The Myths of Indigenous History | Dr. Nigel Biggar and Dr. Stephen Chavura

And the narrative told in Britain is that we are systemically racist because of our Colonial history which can be summarized in the equation colonialism equals slavery brackets and the abor racism that justifi the enslavement of Africans that's the story told and that's what these kids have been taught that the whites basically came here with the intention of annihilating the indigenous Australians but when you look At the Historical records that is just a complete Mis uh misunderstanding it's a complete lie and our capacity to have free debate um our inclination to be concerned about the poor

um of whatever race uh our commitment to want to see equality these are Western values these are not Universal values and if we want to preserve a society where these things are value valued we need to take care to be grateful to what we were given [Music] Nigel thank you very much for joining us and Steve you as well all the way from Oxford out here in Australia in the Northwest plains of New South Wales Steve from the mighty Metropolis of Sydney thank you John we're dealing with something that I think all three of us

recognize is very sensitive how do we understand our past how do we understand very sensitive for me uh as someone whose families came Here on all sides long ago and interacted with the indigenous people um I have represented vast numbers of Aboriginal people across a very big electorate the size of England I think it's important to State at the beginning that we have nothing but good will and a desire to see all Australians enjoy a land of opportunity and a land of Justice absolutely but it isn't always easy I I Often wonder has my family

all the way through treated people decently and fairly it brings me enormous joy to think of the interactions I've had with indigenous Australians one of whom was a delightful local matriarch her name was Auntie VI her real name was Violet Robinson uh and you know VI used to tell me how deeply she had loved my grandfather who used to go and have a cup of tea with her in her house with her family on the Family Farm every Thursday morning and she loved it and I often think to myself that's nice I hope there was

a real atmosphere of respect and trust but I don't know uh another branch of my family uh settled in the same area that waren mundine's family originated in and to this day down through the generations we've remained connected since the 1830s and we're jokingly call well not entirely jokingly Call one another CA but it's so easy to be misunderstood so easy to say something inadvertent or something that sounds hurtful when that's not the objective Nigel for quite a while now there's been a view particularly in your home country Britain which of course colonized Australia that

colonization uh of other countries including this one is sort of Britain's original sin but surprisingly lately there has been quite a volume of Works suggesting that it's far more nuanced than that and that colonization was not only quite common in cultures down Through the Ages much more common than people realize but that it hasn't all been bad that's right John um one thing that needs to happen when we discuss our Colonial history in in public is we do need to send these set these things in context uh so be before we talk about What Arthur

Philip was doing when he landed in Sydney Cove in 1788 just bear in mind that in the 1600s the iraqui in North America had expanded North overwhelmed the Huron and sent other North American people's scattering to the to the West in the 1700s the kamanchi overwhelmed the Apache and established a vast slave economy in the southwest of what's now the US in South Africa the Zulu expand Westward um and then scatter other African peoples even Further Westward and what's now referred to as the inani or the crushing in other words the migration of peoples was

a universal phenomenon uh practiced by people with non-white skins before wh- skinned people from Europe started to do it that's the context um and also yes sometimes when um um one culture encounters another or white settlers encounter Aboriginal peoples there was misunderstanding mistrust and conflict but there was also Fascination um so in the early days of the of the settlement at Sydney Cove um some AB un come into the settlement because they're fascinating partly partly because the supply of food is more ready um and then then Ben along I think tried to persuade um Arthur

Philip and the settlers to become allies of his in a in a in a fight against other other original peoples um and and sometimes the two cultures were just fascinated with one another so it's it's entirely Wrong to portray the relationship of um white settlers to aboriginals um as as one of of conflict and opposition it it wasn't it was a it was a mixture right here where we're sitting was on the interface of some quite serious disagreements oldtimers used to tell my father and my grandfather between local groupings and indeed I told the story

it's a quite closely recorded history of The Red Chief the local leader here to a group of uh school students a couple of years ago only to discover that two girls in particular were quite traumatized they wanted to know why I had described as a hero someone who had acceptably in the customs of their time but nonetheless had in reality abducted two young girls from a neighboring tribe and then murdered one of the girls' fathers when he came out to try and rescue his daughter Now two of these young ladies were quite traumatized why is

he seen as a hero they are terrible things to do in many other ways he was a wonderful leader of the local tribe and you can see why he's revered to this day but doesn't it tell a story that we ought to be very careful about judging others that dividing line between good and bad is a lot more nuanced no absolutely and I think again when we think about the past we do need To get out of our 21st century skins I mean we in Britain and you in Australia uh right now we we live

in societies that enjoy unprecedented wealth health and security um and so it's it's if we assume that the rest of the world in the past should be like us then it's very hard for us to understand understand why people had recours to violence so readily in the past um it's only when we realize that if we lived in similar Circumstances let's say on a Frontier where there's no strong state to regulate our encounter with with strange peoples if we were in those circumstances we would have our musket at our side ready to defend ourselves so

we've got to get we've got to get out of our own shoes and use a bit of imagination um you you mentioned this this this fellow who was partly heroic but partly did things we might disapprove of and my View of that John is is uh as a Christian I don't expect I don't expect even Saints to be perfect um um so if we're going to have Heroes we've got a settle of a flawed Heroes take this example Martin Luther King uh deserved hero of the civil rights movement in in America um if you go

into Washington DC and walk around to the south side of of the lake called The Basin a very Monumental Monument to MLK there and we celebrate him for his Heroic um um action in in the 1950s in favor of civil rights we don't celebrate him because he was a Serial adulterer which he was right so all of our heroes are flaws we put up statues not to say everything this guy did was right but because he did something that was really a major human achievement so uh we need to be a bit forgiving about our

heroes they were flawed but some of them achieved remarkable things now to come back to something Else that you touched on is very important you just mentioned that colonization if you like displacement of other people enslavement of other people even the words banded around far too freely now genocide but the the ethnic cleansing of whatever you might want to call it has happened down through the ages in virtually every culture you care to think of particularly slavery y why is the anglosphere so assist with these aspects of our own History when no one seems to

give a damn about what has happened in other cultures in other places at other times no so you're right I me here in Australia of course um some people think that um white sist perpetrated genocide in Tasmania well I was reading this morning uh Jeffrey Blay's latest the first volume of his uh recent history of Australia um about um a battle fought in 1875 near a place called Running Waters In central Australia where one Aboriginal group takes Revenge upon another and the manner of the revenge is is extermination it it aims to kill women and

children so this people will never revive now that is a form of intentional genocide um let me be clear I disapprove of genocide whether conted by white people or or non-white people um so so first of all again again let's be let's tell the whole truth if some people in in Tasmania were genocidal and They were white that that is a barant but but the plenty of people elsewhere were also um genocidal in intent and as it happens I don't think it's appropriate to describe what happened in Tasmania as genocide and even someone on the

left like Henry Reynolds agrees with that um so so we need to tell the whole story about about the past as for why um we in Britain are currently obsessed with our Colonial history um um um I'm afraid we we imported views From America um I love America I I even married an American um but um we after the the the murder of of um George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 uh the black lives matter movement experienced an upsurge in the states came across the Atlantic landed in Britain and uh the narrative was Tak up

by anti-racist so-call groups in in Britain and the narrative told in Britain is that we are systemically racist because of our Colonial history Which can be summarized in the equation colonialism equals slavery brackets and the abor racism that justified the enslavement of Africans that's the story told um so it's a combination of American influence but also um um um left-wing anti-racist so called uh groups in Britain who found it who find it advantageous to pick up that narrative develop it and propagate it um that's why we're obsessing I mean you could probably also go back

