General News
14 February, 2024
Letter: winner's history not always true
Sir, Here we go again. Cr Gavan Holt asserts that Pat Cummins, in using his position as Australian cricket captain to support changing the date of Australia Day, is guilty of “... something at which all Australians should take umbrage”. Really?...
Sir, Here we go again. Cr Gavan Holt asserts that Pat Cummins, in using his position as Australian cricket captain to support changing the date of Australia Day, is guilty of “... something at which all Australians should take umbrage”.
Really? How then can it be acceptable for you to use your position as mayor, funded by ratepayers, to pontificate on the retention of January 26?
Hypocritical Gavan – and I found much of the rest of your article (Loddon Herald February 1, 2024) bigoted and ignorant.
In building the Australian nation, you concede “…. there were missteps along the way, including violent interactions between the indigenous and the settlers”.
The figures are inexact. Aboriginals were not formally counted until the 1971 census and accurate records of those shot, clubbed, poisoned or pushed off cliffs were seldom kept.
A review by The Guardian concluded that between 1788 and 1928 eleven to 14,000 were massacred.
Professor Henry Reynolds, the pre-eminent authority on the subject, believes it’s closer to 20,000 (and 400 ‘settlers’). ‘Missteps’ Gavan? Thousands of ‘missteps’?
You say that “... activists have permeated the minds of our elites”, leading them to believe that “... members of the First Fleet and the Europeans who followed were invaders and colonisers”. Dust off your dictionary Gavan:
‘Colonisers – a country that sends settlers to a place and establishes political control over it’. Tick!
‘Invaders – a person or group that invades a country, region or other place’. Tick!
The ‘activists’ and ‘elites’ – those woke-folk who were going to infect council before you stepped in – are telling the truth. Australia was invaded and colonised.
You propose a national audit on “…where all the billions of dollars of taxpayers money has gone that has been spent on Aboriginal issues ...”. And what should we do after that?
“Move on from the politics of grievance and find a new way forward to solve the problems we have in our Aboriginal remote communities ...”.
That’s what The Voice to parliament was about – truthfully acknowledging past wrongs and genuinely listening to Aboriginal people in order to achieve positive change and stop repeating our mistakes.
Winston Churchill was right, ‘history is written by the winner’.
Which doesn’t always mean that it’s true – no matter how much you beat the drum, thump your chest, wave the flag and stick your head in the sand.
Max Higgs
Bridgewater