Steve Flora & David Stephens ‘Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part II’, Honest History, 19 September 2017 Part I of this post covered the first decade (1941-51) of the FBI’s interest in the…
Search results for: David Stephens
Flora, Steve & David Stephens: Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part I
Steve Flora & David Stephens ‘Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part I’, Honest History, 25 July 2017 Leslie Cyril Jauncey (1899-1959) has been a fellow traveller in the Honest History enterprise almost since…
The Honest History Book: Canberra launch with Tom Griffiths; ABC’s James Valentine interviews co-editor David Stephens
Last night around 60 people went to Muse Canberra to hear Professor Tom Griffiths AO of the ANU launch The Honest History Book in the national capital. Attendees agreed that the book is a significant contribution to Australian history and…
Flora, Steve & David Stephens: Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (21): Australia reacts to the February 1917 Revolution in Russia: a look at newspapers of the day
Steve Flora & David Stephens The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series ‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (21): Australia reacts to the February 1917 Revolution in Russia: a look at newspapers of the day’, Honest History, 21 March 2017 Australia during the…
Honest History’s David Stephens on 6PR Perth Drive with Adam Shand
Adam Shand on 6PR looked at issues to do with travel to Turkey, in the wake of DFAT upgrading travel alerts. He put questions to HH’s David Stephens about commemoration and appropriateness. Among other things, Stephens said that, if Anzac…
Allan, Susan: Governments and history: David Stephens interview
Allan, Susan ‘”Governments want a history that reflects their agenda“‘, World Socialist Web Site, 8 January 2015 Long interview with Honest History secretary, David Stephens, speaking in a personal capacity. The interview covers the politicisation of the Great War centenary…
Piggott, Michael & David Stephens: Constitution Day
Piggott, Michael & David Stephens ‘Constitution Day: an old Queen and a new nation’, Honest History e-Newsletter no. 4, August 2013 Of all the notable days in the Australian calendar Constitution Day, 9 July, is the least known but one…
David Stephens
Dr David Stephens is Secretary of the Honest History coalition and Editor of the Honest History website. During the Vietnam War era he was a conscientious objector and a National Service Act defaulter. He has an MA in politics from…
Piggott, Michael & David Stephens: Constitution Day: an old Queen and a new nation
Michael Piggott and David Stephens* ‘Constitution Day: an old Queen and a new nation’, Honest History Newsletter No. 4, August 2013 Of all the notable days in the Australian calendar Constitution Day, 9 July, is the least known but one…
Stephens, David: This book about growing up Aboriginal in Australia is not just one for whitefellers of a certain age
David Stephens ‘This book about growing up Aboriginal in Australia is not just one for whitefellers of a certain age’, Honest History, 20 April 2018 David Stephens reviews Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, edited by Anita Heiss It makes a…
Stephens, David: Lest We Forget again: Anzac Day is an opportunity to confront our violent frontier past and its shadow today
David Stephens ‘Lest We Forget again: Anzac Day is an opportunity to confront our violent frontier past and its shadow today’, Honest History, 10 April 2018 updated Yassmin Abdel-Magied, 2017 (Guardian Australia/ABC) Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a young Somali-Australian Muslim woman, was…
Stephens, David: Brendan Nelson’s bunker and with cap in hand: contrasts in funding our national cultural institutions
David Stephens* ‘Brendan Nelson’s bunker and with cap in hand: contrasts in funding our national cultural institutions’, Honest History, 9 April 2018 The Director of the Australian War Memorial, Dr Brendan Nelson, has been spruiking the Memorial’s plans for a…
Stephens, David: To put North Korea 2018 in context, read Australian Michael Pembroke on the Korean War: review note
David Stephens ‘To put North Korea 2018 in context, read Australian Michael Pembroke on the Korean War: review note’, Honest History, 6 March 2018 updated New South Wales Supreme Court judge, Michael Pembroke, born 1955, has written a brilliant book,…
Stephens, David: How does the tax-paying record of large Australian companies square with our much-vaunted Australian egalitarian ethos?
David Stephens ‘How does the tax-paying record of large Australian companies square with our much-vaunted Australian egalitarian ethos?’ Honest History, 18 February 2018 updated The ABC’s chief economics correspondent, Emma Alberici, this week put out some articles on the tax…
Stephens, David: Review note: Great Convict Stories by Graham Seal
David Stephens ‘Review note: Great Convict Stories by Graham Seal’, Honest History, 11 December 2017 This book contains about 85 little chunks of history (two to four pages each, mostly), bound into ten bundles, with seven to eleven chunks per…
Stephens, David: The second First Lady, the pretend colonel, and the dogs of Ottawa: some alternative decision-making scenarios for heads of state
David Stephens* ‘The second First Lady, the pretend colonel, and the dogs of Ottawa: some alternative decision-making scenarios for heads of state’, Honest History, 30 November 2017 One thing often leads to another in the blogging business. A little while…
Stephens, David: The Australian War Memorial is still doing well out of arms manufacturers – how well, we don’t quite know
David Stephens* ‘The Australian War Memorial is still doing well out of arms manufacturers – how well, we don’t quite know’, Honest History, 30 November 2017 updated For some time now Honest History has monitored the interesting phenomenon of arms…
Stephens, David: Faulty abacus? DVA and the cost of commemoration
David Stephens ‘Faulty abacus? DVA and the cost of commemoration’, Honest History, 30 November 2017 The Department of Veterans’ Affairs, working through the French government tourist bureau, Atout, recently squired a couple of Australian-based journalists around the battlefields of the…
Stephens, David: ‘Age shall not weary them’: questioning a Kokoda claim
David Stephens* ‘ “Age shall not weary them”: questioning a Kokoda claim’, Honest History, 3 November 2017 This week’s 75th anniversary of Kokoda has seen repeated claims about the average age of Australian soldiers in the Kokoda campaign. For example,…
Stephens, David: Here we go again: complaints about history curricula, this time tertiary
David Stephens ‘Here we go again: complaints about history curricula, this time tertiary’, Honest History, 25 October 2017 updated There’s been another sprouting of what commentators with a horticultural background once used to call ‘a hardy perennial’ – complaints about…
Stephens, David: Skirmish in Canberra Times letters column over a War Memorial that ‘has lost its way’
David Stephens ‘Skirmish in Canberra Times letters column over a War Memorial that “has lost its way”‘, Honest History, 18 October 2017 updated Today’s Canberra Times (online and hard copy) included a letter from me which was butchered by the…
Stephens, David: Who’s Schlesinger now? Something that may have happened in the Nixon era could be relevant today
David Stephens ‘Who’s Schlesinger now? Something that may have happened in the Nixon era could be relevant today‘, Pearls and Irritations, 5 October 2017 updated Update 19 November 2017: More on this issue in a post from the BBC (with…
Stephens, David: What wars do to soldiers: Greg Lockhart’s The Minefield
David Stephens ‘What wars do to soldiers: Greg Lockhart’s The Minefield‘, Honest History, 2 October 2017 updated All wars are different yet all wars are the same. No matter which politicians garner credit or blame, regardless of which officers get…
Stephens, David: Carmen Lawrence’s 2006 book Fear and Politics is still very relevant more than a decade on
David Stephens ‘Carmen Lawrence’s 2006 book Fear and Politics is still very relevant more than a decade on’, Honest History, 19 September 2017 Carmen Lawrence is a professorial fellow in the School of Psychological Science at the University of Western…
Stephens, David: Here we go again with another lost commemorative opportunity: the Armistice Centenary Grants Program
David Stephens ‘Here we go again with another lost commemorative opportunity: the Armistice Centenary Grants Program’, Honest History, 20 September 2017 Minister Tehan has announced the Armistice Centenary Grants Program (Armistice Grants) a program of grants to commemorate the centenary…
Stephens, David: Hidden in plain sight: Aboriginal massacre map should be no surprise
David Stephens ‘Hidden in plain sight: Aboriginal massacre map should be no surprise‘, Pearls and Irritations, 7 July 2017 updated Follow-up to Professor Lyndall Ryan’s map, unveiled at the Australian Historical Association conference, of settler massacres of Indigenous Australians. The…
Stephens, David: “Australian values” and security: have we been here before?
David Stephens ‘”Australian values” and security: have we been here before?’ Honest History, 26 June 2017 updated Note: related material on section 44 of the Constitution. Update 19 October 2017: the Government’s proposed citizenship changes fail to pass the Senate.…
Stephens, David: Graham Freudenberg, elegant and erudite scribe of an important era in Australian politics – and earlier
David Stephens ‘Graham Freudenberg, elegant and erudite scribe of an important era in Australian politics – and earlier’, Honest History, 22 June 2017 Norman Graham Freudenberg AM is 83 years old this year. He has written speeches for Labor leaders,…
Stephens, David: Now that the Ataturk Memorial at Gallipoli is being restored … some options for President Erdogan to consider
David Stephens ‘Now that the Atatürk Memorial at Gallipoli is being restored … some options for President Erdoğan to consider’, Honest History, 18 June 2017 updated Update 13 July 2017: interesting questions posed (in Turkish) by veteran Gallipoli tour guide,…
Stephens, David: Anzac is not just the One Day of the Year: the myth that just keeps on giving
David Stephens ‘Anzac is not just the One Day of the Year: the myth that just keeps on giving’, Honest History, 16 June 2017 While we have been promoting The Honest History Book – which is doing very well, thank…
Stephens, David: Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (23): ‘A wartime police state’: Australia’s War Precautions Act during the war for freedom
David Stephens ‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (23): ‘A wartime police state’: Australia’s War Precautions Act during the war for freedom’, Honest History, 19 May 2017 updated The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series Every country at war takes measures to protect…
Stephens, David: Afghanistan infinitum or walking away? The possible cost of shared values
David Stephens ‘Afghanistan infinitum or walking away? The possible cost of shared values’, Honest History, 18 May 2017 updated Update 30 May 2017: Defence Minister Payne announces 30 more troops to be sent to Afghanistan, in a training capacity. Comments.…
Stephens, David: Anzac and Anzackery: have Australians normalised war?
