Memorial wrong for ‘frontier wars’: RSL

The RSL is urging the Australian War Memorial not to display frontier war artefacts to preserve the site’s focus on honouring the sacrifice of those who served in defence of the nation.

Brendan Nelson says the memorial will expand its recognition of the frontier wars. Picture: Gary Ramage

The Returned and Services League of Australia is urging the Australian War Memorial not to display frontier war artefacts to preserve the site’s exclusive focus on honouring the sacrifice of those who have served in defence of the nation.

RSL Australia president Greg Melick said the AWM was created to honour the sacrifice of Australian servicemen and women who had fought for their country or joined peacekeeping operations, arguing that the story of the frontier wars would be more appropriately told through a separate monument.

The concern comes after AWM chair Brendan Nelson said the memorial would expand its recognition of the frontier wars – fought between Aboriginal people and British colonists – as part of a wider development project.

The Coalition on Wednesday also warned the display of frontier war artefacts could entangle the AWM in a “partisan” debate and the memorial should be reserved for conflicts fought overseas.

RSL Australia president Greg Melick

Mr Melick said small artefacts displayed in memorials around the country were to provide context to Indigenous personnel who served in the armed forces.

However, Mr Melick argued there must be an entirely separate memorial, such as the Ngurra ­facility, to appropriately commemorate the frontier wars.

The new Ngurra facility is to be built in the Parliamentary Triangle between Old Parliament House and the War Memorial and will form a new cultural precinct to commemorate the diversity of Indigenous Australians.

The project, supported by Labor, was committed to by the former Coalition government in January at a cost of $320m.

“Conflicts are an entirely different matter and are a significant part of our history that would be more appropriately told in the National Museum or a national memorial,” Mr Melick said.

“While some frontier conflicts have been featured in Australian War Memorial galleries and touring exhibitions, these have been mounted to provide some context to the subsequent service of First Nations personnel in the ADF.

“The Australian War Memorial honours the sacrifice of those who have served our nation in armed conflicts and peacekeeping operations, and it is right and appropriate that this is exclusively maintained.”

Opposition defence spokesman Barnaby Joyce said the AWM was built in sacred recognition of conflicts fought overseas when the nation was unified against opposing forces, and should not be used as a memorial for onshore conflict.

“The fundamental element is that the War Memorial was built in sacred recognition of wars that Australians fought as a nation, unified against an external foe. It is not to be a memorial for conflicts within Australia,” he said. “The truth of both is absolute but the fundamental element is different. There are many memorials in Australia and in Canberra that represent the ultimate sacrifice of the person who lays down their life for others in a noble cause, but they are not all in the Australian War Memorial. This does not judge the value of those lives as different.”

But Dr Nelson, who previously served as the Coalition’s leader in opposition, said the memorial’s council decided to have a “much broader, deeper depiction of the violence caused against Aboriginal people” which he said was the duty of all cultural institutions.

It is understood the memorial is looking to expand its current collection of 63 frontier war artefacts and show more of the current collection on public display.

“Generations will change, and you have to make sure you have a credible collection, and not just one particular aspect but the entire basis to tell the story of young veterans in Australia and you can expect that there will be some more in relation to Aboriginal people,” Dr Nelson said.

He said the move was an expansion of what “we are already doing”, with some Indigenous artefacts already on display.

Mr Joyce said Ngurra was a “better philosophical representation” of the issues pertinent to internal conflict as opposed to the Australian War Memorial.

“Conflicts within Australia that pitted Australians against other Australians in our own land, in some instances internecine, should be represented and discussed in a memorial that takes into account this significant difference, and not at the Australian War Memorial which has its philosophical remit in the carnage suffered by those who went to fight for Australia in the First World War,” Mr Joyce said.

First Nations Senator Lidia Thorpe said that, “despite the War Memorial’s long existence, this country’s first wars, the frontier wars, were not represented”.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a former special forces officer who served in Afghanistan said: “The Diggers think it’s woke bullshit and that the AWM has acquiesced because they’re too scared to say no.”

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: BEN PACKHAM