Jo Lindgren (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It appears that in recent times I have spoken about universities on topics such as an alternative national anthem being used instead of the official anthem and rooms designed for the use of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders only. I now rise to speak in this chamber about universities and their so-called progressive or enlightened version of Australian history. If some universities of Australia are trying to cause the referendum for constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians to fail they are certainly headed in the right direction. Once again we see some left wing intellectual elites take it upon themselves to rewrite history.

As we move closer to the referendum on constitutional recognition, changing history only serves to hamper any constitutional recognition. Understand this: three per cent of Australians are asking the other 97 per cent of Australians to support recognition. Pitting these two apart does not do this. Attempting to make others guilty will not do this. I have said this before, but the 97 per cent of Australians today are not responsible for past injustices, and yet some seek to have them accept the guilt. We can only move forward when people are not harangued into a position. As Harvard historian Niall Ferguson says:

… history is not politically correct. Many on the left therefore struggle with its findings.

History cannot be changed. It has happened. If, as reported, they are saying Captain Cook invaded Australia I feel I first need to correct that. James Cook actually discovered Australia in the sense it was mostly unknown to European society. Captain Arthur Phillip led the first settlement. He did not set out to form any permanent settlement. Cook's 'invasion' consisted of a single 32 metre ship with 73 sailors, 12 Royal Marines, five scientists, two artists, a secretary and two servants. Those two artists must have struck fear into people's hearts!

Eight years later, the second wave of the 'invasion' began with the arrival of the First Fleet. Arthur Phillip's 'invasion' consisted of 14 officials, 269 sailors, 245 marines with 51 wives and children, 543 male convicts, 189 female convicts with 22 children—altogether 1,336 people. Add to those, seven horses, 29 sheep, 74 pigs, six rabbits and seven cows. The marines even failed to bring sufficient ammunition, something they had to keep secret from the convicts.

An invasion is described as being:

… a military offensive in which large parts of combatants of one geopolitical entity aggressively enter territory controlled by another such entity, generally with the objective of either conquering, liberating or re-establishing control or authority over a territory, forcing the partition of a country, altering the established government or gaining concessions from said government, or a combination thereof.

In 1788, Australia was colonised by Britain. Yes, it was devastating to Indigenous people. Yes, cultural clashes occurred and, inadvertently, diseases were introduced that killed many Indigenous people, because they had no immunity to newly introduced diseases. But it was not an invasion or a planned military exercise, as one is lead to believe, nor was it executed with the sole intention of conquering a land and a people.

We have to look at the time and what the intention was. In 1788, there were different values and beliefs held throughout the world to what there are now. It was a time when the major European powers were scrambling to occupy as much of the earth's surface as possible. Even minor powers looked for land elsewhere. Many firmly held to introducing the three Cs: Christianity, commerce and civilisation.

While it was the official policy of the British government to establish friendly relations with Indigenous people, it did not take long before conflict began. The colonists did not understand Aboriginal society and its relationship with the land, and Aboriginal people did not understand the British practices of farming and land ownership. Despite Arthur Phillip ordering that there be friendly relations with the local Indigenous clans, there were many failures.

We have to be realistic. If the British Empire had not settled and colonised Australia, then somebody else would have. It is as simple as that. Who would you prefer to have colonised Australia, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese or the Germans? History shows that colonisation had dramatic effects on the local Indigenous people. None of these have unblemished records in colonisation and for that matter neither does the British Empire, but I think they were preferable to the other alternatives.

Niall Ferguson writes:

No one would claim that the record of the British Empire was unblemished. On the contrary, I have tried to show how often it failed to live up to its own ideal of individual liberty, particularly in the early era of enslavement, transportation and the 'ethnic cleansing' of indigenous peoples.

Ferguson argues that the British Empire was preferable to the alternatives also.

It is believed that the Indigenous population was between 800,000 and 1.2 million, which would make the First Fleet at the most 0.16 per cent of all peoples in Australia. What do these enlightened intellectuals call the current Middle Eastern and African illegal immigration attempting to enter Europe? The percentage of these illegal immigrants in this current crisis alone is far in excess of this. For example, in Germany this wave comprises about 1.6 per cent of total people. Is this a settlement, colonisation or invasion, or do they have some way of excusing that while condemning another.

We are all here together now; the past cannot be undone. Australia is our country, and when I refer to 'our' I mean both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. It appears intellectual elites rewrite history to appease the Left. This can only drive a wedge between us all.

I have said this before and I will say it again: non-Indigenous Australians of today are not responsible for what happened in the past. All Australians are responsible for how we conduct ourselves today and we are responsible for setting this country's future. The past is not politically correct and cannot be corrected by terminology changes. You do not like it, which is your right, yet you now deny the right of history students to freely interpret the past for themselves. You remove the concepts of study and argument and now mandate a particular belief to be held. So much for free and open intellectual debate. This is right up there with George Orwell's 1984.

We cannot solve the issues of the past but we can ensure the mistakes of the past do not happen again. We can also address the issues of today. What will this self-soothing change of language really achieve? The claim that it is no longer offensive is in itself offensive. Thinking that those who choose to be offended by the concept of settlement will suddenly become pacified is laughable.

Aboriginal Australia does not need universities to re-write history, it needs them to be innovative and find cures for diabetes and kidney failure; it needs innovative teaching pedagogy to assist with literacy and numeracy; and, most importantly, it needs them to do their job—a role that encourages, engages, develops and educates. That is a university's role and this is what they should focus on.