Our history not written in stone for ALP

Bill Shorten’s move to add a separate plaque to James Cook’s Sydney statue has been likened to an extremist push.

The portrait of Captain James Cook hanging in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. Picture: GL Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

Bill Shorten’s move to add a separate indigenous plaque to Captain James Cook’s statue in Sydney’s Hyde Park has been likened to an extremist push to “trash” Australian values.

Scott Morrison, the member for the southern Sydney electorate named after the British ­explorer, yesterday accused the Opposition Leader of approving a “political correctness test” for public monuments, in a deepening of the political divide over Australia’s history.

Mr Shorten, who was backed yesterday by his deputy, Tanya Plibersek, the MP for Sydney, said Australian history did not start when Captain Cook reached the east coast of Australia in 1770, and argued against an “us and them” approach to indigenous affairs.

“An additional plaque on Captain Cook’s statue is fine by me,” Mr Shorten said.

“We’re Australians. I think we can be smart enough to recognise and be proud of the fact that we share this continent with the oldest continuing group of people anywhere in the world.”

While the Labor leader failed to specify what the extra plaque would say, he said it was unnecessary to tear down statues and urged the nation to be “honest about our history”.

“Captain Cook was the English discoverer of Australia; there were people already here,” he said.

“If you’re an Aborigine you didn’t need Captain Cook to discover your home; you already lived there.”

Linda Burney

Linda Burney — Labor’s human services spokeswoman and the first indigenous woman elected to the House of Representatives — yesterday argued for councils to consider altering ­plaques on monuments to correct “historical inaccuracies”.

“Captain Cook did not discover Australia and his arrival marks a painful event for First Australians,” Ms Burney said. “But you cannot dismiss his historical ­significance to this country. The statue shouldn’t be pulled down, but the plaque should be changed to reflect this truth.”

The Australian Town and Country Journal of February 1879 wrote of Cook’s values ahead of the unveiling of his statue.

Both Ms Burney, who also suggested the creation of monuments celebrating indigenous culture, and Ms Plibersek yesterday condemned the weekend graffiti attack on the statues of Captain Cook and NSW governor Lachlan Macquarie.

A “change the date” slogan was sprayed over the inscriptions of both statues, along with a “no pride in genocide” slogan on Cook’s statue.

Mr Morrison criticised the proposal for an extra plaque, saying it would fail to keep “one indigenous child in school, keep one indigenous woman safe or get any indigenous person into a job”.

“Rather than just call this out for the idiocy it is, Bill Shorten now thinks our public statues need to pass some sort of political correctness test,” he said.

“What is he proposing? That in his first 100 days as prime minister he will visit every public statue with his new Office of the Public Engraver, to edit our history to his liking?”

Ms Plibersek said while it was important to improve understanding of indigenous history, steps also needed to be taken to “close the gap” in education, health and employment and economic participation.

A worker removes graffiti from the Cook statue in Sydney’s Hyde Park.

“I have said in the past that changes need to be made to better recognise indigenous history and culture,” she said. “We are a mat­ure nation big enough to understand our history. Placing a second plaque on the statue may be one way to do that.”

A spokeswoman for City of Sydney Council yesterday confirmed that any proposal to add plaques would be considered “following consultation with the NSW government, the City of Sydney’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Panel (and) the City’s Public Art Advisory Panel”.

The spokeswoman said historians, curators and the broader community would also be consulted and pointed to examples in Victoria and Western Australia where extra plaques were erected, including the Batman monument in Melbourne.

Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar said the push to alter ­historical statues represented an assault from left-wing extremists who wanted to “trash our values and history”.

“That Bill Shorten has signed up to this madness shows just how far he’ll go to appease the hard left of the Labor Party, who would much prefer Anthony Albanese as their leader,” Mr Sukkar said.

Former NSW Labor premier Bob Carr said Australian history was not a “single story”.

“It’s about time we got this straight: from an Aboriginal perspective, 1788 was undoubtedly an invasion,” Mr Carr said.

“From a white perspective, it was a colonial settlement. The two strands apply to the complex interaction but we don’t bury one to celebrate the other.

“Cook was a superb navigator but his first response on seeing Aborigines … was to shoot one and steal their possessions.”