Hands Off the Australian War Memorial!

A battle is underway over the future of the Australian War Memorial. And Australians need to understand exactly what is being proposed.

As part of the Memorial's redevelopment, plans are now underway for a permanent "Australian Frontier Wars Gallery" dealing with conflicts between Aboriginal people and European settlers and colonial forces.

The Australian War Memorial Council has committed to what it calls a "broader and deeper depiction" of frontier conflict, with the new Pre-1914 galleries due to open in 2028. Really?

So this is no longer an abstract academic debate. It is happening.

And it raises a fundamental question:

Should the so-called Frontier Wars be incorporated into the Australian War Memorial as part of Australia's military history?

My answer is no.

Not because this history should be hidden. Not because conflict between Aboriginal people and early settlers should be denied. It absolutely should not.

But the Australian War Memorial is not simply another Australian history museum. It has a unique purpose.

It is not a general, all-purpose museum for exhibitions on every conflict throughout our nation's history. It is not the place for an exhibition on Ned Kelly and his war against the Victorian Police. It is not the place for an exhibition on the battles of the Eureka Stockade. It is not a place for exhibitions on the battles between the Exclusives and the Emancipists. It is not a place for an exhibition on the history of the wars between the Coconut Cartel and Sydney's Lebanese gangs. It is not a place for the conflict over COVID, where sections of the Australian community were happy to abuse human rights and use coercion and threats to force other Australians to undergo a medical intervention. 

There are museums, universities, archives, libraries, and cultural institutions across Australia perfectly capable of examining the history of the colonial frontier and internal conflicts in all their complexity. Put the displays there. But not at the War Memorial.

The War Memorial is a shrine of remembrance. For generations, Australians have entered the Memorial to honour the men and women who served this nation against foreign adversaries, and especially those who never came home. That sacred purpose should be non-negotiable.

In my view, the proposals are the latest front in a decades-long ideological campaign by elements of the radical activist Left to fundamentally rewrite Australia's national story, while they live lives of safety and luxury, reaping the inheritance handed down from the sacrifices of previous generations of Australians, they seek to portray those sacrifices overwhelmingly through the language of invasion, dispossession, oppression, and guilt.

And once they get a foot in the door, if they are appeased, nothing will ever be enough.

They will seek to convert the War Memorial into a place where our explorers must be condemned. Our pioneers put on trial. Our national celebrations questioned. Our traditions disparaged. Our institutions subjected to endless demands for reinterpretation.

These are the same people who want to tear down the Australian flag, abolish Australia Day, undermine Anzac Day with the lengthy Welcome to Country humiliations, remove statues of our pioneers, and turn Merry Christmas into "Happy Holidays".  And now they have come for the Australian War Memorial.

The danger is that an institution established to honour Australians who served and sacrificed will gradually be transformed into an institution that sits in judgement upon the very generations that built the country those Australians fought to defend.

And if those who see Australia's history principally through that ideological lens get their way, Australians should ask one very important question:

WILL THEY TELL THE WHOLE STORY?

Will the proposed "Frontier Wars gallery" tell Australians that Governor Arthur Phillip arrived carrying Royal Instructions from King George III ordering him to "conciliate" the Aboriginal inhabitants, directing British subjects to live with them in "amity and kindness", and requiring him to restrain and punish those who wantonly harmed them?

Will they tell the extraordinary story of the attempted murder of Phillip himself, being speared through the shoulder at Manly in 1790? And will they tell visitors that, despite being seriously wounded, Phillip refused on that occasion to retaliate against the Aboriginal people responsible?

Will they tell of violence committed on both sides of the frontier?

Will they tell of settlers, shepherds, stockmen, and other Europeans who were killed?

Will they tell of violent encounters involving Europeans and Aboriginal people following shipwrecks? Will they tell the story of the Maria Massacre, where 26 men, women, and children survived a shipwreck on the South Australian coast only to be murdered by local Aboriginal people, with search parties later reporting their body parts were wedged into wombat holes?

And, equally, will they tell the remarkable stories of Aboriginal Australians who rescued and assisted stranded Europeans? The story of the heroic efforts of the Aboriginal who undertook a mass rescue of settlers during the great Gundagai Flood of 1852?