David Stephens ‘Anzac and Anzackery: have Australians normalised war?’ Daily Review, 30 April 2017 Might we wade through the emotional sludge of Anzackery – the over-the-top, jingoistic bastardisation of the Anzac legend – to address some important questions about ‘our…
Stephens, David: ‘Afghanistan: The Australian Story shows war is about much more than “love and friendship”
David Stephens ‘Afghanistan: The Australian Story shows war is about much more than “love and friendship”’, Honest History, 2 May 2017 A review of Chris Masters’ double DVD for the Australian War Memorial. (Trailer; ABC story.) The DVDs contain footage…
Stephens, David: ‘”Johnnies and Mehmets”: Kemal Ataturk’s “quote” is an Anzac confidence trick
David Stephens ‘“Johnnies and Mehmets”: Kemal Ataturk’s “quote” is an Anzac confidence trick‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 April 2017 updated Edited version of David Stephens and Burcin Cakir’s chapter 7 of The Honest History Book. The words attributed to Ataturk,…
Stephens, David: Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (22): The Finland Station and Flinders Street
David Stephens ‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (22): The Finland Station and Flinders Street’, Honest History, 16 April 2017 The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series Today (16 April) is exactly one hundred years since Lenin arrived at the Finland Station in…
Stephens, David: Allusions in Beanland: two exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial
David Stephens ‘Allusions in Beanland: two exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial‘, Honest History, 21 March 2017 updated This is a combined review of For Country, for Nation, about Indigenous service in defence of Australia, and A Home on a…
Stephens, David: Review note: Leaders using and abusing power through the ages
David Stephens ‘Review note: Leaders using and abusing power through the ages’, Honest History, 23 February 2017 At a time when on-the-run psychological assessments of world leaders – and one leader in particular – are becoming routine news items, considered…
Stephens, David: Cooking the (visitors) books: the Australian War Memorial struggles with statistics – again
David Stephens ‘Cooking the (visitors) books: the Australian War Memorial struggles with statistics – again’, Honest History, 7 February 2017 The article looks at the statistics in the Memorial’s Annual Report 2015-16 for real (flesh-and-blood) visitors to the Memorial and…
Stephens, David: Opposition Leader HV Evatt receives certain assurances from Comrade Molotov: another case of “They would say that, wouldn’t they”?
David Stephens ‘Opposition Leader HV Evatt receives certain assurances from Comrade Molotov: another case of “They would say that, wouldn’t they”?’, Honest History, 7 February 2017 ‘Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans – FAKE…
Stephens, David & John Myrtle: Review notes: Geoffrey Bolton on Paul Hasluck
‘Review notes: Geoffrey Bolton on Paul Hasluck’, Honest History, 11 January 2017 This book (Paul Hasluck: A Life) was published in 2014 and its author, Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Bolton, has since died. The book deserves recognition after this lapse of…
Stephens, David: These four articles on politics reinforce each other in unexpected ways
David Stephens ‘These four articles on politics reinforce each other in unexpected ways’, Honest History, 27 November 2016 Fifty years on In 1966, 50 years ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson was in the White House, Australia’s new prime minister, Harold Holt,…
Stephens, David: When a motley crew of Canberra stirrers protected the War Memorial from competition
Stephens, David ‘When a motley crew of Canberra stirrers protected the War Memorial from competition‘, Honest History, 11 November 2016 Tells the story of the Lake War Memorials Forum, a group which fought for two years to prevent the building…
Stephens, David: Turks did the heavy lifting: a longer look at the building of the Atatürk Memorial in Anzac Parade, Canberra, 1984-85: Part II
David Stephens ‘Turks did the heavy lifting: a longer look at the building of the Atatürk Memorial in Anzac Parade, Canberra, 1984-85: Part II’, Honest History, 25 October 2016 updated This is a revised and extended version of an article…
Stephens, David: ‘Awkward humility’: The speeches of the Hon. Dr Brendan Nelson AO: Part II: Long bows, Holly Golightly and political baseball bats
Stephens, David ‘“Awkward humility”: The speeches of the Hon. Dr Brendan Nelson AO: Part II: Long bows, Holly Golightly and political baseball bats‘, Honest History, 20 October 2016 This article continues our analysis of ten of Dr Nelson’s speeches from…
Stephens, David: Turks did the heavy lifting: a longer look at the story of the Ataturk Memorial, Canberra, 1984-85: Part I
David Stephens ‘Turks did the heavy lifting: a longer look at the story of the Atatürk Memorial, Canberra, 1984-85: Part I’, Honest History, 11 October 2016 updated This material revises and extends an article published in April 2016 and based…
Stephens, David: ‘Awkward humility’: The speeches of the Hon Brendan Nelson, AO: Part I: Thrice more with feeling
Stephens, David ‘” Awkward humility”: The speeches of the Hon Brendan Nelson AO: Part I: Thrice more with feeling‘, Honest History, 11 October 2016 The article analyses ten speeches from 2007 to 2016 regarding their structure, recurring themes and sets…
Stephens, David: Review note: Howard on Menzies rolls out on the ABC
David Stephens ‘Review note: Howard on Menzies rolls out on the ABC’, Honest History, 18 September 2016 updated So much is available about this two-part ABC doco that we won’t attempt more than some random thoughts which we’ll update after…
Stephens, David: We go to Rio: questioning received war history
Stephens, David ‘We go to Rio: questioning received war history’, Teaching History (History Teachers’ Association of New South Wales), 50, 3, September 2016, pp. 4-6 Pdf accessible here made available by courtesy of HTANSW, which holds copyright. Anzac may be…
Stephens, David: We need to talk about how we commemorate our wars in other people’s countries – and our own
Australia’s Vietnam War – and keeping it in context: others in the series _______________________________ David Stephens ‘We need to talk about how we commemorate our wars in other people’s countries – and our own’, Honest History, 18 August 2016 updated…
Stephens, David: Is Julia Gillard’s speech to the US Congress the most sycophantic speech by an Australian PM?
Stephens, David ‘Is this the most sycophantic speech by an Australian prime minister? Julia Gillard’s address to the United States Congress, March 2011’, Honest History, 19 July 2016 This article analyses a recent claim by former Australian diplomat, Richard Butler,…
Stephens, David: How some Turks would rather that Johnnies and Mehmets were not equal
David Stephens ‘How some Turks would rather that Johnnies and Mehmets were not equal: research report’, Honest History, 19 July 2016 updated The equality of death ‘There is no difference’, we are told every Anzac Day, ‘between the Johnnies and…
Stephens, David: Keepers of the flame: making war memorial councils more representative
David Stephens ‘Keepers of the flame: why do the people who control our war memorials look so different from the rest of us and why does this matter?’ Honest History, 7 June 2016 This article analyses the composition of the…
Stephens, David: Bill Shorten’s Royal Commission proposal: Labor and banks go way, way back
Stephens, David ‘Bill Shorten’s Royal Commission proposal: Labor and the banks go way, way back‘, Pearls and Irritations, 9 April 2016 and updated Update of some earlier material on the Honest History site about the history of Labor’s relations with…
Stephens, David: Malcolm Turnbull’s post-Anzac pitch to the Australian Defence Force
Stephens, David ‘Malcolm Turnbull’s post-Anzac pitch to the Australian Defence Force‘, Pearls and Irritations, 2 March 2016 Looks at a recent speech from the prime minister and a later doorstop (just prior to the release of the Defence White Paper)…
Stephens, David: ‘The Australian War Memorial is happy to let your opinion stand as it is’
Stephens, David ‘“The Australian War Memorial is happy to let your opinion stand as it is”: the Memorial’s response to recent posts on the Honest History website‘, Honest History, 22 February 2016 Commentary on recent response from the Memorial to…
Stephens, David: Singing country: the importance of the song On every Anzac Day
Stephens, David ‘Singing country: the musical legacy of David Morrison, Australian of the Year – and a straw in the wind at the Australian War Memorial?’, Honest History, 2 February 2016 The article looks at the story behind the song…
Stephens, David: ‘Visitation’ numbers at the Australian War Memorial since 1991
Stephens, David ‘“Visitation” numbers at the Australian War Memorial since 1991: is this joint really jumpin’?’ Honest History, 2 February 2016 updated In this article we analyse 25 years of War Memorial visitor statistics and seven years of statistics for…
Stephens, David: A century since we stole quietly away
Stephens, David ‘A century since we stole quietly away‘, Honest History, 23 December 2015 updated Marks the centenary of the evacuation of ANZAC troops from Gallipoli and describes the commemorative ceremony at the Australian War Memorial. Anzac remains, according to…
Stephens, David: will the new Anzac centenary minister be too busy to bother?
Stephens, David ‘Will the new Anzac centenary minister be too busy to bother?‘ Honest History, 1 December 2015 Update 4 December 2015: the Minister has responded on Twitter. The article looks at the ministerial workload implications of the machinery of…
Stephens, David: three Canberra art exhibitions (review)
Stephens, David ‘Less twaddling by the lake: three art exhibitions in Canberra‘, Honest History, 16 September 2015 A review of Reality in flames at the Australian War Memorial, Heroes and villians: William Strutt’s Australia at the National Library of Australia…
Stephens, David: Freedom and the Australian War Memorial: is Honest History not a force for good?