even a Little bit further to uh radical new left thought in the 1960s and the 1970s that sort of took uh Marxist categories of oppressed and oppressor and applied it not just to classes but to racial relations and particularly in the light of the decolonization that had taken place after World War II this sense that uh West equals capitalism equals exploitation of uh Colonial peoples and therefore basically uh repainting the West as essentially evil Repainting colonialism as essentially evil and that in itself and this is how universities work and you'll know this Nigel it generates

uh research projects it generates ways of thinking that that that that people build their careers on that people do phds in that generate funding for universities and so it kind of becomes a self-perpetuating way of thinking you know that is what are all the ways we can uncover the evils of colonialism in the west and what are all The ways we can uncover the continuing legacies of col colonialism so I think we could take it back even further and probably even before this but certainly to the 1960s and70s new left movement which really infiltrated the

universities and Steve you're absolutely right because that helps to explain why uh um most of our cultural institutions including universities have readily taken up this this distorted historical narrative because they're disposed to by By the assumptions of left-wing thinking uh it's always struck me as really odd how the people in charge of our schools and universities and museums are so ready to tell a story about their own culture that is so radically negative why would they do that I I guess it's it's it's uh the the new left's ideology that has infected um um our

our culture for decades now yeah if if if if mainstream Australians who pay their taxes to support universities trust them To be objective in something like this I mean here are three simple irreverre refutable facts as I understand it on slavery African slaves were enslaved by Africans correct often brutally so the infirm older people younger children what have you simply killed then taken back to the coast where they were sold to the British so that that's a fact they traded the slaves that's if if Africans are worried About reparations from Great Britain why are they

not looking at reparations from some of their tribal opponents that's that's number one it can't be denied number two Britain alone so far as I'm aware voluntarily after a difficult debate over a long time sto the slave trade and then slavery itself number three they actually as the superpower of the day put their Navy out on the high seas to stop other countries like Brazil trading In slaves if surely it's imperative if we to have an understanding of history that those three facts alone be addressed and they radically alter the narrative that we're being given

why are we paying our academics to undermine and our young people and understanding what has really happened this is a really serious problem yes it is and I I I um i i s sometimes despair of my academic colleagues uh their failure to there are Plenty of good historians who who know these facts perfectly well and who remain silent um so I your your criticism is is entirely warranted uh and and um the story that that dominates is one that completely misses out all three of the the facts you've just presented and it's a story

that is propagated by um um certainly certainly left the leftwing Press also the BBC see it infects our schools um and and you're also right Universities above all in a society have responsibility to seek up the whole truth not the partisan truth the whole truth and to many of our universities and our historians are failing to tell the whole truth it's a major failure of public duty I think so Steven you've thought a lot about this from Australian perspective you really would think from a lot of what we're being told that the British government came

here invaded the place With the intention essentially since it's banded around so freely now of of of committing genocide how realistic is that assess how honest is that assessment completely false and and it's sad to say that it has so permeated Australian Minds often through the education system so my late father was a high school teacher and he was once telling me uh that he once went and saw a school play performed by Primary School students and it was a School play on sort of the origins of Anglo European Australia and it depicted some children

uh depicting uh Aboriginal Australians they they were there and then they see other children come up uh sort of and they're supposed to sort of be the First Fleet and and Captain Arthur Phillip and then the these other children start shooting dead all the Aboriginal kids and they all just fall down and that's what these kids have been taught that the whites basically Came here with the intention of annihilating the indigenous Australians but when you look at the Historical records that is just a complete Mis misund understanding it's a complete lie Arthur Phillip uh was

explicitly told by the crown that he and everyone else is to pursue friendly relation uh friendly relations with what they called at the time the natives that none of the natives are to be molested or violated in any way in fact the natives the Aborigines were considered um subjects of the crown and to be a subject of the crown meant that you had uh certain rights that you had rights uh not to be harmed by other subjects of the crown and which meant that if someone harmed you you had the right to appeal to the

law they were considered uh basically people with British rights because Britain had anex the territory uh Arthur Philip even explicitly said upon arriving here in 1788 that there will be Absolutely no slavery uh in this colony and he of course was influenced by the Evangelical British Enlightenment movement in that way of thinking because of course people like William wilburforce and John Newton and others had a tremendous influence on the the Personnel who came over to the Colony and the other fascinating thing is and again you read this in the original documents which are all publicly

available all you need to do is go to The historical records of New South Wales or the historical records of Australia they in every good library and it was Arthur Philip's hope actually that there would be intermarriage between uh the the convicts and the Aborigines he wanted them to there was by the way there was of course and that and that was the great hope uh so that they could basically get along with one another and and and look I think we can say that these hopes were Naive but the idea that the the English

that the British came here and simply wanted to kill and annihilate the aboriginies and just clear them out of the way uh is complete myth it's and it's completely contradicted by the available evidence that they came here hoping albeit naively that there could be coexistence that they wouldn't too much get in one another's way and that ultimately they were hoping that Aborigines would be able to join uh British civil ization which the British genuinely thought was the greatest gift that they could give them um it didn't turn out that way and we can talk about

that a bit later but this idea that they came here with the intention of committing genocide and just killing off the Aborigines is a complete lie to go back nazil to I mean England was a pretty cruel place itself and and somebody pointed out to me the other day that there were military people on the On the confict ships that were sent out here uh but they weren't for the purposes of attacking the na the the population here the native population in Australia Yeah by which I mean the people who were native to Australia um

they were there to guard over some pretty cruy treated I'd have to say fellow countrymen absolutely and um when I talk about these things I I again I ask people to use their imaginations um you Know imagine you're a old boy in London you steal a chicken you're arrested you're tried and convicted sentenced to hang but your sent sentence is commun transportation you get in a wooden boat in 1780 cross the Atlantic to Brazil then to South Africa cross the Indian Ocean you almost drown you almost die fever you pitch up in Sydney Cove you

serve out your sentence of 5 years breaking rocks and then you're given the piece of land and and enabled to to Given a chance to to build a new life um and um um in due course your your farm produces corn to which theirin has help themselves you try and demonstrate with them you don't speak their language eventually the conflict breaks out the point is point is this um this this this now 23-year-old uh former former convict was fleeing an awful life in London and and and and risked his life to to get to to

to to Southeast Australia I don't think it's reason to expect him to have gone back so so he was here and he he had no he had no desire to make trouble with Orin he just wanted to raise corn and feed his family but because of the cultural Clash um the aiges didn't understand what private property was they were used to picking up food they found they picked it up they didn't understand that he felt that he put his life and soul into producing this stuff he needed it to feed his Family and they were

stealing there was a cultural class clash and conflict arose tragically uh I don't think either party can be blamed um uh but we again we need to use our imaginations and realize the conditions of of of the past and because people were generally insecure especially on the frontier they had easy recourse to violence we are lucky in living under strong states which which regulate our encounter with strangers and we don't Need to use violence because we are protected people in the past weren't didn't enjoy that privilege so we need to look at the past with

a certain humility and a certain self-awareness we are we are enormously privileged they weren't there's a very interesting point that you're both drawing out here and I think it's the difference between what might be called the better angels that were trying to create a much better Britain y That battle was playing out at the very time that Australia was settled and turn becoming a nation so you had people really wanting to recognize the worth and dignity of every individual and fascinatingly um pit the Prime Minister chose the third ranking Naval officer Man by the name

