Critic of frontier war plans at Australian War Memorial candidate for next chair

The RSL national president who blasted the Australian War Memorial’s plan to commemorate the frontier wars between Indigenous Australians and British colonists is a leading candidate to take over as chair of the institution.

Greg Melick is the War Memorial Council’s longest-serving current member and with chairman Brendan Nelson to depart after the council’s next meeting in mid-November, discussions are under way over who will replace the former Liberal politician in the $80,000 per year position.

War Memorial chairman Brendan Nelson and Veterans’ Affairs Minister Matt Keogh.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Several members of the defence and veterans community, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, told this masthead that Melick and former prime minister Tony Abbott, who recently had his term on the council extended by Labor, were among the names being discussed but Abbott will not be putting his name forward for the job.

Board members Glenn Keys, the founder of Aspen Medical, and Professor Susan Neuhaus, a surgeon and veteran who served in Afghanistan and Cambodia, are also seen as potential candidates.

The council, which oversees the operation of the memorial, selects its own chair and the Veterans Affairs Minister, Matt Keogh, does not get a say in the appointment.

However, Keogh will select a new council member to replace Nelson and the council is expected to choose its next chair once the new member joins the board early next year.

Melick’s potential appointment to chair the national institution, which is currently undergoing a $550 million renovation, could cause friction between the memorial’s council and the minister.

Last week, Melick told The Australian there should be an entirely separate memorial for the frontier wars and that the memorial should exclusively “honour the sacrifice of those who have served our nation in armed conflicts and peacekeeping operations”.

That position was backed by opposition veteran affairs spokesman Barnaby Joyce and defence spokesman Andrew Hastie.

The comments appear to be at odds with the council’s decision, backed by Keogh, for the memorial to give a more prominent place to recording the history of the frontier wars in Australia.

UNSW Canberra Professor Peter Stanley, who worked at the memorial for 27 years and was its principal historian, said that he had argued for 40 years the frontier wars should be recognised.

He pointed out the memorial had displayed galleries that documented the New Zealand wars, the Boer wars in South Africa before federation, and that the colonial galleries had an engraving that documented the Slaughterhouse Creek massacre of 1838.

In addition, the memorial currently owns 63 artworks that document the frontier wars, including the Ruby Plains massacre painting by Indigenous artist Rover Thomas which is currently on display.

“Greg Melick is out of line in breaking council solidarity. If he disagrees with a council decision he should resign,” Stanley said. “The memorial has rightly read the mood of the community and appears to gasp the strength of the historical evidence and has at last decided to recognise the Australian [frontier] wars.”

“The memorial is the place where Australians remember Australia’s wars. It is not a temple to Anzac but is a place to acknowledge the importance of war in Australia’s history.”

But Melick told this masthead that “the chairman [Nelson] has not said we will have a special frontier wars gallery. What he has said is we already mention them and we will mention them in a wider and deeper way than we do now in the new gallery.

“I was not commenting on what the council decided, I was commenting upon what some aspects of the press said we should be doing. And therefore there is no question of me having broken council solidarity.”

Melick would not comment on whether he could be the next council chair.

Australian Defence Association executive director Neil James said his organisation also supported the creation of frontier wars galleries in the revamped War Memorial.

“The Kiwis and Canadians do it well, though they have a separate war memorials to their military museum,” he said.

“As John Coates’ Atlas of Australia’s Wars showed in 2006, if objective historians do it, you can stop it becoming a divisive political issue. It has become such a contentious issue, it needs to be depoliticised.“

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