NAFPS Forum

In his 2002 book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, Keith Windschuttle resurrected the notions that originally justified colonisation - that Australia was never truly owned by its original inhabitants, that they were too savage to understand such a concept as property, too primitive to organise a war and too vulnerable to survive settlement. He offered not only a colonial frontier without warfare, but asserted that it was an academic conspiracy that portrayed it as such...

...He counts the dead but is unmoved by their passing. He concludes that 118 Aborigines were killed on the Tasmanian frontier. Mark Finnane, employing standard social science methodologies, concludes this death rate was proportionally three times higher than that of Australian soldiers in World War I. He wonders why Windschuttle, whose work demonstrates the violence of the colonial frontier, "evades his own conclusions"...

...Australians have remembered Tasmania as the bloodiest chapter in their colonial past. My research has unearthed stories told in Tasmania of a horrific frontier. One person, in 1908, described the island as a "land soaked in blood". But Windschuttle continues an Australian tradition of justifying and silencing colonial injustices. This tradition runs deep only because there is so much to justify, and so many voices to silence.

Controversial historian Keith Windschuttle has dealt with the storm over his appointment to the ABC Board in his customary fashion, publishing an article in Quadrant denying its existence. "I have seen no proof of any outrage and can only conclude it does not exist," he said. "And I reject the suggestion by lesser, evidence-based historians that I should try reading newspapers, listening to the radio or checking my email."