of Middleton to organize the fleet and he wrote extensively he wanted the fleet to be well ordered well it was well ordered the ships were all quite young they weren't warships that Were nonetheless very seaworthy they all made it that was unusual in those days um secondly he wanted it to be a place of Rehabilitation that was not common in the Britain of the day no he wanted the convicts and this was ultimately to play out to be given their freedom and fully restored as members of the community uh and to that end he put

them on a diet was the same as the the guards as I remember they weighed more when they Arrived in botney Bay than they did when they left England that's true yeah is extraordinary but the third thing he wrote going to your point Steve it might have been naive it might have been wishful thinking but he plainly deeply believed they could bring things of value to the indigenous people in other words his motivation was not genocide his motivation the organizer of the First Fleet was to reflect what he saw as Emerging British values to do

the right thing and give them a better life well I mean again when you go back to many of the early documents there's there's almost an admiration uh for the for the aborigin so Arthur Phillip uh one thing he admired was when he pulled into a particular Cove and saw Abes jump in the water and start to swim towards the ship he thought that was very brave of them so he decided to name that area Manley After the Aborigines and there there was a kind of admiration of them there's certainly no indication that there was

some plan or some intention or some desire to destroy them although you know it has to be said we have we we this is the important thing we do need to make the distinction between certain Elites like the governors like the clergy like judges and magistrates and the people living on the farms yes and we'll probably talk about This later who lived in a Perpetual state of Terror of the Aborigines and if you want to kind of understand why things went so wrong you can't understand it unless you understand the situation that both the abides

and the settlers found themselves in and it explains a lot well that's where I wanted to go now because you get out onto the Frontiers and the best intentions of the government in London the administration in Sydney uh of good People everywhere wanting this to be you know a civilizing time in reality just as in any society there are people who for various reasons good and bad don't fit that mold so we're not far from where one of the horrendous early massacres took place the Mile Creek Massacre 1832 very very early days there's a couple

of interesting things to 1838 38 big you're right yeah uh my family literally arrived in that District four years later uh and and that's an interesting thing for me to mull over the first point to not is that the men weren't there they were out working as Stockman they were employed taking up the opportunity that were starting to emerge different ways of living and feeding yourself and looking after your family the truly horrendous thing is that it was basically women and children only that were at the campsite when a group Of whes took it upon

themselves to behave with almost The Butchery of the 7th of October it was terrible I read the detailed accounts appalling and then tried they didn't actually Glo over it rather more like the Nazis they tried to hide what they'd actually done to their victims uh but part of the evidence presented in the court were the bones of a young girl who' been terribly mistreated and then burnt in an attempt To hide what they' done it's a horrific story but it it paints for me again that contrast between where London and the better angels in Sydney

were trying to take this new experimental society and where people on the front line sometimes came out yeah well I mean the Mile Creek Massacre is one of the most appallingly cruel episodes in Australian history how does one human being do that to another it's a good it's a very good Question and look these sorts of things have happened all throughout history they still happen today in war torn countries I we look in terms of why things went so wrong in so many instances I think I think it's a very important thing to remember that

when the First Fleet comes over here to establish a prison there's something that they don't have when they get here it is prisons they get here and it's Bush so The the the convicts straight away were able to roam pretty freely there were no prisons and there weren't enough guards to keep an eye on every convict and when you read early documents like the diary of the surgeon on the First Fleet what conten what he his explanation of of why the conflict started was that convicts would wander off into the bush sometimes start trouble with

aboriginies by stealing their artifacts they might steal something that they've made a Piece of jewelry or or something that they need to catch an animal they steal them sell it to a soldier or something now of course to the aborigin you're stealing their livelihood yeah and that's a very serious thing and so there'd be a reprisal attack and you know Days Later other convicts might go through the bush and find the body and so there's a sense in which the soldiers and there weren't that many soldiers they couldn't control what the convicts Did and the

convicts did start trouble with the AES and what can tench is very sympathetic with the Aborigines now the other thing that I alluded to earlier mean this is how some horror film start what what for example imagine living in a completely isolated area where other people are maybe a 100 kilometers away there is no light there is no electricity it is just maybe you your wife and a small child and then you hear people starting To surround your house at night what do you do you are absolutely terrified this is an age where you cannot

call the police if you need help it is an age where there actually are no police around near you you've got to protect your family yourself it's a terrifying state to be in and so and what that meant was is that settlers genuinely were terrified of many of the Aborigines and the Aborigines were quite terrified of many of the settlers because the Settlers had guns but the Aborigines of course had their weapons as well and it turned very quickly particularly when the wool industry starts in the 1820s and more and more land is being taken

up by settlers with with sheep and sheep can grow from 500 to 900 within a year if things are going well particularly in Australia it was a booming industry basically it turned into a kind Of Hoban circumstance where both saw one another as a kind of terrifying enemy and so what would happen is you know um there'd be hundreds of sheep and and and and and someone would find that the Aborigines maybe had killed a few sheep and eaten them they might go to the Aborigines and say don't do it again and then they you

know maybe a few weeks later they find it's happened again so maybe they will either shoot an aborigin Or shoot in the air or something like that they'll do something like that and then Aborigines might come back for a reprisal or Revenge attack and usually do something like Set Fire to the roof of the house people run out and they start attacking them this happens to a a a few people uh in a space of one month in somewhere between 1828 and 1830 in a space of one month there are over 40 such attacks in

in Tasmania on on settlers and which resulted in the death Of about five settlers the injury of about 10 so these things were incredibly common on the mainland and in Tasmania and so then what happens is well you you're basically in a state of war with local Aborigines and you can either wait for them to come to you or you can go out and try to find them and and and and and completely predictably and tragically of course there were killings um how many we really don't know and we can talk about that later but

we've to Go back to your early Point unless you empathize with the position not just of the Aboriginal but also of the settlers who were living in a state of Perpetual Terror and you read this in the newspapers then you will never understand why things turned out the way they did they didn't just go around killing Aborigines because they hated blacks it wasn't that a lot of them did some did oh no not some a lot but that's not why this started this started Because of the reasons I've just mentioned and then that led to

terrible attitudes I agree um let me add a couple of things first of all um what happened at Mile Creek was a Boren absolutely Boren but let's put that in context as I said earlier that kind of atrocity happened too often it wasn't the only form of relationship between settler and Aboriginal there was also intermarriage there was also Mutual Fascination and There was Mutual Aid so that's the context this was awful it wasn't Universal the second context next is and I mentioned this earlier white settlers at Mile Creek did something bant abin is in um

uh the place I mentioned earlier which I forgotten the name running water in central a Australia same kind of thing abor let's put let's have the whole truth here yes both both peoples did terrible things and now one question this might Raise in the in the minds of those are listening to us is okay well maybe col was a bad idea yeah that's that's where I was going to go should should never should have happen they shouldn't have been there shouldn't have been there uh shouldn't have been there and having discovered you know what was

happening in the frontier how all the utopian ideals of of London were falling apart on the frontier they should have gone back so uh here's the thing um abinal Australia uh because it had been cut off from the rest of the world had had not developed in the way that that other peoples had technologically politically um it was very simple and very vulnerable uh sooner or later the outside world was going to come to Aboriginal Australia if it hadn't been for the for the British would have been the French well they nearly got here ahead

of us they did almost they did God help Australia if that happened but but uh much worse would have been if the muray had come now the Muay had already got to North F Island which I I think is halfway between Oakland and Sydney the the two canoes were discovered there in 179 90 s the muray could could they had crossed large bodies of water when the when the muray invaded the chatam islands in 1835 what did they do they slaughtered 10% of of the population and Enslaved The rest okay that could have happened to

