Overland literary journal

OVERLAND 191
ISBN 978-0-9775171-8-3
winter 2008
published 23 May 2008

A POSTSCRIPT, A PROSPECT

Sean Scalmer re-appraises the ‘History Wars’

In 1996, John Howard uncovered a conspiracy. Early in his prime ministership, he detected “one of the more insidious developments in Australian political life”. This was a plot: a “systematic and deliberate” attempt to “rewrite Australian history in the service of a partisan political cause”.¹

How had history been rewritten? Here the Member for Bennelong arced between two somewhat contradictory poles.

Initially, Australian history had been traduced. Howard thought it a tale of “heroic and unique achievement”.² The conspirators were chastised not so much for their factual inaccuracies (he detailed none), but for insufficient pride. Theirs was a history with a black armband:³ the encomium to heroism had become a bitter lament. Such a tempering of celebrations made Howard uneasy. As he would put it in the last months of his prime ministership: “Why as a nation have we become so ashamed of the Australian story?”⁴

But the concern with patriotic deficiency was increasingly supplanted by alarm over narrative incapacity. The prime minister began to criticise historians not so much for their pessimistic view of the Australian story as for their inability to tell any kind of story at all. On Australia Day Eve, 2006, he upbraided history educators for teaching their subject “as some kind of fragmented stew of moods and events, rather than some kind of proper narrative”.⁵ At the history summit later that year, he echoed these complaints, identifying a perverse desire among instructors to “just teach issues and study moods and fashions”, in preference to the quest to “comprehend and have a narrative”.⁶

Such disparate maladies made for a confusing treatment. If partisan politics had distorted history, then politicians should keep out. Yet Howard’s own attempts to reshape Australian history soon became notorious. ‘History warriors’ who questioned the extent of Aboriginal death or misery were elevated to senior positions on government boards.⁷ Ministerial interventions violated the independence of the Australian Research Council and the National Museum.⁸

In 2006, Howard announced a “root and branch renewal” of Australian history teaching, so as to restore “our national sense of self”.⁹ A summit was convened, to which delegates from the “sensible centre of history debates” were invited.¹⁰ When the new curriculum it helped to produce failed to meet his expectations, Howard sent it out for review to a handpicked team.¹¹ The redrafted Guide to the Teaching of Australian History in Years 9 and 10 was launched with much fanfare, and the prime minister made its acceptance by the states a condition of future Commonwealth funding. He also sought to make it an issue in the subsequent election.¹²

Howard’s interventions into history were sometimes even more direct. He declared the respect granted to Australia’s best-known historian Manning Clark “rather nauseating”.¹³ He launched the Prime Minister’s Prize in Australian History, and may have played a role in picking its winner. Howard’s favoured historian Les Carlyon shared in the award for his Gallipoli. Geoffrey Blainey, a judge of impeccably conservative credentials, reportedly thought the decision making improper.¹⁴ Tom Frame, an Anglican bishop and another judge, defended the process with a disarming admission: “We were told at the outset we were to give a list to the PM who would himself make the choice because it was his prize.”¹⁵

If Howard’s diagnosis of a partisan political history was followed by unprecedented governmental meddling, then his later actions shared in this strange, contradictory flavour. What to do with a history lacking both narrative order and appropriate patriotism? Logic would dictate a curriculum organised around a clear sequence of events, linked deftly together with national pride. However, a combination of political hesitancy and entrenched opposition constrained the prime minister and his allies.

Instead, the Right offered a discordant mixture of order and pluralism. Seeking order, the prime minister demanded historians inculcate “a proper orthodox understanding” among students, “in the sense of being properly instructed and according to some kind of coherent narrative.”¹⁶ At the opening of the history summit in 2006, Education Minister Bishop instructed those present about the government’s aims:

We want to re-establish a narrative structure in the teaching of history … and we want to identify the key historical events, facts, dates and details that should be part of this structured narrative.¹⁷

This was ‘narrative’ in the singular sense: one story. Howard adopted a similar expression in his introduction to the Guide to the Teaching of Australian History in Years 9 and 10, launched in October 2007. There he affirmed the “need to restore a coherent sequenced narrative of our national story to a central place in school curriculums”.¹⁸

Elsewhere, there was an acknowledgement of narratives, plural. Gregory Melleuish gained prominence as the scourge of the left-wing academy. But, charged with revamping the history curriculum in a preparatory document for the history summit, the Wollongong academic admitted that it would be impossible to proclaim a single story:

Narrative is a tricky concept. There is no single narrative into which all history can be placed but a number of narratives, some of which may conflict and others that may be complementary. Narrative is about what we put into a story and what we leave out.¹⁹

Other summiteers of a conservative stamp agreed. Paul Kelly emphasised that “we need to explicitly put down any outside polemical impression that this is about imposing a single historical narrative. Nobody is on about that”.²⁰ And John Howard professed a similar innocence: “We are not seeking some kind of nostalgic return to a particular version of Australian history”.²¹

But if no single or particular interpretation of Australian history was to be asserted, then how might the coherent and structured narrative that Howard sought be forged? How would the story be told? What could be left out? And what deserved to make it onto the page?

