Sir Mark Oliphant’s racist letter to Don Dunstan
It was a shockingly racist letter from Sir Mark Oliphant to Don Dunstan warning about having indigenous man Sir Douglas Nicholls in Government House — but the former Premier wouldn’t have a bar of it.
The South Australian Governor, Sir Mark Oliphant, wrote a shockingly racist letter to Premier Don Dunstan in the 1970s, warning against his replacement, Sir Douglas Nicholls, because of “something inherent in the personality of the aborigine”.
Oliphant, an eminent scientist from South Australia who helped develop the atom bomb that ended World War II, said one problem would be the assumption by other aborigines that “what is his is theirs”.
“The house may well be filled to overflowing by his relatives and tribesmen to whom, by custom and duty, he cannot say no,” Oliphant said in a letter published by Dunstan’s biographer, Angela Woollacott, in Don Dunstan, due out on Monday.
“The results could be chaos … and even the loss of valuables because of the ‘sharing’ habits of his people.”
Dunstan, whose political career was founded on the pursuit of human rights including those of indigenous Australians, made no public comment on Oliphant’s views but sent a secret response in a letter to Oliphant which was “clear and firm” and refuted his concerns.
He also diplomatically skipped over Oliphant’s letter in his autobiography, Felicia, published in 1981.
While Oliphant claimed to be free of racial bias, saying he had fought for Aboriginal advancement, he said there grave dangers in appointing Sir Doug, a minister and social worker.
He warned Dunstan that a royal visit the following year could be derailed unless the Queen stayed on the royal yacht.
“If she stays at Government House, there could be many (problems),” he wrote.
Dunstan ignored the advice and Nicholls was appointed in December but stepped down the following April after suffering a stroke.
His final engagement was to host Queen Elizabeth II at Government House in March, 1977.
Woollacott, the Manning Clark Professor of History at ANU, wrote the biography with the support of Dunstan’s three children and the Dunstan Foundation.
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