Aboriginal Australia um so so when we talk about the British arriving we need to put it in that context if it weren't the British it would have been someone else could have been much worse and the fact that as Steve rightly said the the attitude of the likes of um Arthur Philip who led the first Fleet and then subsequently L mcari were extraordinary Enlighten Enlightened extraordinarily egalitarian um and this this egalitarian impul the notion that all human beings regardless of race and regardless of the level of cultur development are equal uh in the sight of

God and that's what powered the the movement to abolish slavery in the late 1700s and expanded in the 1830s to a general concern for Aboriginal peoples that is why ainal peoples were granted the vote in New South Wales and Victoria in the 1850s That is why black afans Africans were granted the vote in Cape Colony South Africa in 1853 um Mai in in male Mai in New Zealand in 1867 and um uh Native Canadians in Eastern Canada in 1885 the principle that that all people regardless of race are equal now that is that's something we

take for granted in the in the modern West as if it was a universal notion and and was part of the Cosmic Furniture nonsense lots of cultures then and now do not believe in Racial equality and final Point um world value survey 2023 um among the questions asked of people in 70 countries was uh would you object to having an immigrant as a neighbor would you object to having someone of A different race as a neighbor these are uh questions designed to detect levels of racism Canada Australia and Britain are Near the bottom 4% 4%

2% China Russia Iran are near the top it's not a coincidence that countries that belong to the British Empire are now among the least racist in the world so let's tease out this idea of um of the reality that for one of a better word you have people of good intent really trying to build a civilized country those who are terrified and perhaps acting irrationally and those who are just playing bad and frankly the M Creek murderers fall into that latter category no doubt about it but here some interesting things that happened there was a

very very brave white man who saw the Injustice of it and started to insist that the police who were hundreds of miles away they hadn't caught up with this new frontier go out and round up the perpetrators and they did it in the face of obstr obstruction I have it has to be said of of quite a few people who wanted to cover it up but here you have A bunch of men who are taken to Sydney and put on trial the jury acquits them horrendously one of them says I will never see a white

man hang for killing a black man that's right yeah but we have a very brave we'd call him attorney general now a man called John plunket who's a Catholic guy he's come out here because under the rules that applied in Britain he couldn't go any further in his career but he could out here yeah and he's a very courageous and an Incredibly humanitarian man and he forces a retrial yes what happens well well the first trial uh the perpetrators were acquitted within 20 minutes of the jury deliberating and as you say John Hubert plunet was

outraged as was the governor at the time Governor gibs and so he saw to it that there was a retrial and the the newspapers were totally against the retrial they were very much of the opinion that that no white person should be hanged for killing a black Person but the retrial took place and the upshot of it was that it was about eight or or nine of the original perpetrators I can't remember off the top of my head were found guilty and around seven or eight of them were hanged and one who wasn't hanged eventually

later on took his own life and those who knew him said that he was forever playing Ed by the dark deed that he had done and so that was an instance in which of course for for a deed like That there is no full Justice This Side of Heaven but the best Justice that could be offered at the time uh to a subject of the crown was offered to those victims and that in many ways was a sort of Turning Point uh in in Australian history where people were held to account for an atrociously cruel

Act to completely prised British Justice yeah Rough and Ready and a bit delayed but it did finally arrive finally yeah um there are other Stories for reasons that listeners and viewers will understand I'm sensitized to this I come from a pioneering family one branch of my family settled in the hunter Valley a real conflict broke out because a convict had done something as I understand it pretty bad m uh and a group of indigenous people put together a Battle Force and went to seek revenge they arrived at my great great grandmother's house in the LA

Hunter Valley surrounded It my great great grandmother must have been a terrifying moment for it went out only to discover that the indigenous people who lived right by them on their Farm had surrounded the house themselves they formed an inner ring and said these are good people these are our friends leave them in peace and the people on the war path moved on and I don't want to assume that my Family did everything right at all points I don't want to do that for a moment but I find that encouraging now one of the children

who survived then moved to the Clarence River and he eventually married an Irish lady who was very highly educated so she set up a school for the locals and Warren mandine a very well-known leader in this country and I affectionately call one another cousins because his forbit is as he said Benefited from he said look it wasn't always easy but good things happened and your family showed us some things we couldn't have done otherwise and you know played a role in educating us and that's been to our great Advantage I mean that that is very

important that I mean part of the problem with the current debate on the history of black white relations to put it crudely in Australia is that I I think Underneath It All there's this sense That there's almost this belief that oh had the British not come here everything would have been great that there would have been this idic life for the inhabitants if only you know for the British but as Nigel pointed out it was inevitable that Australia would be colonized I mean this is one thing that humans do uh in fact there are books

written on it you know we we we we travel we walk we we explore it it's something that makes us human uh we want To know what is beyond the frontier and then we want to know what is beyond that it was absolutely inevitable that Australia was going to be colonized at some point what the col and and it also should be said that at every point I mean John Hubert plunker a great man was one of many men and women who had a genuine Sympathy for the Aborigines uh many of them were missionaries many

of them were Ministers of religion there Were um Governors other sort of colonial Elites and they knew that the Aborigines had got a raw deal they knew they they saw the problems that had been Unleashed they saw what alcohol had done with them they knew that small poox that pneumonia uh that other diseases had absolutely eviscerated the Aboriginal population uh in the late um I can't remember the exact year it might have been 1797 but probably round about uh Onethird or one half of the aberage jisan city died of small poox so they knew what

they had had brought you know quite unintentionally and they and they they felt for the for the Aboriginal people and they thought what is the best thing that we can do for them and there were certain things that they tried to do and so missionaries tried to protect them from the worst elements of both indigenous and white Society by starting Missionary reserves where white people were generally kept out so they couldn't exploit the Aborigines or give them alcohol and it also stopped other tribes from coming in and Waging War on them because as we've said

um there were many many firsthand testimonies that you can find in documents and books written in the 19th century of tribal conflict so Furious that whole tribes are nearly wiped out it's interesting thing I mean it's it's nowadays trendy to call Aboriginal people First Nations people well if we are actually to consider each tribe a nation then by definition when one tribe nearly wipes out another tribe that is genocide when one tribe takes over the land of another tribe which is what happens to the southern orente people in 1875 in Western Australia they lost their

land and they were slaughtered that's colonialism that's that that is genocide and and and so there were measures to try to do what What we could to make it up to them and and and that meant educating aboriginies who were willing to be educated uh it also meant trying to teach uh trades try to teach them farming so they could take advantage of sort of Western Civilization it took a long time for it to happen but that did eventually over time succeed maybe Steve can can fill this in for me certainly in Canada in the