Here, protestations of pluralism succumbed to a more narrow partisanship. Melleuish’s proposed units in Australian history started with “the beginning of the European presence: 1788″ and his exclusion of Aboriginal history was quickly recognised.²² The author of Cultural Liberalism in Australia, Melleuish also complained of an excessive interest in “social movements”, the Vietnam War and the Whitlam government amongst existing school texts.²³ Former premier Bob Carr (also a guest at the history summit) agreed that “the ’60s are overrated”, and also attempted to downplay that period in a future curriculum.²⁴

Instead, Melleuish pressed the claims of “economic development”, “middle Australia”, “non-Deakinite (Free Trade) liberals” and “people of religious belief”.²⁵ Howard’s panel of review also included the economic deregulation of the 1980s and 1990s in the new curriculum (an addition applauded by the Sydney Morning Herald, as well as by Wayne Swan).²⁶ The panel’s selection of nearly eighty ‘milestone’ events included the Bodyline cricket controversy and the resignation of Robert Menzies as prime minister, but could find no space for the Eureka rebellion or the winning of the eight-hour day.

Today, Howard’s Guide is “as dead as a doornail”, to quote the author of the first draft (and critic of its later versions), Monash academic Tony Taylor.²⁷ But the Labor government plans to pursue a national history curriculum. And its shape remains indeterminate.

In this less cramped environment, questions suppressed by the History Wars appear with a new urgency. Most obviously, how might the broad sweep of Australian history be narrated? Is it possible to address the competing claims of narrative sequence and disputed interpretation? Ease of comprehension and diversity of experience? Are different solutions available than those imagined by Howard’s mates in the academy or the think-tanks?

Many suspect not. John Hirst, an independent historian of the Right, is one scholar confident of an underlying unity around such issues. At the history summit he beseeched attendees not for invention, but for:

the standard periodisation of Australian history which has stood the test of time. That is what I am after.²⁸

Hirst certainly holds no brief for Howard’s version of history.²⁹ But does the standard account he solicited really exist? Or has the basic story of Australia been disturbed by past decades of intellectual discovery and political contention? Are established forms of narrative arrangement still dominant? Or has there been a change? And if so, then of what kind?

These questions usher us beyond the polarities that defined the ‘history wars’. Even Gregory Melleuish has mourned the “lack of debate and discussion regarding the structure of the narrative of Australian history, and of such things as the periods of Australian history”.³⁰ How might this more open and peaceful territory therefore be explored? Is a concise survey possible?

SHORT HISTORIES OF AUSTRALIA: PERIODISING THE PAST
A close comparison of ‘short histories’ of Australia provides a useful first step. The short history of Australia is a venerable genre. First composed by popular authors (among them Marcus Clarke), it has served as the principal instructor of generations of school students. A comparative analysis should establish the relative extent of stability and innovation.

For most of the twentieth century, short histories remained fixated on the process of European discovery, settlement, economic growth and military baptism. Ernest Scott’s influential volume (1916) famously began with the declaration:

This Short History of Australia begins with a blank space on the map and ends with the record of a new name on the map, that of Anzac.³¹

His thirty chapters included seven devoted to exploration, five about the occupation and early administration of New South Wales, and five more concerned with the establishment of the other colonies.³²

Such a fascination with European origins and heroic progress was perhaps unsurprising in the callow youth of a federated Commonwealth. However, this periodisation endured with remarkable constancy. A.L. Meston’s Junior History of Australia (first edition, 1934; second edition, 1950) comprised twenty-two chapters in its second edition. Of these, only six covered the twentieth century. The volume began with European exploration (‘Portuguese, Spaniards, and the Great Southern Land’); surveyed the arrival of the Dutch and the English; covered the establishment of the various colonies, the trials of circumnavigation and internal exploration; the rewards of ‘golden fleece’ and mineral discovery; the event of Federation; the structures of the new Commonwealth, war and expansion.³³

