$12m in academic grants blasted for ‘distorting’ Australian history
Almost $12 million in research grants aimed at ‘enhancing’ our historical understanding of Australia has been slammed for instead promoting an unpatriotic and distorted view of our culture.
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The latest round of almost $12 million worth of taxpayer grants to academics has come under fire for promoting an unpatriotic, “distorted” view of our history and culture.
Announcing the Australian Research Council’s list of projects, Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan promised the money would “enhance” our historical understanding of Australia.
But free-market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs says many of the projects are not in the national interest and push a narrative that the institutions and values of Western Civilisation have been “responsible for all the evils, past, present and future”.
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“If you were to use these projects to paint a picture of Australian society, culture and history, the image that emerges is extremely grim,” the IPA’s Bella d’Abrera says.
“The focus on Australia’s history is that the modern state of Australia was brought into existence by violence, dispossession and colonial oppression, while modern society and culture is characterised by social inequality, crisis and conflict.”
The grants include Griffith University being given $299,108 “to explore the role living heritage sites play in resisting or reinforcing cultural injustices faced by colonial subjects”.
The University of Melbourne will receive $271,000 to investigate the “friction between the nation’s stories of itself, and the current massive fracturing of health, of places and of peoples”.
Ms d’Abrera, the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program director at the IPA, said the academics were responsible for shaping the national narrative.
“Their narrative is that the institutions and values of Western civilisation, which the British brought with them in 1788, have been responsible for all the evils, past, present and future,” she said.
“They are also responsible for teaching this narrative to future generations of Australians. It is no wonder then, that students who have spent three years in humanities departments come out the other end with a distorted view of Australia’s history, society and culture.
“It is why they leave university and want to tear down statues of Captain Cook, and tear down the values and institutions of Western civilisation.”
Asked if his grants promoted a one-sided view of Australia, Education Minister Dan Tehan said he had announced extra grants this year into society, history, literature and art because they were making up only 3 per cent of prior grants.
The research council said the grants met their assessment criteria and the national interest test.