1800s uh Native Canadians were aware that the their traditional way of living was no longer sustainable certainly in the 1870s when the Bison population collapsed in the Western Plains native Canadians knew they had to adapt and change and from 1830s onwards uh Native Canadians were lobbying missionary societies and government to set up residential schools uh to which they could send Their kids voluntarily to learn English and learn Agri agriculture because that was the only way in which their people would survive into the future um uh so so certainly in Canada native peoples wanted didn't didn't

necessarily want to to abandon everything in their own culture but they recognized the need to adopt certain things from the new culture in order to survive and prosper I imagine that that must have been the case in Australia to Some extent well it was a native learning institution there's not a title we'd give it today yeah but Lan mccaran and his wife they routine and they were part of that British evangelicalism committed to the equality of all doing good by convicts and by the indigenous people so they set up the native learning school in param

in I think 1812 St I can't remember the exact date but that's about right yeah and mcari has formed a genuine friendship with a local Medicine Man uh called yundi and they agree that his daughter English name Maria I don't know what her indigenous name would have been should be enrolled voluntarily there's no coercion in her case so she's enrolled four years later she tops the public examinations in your South well she's the brightest kid after 4 years of education in the colony she goes on to marry a white convict a carpenter they produce I

think it's 10 children they start a family Dynasty they were very successful at business and became very prosperous and were given two separate grants of land that is extraordinary and I made that comment to someone said well you know so they had a grant she got a grant of her own there's no way a woman in that culture would have been given a ground of land no it wouldn't have happened that's right well I mean you know it's it's a very sensitive thing to talk about but the The the the the universal testimony of Colonials

and and Colonials highly sensitive and highly sympathetic with Aborigines the universal testimony was that Aboriginal woman were treated absolutely appallingly um test the early records are quite compelling on that oh the records right from the beginning pe people's Diaries also well into the 20th century noting the way that women were savagely Beaten around the head the way that women were ritually abused uh raped uh used as diplomatic um currency to Garner favor from one Chief to another send over a woman for the for their use the Europeans used to do that well that's that's an

important thing to keep keep in mind that that that certainly you know Europeans are not certainly not immune from criticism but there's sense in which I mean look the way women were treated was even AB barant to the Europeans who you know many would say in the 18th century didn't have particularly enlightened views about women you that that's another debate um but we are talking about really horrific treatment of women um and that is something that certainly many of the the white people try to rescue women from and sort of bring them into Christian reserves

to protect them from that kind of treatment and as the brilliant Anthropologist Peter Sutton uh said in His his book um the politics of suffering he said in all his decades living with Aboriginal communities he never once came across a woman who long for the old days to return they were absolutely brutal and Savage for women it's it's a very uncomfortable thing to say and I I don't say it to uh put down uh indigenous Australians or anything like that it is just a fact and again it speaks to this idea of again there's this

idilic view that everything was Great prior to the Europeans but everything was not great um it was a very hard life for a lot of indigenous Australians and and and we do often Marvel at the fact that indigenous Australians were able to survive for so many thousands of years without any of the technology that we had with with I guess really really Stone Age Technology literally but what we forget now exactly how many there were on the mainland no one really knows 300,000 350,000 no one really knows but what we do know and it's universally

testified uh by settlers and and spoken of by Aborigines themselves is that one way that they survived as a semi-nomadic people was by infanticide infanticide was something baked into Aboriginal culture and in a way it had to be because it's very difficult to be nomadic and bringing about you know three four little children um and again when you don't Have modern technology to grow food in vast amounts food is pretty scarce and and it's probably the case as Jeffrey blay said that a lot of the Aborigines lived a lot better than a lot of the

Europeans at the time the poorer Europeans but one of the ways they were able to survive was quite frankly keeping their population Low by killing by killing their own babies usually by strangulation or some kind of Suffocation how many um again no one Really knows but historians and Witnesses suggest that at its highest it might even have been one sort of um I've got the figure here possibly one in three babies killed pretty much upon birth and so what one of the things that allowed them to survive so long was infanticide um that is nothing

that we should lament ending that that is not a cultural attribute that that we should be sort of Saying it's a Pity that finished and The Awful Truth is that if you were a girl you were more likely absolutely that is absolutely the case John you just you raised just a moment ago the issue of cultural comparison right so you're right to say that in Western Christian civilization at certain periods certain human beings were were very M badly badly treated um uh but in in western civilization we can see a certain kind of moral progress

in the New Testament first century St Paul a very subtle stance on on Roman slavery but he does imply that he does he does say to to a Roman slave owner fiman that he needs to treat his slave his runaway slave whom Paul returned to him as a beloved brother so early on the seed of the notion of human equality in medieval France and England 13th century or thereabouts slavery was outlawed and then uh in the late late 1700s uh a popular movement develops in England New England uh uh I think France as well but

especially England uh that that views the enslavement of other people the treatment of other people as chattles is morally abor uh and that then leads to leads to the evolition movement and whatever and so uh yes um um um the status of women in in British Society um um at the time that sellers came to Australia was not what we would regard as adequate uh but in the late 1700s you have Mary Wilston craft Writing a book in in promotion of the rights of women so so as a the process of sexual equality is beginning

to to develop we've already had the process of racial equality and it was it was then that Britain's landed on the on the shores of Australia so compared to what Europe was learning about sexual and Racial equality Aboriginal peoples were relatively speaking uh not as not as far Advanced morally I I realize it's it's dangerous To talk in terms of inferior Superior uh in terms of of um cultural comparison but I actually think that with with care and with Nuance one needs to make those those comparisons well what comes to mind was the practice of

suti in India yes surely we can all agree surely it was right for the British to Outlaw that practice as Colonial overlords all burning widows and their husbands funeral Powers leaving Heaven only knows what plight uh To descend upon their children amongst other things quite apart from the sheer barbarity of it that's that's a very instructive example John because it wasn't just the British coming in with their weird Western ideas and imposing it on the naves there were Hindu social reformers like Raju Raman Roy who encouraged the British who Allied themselves to the British to

Outlaw this uh inhumane practice uh so so even some Native Indians recognized that this was Just inhumane uh it wasn't a cultural imposition but just on on the issue of making cult sort of evaluative cultural comparisons because nowadays it's I think regarded as racist to make any invidious cultural comparison so here's my response to that I think any wholesale indiscriminate rubbishing of another culture is prob probably arrogant and racist most cultures have something to be said in Favor of them um that being said uh a a culture that has developed uh ships that can cross

oceans is in that in that respect in the respect of martime Technology Superior to one that can only develop has only developed canoes that can survive in in coastal Waters or a culture that re that is understood that the world goes around the Sun not vice versa is Superior in that scientific respect to one that thinks that uh the Sun goes around the Earth and one a culture that that has has has decided that uh the treatment of uh foreign people or women as chattles as slaves is abor is superior morally to one that hasn't

recognized that and I expect any Progressive person to certainly to endorse that last point so I think as as long as we are careful to say and I've said it I've said just now that a one culture might be superior to another in a certain respect not in all respects but in this respect yes Important but our starting point with this whole conversation was to emphasize that all three of us absolutely believe in the dignity and worth of every individual on an equal on an equal footing equal basis yeah absolutely of individuals not necessar of

cultures that's that's a very different thing but we you know we've just made criticism I mean um based on testimony of the time and it seems from what I've read it seems to be widely accepted that that That often usually the treatment of Aboriginal women by abigal men was uh um brutal okay so that's that's a criticism we've also said and Steve has said this and you've said this many times that there are many features of Aboriginal culture that to provoke admiration among white people so aigal people had learned to survive in an extremely hostile

uh environment for thousand tens of thousands of years in in ways in which white people had no idea and white People recognized that Burk and wills would not have died if they had uh Aboriginal people with them their whole trip because they died not that far from a a water source that Aborigines would have been able to take advantage of that that is absolutely true and and I don't talk about infanticide among the aborigenes with with any glibness and that's actually a good a good example of a particular respect in which one culture is better