High school seniors and undergraduates persisted on a similar diet. R.M. Crawford’s Australia (1952) also passed over the period of Commonwealth history with an astonishing lightness. The Melbourne professor delved backwards to consider ‘The Land’ and ‘The Aborigines’, before devoting a further six chapters to the broad sweep of European arrival and colonisation. Crawford’s political interests were evident in the foregrounding of democratic events, with chapters devoted to ‘Gold and Democracy’ and ‘Aggressive Democracy, 1860-1900′. A mere three chapters took up the story from this point: ‘The Australian Legend’ (an exercise in cultural history that also harked backwards), ‘The Commonwealth’ and ‘Australia, Present and Future’.³⁴

A more balanced coverage was evident in Gordon Greenwood’s Australia: A Social and Political History (1955), with fully half of the outline devoted to the then current century. Even here, however, the twentieth century was considered overwhelmingly as a military endeavour, two of the four relevant chapters being ‘Australia at War, 1914-18′ and ‘Depression and War, 1929-50′.³⁵

These emphases were not seriously questioned, even by those identified as visionaries or iconoclasts. Certainly, Manning Clark shared in the common approach nearly as much he dissented from it. The bearded prophet looked beyond the marketplace and the paddock to the clash of ideas and the quest for grace and, in place of sunny achievement, he detected a tragic failure. His Short History of Australia (1963) closed, in its final, revised version (1986), with a cry of anguish from the kingdom of nothingness:

Mammon had won: Mammon had infected the ancient continent of Australia. The dreams of humanity ended in an age of ruins.³⁶

But the tragic unfolding was most closely sketched in the first years of European arrival. In Clark’s History of Australia, four of the six books take the story up to 1888, while two volumes complete the survey until 1935. As the author of a short volume, he was similarly focused: Clark used four chapters to tell the history of the twentieth century, from ‘The Age of the Optimists: 1901-1919′ until ‘An Age of Ruins: 1969-1986′. By contrast, there were nine earlier chapters devoted to the period from ‘The Coming of the Aborigine and the White Man’ to ‘Radicals and Nationalists: 1883-1901′.

The children of the baby boom were reared on these accounts: explorers and charts, wool and gold, war and Federation, money and markets. The great achievement of the next generation of ‘New Left’ historians was to enlarge the story. First as a social history, their narrative embraced not only the making of a ‘nation’ but also the experiences of its peoples. Second, ‘the people’ were understood to include women as well as men, the indigenes as much as newer arrivals. Third, their victories were acknowledged as a shared labour; theirs also became a story of conflict, and of loss.

The passionate urge to confront earlier and grossly selective accounts of Australia’s past drove the younger brigade.³⁷ Together, their works filled bookshelves with learned theses and fresh interpretations. But how have these filtered through to shorter histories of Australia? Have they, too, been rewritten?

Here, the challenge has also been impressive and sustained. R.W. Connell and T.H. Irving’s Class Structure in Australian History (1980) led the charge. A collaboration of scholars schooled in the social sciences as well as history, it was notable for its theoretical concern, narrative invention and openness to the reader. Of the five chapters, one discussed ‘Class Analysis and History’, and the four others devoted roughly equal attention to the broad sweep of Australian history. The remaking of class provided the narrative thread, so that the story began with the building of colonial capitalism (1788-1840), continued with the hegemony of the mercantile bourgeoisie (1840-90), the working-class challenge (1890-1930) and the rise of an industrial ruling class (1930-75). The book’s subtitle was ‘Documents, Narrative and Argument’, and each of the main chapters comprised upwards of twenty primary documents. Here was illustrative material – but also the opportunity to share in the acts of interpretation and narration.

Feminist historians extended the sensitivity to difference. In Creating a Nation (1994), Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly shared in the authorship of a new short history. The centrality of gender suggested a new means of imagining Australia’s past. Moreover, the authors chose to devote three separate chapters to the “very distinctive” Aboriginal experience of “colonisation” and “nation building”.³⁸ This quarter or so of the book was matched by roughly even slices (three chapters apiece) on the period from European arrival to 1860, from 1860 until 1912, and a slightly greater concentration on the bulk of the twentieth century (four chapters). The book gave special attention to conflicts produced by “the encounter between diversity and the incitement to national uniformity”,³⁹ and it closed with a clear endorsement of the former – a chapter entitled ‘Affirmations of Difference’.

