Was ever a great man more maligned than James Cook? He was a legend in the fields of navigation, cartography, exploration, and leadership, yet mere mention of his name these days invokes accusations of imperialism, genocide, and cultural hegemony.
So dastardly and numerous are the crimes against his person, it is hard to say which one is the
cruellest, whether it is ending up a historical pariah, or being murdered, disembowelled, broiled and returned to his crew in bits, or having Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons as his biographer.
Whatever the case, we cannot deny that on April 29, 1770 Cook arrived on this continent, an event that would eventually lead to the founding of one of the most successful, harmonious, and multiracial democracies the world has known.
Understandably, many indigenous Australians do not regard Cook’s landing as cause for a celebration. Neither do Greens politicians, student activists, left-wing academics, or many other misery merchants who, despite their purported abhorrence of colonisation, choose to remain on this land.
Their opposition was always expected. But as it turned out, most commemorations were cancelled due to coronavirus restrictions. Given Cook had been denied that, was it unreasonable to expect his critics, especially well remunerated officials, to refrain from denigrating him on that special day?
Sadly, it was. “Sudden arrival of an invader from another land, decimating populations, creating terror,” tweeted Victoria’s deputy chief health officer, Dr Annaliese van Diemen. “Forces the population to make enormous sacrifices & completely change how they live in order to survive. COVID-19 or Cook 1770?”
Sudden arrival of an invader from another land, decimating populations, creating terror. Forces the population to make enormous sacrifices & completely change how they live in order to survive. COVID19 or Cook 1770?
— Dr Annaliese van Diemen (@annaliesevd) April 29, 2020
For the sake of Victoria and the rest of the country, let’s hope the good doctor knows far more about pandemics than she does about history, because she is a quack when it comes to the latter. As Australian National University historian Professor Angela Woollacott observed, this was “a very misleading comparison”.
“There were no sudden terror, enormous sacrifices or complete changes on a large scale,” said Woollacott last week. “In 1789 there was an epidemic of smallpox around the Sydney area that then spread more widely with devastating effects for Aboriginal people. But the large-scale dispossession of land, widespread frontier conflict, loss of livelihood and culture and stolen children occurred slowly over the 19th and 20th centuries.”
Van Diemen had tweeted from a private account, but her official title is displayed prominently in her Twitter bio. By drawing an analogy involving the foremost priority of her office, she effectively ensured this tweet had her employer’s imprimatur. Even The Age editorialised she should apologise.
“For a senior government official entrusted with giving advice on the deadliest pandemic in a century to be offering up such historical analogies on social media is completely out of bounds,” it said.
By tweeting so, van Diemen joins a long list of officials who, despite holding impressive qualifications, have made a dill of themselves on social media. As to why she slandered Cook, look no further than what she tweeted in 2015, a year before she was employed by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The system was created by white men for white men. It was not designed for equality, so the design needs to change. #qanda
— Dr Annaliese van Diemen (@annaliesevd) August 17, 2015
“The system was created by white men for white men,” she said.
You can see where this is going. Cook is the embodiment of white patriarchy and privilege (forget that he was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings), which automatically warrants punitive revisionism and nullifying of all his achievements.
For her target audience, van Diemen’s historical howlers are of minor importance. With her cheap iconoclastic shot, she has publicly validated her credentials as the great white woman who weeps for the wretched, as well as affirming her self-loathing.
State Opposition Health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier called for van Diemen to resign, while Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said she should be sacked.
Two things to consider in response to that: First, the Morrison Government has set aside millions for honouring Cook; and second: Victoria is the state of provincial wokeness. For the likes of van Diemen, pissing off your political masters’ Canberra counterparts will, if anything, get you a pay rise.
The Victorian Public Sector Commission has already announced it will not take disciplinary action against van Diemen. Earlier. DHHS Secretary Kym Peake had advised the tweet had been sent when she “was not at work and was given in her personal capacity”.
But that is a specious distinction, given it was sent via a departmental phone. Peake can stress all she likes that van Diemen has met senior departmental managers “to discuss the risks of private use of social media when working in the public sector, and particularly when occupying a role that involves high profile public communication,” but neither the tweet concerned nor her official title has been removed from the DCHO’s “private” account.
Van Diemen’s defenders, including Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, have dismissed criticism of her as ballyhoo, highlighting her valuable work in combating coronavirus. Also, being a senior official is not necessarily a bar to showing contempt for mainstream Australia and its origins. In fact, it is almost mandatory for academics, human rights officials and journalists of our national broadcaster.
But van Diemen is still a public servant, albeit one with a stethoscope. She has a statutory obligation to be “impartial, apolitical and behave in a way that sustains public trust”.
She might also want to read her department’s annual report from last year, specifically that excerpt which notes that Aboriginal children and families should be encouraged to “to be strong in culture and proud of their unique identity”.
Presumably this would mean not tweeting that the arrival of humans in this continent tens of thousands of years ago also had catastrophic consequences for the native animals, with 85 per cent of megafauna being wiped out.
Would she suggest the ancestors of indigenous people were analogous to a deadly virus, or are her fashionable denigrations reserved only for dead white males?
This is not the first time van Diemen has used her public profile for political purposes. In October 2016, having joined DHHS in March of that year, she signed a petition decrying Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres, specifying that she was in “public health”.
In 2014 she retweeted a claim from human rights lawyer Julian Burnside to the effect that student Freya Newman “deserves a medal, not a penalty”.
Student Freya Newman pleads guilty to hacking Frances Abbott design scholarship files http://t.co/WtzSuD19k1 Deserves a medal, not a penalty
— Julian Burnside (@JulianBurnside) September 21, 2014
Newman, formerly an employee of Whitehouse Institute Design, had used her position to access confidential data relating to the awarding of a scholarship to then Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s daughter Frances, and later pleaded guilty to accessing restricted data.
Given the vastness and sensitivity of the personal information that DHHS holds and van Diemen’s senior position, you would hope van Diemen does not condone the actions of departmental employees who commit such breaches.
The VPSC may well regret it did not decisively call out van Diemen’s use of departmental resources for partisan comment. By not doing so, it has sent the wrong message to all public sector employees in the state, particularly those in DHHS. After all, leaders lead by example, whether it be good or bad.
If van Diemen can publicly comment on political issues, why not all public servants? We could start with DHHS’s decision in 2018 to observe “They Day” every month. On that day, its 10,000 employees are asked to avoid “gendered” language and instead use neutral pronouns such as “they” or “them”.
A question for all DHHS employees: do you feel abolishing gendered pronouns is a good thing or do you think this Newspeak is a virus that attacks the English language? Don’t be shy: tell us how you feel about this and other issues. Do you think that biology determines gender? What is your attitude towards giving puberty blocking drugs to young children who think they were born in the “wrong body”?
What do you think of the Victorian Government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak at Cedar Meats (currently 62 cases)? Note, when answering, do not forget to put your name and official title in your social media bio. Oh, and if you are using a departmental phone to respond, please wait until your rostered day off. I am joking of course. Public servants should always act impartially and apolitically. But imagine the furore if employees with conservative views took advantage of this. I doubt whether they would receive the leniency that van Diemen enjoyed.
Finally, there is another insidious virus which increasingly threatens this country’s economic and social wellbeing. It is parasitic, it stifles initiative, it rewards mediocrity, it targets this country’s white blood cells, it causes paralysis, it makes people question their self-worth, it causes divisiveness, and it makes intelligent people deny objective reasoning. We have the means to cure it, but for some reason we lack the willpower. Spare us please the virus of the cultural commissars.
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