Grappler Racist Filth wrote on Jun 12
th, 2026 at 3:12pm:
Robert Hill is very good.
Fortunately, he is not a lonely voice.
To ascribe genocidal intent to the British, and to frame the entire national story as a one-dimensional tale of violence and dispossession, is historically reductive and pedagogically damaging. In the current political climate, to suggest otherwise risks cancellation, deplatforming and the ire of the academic establishment. It will make you deeply unpopular.
Yet some, such as Australia’s pre-eminent historian, 96-year-old Geoffrey Blainey, are, in a sense, uncancellable. “I myself believe that most Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders are far, far better off today than if they were living in 1788,” he says. “This land is infinitely more fruitful than it was in 1788, and most Aboriginals are now the gainers … Here in this continent arose a democratic society which, for all its imperfections, offers liberty in a world where liberty is not normal.”
By “better off”, Blainey means that by the end of the 19th century the application of science and a pursuit of progress by the Europeans lifted the material standards of living above the impressive level achieved by Aborigines. Even quoting Blainey, suggesting on balance that colonisation may have brought benefits, will no doubt provoke the wrath of the establishment.
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Guilt runs through the syllabus like cracks in a facade, as Australian history is recast as single, unbroken narrative of “frontier warfare, massacres, removal from land and relocation to protectorates, reserves and missions”. Everything, it seems, except nation-building.
But here’s the kicker: children are also taught that no number of apologies, cards or tears can atone for the sins of the past. The curriculum insists that not even “reconciliation and truth-telling” can heal the deleterious effects of colonisation. Instead, they are told that “Reconciliation is not a single significant event or change, but an ongoing process of truth-telling and healing between First Nations Australians and other Australians”. This is reinforced by national observances such as National Sorry Day, National Reconciliation Week and NAIDOC Week, which are calendar fixtures that embed a rhythm of annual remembrance, contrition and activism into school life. Children are thus trapped in a cycle of endless apology and inherited guilt, from which there appears to be no escape. As Douglas Murray notes, “
If there is no possibility of forgiveness, then apology is merely the first step in a process of permanent submission."
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This is politics disguised as history. And despite having been thoroughly discredited, a simplified version of what is essentially a work of fiction, Young Dark Emu: A Truer History, published in 2019, has been widely adopted in Australian primary schools. Glowingly endorsed by education departments for its “corrective” approach to history and stocked in school libraries, Young Dark Emu presents children with a false version of the past in which Aboriginal people were an advanced civilisation of farmers, builders, engineers and political organisers, wiped out by colonisation.
For children raised on Pascoe’s narrative, national pride becomes difficult.
On Australia Day, many are far more comfortable waving the Aboriginal flag or the Palestinian flag or marching through the streets shouting politically loaded slogans such as “Sovereignty was never ceded” or “Always was, always will be”. But when asked if they would stay and fight in the event on an invasion, 48 per cent of Australian 18 to 24-year-olds say they would flee the country – presumably leaving the Aboriginals to defend themselves.
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