This path-breaking work had few precedents. Perhaps only Russel Ward’s Australia Since the Coming of ManConcise History title) could be considered a forerunner. Ward was critical of earlier short histories, and promised to scrutinise the relations between Aborigines, women, explorers and “the dominant white, male establishment” for the first time.⁴⁰ His innovation was most evident in the discussion of Australia’s origins: the text began with a chapter on ‘Black and White Discoverers, c. 60000 B.P. – A.D. 1770′. (later republished under the

For the past two and a half decades, such pioneering works have offered their readers new forms of “structured narrative” (to use Howard’s preferred term); their authors have not succumbed to a strange desire for “moods and fashions”, nor to a postmodern flight from “comprehension”. But the presence of multiple versions of the past has made these histories more humble and democratic; less authoritative, but also more perceptive. The most recent short histories are marked by a self-conscious awareness of the coexistence of different stories. This gives each narrative a special wisdom and sensitivity. Stuart Macintyre’s Concise History (1999), for example, begins not with a proclamation, but with a question: “How and when did Australia begin?”. Macintyre’s answer extends to a survey of alternative “versions” of Australia’s past, among them the school history of his own childhood and the Djanakawa story of the creation of the land and its animals.⁴¹ His discussion seeks a creative relationship between the past and the present: as the historian turns to the past with new questions, so the discovery of the past is seen to provide a new understanding of constraints and possibilities:

The history of Australia works backwards and forwards to rework our understanding of how we came to be what we are. Its presence is inescapable. To enter into it provides a capacity to determine what still might be.⁴²

For those familiar with such approaches, John Howard’s condemnation of an apparent delight in moods and fashions among Australia’s historians appears as a serious misreading of dispositions and achievements. Likewise, John Hirst’s propensity for a “standard periodisation” which has “stood the test of time” also seems very wide of the mark. Over the last two decades, new kinds of shorter histories have been composed. A wider temporal reach and a more generous understanding of the past distinguish them from their precursors. An awareness of multiple narratives has been met with the composition of new forms of storytelling, and not by the abandonment of ‘the Australian story’ as such. On the contrary, that story is now recounted with greater comprehensiveness than ever before.

POLITICS AND HISTORY: AFTER THE WAR?
None of the newer histories is without a politics. But this should not be surprising. Politics intervenes in the selection of events (a process grossly evident in the priorities of Melleuish and Carr at the history summit); politics is present when the historian shapes those events into a meaningful story. As Hayden White famously argued, a given sequence of events might be emplotted in a number of different ways: as a romance or a comedy, a tragedy or a satire.⁴³ The matching of plots with events is a literary and creative act. ⁴⁴ It makes each history distinctive, and necessarily involves the creation of mood, the identification of a meaning and the passing of judgements.

In consequence, no ‘History of Australia’ will be met with universal acclaim. The best might engage some and anger others; move those with an appetite for romance, for example, but sour readers with a more tragic or comedic disposition. Now that the Howards have carted their possessions from Kirribilli House and the new government is contemplating a national curriculum, this should be remembered by the more timid of Labor’s technocrats. Consensus about Australia’s past is impossible. Warriors of the Right rarely lay down their arms.

The persistence of conflicts over history will doubtless surprise some. In the aftermath of Labor’s election, Robert Manne thought that “[t]he culture war will come abruptly to an end”,⁴⁵ a sentiment gleefully echoed by a number of other liberal commentators.⁴⁶ The conservative columnist Greg Sheridan mournfully made the same point in the final weeks of the Howard era.⁴⁷

But the evidence of such a subsidence is so far painfully scant. In late November 2007, the Sydney Morning Herald editorialised that “The election has not settled the ‘history wars,’”⁴⁸ and the Australian has since affirmed that the “warriors” in the “culture wars” have been “vindicated” far more than “vanquished”.⁴⁹ New commentators have more recently criticised an alleged absence of “facts” and “chronology” in the existing history curriculum,⁵⁰ and Murdoch’s newspapers have even identified “what is taught at school” as a profitable means of broadening conservative appeals.⁵¹

How will a Rudd government respond if the ‘history warriors’ dig in? The prime minister’s apology to the Stolen Generations is an important sign of fidelity to historical truth and a willingness to challenge conservative sensibilities. Kevin Rudd’s slow repetition of the word ‘sorry’ on 13 February 2008 moved many Australians to tears. The contrast with Howard’s flint-hearted and legalistic refusals was remarkable, and the ceremony revived earlier hopes of a justice long deferred and a reconciliation long imagined.

