Bill Shorten wary of Morrison’s Captain Cook ‘fetish’

Bill Shorten has called Scott Morrison’s backing for a commemorative voyage a “bizarre Captain Cook fetish”.

Scott Morrison joins the Guguyimithirr tribe at Reconciliation Rocks in Cooktown yesterday. Picture: AAP

Bill Shorten has blasted Scott Morrison’s decision to allocate $6.7 million towards a commemorative voyage of a replica of HMS Endeavour, accusing the Prime Minister of spending precious taxpayer funds on satisfying a “bizarre Captain Cook fetish”.

Mr Morrison yesterday announced the replica sailing ship would circumnavigate Australia next year to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Cook’s first voyage to Australia and the Pacific.

But the Opposition Leader, when asked if he would maintain the funding, said in Rockhampton: “I’m not going to get caught in some sort of bizarre Captain Cook fetish which Mr Morrison wants me to engage in.

“I want to make sure that, if we’ve got scarce taxpayer dollars, I’ll make sure your parents can get into aged care if they need it, that Australia’s kids get a quality education and get an apprenticeship; I want to make sure that you can drive up and down the Bruce Highway safely.

“Yes, Captain Cook was an English navigator — a very notable navigator — and he landed on the east coast … That’s fine, that’s our history, but I’m not obsessed about our history; I’m obsessed about our future.”

Speaking in Cooktown, Mr Morrison said those who criticised the commemorative activities were “missing the point” and that the activities were an act of reconciliation and education.

Announcing $5.45m towards the Cooktown 2020 festival in north Queensland, Mr Morrison said the local indigenous community was supportive of the activities. “You don’t crab-walk away from history, you open yourself to it, you embrace it, you come together and understand it,” Mr Morrison said after a re-enactment ceremony of an encounter between members of the Endeavour crew and local Bama Aborig­ines.

“What was so beautiful about the ceremony we had today was it told the story from both perspectives and I thought it captured a spirit of reconciliation which we want to go right across Australia.”

The re-enactment of events on July 17, 1770, during Endeavour’s 48-day stopover in Cooktown for repairs, portrayed a tense standoff between the Bama and Endeavour crew over a collection of turtles aboard the ship.

The standoff ended when a Bama man presented Captain Cook with a spear with the tip broken off — a gesture repeated yesterday by local Waymbuurr Warra man Fred Deeral to the Prime Minister.

Addressing a crowd of about 200 people at a local park, Mr Morrison said events such as Australia Day and the anniversary of Cook’s voyage were a time to “come together, reflect and learn”.

“Cooktown is saying, this is how you do it, this is how you embrace your past and your future,” he said.

Mr Shorten dismissed Mr Morrison’s suggestion that the Opposition Leader was encouraging Australians to despise their nation’s history as a “brain snap” by the Prime Minister.

“What I really think is that’s a distress cry from someone who can’t control his own party,” Mr Shorten told reporters in Mackay, where he announced $280 million for the North Queensland city’s ring road.

“Australia doesn’t need to have massive, divisive debates about our history. Kids should be taught it – I think every Australian child should be taught that Captain Cook didn’t sail around Australia, that it was Matthew Flinders – so I do believe in teaching our history accurately. But I, to be honest, have got some bigger fish to fry.”

Mayor Peter Scott said the funding was a “watershed moment for Cooktown” that would help boost the economy.

“Our mantra of ‘two cultures one people’ germinated when Captain Cook visited this area,” Mr Scott said.