Stephens, David ‘Freedom and the Australian War Memorial: is Honest History not a force for good?‘, Honest History, 1 September 2015 Honest History’s secretary and editor traces the often fraught relationship between Honest History and the Australian War Memorial, which…
Stephens, David: Anzackery: parochial puffery a century on
David Stephens ‘Anzackery: parochial puffery a century on‘, Honest History, 25 August 2015 This speech, including Powerpoint slides, was prepared for a professional development session for Museums of New South Wales. The session was cancelled but the speech has been…
Stephens, David: ‘There will be blood’: ministers and the military responsibility of children
David Stephens ‘“There will be blood”: ministerial remarks on the responsibility of children‘, Pearls and Irritations, 22 August 2015 Traces the fascination of authority figures with the concept of blood sacrifice. The blood sacrifice of children was evident in ancient…
Stephens, David: Public Works Committee’s paddle in Monash museum
Stephens, David ‘Public Works Committee’s paddle in Monash museum‘, Honest History, 19 August 2015 Our third article on the Sir John Monash Interpretive Centre proposed for Villers-Bretonneux in France. It briefly analyses the Public Works Committee report, tabled in the…
Stephens, David: Monash interpretive centre, Villers-Bretonneux (II)
Stephens, David ‘Monash interpretive centre (Immersion II of II): Public Works Committee dips toe in water‘, Honest History, 4 August 2015 The article considers further the proposal to build the Sir John Monash Interpretive Centre at Villers-Bretonneux, France, at a…
Stephens, David: And the children went: Hands on History at the War Memorial
Stephens, David ‘“And the children went”: Hands on History at the Australian War Memorial‘, Honest History, 4 August 2015 A description of a ‘Hands on History’ session for school children on holidays, leading in to an assessment of how the…
Stephens, David: Money, Monash and motive: analysing a project in France (I)
Stephens, David ‘Money, Monash and motive: the Sir John Monash Centre, Villers-Bretonneux (Immersion I of II)‘, Honest History, 7 July 2015 An analysis of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs submission to the Public Works Committee hearing on the Monash centre…
Stephens, David: Australia spending so much more on WWI centenary
Stephens, David ‘Why is Australia spending so much more on the Great War centenary than any other country?‘ Pearls and Irritations, 20 June 2015 Honest History’s David Stephens writes for John Menadue’s blog, Pearls and Irritations. The article compares Australia’s…
Stephens, David: Anzac and Anzackery (Kogarah speech)
Stephens, David ‘Anzac and Anzackery: speech to Kogarah Historical Society, 14 May 2015‘, Honest History, 9 June 2015 Honest History’s secretary speaks on the contrast between an Anzac ideal and the bloated caricature that is ‘Anzackery’. There are many resources…
Stephens, David: ‘The Next War’: two speeches on Australia 2015
Stephens, David ‘”The Next War”: two speeches on Australia 2015’, Honest History, 23 May 2015 The first speech, ‘Anzac and the militarisation of Australian society‘, was given at Politics in the Pub, Glebe, on 9 April 2015. It discussed Anzac…
Stephens, David: constructing emotions (centenary spend)
Stephens, David ‘Constructing emotions: Australia leads world in WWI commemoration spend‘, Independent Australia, 19 May 2015 (This is an updated version of the piece here, dated 12 May.) The recently (re-)announced $100 million for a hi-tech museum in France is…
Stephens, David: rebooting Anzac
David Stephens ‘Rebooting Anzac for the next century‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 April 2015 (and in other Fairfax) Traditions that are not continually refreshed become quaint and irrelevant and eventually die. The Anzac tradition has waxed and waned over a…
Stephens, David: magic Anzackery pudding
Stephens, David ‘The magic Anzackery pudding‘, Honest History, 9 April 2015 Guest posting on 7 April on John Menadue’s blog. Norman Lindsay was busy during World War I. When he wasn’t doing propaganda posters of slavering Huns or sketching buxom…
Stephens, David: Five arguments for downsizing Anzac
David Stephens ‘Five arguments for downsizing Anzac’, Teaching History (History Teachers’ Association of New South Wales), 49, 1, March 2015, pp. 16-19 Pdf accessible here made available by courtesy of HTANSW, which holds copyright. We need to make Anzac less…
Stephens, David: Peter FitzSimons: poltergeist with two brains
Stephens, David ‘Peter FitzSimons: poltergeist with two brains‘, Inside Story, 25 March 2015 A review of FitzSimons’ Gallipoli which makes some general points about FitzSimons as a ‘storian’ who should unleash his inner historian. The article argues that FitzSimons’ style…
Stephens, David: Anzackery in the time of Anzac
Stephens, David ‘Anzackery in the time of Anzac‘, Pearls and Irritations, 16 March 2015 On John Menadue’s blog, this short article takes an etymological look at the concept of Anzackery and quotes a couple of prize examples. While ridicule is…
Stephens, David: Another look at the Australian War Memorial’s WWI galleries
David Stephens ‘Is this “our story”? Another look at the Australian War Memorial’s refurbished World War I galleries’, Honest History, 3 March 2015 Update 20 November 2015: a review from Christina Spittel of UNSW Canberra in the National Museum’s reCollections…
Stephens, David: Why does Honest History review movies and TV shows?
Stephens, David ‘Why does Honest History review movies and TV shows?‘ Honest History, 3 March 2015 The article gives three answers to the question posed, the most important answer being that ‘film and TV portrayals of historical events stumble around…
Stephens, David: Two views of World War I: War Memorial and National Library
David Stephens ‘Two views of World War I: sight-bites and Keepsakes‘, Honest History, 3 February 2015 The article is a review of the refurbished World War I galleries of the Australian War Memorial and the temporary Keepsakes exhibition at the…
Stephens, David: ADFA presentation on teaching children about war
David Stephens ‘Top down, bottom up, or bit by bit? Teaching children about war: paper to ADFA Summer School, 21 January 2015‘, Honest History, 21 January 2015 These are notes of a presentation to the UNSW Canberra ADFA Summer School…
Stephens, David: Do spiffing war yarns persist?
Stephens, David ‘Empire sun has set but do spiffing war yarns persist?‘ Honest History, 2 December 2014 This analytical piece compares WH Fitchett’s 1897 Deeds that Won the Empire: Historic Battle Scenes with Audacity: Stories of Heroic Australians in Wartime,…
Stephens, David: Does the banker still hold all the cards?
Stephens, David ‘Does the banker still hold all the cards?‘ Honest History, 24 November 2014 and updated A historical view of some aspects of banking policy, inspired by a recent piece from The Australia Institute targeting the concentration of banking…
Stephens, David: does arms spending lead to war?
Stephens, David ‘Does arms spending lead to war?‘ Honest History, 4 November 2014 and updated The article compares defence spending as a proportion of gross domestic product – the proportion has been around two per cent for more than 50…
Stephens, David: Donnelly-Wiltshire fire a salvo
Stephens, David ‘Donnelly-Wiltshire gunners fire a civilised salvo – but will Minister Pyne follow up?‘ Honest History, 15 October 2014 Analysis of the report of the national curriculum review, paying particularly attention to what it says about the teaching of…
Stephens, David: The children suffer
Stephens, David ‘The children suffer‘, Honest History, 11 August 2014 A version (including links) of an article that appears on John Menadue’s blog, Pearls and Irritations. An earlier piece on the same subject appeared in Honest History’s first newsletter. There…
Stephens, David & Steve Flora: Simpson Prize
Stephens, David & Steve Flora ‘The Simpson Prize: history or civics?’ Honest History, 8 July 2014 and updated There is a link below to a pdf of the article. In summary, the article analyses a number of aspects of the…
Stephens, David: Conservative commemoration
Stephens, David ‘Anzac Centenary Local Grants: conservative commemoration’, Honest History, 30 June 2014 This note comments on the statistics set out in Honest History Factsheet No. 2 on the Anzac Centenary Local Grants Program. Ken Inglis says in his book…
Stephens, David: ANZAC Day Anzackery
Stephens, David ‘ANZAC Day Anzackery‘, Independent Australia, 25 April 2014 Anzackery today is a form of patriotic mysticism trotted out by prime ministers and old military buffers. But why is it so popular? Well, it’s partly because it simplifies complex…
Stephens, David: Parochial commemoration
Stephens, David ‘Parochial commemoration of war‘, Pearls and Irritations [John Menadue’s blog], 23 April 2014 Guest blog arguing that the Australian War Memorial narrowly defines its own legislation with the result that the Memorial ‘is missing many opportunities to expand…
Stephens, David: Remembering and Healing in Lismore
Stephens, David ‘Alternative Anzac: Remembering and Healing in Lismore models a peaceful world’, Honest History, 30 April 2014 (updated 27 June 2014) If you live in Canberra and have never been further north on the New South Wales coast than…
Stephens, David: Commemorating the survivors
Stephens, David ‘Commemorating the survivors’, Honest History, 24 February 2014 This is an Appendix to Michael Piggott’s review of the Australian War Memorial’s exhibition ANZAC Voices. It contains some confronting images. See also Kerry Neale’s paper. The photograph above is…
Stephens, David: Memorial connects children with 62 000 dead
Stephens, David ‘Australian War Memorial offers opportunity for primary school children to connect with 62 000 Great War dead’, Honest History, 31 March 2014 The article describes the Australian War Memorial’s Roll of Honour Soundscape project in which primary school…
Stephens, David: Prime ministerial exits: an interview with Norman Abjorensen
Stephens, David ‘Prime ministerial exits: an interview with Norman Abjorensen’, Honest History, 24 February 2014 (updated) Norman Abjorensen is a Visiting Fellow in the Policy and Governance Program in the Crawford School at the Australian National University. He is a…
Stephens, David: Should we softpedal on Gallipoli?
