Historical grievance politics imperils our future

The debate is not really about statues or political correctness. The statues row is a bizarre event revealing of something larger: how European Australia and indigenous Australia are going to recon­cile on this continent given their competing cultures and histories.

There are two tough principles at the heart of this. First, there can be no full justice or restitution for the enormous crimes and sins committed against the indigenous peoples, though this cannot gainsay efforts to address injustice against them; and, second, this is a dialogue between two different cultures, both of which have legitimate claims on this continent, with such legitimacy needing to be recognised by the other. Without acceptance of these harsh realities, we are collectively doomed.

Whenever the history wars recur, confusion reigns. The Labor Party is now seized with the idea of historical falsehoods. Tony Burke has denounced on ABC’s Q&A the idea that James Cook discovered Australia. Bill Shorten opposes tearing down statues but backs the indigenous proposal for an extra plaque on Captain Cook’s Hyde Park statue. Indigenous Labor frontbencher Linda Burney encourages local councils to check out their areas for historical inaccuracies to be corrected.

This gives Labor sanction to the revisionist movement. The politics of these movements is well known. One demand follows another. Given Australia’s racist past is assumed, does this mean thousands of statues, plaques and place names across the country need to be reviewed or adjusted? That would seem to be the inevitable logic. How could it not be? Shorten cannot believe his “correction” applies to just one statue.

This runs in parallel with the campaign to move Australia Day, which is denounced as racist. Once that brand is put on Australia Day it becomes a moral imperative to abandon it. This tactic is obvious and gains traction as one local council after another examines the issue. Burney said on Sky News that it is not a “unifying day” while conceding it “needs to be respected”. In short, the current situation is untenable.

Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, says her party has no plans to change it “at the moment” but adds that it is a “difficult day” for many. That is an unmistakeable pointer to what is coming. Imagine the future demands from the Labor rank and file. How Labor treats Australia Day is, in effect, up for review.

The initial push may come from state Labor parties. The recent NSW ALP conference passed a motion calling on Labor to consult with a view to creating a day to celebrate Aboriginal culture, a motion moved by Burney. NSW leader Luke Foley suggested it might be the Queen’s Birthday holiday in June: so you switch the day from honouring the monarch to honouring indigenous peoples.

Regardless of the chosen day, a national day to celebrate indigenous culture is appropriate. Indeed necessary. The issue is obvious: does this become the excuse for tearing up Australia Day or does it stand in parallel? This raises the pivotal question: is the latest push for indigenous recognition in symbols, statues and history a zero-sum game in which European symbols, statues and history are to be dismantled in the cause of so-called “truth telling”?

Put bluntly, this won’t work, any more than announcing as fact that Cook didn’t discover Australia. How ludicrous can we get? Does everything need to be so difficult? The only reason British settlement occurred is because Cook discovered Australia. Indeed, he is a towering figure from the age of Enlightenment and European discovery whose achievements remade global history. He is recognised for discovering and mapping Australia’s east coast, an event that inaugurated a British sphere of influence that shaped the future for nearly two centuries.

This does not gainsay that indigenous peoples were here already, that they had been here probably for 60,000 or more years and that the eastern Australia that Cook discovered was already occupied by a civilisation that had remained isolated to that point from the rest of the world.

Can we not hold these two realities in our head simultaneously? Can we not honour them both? Should we have more commemoration of the indigenous history? Of course we should.

Cook was a man of his time. That he was touched with greatness is beyond question. In his diary he wrote of the Aborigines: “From what I have seen of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them.

“They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: the Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life, they covet not Magnificent Houses, Household-stuff &c. They seem’d to set no Value upon any thing we gave them, nor would they ever part with any thing of their own for any one article we could offer them.”

It is true Cook’s voyage would inaugurate an age of violence for these peoples. One of our great anthropologists, John Mulvaney, said: “When Europeans came here, the Aboriginal population was probably half a million, if not more. By the time of Federation it was probably down to a hundred thousand or less.”

For Aborigines, Federation in 1901 meant nothing and gave them nothing. The founders believed they were a dying race. In 1902, in a shameful act, the new parliament legislated a uniform franchise for elections, giving the vote to men and women and denying it to Aborigines. Racism lay at the heart of the new nation.

The path to reconciliation has seen the 1967 referendum, land rights, native title, the apology, enormous federal funding, the “Closing the Gap” framework, the debate about constitutional recognition and the treaty.

Let us state the harsh truth — the path to fully honouring Aboriginal history depends ultimately on the goodwill of the Australian people. It depends on identifying and exploiting what European and Aboriginal Australians share in common, not what divides them.

There is no redemption in the temporal world for the enormity of past sins. Such demands issued endlessly, generation after generation, will only exhaust all parties. Adversarial political tactics are understandable but they will fail.

Telling the Australian people they must surrender their national day, their statues, their commemorations, their history while expecting the same people to vote for indigenous constitutional recognition and a treaty is a failed strategy that will only deepen grievance without repair.

There should be monuments to indigenous figures, a national day of Aboriginal commemoration and constitutional recognition. But this demands a politics of reconciliation, not grievance.

If indigenous leaders want to tear down the past they will find a populist right-wing reaction against them. Everybody will be the loser.

We cannot run away from Australia Day. The pretence is that moving the day is the solution to our cultural divide. Australia Day needs to be reshaped to confront the moral contradiction at the heart of our existence.

It is, however, alarming to see the rise in this country of the victimisation cult now rampant in America — the essence of identity politics — in which one section condemns another and asserts its moral superiority because it has been hurt and offended. We need to have the courage to repudiate this, not surrender to it. That is Labor’s weakness.

We also need to recognise what has been done.

Stan Grant did nobody a service with false claims about reducing Aboriginals to a postscript in our history. Our indigenous history, as Geoffrey Blainey says, has seen a huge commitment now for several decades. School textbooks provide extensive accounts of indigenous history.

The moral crimes against the Aboriginal people mean the work of reconciliation is never done — yet our obligation is to find a way to live together.