than another is is is Exceeds another culture in the sense that a culture that has that has developed the knowledge and the technology to be able to sustain all those who are born and not have to engage in infanticide to survive in their conditions is better than a culture in that respect that in order to survive must kill so many of its own children and I don't say that glibly because we're in a culture right now here in Australia where we probably kill about 880,000 of our own children every year through abortion we engage in

infanticide the really terrible thing is we engage in it not in order to survive yes but simply in order to be able to live lives in which we can do what we want and so I do not critique um the infanticide of of of indigenous culture glibly in a in a sense that we're somehow better than them in that respect I think in in many Ways we're doing things that are that are actually worse I I've known many indigenous Australians and they have two qualities that I find particularly endearing that we could have learn a

lot from one is they by and large very gentle on the second second thing is they have a wicked sense of humor and they don't mind laughing at themselves and we've lost that ability you know I find them they can be tremendous company um let me Ask you another question it seems to me that in so denigrating those who have gone before us with a blanket condemnation that everything they did was wrong we fall into two serious traps we demean ourselves we make ourselves little people by denying ourselves the opportunity to learn from Heroes the

second thing we do though is we nearly guarantee we'll repeat the mistakes of the past because we can't learn from them we don't know What we got right we don't know what we got wrong I would add a third thing uh John um in failing to acknowledge the extent to which our extremely privileged situation in 21st century and Britain depends on the blood and the toil of our ancestors what they built um um our failure to acknowledge that and to realize the contingency of it this is this didn't fall from Heaven This wasn't part of

wasn't picked up from the natural environment it was built over centuries um and although we can criticize what happened in the past and we may may not be entirely happy with what we've inherited and we we will go on to reform and perfect it into the future all that said um and unless we take care of it and if we're constantly trashing it as uh as we're tending to do we will lose it yes and um you know Right now when when uh we and the liberal de Democratic West are are being threatened by an

extremely brutal unscrupulous Russia in Ukraine and um uh a bullying China uh um um from from Beijing um we need to have um we need to be sufficiently self-confident that what we have built is worth preserving and fighting for um being self-confident doesn't mean we're uncritical but it means we're fairly critical and um we can be fairly critical and still say Know what we've built here uh um is is precious and our capacity to have free debate um our inclination to be concerned about the poor um of whatever race uh our commitment to want to

see equality these are Western values these are not Universal values and if we want to preserve a society with these things are value valued we need to take care to be grateful to what we were given and that's I think a major danger of as it were internal Demoralization and that that speaks to the the the danger of exaggerating the sins and and the evils of the past because that creates an almost insurmountable stumbling block for people to be able to appreciate yes the British Heritage like and you've made this point many times John over

the years that um you know we um you know we we need to appreciate our heritage to have some understanding of of sort of historically who we are we we Are historical creatures and the more people have just fed the message that oh um British were Invaders British were colonialists British were engaged in genocide and that kind of thing then you then you just cannot get people to take any appreciation of the actual reality of how the society that we that we value uh came into existence and then you just get this sense well it's

all just here that's great and no sense that we need to understand and preserve the Ideals and the institutions ways of thinking uh that the British brought that actually sustain all of this even even to this day and that's the danger of what Jeffrey blay called the black armband view of Australian history it it kind of poisons and and and and prevents people from being able to really understand and appreciate the historical Legacy that has created them and created so many of the good things about this country yes we we we we are in danger

of Cutting off the very Branch we're sitting on because of historical ignorance uh and and um a an historically untenable uh negative reading of of our history so to to build this point a little more I want to be really blunt here to the people who might be critical of what we're saying um we sit in extraordinary judgment on those who have gone before us on this that's what we've been talking about giving us a very Distorted reality that all the problems we have today can be traced to the terrible things that those who' have

gone before us have done Peter Sutton points out that virtually every indicator of if you might call it human flourishing in remot Aboriginal communities in particular have got significantly worse over the last 30 years under the progressive Mantra that's taken hold what will future Generations say about the fact that but We condemned those who had gone before us but presided over a worse situation in many ways and and anecdotally I mean I've had particularly older Aboriginal ladies absolutely deplore the lack of discipline commitment to education allowing treny and so forth at school my wife had

the same thing she taught in indigenous schools and many of the older people say we're going backwards not forwards and just for the sake of those of your uh viewers and Listeners who don't know who Peter saton is he was a he is an anthropologist who spent many years I think in in Northern Queensland living among the Aboriginal people there learning their languages extremely affectionate of them um very respectful of them describes himself as a man of the left uh uh when he talks about um the movement for for land rights and constitutional recognition he

doesn't say it's wrong Um uh but he does rather imply that's not going to address the real problems on the ground and he is extraordinarily scathing about uh many uh self-regarding Progressive folk in the cities especially in universities um who talk a good War but don't want to address the Practical problems of social dysfunction in the communities he knows about um um but coming from a man of the left and an anthropologist who lived among those People he speaks with extraordinary Authority no one can doubt his commitment to the indigenous people he lives and breathes

it absolutely genuinely cares he's not an armchair critic of the sort who seem to dominate the debate in this country at the moment um going to this issue of Integrity about the past it troubles me that I think we see a serious attempt to imply that terrible As Massac work they were commonplace and vastly more people died than did and it was only ever whites who perpetrated it and then we have the same problem with the stolen generation I've known five people who were removed three of them have actually said to me I wouldn't have

changed anything in my life even though it was hard at the time it's not as straightforward nor are the numbers as we are Told this is so important and so many people need to hear what you just said about those who were removed and said they're basically glad that they were removed uh if then even though they're probably not glad that they had to be removed um they would have preferred the circumstances of their family to have been different uh in terms of the massacres um look it's almost certainly the case that the the number

of massacres that are that are reported and You can have Massacre maps of Australia literally sort of hundreds of dots around them of massacres it's almost was certainly the case that a lot of those either never happened or though the numbers killed in them are far less than what is commonly said so one example of a very famous Massacre uh or alleged Massacre that took place in uh in Van Demon's land in 1804 was the Risen Cove Massacre risen Cove is not far from Hobart and it's where the uh The the settlers and the soldiers

originally uh settled before they went to hobot anyhow one day a cannon shot was heard in hobot from risten Cove and what happened well the very same day uh the minister in the area U Robert knopwood who wrote a diary which is still to this day you can buy uh he received a letter from the surgeon in riddon Cove telling him what had happened and the surgeon basically said and this is corroborated By another letter from William Moore uh a general at the time who was sort of in command of the situation basically that an