David Stephens ‘Should we softpedal on Gallipoli?’ Honest History, 4 February 2014 Andrew Nikolic is the Liberal member for Bass, Tasmania, and a former Brigadier. He commented on his website on remarks by our President, Professor Peter Stanley, about the…
Stephens, David: Hugh White on Australians and war
Stephens, David ‘Hugh White on Australians and war’, Honest History, 5 February 2014, updated Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University and a former senior public servant in the Department of Defence. Here he considers…
Stephens, David: Minister Pyne and the curriculum – again
David Stephens ‘Minister Pyne and the curriculum – again’, Honest History, January 2014 (and updated) The preliminary report of the Donnelly-Wiltshire review was released in June 2014. Donnelly interviewed. Gary Foley and Elizabeth Muldoon question the treatment of Indigenous history…
Stephens, David: Tangled up in red, white and blue
Stephens, David ‘Tangled up in red, white and blue’, Honest History e-Newsletter no. 5, September 2013 We choose our own history, which bits of the past we wish to burnish and which we prefer to leave alone.We are doing war…
Stephens, David: Australian War Memorial
Stephens, David ‘Memories and messages at the Australian War Memorial‘, The Drum (ABC), 29 April 2011 Thoughts provoked by a visit to the Australian War Memorial on Anzac Day, stressing particularly the effects of the normalisation of militarism. Notes also…
Stephens, David: Tangled up in red, white and blue
David Stephens* ‘Tangled up in red, white and blue’, Honest History e-Newsletter no. 5, September 2013 War remembrance and days of commemoration bring out extremes of rhetoric, little gems of hyperbole that even the speaker might reconsider had they given…
Furst, David, Tomas Munita et al: walking in war’s path
Furst, David, Tomas Munita, Jodi Rudoren, Isabel Kershner, Jon Huang, Sergio Pecanha ‘Walking in war’s path‘, New York Times, 22 August 2015 We don’t normally feature the Gaza Strip on Honest History but this is an exceptional piece of reportage…
Stevens, David: In all respects ready: Australia’s navy in World War One
Stevens, David In All Respects Ready: Australia’s Navy in World War One, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2014 When the newly built Australian fleet sailed into Sydney for the first time in October 1913, it was portrayed as a sign…
North, David: The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century
North, David The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century, Mehring Books, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2014; e-book available One hundred years after the outbreak of World War I and the Russian Revolution, none of the problems of the twentieth century—devastating…
Reid, David: Anzackery: a personal view
Reid, David ‘Anzackery: a personal view‘, Honest History, 3 February 2015 A former soldier, whose father served in the RAAF and the peace-time army, reflects on the concept of Anzackery and its implications for future generations. Anzackery is a theme…
Nine alternative views for Anzac Day – including Lisa Barritt-Eyles on how Lake Macquarie tackled the Frontier Wars
Rather than keep up with the flood of formulaic Anzac Day stories, we collected these few, some of them from our associates, all of them, to varying degrees, coming at ‘the One Day of the Year’ from different angles. (There…
Fairfax FOI claim exposes full details of Camp Gallipoli rort
Honest History followed the history of Camp Gallipoli until the venture crashed and burned a couple of years ago. Use our Search engine with term ‘Camp Gallipoli’ to find our reports. The assiduous Chris Vedelago and Cameron Houston have used…
War Memorial commissions film that shows Turkish side of Gallipoli, then and now
A film by Turkish film-maker, Koken Ergun, is showing in Sydney till 12 May. The film, Heroes, was made with $25 000 and ‘free rein’ from the Australian War Memorial, is now owned by the Memorial and will be shown…
Heiss, Anita, ed.: Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia
Anita Heiss, ed. Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2018 What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to…
General Campbell becomes Chief of the Defence Force; General Burr and Admiral Noonan to join Council of Australian War Memorial
The Prime Minister has announced that Lieutenant General Angus Campbell will become Chief of the Defence Force from July, replacing Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin. Major General Rick Burr is to become Chief of Army, replacing Lieutenant General Campbell. Rear…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 50, 10 April 2018
ISSN: 2202-5561 New at honesthistory.net.au Brendan Nelson’s bunker and with cap in hand: contrasts in funding our national cultural institutions Lest We Forget again: Anzac Day is an opportunity to confront our violent frontier past and its shadow today, writes…
Changing the guard at Veterans’ Affairs: Liz Cosson is new Secretary as Simon Lewis retires
Simon Lewis PSM is to retire on 18 May as Secretary of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Thanking Mr Lewis for his work, Prime Minister Turnbull referred particularly to his management of the Anzac centenary over the last four years.…
Winton, Tim: About the boys: Tim Winton on how toxic masculinity is shackling men to misogyny [with some related stuff]
Tim Winton ‘About the boys: Tim Winton on how toxic masculinity is shackling men to misogyny‘ [with some related stuff], Guardian Australia, 9 April 2018 updated An extract from the novelist’s speech about his new book The Shepherd’s Hut. (The…
Highlights reel: historian Mark McKenna writes in 1997 on ‘black armband history’
‘Highlights reel: historian Mark McKenna writes in 1997 on “black armband history” ‘, Honest History, 10 April 2018 Mark McKenna’s Quarterly Essay 69: Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future (2018) considers related issues. HH *** Historiography, like history itself,…
Centenary Watch April-May 2018
Update 25 April 2018: Nine alternative views for Anzac Day – including Lisa Barritt-Eyles on how Lake Macquarie tackled the Frontier Wars A non-mainstream miscellany for ‘the One Day of the Year’. Update 24 April 2018: Preening peloton, nationalist validation,…
Daley, Paul: A $500m expansion of the war memorial is a reckless waste of money
Paul Daley ‘A $500m expansion of the war memorial is a reckless waste of money‘, Guardian Australia, 9 April 2018 Picks up the issue also canvassed by David Stephens of Honest History. Having spent more than half a billion dollars…
Want to buy (or sell) some ‘Made in Australia’ military kit?
Following recent announcements about an increased Australian arms export drive, there has come to light online this interesting resource: the Australian Military Sales Catalogue 2018, Edition 2, published by the Australian Military Sales Office. This glossy document now includes ‘a…
12 months of The Honest History Book: pleasing sales figures reported
Around 12 months ago, The Honest History Book became available in shops and online. We can report that the book, as of today, has sold 2060 copies, including 1880 hard copies, and is still selling. We reckon this shows there…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (35): As enlistments dwindle, PM Hughes reminds people there is a war on
‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (35): As enlistments dwindle, PM Hughes reminds people there is a war on’, Honest History, 16 March 2018 The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series The second conscription referendum in December 1917 may have looked like the…
Napier Waller Art Prize a good War Memorial initiative targeted at Defence personnel and veterans – but paid for by an arms manufacturer
The Australian War Memorial has launched the Napier Waller Art Prize, the first national art prize offered exclusively to Defence personnel. (Memorial information on the prize. Fairfax story. Murdoch story.) The prize is open to all current and former Defence…
73 years this week since the most destructive bombing raid in history: Tokyo 9-10 March 1945
Everyone knows about Hiroshima and Nagasaki – two cities where tens of thousands of people were killed by a single bomb – but there is much less awareness about what happened in Tokyo on the night of 9-10 March 1945.…
Australian War Memorial Fellow Dr Chau Chak Wing has cameo role in Clive Hamilton book on Chinese influence in Australia
Honest History has previously noted the links between the Australian War Memorial and wealthy Chinese-Australian, Dr Chau Chak Wing. In 2015, Dr Chau was made a Fellow of the Memorial, and his name is on the Memorial’s wall opposite the…
New Deputy PM’s workload raises questions about treatment of Veterans’ Affairs, Centenary of Anzac and Defence Personnel: new Ministry list
Update 5 March 2018: new Ministry List released. Update 1 March 2018: Sorted. McCormack’s former jobs (and the ticket for Villers-Bretonneux in April) passed to Chester. Update 28 February 2018: Reports (for example, this one) circulating of a reshuffle of…
If Michael McCormack becomes Leader of the Nationals, there’ll be an opportunity to abolish Veterans’ Affairs
Update 26 February 2018: how it turned out. Michael McCormack: the last of the line? (Queensland Times) After a glitch a few days ago, Michael McCormack MP seems to be favourite to become Leader of the Nationals and Deputy Prime…
Bombing of Darwin 76 years on: Territory tourism to have even stronger khaki tinge (but focus is still too narrow)
Minister for Veterans’ Affairs pro tem* Michael McCormack reminds us that today marks the 76th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin in February 1942. Around 400 people were killed in Darwin and in later raids on other northern towns. SS…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 49, 30 January 2018
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New on the Honest History site Honest History in 2018 – and possibly beyond: a prospectus from HH HQ The Good Country: The Djadja Wurrung, The Settlers and the Protectors: Ben Wilkie reviews Bain Attwood’s new book…
Victorian government survey on Anzac Day recognition of Frontier Wars provokes predictable pile-on
In August last year, the Victorian government did some research on ‘the social value of war commemorative events’. Among many other questions, the research (using a sample of about 500 people) asked whether the deaths of Indigenous Australians in the…
Daley, Paul: Beating the khaki drum: how Australian identity was militarised
Paul Daley ‘Beating the khaki drum: how Australian identity was militarised‘, Guardian Australia, 1 February 2018 Pulls together the themes of Anzackery, arms manufacturers inflicting advertising on Canberra airport users, and the same manufacturers donating to the Australian War Memorial…
Honest History in 2018 – and possibly beyond
Honest History in 2018 – and possibly beyond The Honest History website (and the Honest History association) began in mid-2013. Since then we have placed on the website nearly 2800 posts and another 70 pages (including two editions of Honest…
Centenary Watch February-March 2018
Update 29 March 2018: Commemorative dates for the rest of the year Minister Chester’s presser on important dates for the rest of the year, including the opening of the Monash Interpretive Centre on 24 April. ‘As the last year of…
Archive: Talking Turkey
Those heroes that shed their blood And lost their lives… You are now lying in the soil of a friendly Country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies And the Mehmets to us where they lie…
Broinowski, Alison: Incorrigible Optimist review: Gareth Evans’ account of his public life
Alison Broinowski ‘Incorrigible Optimist review: Gareth Evans’ account of his public life‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 January 2018 This book was launched by Bob Hawke and has been widely reviewed. (See especially Norman Abjorensen in the Canberra Times and Jock…
Three angles on security – including a bit of quis custodiet ipsos custodes
‘Three angles on security – including a bit of “quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”‘, Honest History, 10 January 2018 The Latin tag, for those who don’t know it, means roughly ‘who will guard the guards themselves?’ and it was coined by…
First Peoples May-August 2017
Paul Daley recalls the saga of the return to Australia of Yagan’s head, 20 years ago (31 August 2017) In Guardian Australia. Body parts belonging to thousands of Indigenous Australians still languish in Australian and overseas (mainly British and European)…
Dan Tehan promoted to Minister for Social Services; Michael McCormack is new man at Veterans’ Affairs-Centenary of Anzac
Minister Tehan (Twitter) The Honourable Dan Tehan, formerly Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Minister for Defence Personnel, and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac, and for Cyber Security, has been promoted to the job of Minister for…
What Honest History reviewed in 2017: might be some Christmas reading here
Honest History’s reviews are found here, with the latest at the top of the list. You can scroll down and find reviews of a wide range of books, of a generally historical bent, along with the occasional movie or television…
Armstrong, John: Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. April 2015 – April 2019
John Armstrong* ‘Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. April 2015–April 2019‘, New Zealand Journal of Public History 27, 2017, pp. 59-63 This (pdf) is a long review of the Museum of New Zealand…
Hyland, Tom: What have I become?