However, the apology appears to be designed as a singular gesture rather than an encouragement to further discussion, compensation or historical discovery. The text of the speech suggested a settling of accounts, not an immersion in past events. Like a marketeer re-launching a brand, Rudd was eager to move on rather than reflect or review:

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.⁵²

In an earlier career as a Queensland bureaucrat, Rudd foreshadowed a similar desire to pass on from conflicts over history, especially in the history curriculum.⁵³ As Minister for Education, Julia Gillard has also avoided rather than entered controversy. Her efforts to deflect questions on the meaning of ‘1788′, for example, combined conservative reassurance with a vague relativism:

I would say Australia was settled. I can understand that many indigenous Australians would say that it was invaded and I think for senior students who study history in our secondary schools, one of the things they would consider is this conflict of views.⁵⁴

Statements of this sort are as unlikely to please the devotees of historical understanding as they are the custodians of the national honour. They suggest sharp limits upon the practices and the disciplines of history.

Gillard, unlike Howard, recognises that history is more than simply ‘what happened’. But the methods of the historian also extend further than the consideration of different or conflicting views. Students of the discipline are required, additionally to investigate, to interpret evidence and episodes, to evaluate competing accounts, and to explain.⁵⁵ These are the activities that most excite enthusiasts for history in the nation’s classrooms.⁵⁶ But they necessarily touch upon areas of controversy and disagreement, and they therefore invite further conflict, both in the schoolroom and in the polity. The claims of history and the imperatives of political peacemaking are likely to be in periodic tension over the coming years. And Labor’s rulers will sometimes need to choose between them.

For more than a decade, the ‘history wars’ orchestrated by the Right have battered the profession and poisoned the public conversation about Australia’s past. After the departure of Howard, the search for a more civil discourse is both understandable and praiseworthy. But if Labor’s leaders seek only consensus, then they will embolden the ‘history warriors’, rather than advance either understanding of the past or renewal of the present. The enlargement of the national story over a longer period (nearly a generation) has been accomplished by disciplined historical research and by sustained efforts at public persuasion. This needs to be remembered and celebrated. The rewriting of the past need not be an act of conspiracy or a pretext for manipulation. It might also be an opportunity for discovery, and an invitation to further invention and debate.

1 Cited in Humphrey McQueen, Suspect History, Wakefield, Adelaide, 1997, pp. 2-3.
2 Ibid., p. 98.
3 A phrase Howard owed to a 1993 speech by Geoffrey Blainey. See Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark, The History Wars, 2nd edn, Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, 2004, pp. 128-9.
4 Cited in Russell Skelton, ‘Time to Mention the Wars’, Age, 15 December 2007.
5 Cited in Imre Salusinszky, ‘Howard Rewrites Nation’s History’, Australian, 11 October 2007.
6 Australian History Summit, Transcript of Proceedings, p. 1, .
7 For example, Keith Windschuttle, author of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, was appointed to the board of the ABC. Others appointed to government positions who had strong records as ‘history warriors’ included Ron Brunton, Piers Ackerman and Janet Albrechtsen.
8 Interventions into the National Museum are discussed in Macintyre and Clark, and Graeme Davison, ‘A Historian in the Museum: The Ethics of Public History’, in Stuart Macintyre (ed.) The Historian’s Conscience: Australian Historians on the Ethics of History, Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, 2004, pp. 49-63. As Education Minister, Brendan Nelson rejected a number of grant winners earlier selected through the independent peer review of the Australian Research Council. He also established a separate ‘Community Standards Committee’ to invigilate grant winners, to which he appointed P. P. McGuinness. See Stuart Macintyre, ‘Universities’, in Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison (eds) Silencing Dissent, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2007, pp. 41-59.
9 ‘Prime Minister John Howard’s Address to the National Press Club on January 25, 2006′,