Aboriginal tribe who saw that some settlers had gone kangaroo hunting and took some kangaroos uh seemed either to attack or threaten those settlers and take one of their Kangaroos and then a little bit later uh apparently hundreds of Aborigines came and surrounded the settlers with Spears and acting in a very very aggressive manner long story Short the surgeon who's really got no skin in the game because he didn't participate in this particular event uh event and the general who did both said the surgeon said three people were three Aborigines were killed the the the the

police General William Moore said two um now so these are the earliest documents that we have of what happened um eyewitness accounts from the day giving numbers roughly of how many were Killed if you read about it in a book today they'll say 40 to 50 abans were killed where did they get that number from because it's not in any of the original accounts that where they get that from is that 26 years later a person gave evidence I think in New South Wales to an inquiry into Aboriginal violence a person who was 12 years

old at the time of the risten Cove event who wasn't even in risten Cove said 26 years later around about 40 to 50 were killed now at the time the inquiry pretty much sort of dismissed his EV they didn't dismiss it but but they clearly weren't that impressed with him as a witness they they didn't consider him a particularly reliable witness and it it would seem that somehow or other you know um the the story of of that particular event got embellished over the years and the numbers Rose to 40 or 50 um Reverend knopwood

himself visited the site about A week later and in the rest of his diary he never mentions anything about greater numbers than the ones that reported to him now what have historians done historians have basically adopted that figure that that that first comes up 26 years later from someone who wasn't even there to see the massacre they've adopted that and they've dismissed the earlier um account that is not how a court of law would work that is not how A a a proper journalist would work but unfortunately it's how too many historians have operated they've

sort of they've sort of taken this methodology of almost believe every Massacre um uh story uh if there's a higher number generally go for the higher number not the lower number um don't subject oral test oral history to Too Much scrutiny and what you wind up with is Massacre accounts that often are quite just Intrinsically implausible in themselves and this leads to a very misleading reading of Australian history that it was just wall toall massacres all around Australia no one doubts that there were massacres the question is how many there were and how many people

died in those that occurred and on this issue the best book that you can read is the fabricat of Aboriginal history by Keith winshuttle which came out in about 2002 and and he Scrutinizes all the massacre accounts in Tasmania and he shows very very convincingly that the numbers suggested for those who died in massacres is actually grossly inflated owing to a misreading of Records on occasions just making up numbers and in actual fact he shows that they were almost certainly much much lower now as for the stolen generation issue that's such an important Point as

soon as the bringing them home report came out in 1997 it was Subject to very rigorous scholarly criticism by certain people um Ron Brunton an anthropologist was one of them and what they pointed out was that there's not even any attempt to offer an overall account of people's experiences people who were removed their EXP experiences who had positive experiences who had negative experiences there's hardly any mention in the report of the fact that the overwhelming majority of children the overwhelming Majority of children were taken because they were being abused neglected um even in some hor

horrific instances prostituted out there were even accounts of again something that was very common in the 19th century uh INF fanticide against half casts Marge Harris who who was born in 1930 uh was a girl who was rescued by her grandmother uh because her brother had just been killed by her mother and she was about to be killed as well Because she was a half-cast uh the circumstances which children were removed was generally for their own welfare and it wasn't unusual for parents to willingly hand their children over because they knew they'd have a much

better life um um outside of the Aboriginal camp and just the final thing I'll say is is that the notion of Aboriginal children being systemically removed to eradicate Aboriginal culture is complete Myth the laws under which the removals took place were very specific they were about the welfare of children who are being neglected or abused there is no evidence of any powerful high ranking or official or systemic movement or systemic idea of taking them out for cultural reasons they were taken out for the same reason and white children were taken out of their homes and

and we remember thousands of British children were removed from their from their homes Uh from the late 19th century up till the 1960s and taken to Canada taken to Australia often because they were born to single mothers this was not something unique to Aboriginal people thousands were removed exactly how many um Keith windsh shuttle says around about maybe 8,000 odd 8,250 uh Kevin rud in his apology said anywhere up to 50,000 the up to 50,000 is almost certainly completely false you know Nel you will have thought A lot about ethics that's what you do amongst

other things what was really troubles me about the whole stolen generation thing is the demonization of people who at least in terms of their motivation were doing things they probably didn't want to do it can't have been much fun to go in and try and remove a child from what they believe was great moral and physical danger we've demonized them I wonder whether we haven't demonized the wrong people for Example the town drunks who have gone and grabbed an Aboriginal girl and taken her down by the river bank and behaved appallingly and they've produced a

child we've demonized I think a lot of people perhaps they didn't have it all right but at least they cared yeah so so John this phenomenon of the politically biased Distortion of of the past and also of it of its propagation by not just by universities but also by the press and whatever as an exact parallel In Canada yeah slightly different case um there um what's in the in the sights of um Progressive decolonizing critics are the residential schools for Native kids and the uh 3 years ago just over 3 years ago in British Columbia

uh the claim was made that the mass Graves of um Native Canadian kids in schools run usually by by missionaries have been discovered and the implication was that these were Mass murdered kids um and Subsequently all sorts of other um um communities around Canada claimed that they also discovered similar uh um Graves of of um um native Canadian kids who've been uh killed or done away with in these residential schools as a consequence of which last time I looked uh 85 Christian churches in Canada had been burnt To The Ground by enraged uh uh folk

enraged at this story the story was quickly picked up by the New York Times gleefully picked up and broadcast around the world by Al jazer uh so the world now thinks that uh Canada was built on on the mass murder of native kids so so Canada's reputation and diplomatic uh clout and soft power has been severely damaged the these these these stories are not without effect in the world here we are three and a half years later not a single grave of a murdered native Canadian child has been Disinterred it's not clear though it's not

not even clear in the original case the world Graves at all other than uh uh because because the what was the discovered was was using uh surface technology they discovered movements of the earth underneath uh they've not diser uh um the alleged Graves be partly because um some native Canan people claim it would be disrespectful so so there's no proof at all that there were Mass Graves of of of um Indian Kids um and it's looking like the whole thing was a myth uh a damaging myth but gleefully picked up by academics by Canadian government

by the Canadian press by the New York Times um enormously damaging uh and and this raises the question as to why would people so uncritically even gleefully pick up the story and propagate it why spread the lie why spread the fraud and this may go back to what Steve was saying earlier about kind Of uh a a a um a new left mentality whereby many University educated Canadians now in government now in the Press now running schools just assume that um that that um the West white people white settlers were guilty and so when they

hear a story that that fits that narrative they just assume it's true but the the the um it's not quite criminal but the the immoral thing is that that people charged with um the pursuit of truth in Universities who are charged with assessing evidence and and reason for positions and for claims have failed um um but but as in Canada so in Australia it seems that the the prevailing narrative about strong Generations is seriously distorted and people who should know better maybe even people who do know better have failed to correct this sort of narrative

it's a great lesson in this isn't there lack of reflectiveness what judgments on good People well-intentioned people might be made by our children if we haven't shown them the need to be Discerning I have a personal view a lot of Australians ought to leading in leadership positions ought to think a lot more carefully about their own legacy when they behave in these ways uncritically revisionist history distorting the past to serve some sort of Twisted objective of today as as a corny old American song Had it be kind to the little man on your way up

or you might meet him on your way down can we start then to land the plane common to many countries now where particularly in the anglosphere where there have been issues in relation to the impact on Native people's apologies have become all rage I'd be very interested in your views on these it seems to me there's two problems the first is how do you apologize with sincerity for what Somebody else has or is alleged to have done you can express regrets but can you can I really apologize for what my forbears may have done two

or 300 years ago is it relevant but the second problem is I am a great believer in apologies per se where they have value but it seems to me that if you ask for forgiveness it's meaningless unless the forgiveness is recorded and accepted so that you can then have a basis to move on from I agree with you I'm I'm you Know as a as a Christian I'm I'm all in favor of um repentance and apology and forgiveness and Reconciliation um I'm not in favor of apologizing for things you didn't do um none of us

for example living now um were involved in 18th century slavery or slave trading none of us living now with the victims of that um so so apology and forgiveness are not appropriate in these Circumstances what we can do is we can lament the fact that some of our ancestors were involved in slavery some of our ancestors uh committed atrocities against Aboriginal peoples for sure but but again uh let's let let's let's have everyone tell the truth um um uh let's have some original people's um lament what their people did to other Aboriginal peoples for example