Tom Hyland ‘“What have I become?”‘ Inside Story, 14 December 2017 A review of – and a look at the politics behind – Chris Masters’ just published book No Front Line: Australian Special Forces at War in Afghanistan. Hyland notes…
ANU opens negotiations with Ramsay Foundation for studies in Western Civilisation
The Australian National University, Canberra, has announced that it is ‘currently negotiating with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation to develop a new program in Western Civilisation to add to the University’s suite of undergraduate programs that includes European studies,…
A Nobel achievement, partly Australian, unsung by the Australian government: the Nobel Peace Prize goes to ICAN
ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) has received its Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo. Margaret Beavis writes from the Medical Association for Prevention of War; Dr Beavis is an ICAN Board member. Also this from…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 48, 30 November 2017
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New and recently on the Honest History website: original material, book reviews, links, announcements Banking Royal Commissions: a look back at the 1935-37 model The second First Lady, the pretend colonel, and the dogs of Ottawa: some alternative…
Long Tan Cross repatriation a good time to put Vietnam War in perspective
The Long Tan Cross has been repatriated to Australia, as reported on Defence Connect, by the Prime Minister and Minister Tehan, and in the media. There are plans for the cross to go on permanent display at the Australian War…
Broadcaster Genevieve Jacobs – a great friend of Honest History – reluctantly leaves ABC Canberra
Honest History notes with sadness the departure of presenter Genevieve Jacobs from the ABC’s Canberra bureau. Genevieve worked closely with Honest History to present a regular fortnightly ‘Honest History spot’ on ABC Canberra Local Radio 666. This spot ran for…
Bolton, Geoffrey: The Gluckman Affair 1960: a bystander’s view
Geoffrey Bolton ‘The Gluckman Affair 1960: a bystander’s view‘, Labour History Canberra, 16 November 2017 Max Gluckman (makinganthropologypublic) John Myrtle, Honest History volunteer, author of our Online Gems, retired librarian and facilitator of this article’s republication explains its provenance: In…
Centenary Watch December 2017-January 2018
Update 10 January 2017: Arthur Streeton: The art of war at the National Gallery of Australia combines beauty and barbarity Sasha Grishin’s Canberra Times review of an unconventional war artist, Arthur Streeton, on show at the National Gallery till after…
Steady as she goes or wait and see? Some (mostly) non-Main Stream Media views of the Foreign Policy White Paper
The Foreign Policy White Paper would not have escaped most reasonably alert people’s notice, even as there began the cricketing equivalent of the Battle of Brisbane though, in that case, the Australians’ antagonists were Americans. (That battle was 75 years…
McCormack, Matthew: Historians and Twitter
Matthew McCormack ‘Historians and Twitter‘, Twitter/History at Northampton blog, 20 November 2017 This is a first for Honest History – turning a Tweet into a post – but it is done gladly because Matthew McCormack up there at the University…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (30): Officially sponsored 2017 view of the conscription battles of 1916-17
‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (30): Officially sponsored 2017 view of the conscription battles of 1916-17’, Honest History, 20 November 2017 The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series Some Fairfax papers today carry an article by Michael Grealy on the conscription referendums…
Paradoxical purchase: War Memorial acquires APY ‘defence of Country’ painting Kulatangku angakanyini manta munu Tjukurpa
The Australian War Memorial has unveiled a large painting by artists from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands in South Australia. The painting, Kulatangku angakanyini manta munu Tjukurpa (‘Country and Culture will be protected by spears’) hangs in a conspicuous…
Four late offerings for Remembrance Day: what should we remember really?
We have already posted some material relevant to 11 November, Remembrance Day, the 99th of that designation. That little collection links to the other posts. There’s also Simon Jenkins from The Guardian, who says ‘enough already’ of Remembrance Day. Two…
Winging it with Dr Chau: Clive Hamilton’s suppressed book has more about the War Memorial’s Fellow
Update 26 February 2018: the book has been published by Hardie Grant. Update 1 March 2018: Our take on the Dr Chau angle. Update 1 December 2017: Dr Chau hosts a policy conference in China, where speakers include President Xi.…
Letter to the Editor: Euphemisms are deadly
This in Fairfax today from Honest History secretary and editor: Every Anzac and Remembrance Day, we hear euphemisms for men and women who have died in war. They are “the fallen”, they “made the supreme sacrifice”, “they shall grow not…
Beyond the poppies row on row: Remembrance Day is a good day to think
Remembrance Day (Armistice Day, if you prefer) – like Anzac Day, Christmas, Easter, Passover, Ramadan, Diwali, Melbourne Cup Day, and other regular ceremonial and commemorative occasions – triggers virtually automatic reactions among many of us. Poppies, stories of old Diggers,…
Down the Remembrance Trail to Villers-Bretonneux with the (fairly self-effacing – so far) DVA publicity machine
Readers of the Launceston Examiner, North-west Tasmania Advocate and Canberra Times earlier this week will have seen some articles under the byline of Michael Grealy. The articles in the Canberra Times were headed ‘New tribute to Diggers in Europe’, ‘“Mad…
Glover, Jeff: “Trying to be something they’re not”: grandfathers, Diggers, and Peter FitzSimons
Jeff Glover* ‘“Trying to be something they’re not”: grandfathers, Diggers, and Peter FitzSimons’, Honest History, 10 November 2017 As a 61-year-old avid reader of Australian military history, all too often these days I find inaccuracies, mistruths and even lies about…
Letter to the Editor: War Memorial a great place but no ‘soul of our nation’
This in Fairfax today from Honest History secretary and editor: What nonsense from Bill Shorten (Private Capital, November 7, p. 13). The War Memorial no more “represents the soul of our nation” than any other place where Australians gather. It…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (29): All at once – another conscription vote and news of Bolshevik revolution
‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (29): All at once – another conscription vote and news of Bolshevik revolution’, Honest History, 9 November 2017 updated The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series Another run at conscription The possibility of a second conscription referendum…
The Honest History Book is on this non-fiction list – and well covered
Lisa Hill at popular blog ANZ LitLovers has done a list of books for non-fiction November. The Honest History Book is on Lisa’s list of 13 non-fiction books of 2017. (Lisa reviewed the book recently.) Also on the LitLovers list…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 47, 25 October 2017
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New and recently on the Honest History website: original material, book reviews, links Michael Piggott reviews Ross McMullin’s new book, Pompey Elliott at War: In His Own Words. Kristen Alexander reviews Clare Makepeace’s new book, Captives of War: British…
Two reviews of – and a French riff off – The Honest History Book
The Honest History Book was published seven months ago and is still doing very well, thank you. There have been lots of reviews and comments (follow the link above) and here are some more. French-Australian historian, Romain Fathi, now at…
The Atatürk memorial at Anzac Cove has been restored but the words – though moving – are still dubious
The photograph below, taken on 29 October, shows the Atatürk memorial at Anzac Cove (Ari Burnu) after recent refurbishment. Honest History offered some advice to Turkish President Erdoğan about future options for the memorial but – not surprisingly perhaps –…
Specially Forced? Odd outburst from Director of Australian War Memorial
ABC News TV yesterday repeatedly ran an interview by Defence reporter, Andrew Greene, with Australian War Memorial Director, Brendan Nelson, in which Dr Nelson questioned the time being taken by the Army’s review into the conduct of Special Forces in…
Walsh: Nick: Kokoda Track: from the Honest History archives
[Note: this post was originally published in January 2016. Ministerial press release to mark 75th anniversary of Kokoda campaign.] Nick Walsh Kokoda Track, The author, 2nd edition, Melbourne 2012 This little book (70 pages, a dozen photographs, two clear maps) was…
Newton, Douglas: Beersheba and the scramble for the Ottoman Empire – and more on the Beersheba centenary boast
Update 8 November 2017: David Faber writes about the Beersheba centenary and the work of Kelvin Crombie (Gallipoli – The Road to Jerusalem), who has tried to put the Gallipoli campaign into a Christian context. Essentially, Crombie argues that the…
Kahn, Matthew: How far must Trump ‘unravel’ before the 25th Amendment kicks in?
