Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation) Share this | Hansard source

But that is not actually the point about this drama. I would like to go to comments made by the writer of the series, Sue Smith. She said:

My approach is this is a generation or two of men who haven’t fought a real war and this is the closest many will get to fighting a war.

When you talk to many of the men involved, they cry because it was such an intense experience and tested their mettle so much.

I am quoting from an article in the Weekend Australian. She goes on to say:

In some ways, people probably expect it to be a piece of leftie-something, which is why we went to great pains to be not that.

Let it stand on the record that these allegations are just another attempt by Howard government members to try to bully and intimidate the ABC into conforming to their view of history. But there is more, as I said, such as the recent lies and cover-up relating to the Jonestown book, where the ABC board not only sought to have an employee of the ABC take full responsibility for withdrawing that book from sale but also embarked on a cover-up, as was exposed on Media Watch. The ABC board intervened to stop ABC Enterprises publishing distinguished journalist Chris Masters’s biography on Alan Jones. That culture has really sunk in. Before making a few further comments, let me give one more example. On the Sunday arts program on radio ABC 774 there was criticism of board member Keith Windschuttle, who was censored on air, much to the disgust of those involved.

So those examples—TV, books, audio, board appointments and the monitoring regime—all stack up to a regime of intimidation of the ABC. They come in the context of the Howard government today attempting to dictate what should be taught to our children. I remember very strongly the culture wars when National Museum board appointments David Barnett and Christopher Pearson led the charge to change exhibitions relating to Australian history. And now we have the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, claiming that history teaching was a ‘fragmented stew of themes and issues’.

When you link all these things together, there is clearly a censorial campaign afoot from the Howard government, which has manifested itself in the board interference of many of our cultural institutions. It does constitute a cultural and historical war, with this government trying to reframe and reinterpret through its own ideological prism the history of this country, and that is disgraceful. (Time expired)