Mark Temby
The history wars have begun but should it be a war about the slant of educational subjects our children receive or the educational system itself? John Howard appears to be driving another wedge into Australian society and the Australian Labor Party prior to the next federal election.
Professor Manning Clark’s voluminous History of Australia first entered universities as an Australian History course in the early seventies. It was largely his passion that demanded a standalone subject as a precursor to secondary teaching. However, he has also been the subject of much venom and, possibly, professional jealously from the likes of Professor Geoffrey Blainey and other neo conservatives over the years.
Disconcertingly, various Labor politicians have already started to argue along ideological lines.
However, education remains a weakness of John Howard’s government at a federal level. John Howard continues to point his finger at the states while, under his own government, universities have reduced commonwealth funding as HECS fees have skyrocketed. His minister, Julie Bishop, recently claimed HECS debts averaged just $9,000 and were therefore affordable. I assume this amount includes the disproportionate number of first year dropouts as a basic completed arts degree would cost around $15,000. Deserving students have also been disadvantaged where entry level scores vary significantly between HECS supported placements and full fee paying students.
The numbers of trade apprenticeships are also failing our young people and industries. In the meantime, in true Australian fashion, our young sportspeople gain funding to advance their careers while our young scientists pay for theirs.
On the specifics of the history wars I will raise again Australia’s hidden past. Most Australian’s acknowledge the tragic history between “White Australia” and the aborigines but choose to turn a blind eye because we think it was either from another time and place or the truth is too confronting to their personal beliefs. Tasmania is a prime example of such a tragic past.
Does the average Victorian ever wonder why so few aborigines reside in any Victorian towns and cities?
Australian governments recently organised a summit on history taught in our schools but could not agree to a summit on Aboriginal assistance.
Western Australia is proud of its, mostly, convict-free status but this was not sufficient to prevent criminal behaviours. Travelling the west coast of Australia has provided a discomforting insight into Australia’s history. Most people are aware of the Derby Prison Tree, aboriginals in chains and the “Stolen (half-caste) Children.”
However, I wonder how many readers are aware of blackbirding? Blackbirders captured aborigines to sell their labour to the pearling and livestock industries. It was a further crime when aborigines “escaped their tenure.” Ignoring the literary cleansing required by neo conservatives, this was slavery through kidnapping.
How many readers are aware of the massacre of all the aborigines on the Dampier (Burrup) Peninsula?
The stark contrast in recalling history is evident today in Carnarvon where $2m in federal and state funding was granted in 2005 to research Australia’s greatest military loss from a single disaster where 645 lives were lost when HMAS Sydney II was sunk off the coast during WWII. In the same area, 700 aborigines were collected in chains from, essentially, the north west of the state. They were shipped onto two offshore islands from One Mile Jetty, separated by gender and spent their remaining days in exile. Their crime was reputedly having contracted a communicable disease. Cynically, I note the absence of any record of the white settlers’ liberty being threatened when it was they who brought the sexually transmitted diseases into the region.
Again, ignoring the cleansing needs of neo conservatives, these acts could only aid genocide across a region. Personally, I have always counselled temperance in the use of language to politically persuade the general population but there are no other outcomes I can see.
Roebourne is an example of a largely aboriginal town and is located centrally to the booming resource sector in NW Australia. News items throughout the Pilbara and the Dampier coast (eg Karratha) regularly reported on the difficulty to recruit staff for mining trades, labouring and retailing such as Woolworths and McDonalds. The McDonald’s franchisee even suggested recruiting from the Philippines. In the meantime, less than 20 kilometres away, aboriginal children play basketball after school while older residents are collected for the detoxification centre.
It is the education system that is failing these young Australians.
Will the new history of Australia teach the truth of, and reasons for, these past actions or will it be grab-bag of pioneers, economic periods, war heroes and mateship provided by anglophiles such as John Howard, Geoffrey Blainey, Keith Windshuttle and other aging neo conservative commentators?
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