Matthew Kahn ‘How far must Trump “unravel” before the 25th Amendment kicks in?‘ Foreign Policy, 23 October 2017 A detailed and sober assessment of the possibilities of using the 25th Amendment (presidential disability) to the United States Constitution to remove…
Centenary Watch October-November 2017
Update 20 November 2017: Officially sponsored 2017 view of the conscription battles of 1916-17 The Department of Veterans’ Affairs-Fairfax ‘contributed content’ partnership has produced a sober and balanced short article on the conscription plebiscites of 1916-17. Can it last? Update…
Australia Explained: a website by an ex-European for migrants who find themselves in the Wide Brown Land
We’ve caught up with Australia Explained, a website wrangled by Dr Ingeborg van Teeseling, who came here in 2006 from the Netherlands. The site has sections on history, Aussie mavericks, books, films, people, resources and opinions, as well as Ingeborg’s…
‘Anzackery’ definition included in the new edition of the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary
‘Anzackery’ is one of the new words included in the sixth and latest edition of the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary, edited by Mark Gwynn and Amanda Laugesen, and to be published on 26 October. As in the Australian National Dictionary…
Tocsin magazine brings out another edition … and here’s an apposite poem from 1917
Honest History noted a little while ago the launch of Tocsin, a publication from the John Curtin Research Centre. The centre’s inaugural gala dinner happens to be tonight, addressed by the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten. Tocsin‘s second number…
More thoughts on the memorials/statues debate: Don Watson and Tracey Spicer
We have collected lots of links from home and abroad on the recently aired (but perennial) issue of statues, monuments, memorials, remembering and forgetting. You can find them here, under the heading ‘The past, choosing our history, and memorials: an…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 46, 21 September 2017
ISSN: 2202-5561 © The Honest History Book The Honest History Book, published in early April, is still selling well, has been favourably reviewed in a number of places (including by Anna Clark below), and is now in its second print.…
War Memorial Director Brendan Nelson at the Press Club: speech or performance art? Centenary Watch update
David Stephens of Honest History analyses last week’s National Press Club address by the Director of the Australian War Memorial, Dr Brendan Nelson. The speech was called ‘Tragedy and triumph – 1917’ and looked at Passchendaele and Beersheba, two key…
Stanley, Peter: The Crying Years: Australia’s Great War
Peter Stanley The Crying Years: Australia’s Great War, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2017 Peter Stanley cleverly weaves his narrative around striking images [from the National Library’s collection]—many never seen before—to create a visual history that immerses the reader in…
Haultain-Gall, Matthew: Same old relics, same old story? Displaying the third battle of Ypres at the Australian War Memorial, past and present
Matthew Haultain-Gall ‘Same old relics, same old story? Displaying the third battle of Ypres at the Australian War Memorial, past and present‘, History Australia, vol. 14, no. 3, August 2017, pp. 1-17 (link to online version supplied by author) When…
Political partisans: a conservative line of succession (culminating in Tony Abbott) and the Burkes of Perth
Two new books have hit the shelves. One is thicker than the other but both take the long view. They look at nominally different sides of politics, though readers of both books might suspect considerable overlap of views between the…
Centenary Watch September-October 2017
Update 28 September 2017 updated: War Memorial Director Brendan Nelson at the Press Club: speech or performance art? Polygon Wood ‘remembered’ We said (21 September, below) we would look more closely at Dr Nelson’s 19 September National Press Club speech…
Torsh, Daniela & Max Humphreys: On Sydney Harbour with the prime minister of South Vietnam, 1967
Daniela Torsh & Max Humphreys ‘On Sydney Harbour with the prime minister of South Vietnam, 1967‘, Honest History, 19 September 2017 This extended interview transcript is provided as a primary source for readers interested in the history of protest in…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (28): More on the 1917 Great Strike in Australia
‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (28): More on the 1917 Great Strike in Australia’, Honest History, 27 August 2017 Update 28 August 2017: Unions NSW advises of its exhibition on the Great Strike. See comment below – and three pictures…
The past, choosing our history, and memorials: an issue in Charlottesville and many other places
‘Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You … can’t change history, but you can learn from it.’: President Trump, Twitter, 17 August 2017…
Myrtle, John: Observing journalism for 80 years: The Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism
John Myrtle ‘Observing journalism for 80 years: The Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism’, Honest History, 18 August 2017 A paper in three parts: an introduction to Arthur Norman Smith and the endowed Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism; consideration…
Observing journalism for 80 years: The Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism
John Myrtle[1] ‘Observing journalism for 80 years: The Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism’, Honest History, 18 August 2017 Introduction There are three parts to this paper: an introduction to Arthur Norman Smith and the endowed Arthur Norman Smith Lecture…
Want to spend the weekend with Constitution section 44? A useful backgrounder from the Parliamentary Library
Note: related material on ‘Australian values’. Update 12 November 2017: more from former Labor speechwriter, Graham Freudenberg, who links the unsuccessful Bicentennial celebrations of 1988 with various events since (Pearls and Irritations). The disqualification of members of parliament is only…
Better late than never: Minister says best form of commemoration is to look after today’s veterans and families
Update later 15 August 2017: Minister welcomes report of the Senate References Committee into suicide by veterans and ex-service personnel. (The report is here.) SBS Insight program ‘Coming Home’ on issues faced by ADF personnel coming back into the civilian…
Korea, the war that never ended, might be starting up again: some useful source material
Update 19 August 2017: Michael Leunig on being ‘joined at the hip’ in ANZUS (‘Australia and New Zealand’s Unquestioning Subservience’) As one who was almost jailed under the ANZUS treaty for resisting a notice of military conscription in the Vietnam…
‘Joined at the hip’ department: Melbourne conference on keeping Australia out of US wars
The prime minister says Australia will be involved if North Korea attacks the United States in the current heated atmosphere. Indeed, ‘we are joined at the hip’ with the United States. He cites the ANZUS treaty. Even more relevant now…
From the Honest History archives: Lest We Forget Hiroshima 72 years ago this week
Repost from last year. Why? Well, we faithfully and annually commemorate wartime events involving Australians. Some of these events are relatively insignificant, even trivial, in the scheme of things or when compared with other wartime events. It seems only right…
Minister says stand-alone DVA will continue – but here’s some advice, just in case
We don’t quite know why he felt the need but Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac, Minister for Defence Personnel, and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security [pause for breath],…
Inequality is a much more complex issue than kneejerk political responses suggest: a dozen links
Honest History has had a special interest in inequality for more than three years. Under our homepage Inequality thumbnail we have collected a mass of links to resources – reports, comments, even some policy proposals from government – which track…
Nolan, Christopher (dir.): Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan Dunkirk, Syncopy, Warner Brothers and others, UK, US, France, Netherlands, 2017 Set during the Second World War, [the film, with an ensemble cast] portrays the Dunkirk evacuation … Nolan wrote the script, told from three perspectives—the land, sea, and air—to contain…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 45, 25 July 2017
ISSN: 2202-5561 © The Honest History Book: now into its second printing New on the Honest History website The generations of us: exploring interactions, overlaps and inflections: Michael Piggott reviews Australian Lives: an Intimate History, edited by Anisa Puri and Alistair Thomson…
Australian racism and how we see each other: poems by Steven Oliver and a film by Warwick Thornton
We have never come across this poet and comic, Steven Oliver, before – which says more about our lack of awareness than about his talent and perspicacity – but New Matilda ran two videos of his poetry this week and…
Centenary Watch July-August 2017
Update 15 August 2017: Better late than never: Minister says best form of commemoration is to look after today’s veterans and families Comment on the inaugural Ministerial Statement on Veterans and their Families, pointing to the Minister’s creative accounting, which…
The Vimy Trap rings Anzackery bells (review of McKay & Swift)
‘The Vimy Trap rings Anzackery bells’, Honest History, 25 July 2017 David Stephens* reviews The Vimy Trap Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War, by Ian McKay and Jamie Swift The Battle of Vimy…
Rewriting the history of Gallipoli: a Turkish perspective
Ayhan Aktar * ‘Rewriting the history of Gallipoli: a Turkish perspective’, Honest History, 25 July 2017 updated [This piece draws upon my article originally published in the Turkish daily newspaper Taraf (Istanbul), 18 March 2014. An earlier English translation by…
McKay, Ian & Jamie Swift: The Vimy Trap Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War
Ian McKay & Jamie Swift The Vimy Trap Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War, Between the Lines Books, Toronto, 2016; e-book available The story of the bloody 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge is, according…
Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part I
Steve Flora & David Stephens ‘Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part I’, Honest History, 25 July 2017 Reintroducing Les and Bee Jauncey Leslie Cyril Jauncey (1899-1959) has been a fellow traveller in the…
Arms spending and war: which comes first, at home and abroad?
Christopher Pyne, Minister for Defence Industry, has been talking up the possibilities of Australia growing its arms exports industry. Fairfax’s David Wroe says Pyne ‘wants Australia to become a major arms exporter on par with Britain, France and Germany and…
Art and design: 1930s Australia: the art deco designs ushering in a brave new world – in pictures
Art and design ‘1930s Australia: the art deco designs ushering in a brave new world – in pictures‘, Guardian Australia, 14 July 2017 We normally try to find an author for our posts. No luck this time, but we’ll still…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (25): The Free Religious Fellowship: anti-conscription – and unexpected family history
The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series Chris Wade’s article, ‘Practical idealists: the Free Religious Fellowship, the Great War and conscription‘, reminds us of the breadth and depth of feeling against conscription in Great War Australia: the cause was taken up by…
Australian diversity and what we think about each other – and do to each other
We’ve heard a lot recently about ‘Australian values’ and what the government expects of new arrivals in relation to them. (The term ‘Australian values’ seems to be relatively recent in our history though it has popped up previously.) There is…
Reynolds, Henry: Memories and massacres
Henry Reynolds ‘Memories and massacres‘, Pearls and Irritations, 10 July 2017 For over 30 years, Henry Reynolds has been writing about massacres of Indigenous Australians. The culmination of his research was the well-received book Forgotten War in 2013. This brief…
Sherratt, Tim: Historic Hansard: Commonwealth of Australia parliamentary debates presented in an easy-to-read format for historians and other lovers of political speech
Tim Sherratt Historic Hansard: Commonwealth of Australia parliamentary debates presented in an easy-to-read format for historians and other lovers of political speech This is a searchable database of Commonwealth Hansard, Reps and Senate, from 1901 to so far, 1980. You…
Wahlquist, Calla: Map of massacres of Indigenous people reveals untold history of Australia, painted in blood
Calla Wahlquist ‘Map of massacres of Indigenous people reveals untold history of Australia, painted in blood‘, Guardian Australia, 5 July 2017 updated Reports a paper by Professor Lyndall Ryan (University of Newcastle) at the Australian Historical Association conference in Newcastle.…
This week in the Russian Revolution 1917: courtesy of the World Socialist Web Site – and Alexander Kerensky
We have previously respectfully drawn readers’ attention to the resources of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), which tracks world politics from the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The Fourth International was founded by Leon…
Highlights reel: Hilary Mantel, historical novelist, on what history is all about
Dame Hilary Mantel (author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and other books) is this year’s Reith Lecturer for the BBC. You can find transcripts and audio of the lectures (weekly, 13 June 2017 for five weeks) on the…
Menadue, John: By accepting funding from weapons suppliers the Australian War Memorial demeans Australia’s war dead
John Menadue ‘By accepting funding from weapons suppliers the Australian War Memorial demeans Australia’s war dead‘, Pearls and Irritations, 30 June 2017 John Menadue, former senior public servant and businessman, wrote to Brendan Nelson, Director of the War Memorial, to…
Census results: 45.5 per cent of us had one or both parents born overseas – but does the Anglo-Celtic narrative still dominate?
The Conversation has a comprehensive coverage of the results of the 2016 Census (six articles from this week, plus earlier material), released yesterday. The Census website goes into further detail. There is also a video on the Guardian Australia site…
Australian War Memorial’s $16.1 million shed for big war things: money well spent?