.
10 The formulation was Education Minister Bishop’s. See Australian History Summit, Transcript of Proceedings, p. 1.
11 As discussed in Tony Taylor, ‘Howard’s Way Fails School Test’, Age, 14 January 2008.
12 As noted by Skelton.
13 Cited in Macintyre and Clark, p. 50.
14 John Lyons, ‘Blainey’s Ire over PM’s History Prize’, Australian, 17 November 2007.
15 Cited in ibid.
16 Australian History Summit, Transcript of Proceedings, p. 2
17 Ibid., p. 1
18 John Howard, ‘Foreword’, Guide to the Teaching of Australian History in Years 9 and 10, p. 1.
19 Gregory Melleuish, ‘The Teaching of Australian History in Australian Schools: A Normative View’, prepared for the Australian History Summit, Canberra, 17 August 2006, p. 2.
20 Australian History Summit, Transcript of Proceedings, p. 24.
21 Ibid., p. 1.
22 Jackie Huggins, ibid., p. 35.
23 Melleuish, p. 3.
24 Australian History Summit, Transcript of Proceedings, p. 68.
25 Melleuish, pp. 4-5.
26 ‘Mr Howard’s History Lesson’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October 2007. On Swan, see Gerard Henderson, ‘The One-Sided History Wars’, Age, 18 January 2008.
27 Taylor, ‘Howard’s Way Fails School Test’.
28 Australian History Summit, Transcript of Proceedings, p. 52.
29 His experiences at the summit and in writing other histories for government are outlined in John Hirst, ‘Australia: The Official History’, Monthly, February 2008, pp. 28-35
30 Melleuish, p. 6.
31 Cited in Stuart Macintyre, A History for a Nation: Ernest Scott and the Making of Australian History, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1994, p. 73. The focus on military endeavour was retained, so that the seventh edition bore a preface by Herbert Burton which referred again to the blank space, but ended “with Australia bearing her share in the Second World War”. See ‘Preface to the Seventh Edition’ in Ernest Scott, A Short History of Australia, 7th edn, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1947, p. v.
32 As noted in Macintyre, 1994, p. 76.
33 A.L. Meston, A Junior History of Australia, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1950.
34 R.M. Crawford, Australia, Hutchinson’s University Library, London, 1952.
35 Gordon Greenwood (ed.) Australia: A Social and Political History, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1955.
36 Manning Clark, A Short History of Australia, rev. edn, Penguin, Melbourne, 1986, p. 251.
37 See Henry Reynolds, Why Weren’t We Told? A Personal Search for the Truth About Our History, Viking, Melbourne, 1999.
38 Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly (eds.) Creating a Nation, McPhee Gribble, Melbourne, 1994, p. 5.
39 Ibid., p. 2.
40 This is from the text of his 1987 preface. See Russel Ward, ‘Preface to 1987 Edition’, Concise History of Australia (rev. edn, 1992), University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, p. ix.
41 See the first chapter: ‘Beginnings’, Stuart Macintyre, Concise History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1999.
42 Macintyre, 1999, p. 280.
43 Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1978, p. 61.
44 Ibid., p. 85.
45 Cited in Andrew Bolt, ‘Beware Those Whackers’, Herald Sun, 14 December 2007.
46 For example, Mark Bahnisch, ‘Culture War a Dead Duck’, ; Lindy Edwards, ‘Social Shift Ends Howard Interlude’, Canberra Times, 26 November 2007.
47 Greg Sheridan, ‘Howard’s Grand Failure’, Australian, 25 October 2007.
48 ‘Beyond Sorry, Making Amends’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 November 2007.
49 ‘Misreading History’, Australian, 11 November 2007.
50 Christopher Bantick, ‘Government Faces Test on Australian History’, Sunday Herald Sun, 20 January 2008.
51 ‘Time to Be Pragmatic’, Australian, 20 December 2007.
52 ‘Text of PM Rudd’s Sorry Address’, Age, 13 February 2008.
53 When conservatives complained of the use of the term ‘invasion’ in new school materials, the Goss government (after interventions from the Cabinet Office that Rudd led) acted to mollify them. This is discussed in Ray Land (ed.) Invasion and After: A Case Study of Curriculum Politics, Queensland Studies Centre, Brisbane, 1994. See also Noel Pearson, ‘Sorry, We Require a Synthesis’, Australian, 1 November 2007.
54 Cited in Justine Ferrari and Lauren Wilson, ‘Gillard Wants History Taken Back to Basics’, Australian, 3 December 20007.
55 These are elements of ‘historical literacy’ in Tony Taylor’s original draft of the guide. See Taylor, Outline of a Model Curriculum Framework: Australian History, Years 3-10, Department of Education, Science and Training, April 2007.
56 For more on the tastes of history students, see Anna Clark, History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2008; ‘Learning About Stuff Outside the Box’, Overland 191, 2008, p. 16.

Sean Scalmer teaches history at the University of Melbourne. His most recent book is The Little History of Australian Unionism (Vulgar Press, 2006). Special thanks to Anna Clark, Nathan Hollier, Stuart Macintyre and Jeff Sparrow for comments on an earlier draft.
© Sean Scalmer
Overland 191 – winter 2008, pp. 27-33

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