And will they tell of the history of violent inter-tribal warfare between different Aboriginal groups and the appalling treatment of women in Aboriginal society?

Will they tell Australians that the historical record is vastly more complicated than a simplistic morality play in which one race is permanently assigned the role of aggressor and another permanently assigned the role of victim?

And here's another question.

Will they tell visitors about the efforts of the colonial legal system to deliver justice for Aboriginal people?

Will they tell the full story of Myall Creek in 1838?

At least 28 Aboriginal men, women, and children were massacred. It was an appalling crime. But that was not the end of the story. The authorities investigated. Eleven men were brought before the courts. When the first trial ended in acquittals, Attorney-General John Plunkett refused to simply walk away. Another prosecution was brought.

Seven white men were convicted of murdering an Aboriginal child. And they were hanged.

Think about the significance of that. In colonial New South Wales in 1838, British subjects were executed for murdering Aboriginal people. And that wasn't the first time; eighteen years earlier, in 1820, John Kirby was convicted of murdering Aboriginal leader Burigon at Newcastle and was hanged.

The principle was clear: under Australian colonial law, the murder of an Aboriginal person was murder.

It tells us that even in those early colonial times, there were people prepared to insist that Aboriginal people were entitled to the protection of the law, and that white men who murdered them could be prosecuted, convicted, and ultimately executed; exactly what King George III ordered. 

Or will Australians instead be presented with a carefully curated political narrative designed to place previous generations in the dock and Australia itself on trial?

That is the danger whenever history becomes subordinate to ideology. Because history is complicated. It contains brutality and humanity. Injustice and justice. Conflict and cooperation. Cruelty and courage. Australia's colonial history is no exception. Nothing should be hidden, including atrocities committed against Aboriginal Australians. But neither should history be selectively assembled to prosecute a modern political case against Australia itself.

And that brings us back to the fundamental question:

WHY THE AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL?

There are countless institutions capable of examining the entirety of Australian history.

There is only one Australian War Memorial.

Once we accept that the War Memorial should commemorate internal colonial conflicts as "wars" for inclusion, we cross an important line.

The Memorial risks ceasing to be principally a shrine dedicated to Australians who served and sacrificed in Australia's wars and military operations and beginning to become something very different, a museum interpreting conflicts between people within Australia and passing judgement on previous generations.

And where does that process end?

The Australian War Memorial should not become another battlefield in Australia's culture wars.

It should remain the place where Australians can stand together, regardless of politics, and remember those who served and those who never came home.

But there is an even more fundamental question:

WHO GETS TO DECIDE?

The Australian War Memorial does not belong to a committee sitting in Canberra. It does not belong to academics. It does not belong to curators. It does not belong to activists. It does not belong to bureaucrats. And it certainly does not belong to whichever government happens to occupy the Treasury benches.

The Australian War Memorial is not theirs to remake. The Australian War Memorial belongs to the Australian people.

If its fundamental character and purpose are going to be changed, Australians deserve a direct voice in that decision.

So let's have the argument openly.

Let Labor state clearly where it stands. Let the Liberals and Nationals state clearly where they stand. Let One Nation state clearly where it stands. Let the Greens state clearly where they stand. Let the Teals and independents state clearly where they stand.

No hiding behind committees. No carefully crafted bureaucratic language. No transformation of a national institution by administrative decision, while most Australians are barely aware it is happening.

Put the issue squarely before the Australian people at the next federal election:

Should the Australian War Memorial remain principally a shrine commemorating Australians who served and sacrificed in Australia's wars and military operations against foreign adversaries? Or should its purpose be expanded through a permanent Australian "Frontier Wars" Gallery dealing with conflicts between Aboriginal people, settlers, and colonial forces - and then other internal conflicts.

Let every political party and every candidate tell Australians where they stand.

Let the arguments be heard.

Then let Australians make up their own minds and cast their votes accordingly.

That is democracy.

Let Australians decide.

And until they do:

HANDS OFF OUR WAR MEMORIAL.

“Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made.”
― Charles Bean