As reported in the Canberra Times, the Australian War Memorial is making its case to the parliamentary Public Works Committee to build a $16.1 million facility at Mitchell in Canberra. On past form, the PWC will put a tick on…
Talking about The Conversation: five easy pieces in just a few days
Update 22 June 2017: and, lo, just as we ruled a line and settled on the headline, The Conversation came good again with: three charts on looming differential access to the National Broadband Network (digital divide, another form of inequality);…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 44, 13 June 2017
ISSN: 2202-5561 © The Honest History Book New on the Honest History website Democratic opposition to war: the 1916-17 anti-conscription campaigns: Barry Jones’ keynote speech to the Brunswick-Coburg conscription conference, 20 May Honest History’s Alternative Guide to the Australian War…
Democratic opposition to war: the 1916-17 anti-conscription campaigns – impacts and legacies
Barry Jones ‘Democratic opposition to war: the 1916-17 anti-conscription campaigns – impacts and legacies (Keynote address, Brunswick-Coburg Anti-Conscription Commemoration Campaign Conference, 20 May 2017)’, Honest History, 13 June 2017 The conscription referendums as a turning point in Australian politics I…
Centenary Watch June-July 2017
Update 5 July 2017: Enlistment news from a century ago: Australians prefer not to be there We run this graph from time to time (courtesy of Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation, where the original graph and Ernest Scott’s figures appear in…
Breen, Sally: Friday essay: the 90s – why you had to be there
Sally Breen ‘Friday essay: the 90s – why you had to be there‘, The Conversation, 9 June 2017 Review of – and thoughts provoked by – a new exhibition, Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s, at the National…
Australian Bureau of Statistics: GDP growth moderates as dwelling investment and exports detract from growth
Australian Bureau of Statistics ‘GDP growth moderates as dwelling investment and exports detract from growth‘ (Media release, 7 June 2017) Growth actually slowed in the March quarter (0.3 per cent) and the ABS presser was ‘just the facts’ but those…
Wright, Clare: How Australia became a nation, and women won the vote
Clare Wright ‘How Australia became a nation, and women won the vote‘, The Conversation, 6 June 2017 Article to mark the 120th anniversary of the Australasian Federal Convention in Adelaide (Queensland absent). Among the outcomes of the Convention was votes…
Abjorensen, Norman: Ben Chifley’s botched attempt to nationalise Australia’s banks
Norman Abjorensen ‘Ben Chifley’s botched attempt to nationalise Australia’s banks‘, Canberra Times (Public Sector Informant), 6 June 2017 Against the background of another poke at banking power, this time by a conservative government, this is a concise summary of Chifley’s…
Three thought-provoking foreign and defence policy posts (no, actually four) on the Pearls and Irritations blog
Even when the times are out of joint, the Australian media is not good at looking intelligently at issues of foreign and defence policy. Stories that can be linked to striking pictures – of oddball leaders gloating over missile test…
Broinowski, Alison: The Merkel moment: wherever that works
Alison Broinowski ‘The Merkel moment: wherever that works‘, Pearls and Irritations, 30 May 2017 Chancellor Merkel’s remark that the United States is no longer reliable, and that Europe should look after itself, should also be a wake-up call for Australia.…
Head, Mike: Australia’s billionaires celebrate a “wealth boom”
Mike Head ‘Australia’s billionaires celebrate a “wealth boom”‘, World Socialist Web Site, 29 May 2017 Useful analysis of this year’s Australian Financial Review (AFR) Rich 200 List. The article nicely captures the breathless style of John Stensholt’s original piece (which…
Putting Reconciliation Week in context: Lest We Forget Queensland Genocide
Reconciliation Week runs annually from 27 May, the anniversary of the 1967 Referendum, to 3 June, the anniversary of the Mabo decision in 1992. The theme for this year is ‘Let’s take the next steps’, which is appropriate, given the…
Bottoms, Timothy: Genocide in colonial Queensland, Australia
Timothy Bottoms ‘Genocide in colonial Queensland, Australia‘, Honest History, 26 May 2017 The attached pdf is a revised and extended version of the prologue to the author’s 2013 book, Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland’s Frontier Killing Times. Honest History thanks Timothy…
Better not forget The Forgotten People: 75 years since RG Menzies’ direction-setting speech
There is to be a big dinner at Parliament House tonight to mark the 75th anniversary of a broadcast delivered on radio station 2GB, 3AW and others by a former prime minister, but then humble backbencher, the Right Honourable Robert…
Gallagher, Emily: The first war for country, for nation
Emily Gallagher ‘The first war for country, for nation‘, Inside Story, 18 May 2017 A review of the For country, For Nation exhibition at the Australian War Memorial. Another review, by David Stephens for Honest History, is here and should…
Budget provisions on commemoration, Veterans’ Affairs, more space at the War Memorial, cultural institutions – and a machinery of government proposal
Update 12 May 2017: For a non-mainstream media view of the overall Budget, see the articles by Michael Keating, former Secretary of the Departments of Finance and Prime Minister and Cabinet, in Pearls and Irritations. Part 1, Part 2. There’s…
ABC Q&A comments by Minister Tehan and others show how far past Peak Anzac we have come
The ABC’s Q&A program last night (video; transcript; Twitter; ABC story) tackled a number of questions with compere Virginia Trioli and panellists including Dan Tehan, Minister for a number of things including the Centenary of Anzac and Veterans’ Affairs. Honest…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 43, 2 May 2017
ISSN: 2202-5561 © The Honest History Book is now well and truly launched (and sailing very well) New on the Honest History website Events like ‘Yassmin-gate’ are inherent in our often politically-driven sentimentality about war memory: Roger Markwick (University of…
The Honest History Book: second Sydney launch at Australian Institute of International Affairs
At Glover Cottages, Kent Street, on 2 May, the first Tuesday after Anzac Day, a timely book edited by Dr David Stephens and Dr Alison Broinowski was on show to members and guests of the AIIA, New South Wales Branch.…
Hassan, Toni: Why does the War Memorial proudly display this booty from an illegal war?
Toni Hassan ‘Why does the War Memorial proudly display this booty from an illegal war?‘, Canberra Times, 3 May 2017 Also in other Fairfax and in Canberra Times hard copy. Reports the disappointment of former Australian War Memorial education officer,…
The Honest History Book media coverage
Our regularly updating promotional package on The Honest History Book includes links to media mentions of the book, including a number of articles which include excerpts from the book. As well, Guardian Australia published David Stephens’ op ed on the…
Lest we forget Lest We Forget: Rudyard Kipling’s Recessional: Honest History document
‘Lest we forget Lest We Forget: Rudyard Kipling’s “Recessional”: Honest History document’, Honest History, 2 May 2017 updated Update 4 June 2017: an Army musician sang ‘Recessional’ at the opening of the Boer War memorial in Canberra last week. Last…
Centenary Watch May-June 2017
Update 22 May 2017: The Anzac Christmas card Gary Werskey on the project run by Lady Birdwood and the artist AH Fulwood to produce 50 000 Christmas cards for Anzac troops to send home in 1915. Update 20 May 2017:…
Markwick, Roger D.: The “sacralisation” of history and state legitimation
Roger D. Markwick ‘The “sacralisation” of history and state legitimation’, Honest History, 2 May 2017 The furore over the recent remarks of Yassmin Abdel-Magied raises important issues about the possibility of dissent against received – and state-promoted – views of…
Wallace, Donald M.: The Web of Empire (1902): highlights reel of a royal visit to Brisbane
Donald Mackenzie Wallace ‘The Web of Empire (1902): highlights reel of a royal visit to Brisbane’, Honest History, 2 May 2017 Members of the Royal Family have visited Australia regularly since Prince Alfred was here in 1867. (He was shot…
Afghanistan: The Australian Story shows war is about much more than “love and friendship”
David Stephens ‘Afghanistan: The Australian Story shows war is about much more than “love and friendship”’, Honest History, 2 May 2017 Serendipity can be illuminating. This reviewer began to watch Chris Masters’ double DVD, Afghanistan: The Australian Story, on the…
Angry Anzac Day 2017: three pieces from Guardian Australia: get those responses rolling in
Update 1 October 2017: Autobiographical piece from Yassmin Abdel-Magied covers the Anzac fuss. Update 18 August 2017: Yassmin Abdel-Magied talks about being Australia’s most publicly hated Muslim. Update 7 August 2017: Yassmin Abdel-Magied wonders where the free speech defenders were…
On every Anzac Day: a rapid round-up of reports before rumbling on to the next ridge
Related material: earlier; later. *** Two years ago, media academic Sharon Mascall-Dare wrote about how journalists every year slip into a standard Anzac Day reporting mode. Look for an old Digger, some attractive young kiddies waving flags, and someone crying,…
The full set: seven pieces of non-mainstream, non-marked up, non-profit commentary for Anzac Day
Related material: later; later still. *** Updated with a few more on Anzac Day itself This Anzac season, as in a number of previous years, Australian children – and possibly some adults, too – can pick up some Anzac mementoes…
Successful launch of The Honest History Book in Melbourne with Jonathan Green
The Honest History Book launchathon ended last evening at Readings Carlton with about 50 people in attendance. Jonathan Green of Meanjin and ABC RN cycled up Lygon Street from the ABC to do the launch honours and co-editor David Stephens…
Welcome to what? A note on immigration, multiculturalism and ‘Australian values’
Update 19 March 2018: proposal by Minister Dutton to bring white South African farmers to Australia is linked by Jon Piccini in The Conversation to a historic Australian whiteness trope. Update 19 October 2017: the Government’s proposed citizenship changes fail…
John Pilger’s The Coming War on China is on SBS on Sunday: here’s a resource package
Late last year, John Pilger, journalist and film-maker, released his documentary, The Coming War on China. It didn’t get much of a run in theatres though it got a review in the Sydney Morning Herald and another in The Age,…
The Honest History Book launched in Sydney with great speech from Associate Professor Michelle Arrow
A wet night in Glebe yesterday saw the Sydney launch of The Honest History Book. Around 80 people braved the rain and found their way to the upper room at Gleebooks, where proceedings were wrangled efficiently by James Ross. David…
Five points for John Clarke, also known as Fred Dagg, Trans-Tasman observer: incisive but no prick
The death of John Clarke, comedian and satirist, has brought forth some nice pieces of an obituarial bent. The present writer recalls snuffling with glee over Fred Dagg books and, a little later, chuckling at Farnarkling (a much more plausible…
One hundred years since the United States entered the Great War, some comments on foreign and defence options
Updated 18 April 2017: Gareth Evans at the National Press Club (podcast and summary). Updated 17 April 2017: More from James O’Neill in Pearls and Irritations. Updated 14 April 2017: Mike Head on the World Socialist Web Site. Updated 13…
