Rename Ben Boyd National Park? Take a hike

A historian has slammed a decision to rename the Ben Boyd National Park, warning it will set a precedent for other historical sites across Australia.

A portrait of the 19th century landowner Benjamin Boyd by an unknown artist. Picture: Mitchell Library NSW

Historian Keith Windschuttle has attacked a decision by the NSW government to rename the Ben Boyd National Park in the state’s far south, arguing that the change is based on “shoddy historical research” and does not provide an accurate view of Boyd’s life or the practice of blackbirding in Australia.

Mr Windschuttle, who played a leading role in the so-called history wars of the early 2000s, said a government-sponsored report into the park’s renaming overlooked important historical research and that it should be recommissioned to offer a more rigorous account of the 19th-century landowner and the “contested” link between blackbirding and slavery in Australian history.

The government’s report, commissioned by Environment Minister Matt Kean and written by historian Mark Dunn, ­described Boyd as a colonial ­entrepreneur, land holder and steamship owner, who took people from the islands of Vanuatu and New Caledonia to work on his pastoral stations in NSW.

It concluded that Boyd’s operations marked the beginnings of a labour trade that would later ­become known as blackbirding, the 19th-century practice of ­coercing South Sea islanders to work on Queensland’s sugar and cotton plantations.

“His schemes were controversial at the time and viewed as a form of slavery by many of his contemporary critics,” wrote Dr Dunn. “His methods used in ­securing the labourers were considered to be coercive and the ­second voyage (to collect labourers from South Sea islands) ­descended into extreme ­violence.”

However, Mr Windschuttle, who is currently editor-in-chief of Quadrant Magazine and author of the three-volume The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, has disputed the use of the term slavery as well as the depth of Dr Dunn’s research.

The practice of blackbirding, Mr Windschuttle said, was one of the most government-regulated programs of labour migration of all time. “The fact is slavery was ­illegal in Australia,” he added. “Arthur Phillip said there will be no slavery in a free land and that was a principle he laid down which all of the British naval officers, who dominated the governorship for the first 20 years, all agreed upon.

Australian historian and writer Keith Windschuttle.

“The problem with the report is it does not provide a complete literature review. It doesn’t quote or even cite some of the major scholars in the field like Clive Moore and Peter Corris, who wrote widely on these subjects … It’s shoddy historical research and the minister should employ somebody else to do a better job.”

While Mr Windschuttle warned against the renaming of the Ben Boyd National Park, which was gazetted in 1971, he said he was not necessarily opposed to the idea of name changing “if it is based on thorough historical ­research”.

“Sometimes the names originally chosen are not very good or some of the statues are bad … If you look at the statues of Queen Victoria or Prince Albert in Sydney, they are very kitsch. And ­Albert had no influence in Australia whatsoever and they have a big statue of him on Macquarie St which is just rubbish,” he said.

Mr Kean said “there are many people from NSW’s early history who are worth remembering and celebrating, but it is clear … Ben Boyd is not one of them”.