Vikki Campion: Telling half the story in Voice campaign is an injustice to all people

It’s an insult for “yes” Voice campaigners to cherrypick history. As activists claim all were treated terribly, history must never be changed. The full story should be told, writes VIKKI CAMPION.

Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“Yes” campaigner and activist Thomas Mayo fronted a Year 6 class in Bundaberg this week, unbeknown to parents, leaving students with a simplistic view of history and the Voice, an insult to those who were there in the era before him.

Mayo had travelled from Melbourne to Hervey Bay for the Yes campaign, to talk to Bundaberg Catholic Primary School without the school informing parents that he would be addressing children about the Voice.

The self-declared former communist and MUA activist lectured 11-year-olds for 1½ hours, as he does in his children’s book, that “when Captain Cook came, our life changed, we were treated badly and ignored”.

One Bundaberg dad said his daughter was “straight onto me about the referendum” after school.

Mayo had convinced the 11-year-old the No campaign was lying. She became aggravated with her father, arguing “the Voice was all about recognition”.

Liberal MP Pat Farmer, who passed through Bundaberg on his Run For The Voice tour around Australia in support of the Voice, joined panellists Thomas Mayo and Jade Appo-Ritchie on the stage at the conclusion of a Voice forum at Bundaberg. Picture: Supplied

The baffled dad explained that Mayo does not represent an entire demographic. “I had some work to do to convince her,” her father said.

While Mayo was in Bundaberg, Noel Pearson presented the Voice to North Sydney preschoolers’ parents, and Teal MP Kylea Tink.

Voice campaigner Noel Pearson. Picture: Picture: Sky News

History is more complex, and in many places, not even similar to what Mayo told Bundaberg’s schoolchildren.

If you listen to Mayo and Pearson, Australia was a cesspit of interracial conflict and discrimination.

ALTERNATE FACTS

Alternate facts show it was a meeting of two different ways of life, often lived in parallel, rather than at each other’s throats.

Mayo is rewriting history, and suppressing powerful positive stories to get a Yes vote so we are all maligned with a hereditary stain.

The truth of my valley says that is not so.

About 100 years ago, on the remote property in Danglemah where I live, early residents’ written accounts survived the rewriting of history.

Aboriginal tribes came from over the ranges, camped here, and worked – when they wished – with the remote people on the property, paid with fresh meat.

It was here “Queen Mary” met “Missus Lily”, who lived here 100 years before I did. Her real name has been lost, but she called herself Queen Mary, the chief’s wife; he wore the breastplate inscribed “king”.

Mary helped Lily on wash days, and Lily gave her flour, soap, fruit or tobacco in return.

Then, like now, there was no shop. They relied on the land.

When Lily wanted a school to educate her children on her veranda, and hired a governess, Mary wanted the same for the camp children and brought six.

There was no “them and us” attitude; the railway children, Aboriginal children and manager’s children all came because they were wanted, equally entitled in Lily’s eyes.

The 1920s veranda school showed acceptance. As evidence, the enamel basins Lily bought for the kids were, until recently, still under the house.

One night, Mary arrived on Lily’s doorstep beside herself.

CHERRYPICKING HISTORY

She begged Lily “to go to the camp as they were killing each other”. Lily’s husband was worried, but reluctantly allowed her to go because he knew Mary needed help. They trusted each other.

Lily ripped up old sheets for bandages. And set out through the dark valley.

Who now would run into a war zone in the middle of the night, unarmed, with a rudimentary first aid kit? Today it would be left to the police and ambulance, but in the 1920s, Lily and Mary — the “missus” and the “Queen” — were all the camp children had.

Confronting Lily were “awful wounds” which she cleaned and bandaged. Then she walked home alone through the dark valley.

“She’d never seen such a sight, and it made her feel quite sick”, a written account from her daughter said.

I trace the footsteps between the house and the camp that Lily and Mary made that night about 100 years ago. An hour at least, in pitch-black. Their bravery, courage and generosity should be remembered.

Keith Pitt has now been invited to the Bundaberg school to present the other side of the Voice debate.

These are hardly the actions of a racist bigot. But Thomas Mayo doesn’t tell stories like this to kids.

This was not the story of two ethnicities at war. Lily was no rich landholder, and no tyrant to Queen Mary’s tribe that camped nearby.

While 100 years ago, they were sharing lessons on their veranda school, activists are now sneaking into classrooms and claiming all were treated terribly. History must never be changed, and that’s why the full story should be told.

Australian history should feature all available comprehensive accounts, not cherrypicked items presented as the complete picture.

Tell stories of Mary, “the Queen”, and Lily, the “missus” – living in a remote place where all relied on their wits and resilience, on the land and the orchard.

Instead, Mayo left kids in Bundaberg with a one-sided view – and left Bundaberg Catholic Primary to apologise to parents on Friday for failing to inform them of his visit.

The school has now invited federal MP Keith Pitt to present the other side of the Voice debate to the Year 6 class – but as Pitt says, when he talks to kids, it’s about the fundamentals of democracy, not his view of politics.

After a decade of talking to schools, Pitt’s favourite question from a student is: “Is the Prime Minister your friend? Do you have his mobile number?”

They are 11, after all. And that’s a lesson the Yes case could learn.