. The Australian Aborigine activists who have taken exaggerated complaints to the UN are of course participating in the agendas.
Of course Australians today were not responsible for colonisation beginning 26 January 1788, colonial governments, or even the Federation of States forming the Commonwealth (republic) of Australia in 1901. We cannot sign a treaty (and that would have to be hundreds of treaties) on behalf of deceased people and their descendants (most part ancestry) cannot be compensated for things real or imagined from the distant past.
We can, and our Federal governments have expressed regret and even said sorry but that’s as far as it can reasonably and fairly go.
If Great Britain had wanted to invade this country it would not have been the First Fleet of settlers and convicts, they would have sent many well armed ships and soldiers. However that was not necessary because there was not one nation here.
So let’s not forget and ignore the distant past, Australian Aborigines and their traditional life should be recorded as information is discovered, there are of course no written records, and remembered. I have travelled extensively by road all over Australia since retiring and earlier on business trips. And have visited art galleries and museums looking for references to that history.
But as we cannot change the past we can work hard to make the future better for people and through a prosperous national economy. Disadvantaged Australians provided with direct qualified assistance were needed to benefit from our common wealth as it should be.
Another Aborigine & Torres Strait Islanders Commission called a Voice instead of Commission is a waste of time and money, remote in Canberra bureaucrats riding a gravy train. Research the history of ATSIC.