let's not racialize this as white versus black because there's there's sin all over the Place um and um um in terms of I mean this is a negative response to the idea of apology we can lament what some people did in the past let everyone lament what their ancestors did uh let us admire what other ancestors did um and as for does apologizing for what people did 200 years ago help well in these circumstances I fear it confirms The Narrative that white people are guilty or rather non Aboriginies are guilty whereas aboriginies are innocent and

and how do how do Chinese Australians feel about this or Vietnamese Australians Indian Australians they weren't at all involved their inors were even here so so who is when when one of your Prime Ministers apologizes on whose behalf so I think it's it's it's well-intentioned I'm sure it's well-intentioned but it's it's illc conceived my view is um let's I'm with Peter suon on this there are as I understand it 20% roughly of contemporary Australian AB Originals languishing in remote communities and suffering from major social dysfunction let's address those problems and disadvantages is in the most

practical way we can trying to make half of Australia excuse me trying to make 97% of Australia feel guilty for what happened 200 years ago doesn't help it really doesn't um and there are plenty of VI original people I think who would Who would acknowledge that but let's follow Peter suon and Warren mandine and let's let's address unfair social disadvantages Among Us in the most practical and effective way we can just enter price would actually argue that abins people have not suffered or no longer suffer from the impact of colonization well and you know I've

been saying this to to you Australians I'm not Australian I'm British uh but the Fact of the matter is you and Australia uh along a bumpy road when bad things were done as is bound to be the case with any state you have built one of the most prosperous and one of the most liberal countries on Earth and you enjoy privileges and freedoms here that the Chinese people and Russian people in Rani people and North Korean people do not enjoy and and those privileges are open in principle to all people regardless of race as I

understand it um 80% of Australian aboriginals live more or less like like other Australians in cities or near near cities wage earners there may be a gap in terms of of outcomes where Aboriginal Australians are perhaps below the average but I understand the Gap is closing and long may it close um so even Aborigines who who who who languish in the in R communities still of the privilege in belonging to a society sufficiently liberal to care about them To try and solve the problem uh so um just centerprise is right um uh today most eies

all EES have reason to be grateful that they live in this kind of of society even if uh some of them languish and and need help I think there's an important point there if I could just clarify my understanding is that in terms of closing the Gap many social indicators in the more remote communities are getting worse and this is the point that that Sutton makes that 30 years of progressive politics hasn't reversed that that but what what is true is that there are larger and larger numbers of of indigenous people as Stan Stan Grant

pointed out to me I don't think he'd mind me referring it to it um tens of thousands of indigenous people now who have qualifications tertiary qualifications degrees yes they've integrated they're enjoying their life as Australians yeah good yeah as you say um the great Gap is between those who Live in the regional areas really and those who live live in the city areas which is sort of what you were getting at with the 80% who are do who are roughly roughly on parody yes uh and this is and I think one of the things that

really worries me is that the more indigenous Australians who are struggling in these Regional areas the more they hear things like white man is the aggressor um you know Australia is a colonial Enterprise Australia is Systemically racist um you know white man's ways are radically different from indigenous ways the more they hear that the less inclined they're going to be to integrate into mainstream Australian culture and into the mainstream Australian economy and that is the only way the Gap can be closed I think we've got to think very clearly about what we mean when we

talk about closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians what we mean is that Indigenous Australians enjoy the same Health outcomes as non- indigenous Australians the same educational outcomes the same employment outcomes um safety sa exactly the same safety outcomes their children if they're molested uh will the justice will be done on their behalf that's right and the only way all of these outcomes can be enjoyed is if they are integrated into a modern economy doesn't mean made the same it just means find their place In it means find their place in and and no

longer see modern mainstream Australian culture as a colonial imposition but as an opportunity to make the most of themselves and the good news is as Nigel said the overwhelming majority of aborigin have actually done that and so there's a sense in which what do we mean by closing the Gap we mean for the remaining 20% to do what the other 80% have done and that might mean and and and people like Warren Mandine and and Dr Anthony Dylan and um Gary Johns in his book the burden of culture a book very much worth getting uh

what that means is that a lot of Aborigines might have to consider coming off coming out of the Regional areas and going to the the areas where there are jobs where there are uh social services that are easily available where they're closer to hospitals and things like that and I'm going to add the effective application of the law of the land yeah Because if there's one thing that indigenous women have often said to me is that we want the normal standards applied that apply to every other Australian who bullies or Mists or in some way

damages a y that's that's Justice yes and those kids until you break that cycle of emotional violence physical violence moral violence we know enough about children to know that there are some things you Never recover from you cannot go on and be a fully functioning human being there's a unfolding tragedy let's come right back to your area of expertise um I am a great admirer of the British peoples uh I think I can say say that as a Scottish Australian um I think they've been a tremendous civilizing influence if they hadn't stood up in 1939

for example we wouldn't be here sitting in peace in rural Australia we wouldn't be Here yeah and yet the British have completely lost confidence in themselves they seem to want to decry everything they've ever achieved is there a case for restoring a sense of britishness can I put it that way so John you right but some British people like me have not lost self-confidence and I'm I'm I'm I'm glad to say that the person who looks like being the leading Contender for the leadership of the conservative opposition back in London Tory uh kimy Bok um

she also has a strong sense of britishness uh curiously but actually tellingly um she's a Nigerian immigrant uh because she's an immigrant a black woman immigrant um she knows what the alternative is she is able to appreciate what has been built in Britain better than many Britains who take it entirely for granted um so I I I agree I'm the reason I wrote my book on colonialism was because I feared that what one historian and Nic called the Canker of imaginary guilt was going to affect my country and yours and Canada and New Zealand and

the United States um um in ways that that weaken our self-confidence demoralize us make us vulnerable to to Blackmail and exploitation on the part of of Caribbean countries for reparations on the part of China and Russia uh because we no longer believe in ourselves so I I I think countering this excessive self-criticism is enormously important for the future Of the West and and um having a measured admiration and appreciation uh of what our British ancestors achieved in the past all over the world uh and and um therefore a proper self-confidence in us as uh anglicized

Australians and anglicized Canadians uh is is important I mean I'm perfectly well aware John that you as an Australian are proud Australian you're not just British but there is Australia as it now exists would not exist uh Without um British settlement and liberal Australia Democratic Australia would not exist without British traditions of of parliament Free Press independent Judiciary Etc um and and there's no shame at acknowledging uh what we all owe to our British ancestors well I as an austr as as you say a proud Australian believe we benefited hugely uh from what our British

parents if you like gave us but we've gone on to Become an independent uh High performing self-confident or what ought to be a self-confident country aware of its weaknesses but the lighting that what we have as a great gift from those who have gone before us is a good set of mechanisms the architecture if you like to address the things we still haven't got right yes but we need to have the confidence to believe we can use those instruments to do what we've been Talking about here because I'd like to dedicate this conversation to indigenous

Australians everywhere that we want to see flourish and do well but we won't do it if we continue this childish childish idea of victims and victim makers and everybody fits into one category or the other and nobody really wants to address the needs of the genuine victims it's a terrible thing to have to say but I Charge quite a few of the activist forces in this country of belonging to that very category of people yes let's not virtual let's not signal our virtue let's practice it exactly let's be virtue doers not signalers yeah [Music]