Does this Advance Australia Fair? The Australian War Memorial’s new marketing slogan
Update 25 April 2017: Sue Wareham in Pearls and Irritations on the War Memorial’s reliance on funding from arms manufacturers. Update 15 April 2017: Canberra Airport is renowned already for its hosting of advertisements for arms manufacturers. The No Airport…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 42, 21 March 2017
ISSN: 2202-5561 © The Honest History Book Launches: Canberra, 6 April; Sydney, 12 April; Melbourne, 20 April About the book, including Advance praise ‘This is collective history at its finest.’ (Melanie Oppenheimer, Flinders University) ______________ New on the Honest History website…
Wearing three hats, an interesting collection of pressers from Minister Tehan
The member for Wannon, Dan Tehan, is minister for a number of things, although we mostly track his activities as Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac. A clutch of media releases from the Minister this week…
Late Night Live kicks off media discussion of The Honest History Book
Update 29 March 2017: a recording of the broadcast. Late Night Live on Radio National tomorrow night (Tuesday, 28 March) will feature contributors to The Honest History Book, Alison Broinowski and Joy Damousi, talking to Phillip Adams about aspects of…
The Honest History Book is well and truly out there, presenting the evidence that Australia is more than Anzac – and always has been
Our publisher NewSouth advises us that The Honest History Book is now widely available in book shops ($A34.99, $NZ42.99). We have seen a list of shops so far and are impressed by the initial take-up. (If your shop doesn’t have…
Long white clouds of Atatürk myth over Aotearoa New Zealand
Long white clouds of Atatürk myth over Aotearoa New Zealand The other day at the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington, New Zealand Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Maggie Barry, and Turkish Ambassador, Ahmet Ergin, unveiled a sculpture…
Phillips, Walter: My late pilgrimage to Gallipoli
Walter Phillips ‘My late pilgrimage to Gallipoli‘, Honest History, 21 March 2017 Honest History is pleased to publish this piece from Walter Phillips, Emeritus Scholar at La Trobe University, Melbourne. It is comparable with the elegaic Anzac commemoration pieces from…
Allusions in Beanland: two exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial
David Stephens ‘Allusions in Beanland: two exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial’, Honest History, 21 March 2017 In September 2016, the War Memorial opened For Country, for Nation, an exhibition about Indigenous service in Australian defence forces from the Boer…
Munro, Doug: ‘How illuminating it has been’: Matthews and McKenna, and their biographies of Manning Clark
Doug Munro “‘How illuminating it has been”: Matthews and McKenna, and their biographies of Manning Clark’, Philip Payton, ed., Emigrants & Historians: Essays in Honour of Eric Richards, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2016, pp. 98-131 (pdf made available courtesy of the…
Centenary Watch March-April 2017
Update 27 April 2017: Angry Anzac Day 2017: three pieces from Guardian Australia: get those responses rolling in Articles in Guardian Australia by Honest History’s David Stephens, Mariam Tokhi of Muslims for Progressive Values Australia, and Guardian Australia‘s Brigid Delaney,…
Latham, Mark: Insiders and outsiders (2002 Menzies Lecture, London): Highlights reel
Mark Latham ‘Insiders and outsiders (The 2002 Menzies Lecture, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London, 17 September 2002): Highlights reel’, Honest History, 21 March 2017 updated This is a 4000 word article, originally presented as a speech and…
Shorter hours and vigorous industrial action were all the rage 100 years ago, too
This week we heard the Greens leader, Senator Richard Di Natale, go hard for the need to debate shorter working hours. On Lateline, for example, he said this: We’ve got, in Australia, people here doing more hours than any other…
Cain, Frank: The Petrov Affair and fake documents: another look
Frank Cain* ‘The Petrov Affair and fake documents: another look’, Honest History, 15 March 2017 In a previous edition of Honest History, David Stephens referred to fake news and the seeking by Dr HV Evatt, then Leader of the Opposition,…
Leigh, Andrew: Why corporate Australia should care about inequality – Speech, Minerals Council of Australia Tax Conference, Friday 10 March 2017
Andrew Leigh ‘Why corporate Australia should care about inequality – Speech, Minerals Council of Australia Tax Conference, Friday 10 March 2017‘, Andrew Leigh MP Blog, 10 March 2017 Over the past generation [says Leigh], Australia has seen an increase in…
True Blue but by no means politically correct – or just a different form of correctness?
Update 10 August 2017: John Roskam of the Institute of Public Affairs talks to Genevieve Jacobs of the ABC. Update 3 May 2017: Tony Abbott talks in Perth: search for ‘Western civilisation’. Update 14 April 2017: We didn’t want to…
How defence spending gets its claws in: From the Honest History archives
Update 7 March 2017: Andrew Farran on Pearls and Irritations tries to match the F-35 to strategic imperatives. Update 3 March 2017: Steven L. Jones on The Conversation gives some background. News.com report on claimed job spin-offs. ‘A pilot’s dream‘.…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (20): The soldiers’ vote denied: making sense of the first conscription plebiscite
The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series ‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (20): The soldiers’ vote denied: making sense of the first conscription plebiscite’, Honest History, 28 February 2017 During 2016 our ‘Divided sunburnt country’ posts (linked above) tracked events in the…
The Fitzkrieg reaches Darwin: Honest History and Peter FitzSimons
The Northern Territory government was pleased to welcome leading ‘storian (his term), Peter FitzSimons to Darwin for the weekend’s commemoration of the bombing of that city in 1942. This was of interest to Honest History, since we had put up…
The bombing of Darwin, 75 years on: some alternative views
Honest History has been interested in the bombing of Darwin almost since we began the website, though our interest has extended to aspects that are not likely to be front and centre this week during the 75th anniversary events. Obviously,…
The Fall of Singapore, 75 years on: some alternative views
Update 20 February 2017: The Strategist has three articles on the Fall of Singapore, from James Goldrick, Joan Beaumont and Hugh White. On Wednesday in Ballarat, Minister Tehan will attend a national service in Ballarat to commemorate the 75th anniversary…
Cashen, Phil: Enlistments in the second half of 1916: background characteristics Part 2 – religion, units and service history
Phil Cashen ‘103. Enlistments in the second half of 1916: background characteristics Part 2 – religion, units and service history‘, Shire at War, 5 February 2017 We have often linked to the sterling work of Phil Cashen of the Shire…
Keeping up with The Conversation: wide selection as Parliament returns
Whether your problem is the return to school last week or the return of Federal Parliament this week, President Trump being erratic or AFLW making a splash, if one needs distractions there seems to be more to read at the…
Crotty, Martin: In their footsteps? Anzac fun runs and the consumption of the past
Martin Crotty ‘In their footsteps? Anzac fun runs and the consumption of the past’, Honest History, 7 February 2017 The author, a fun runner, describes some Anzac-themed running events and what they say about the current desire of some of…
Centenary Watch February-March 2017
Update 16 February 2017: The bombing of Darwin, 75 years on: some alternative views A brief reading guide, showing how commemoration of this event could just as easily be filed under ‘tourism bonanza’ as under ‘Lest We Forget’. The post…
Cooking the (visitors) books: the Australian War Memorial struggles with statistics – again
David Stephens ‘Cooking the (visitors) books: the Australian War Memorial struggles with statistics – again’, Honest History, 7 February 2017 ‘There has always been an element of myth-making and myth-peddling in the Memorial’s work; it should not extend to its…
An offering for the Inauguration of the 45th President of the United States: Professor Harry Frankfurt on the nature of bullshit
Update 27 January 2017: Norman Abjorensen in Inside Story looks at the long history of post-truth politics. This is good also, from Rod Tiffen in Inside Story. And US academic Lauren Griffin (The Conversation US) applies Frankfurt to today’s reality.…
MYEFO impacts on cultural institutions – but still some mystery about what War Memorial money is for
The Mid-Year Economic and Financial Outlook (MYEFO) statement came out this week and included these paragraphs relevant to national cultural institutions: The Government will provide $20.4 million over five years from the Public Service Modernisation Fund — Agency Sustainability Stream…
Barker, Renae: Australians have an increasingly complex, yet relatively peaceful, relationship with religion
Renae Barker ‘Australians have an increasingly complex, yet relatively peaceful, relationship with religion‘, The Conversation, 21 December 2016 A good subject for a time of year in Australia when those who were nominally Christian in their youth (or perhaps a…
Camp Gallipoli stripped of its charitable status: at last, time to evacuate from this questionable venture
Update 24 December 2016: big story in Fairfax media on all of this. Honest History has tracked the tortuous path of Camp Gallipoli (background or use our Search engine) which, like the original Gallipoli venture, may have started with the…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 40, 13 December 2016
ISSN: 2202-5561 © SEASON’S GREETINGS This is our final newsletter for 2016. Our next edition will be around the end of January. Meanwhile, we wish all readers, followers and fellow-travellers the very best for Christmas, Hanukkah, Hogmanay, Mohammed’s birthday, New…
Silent Centenary: Australian voices questioning the war of 1914-18
Our regular correspondent, singer-songwriter, Tony Smith, has sent us a CD wrangled by himself and musical and poetical colleagues. It is called ‘Silent Centenary: Australian voices questioning the war of 1914-18’. It includes a mixture of sung songs, recited poems,…
What Honest History read and reviewed during 2016: a round-up of book reviews (and reviewers)
‘What Honest History read and reviewed during 2016: a round-up of book reviews (and reviewers)’, Honest History, 13 December 2016 The Honest History team gets to read a lot of books during a year and we are getting more and…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (19) The 1916 coal strike
The Divided Sunburnt Country series ‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (19): The 1916 coal strike’, Honest History, 13 December 2016 ‘The strikes and upheavals, political and industrial, we see around us are the manifestations of a deliberate policy which aims at destroying…
Catching up with The Conversation: three very worthwhile days (and no pay-wall)
Queensland University of Technology academic, Axel Bruns, set out earlier this year a cogent argument for preserving social media as ‘a first draft of the present’ in a similar way to how journalism has traditionally been described as ‘the first…
While we are on the subject: four articles on aspects of democracy – and its possible future currency
Last Sunday we put up a post riffing off four articles which said something about the nature of politics. Without exactly saying so, we were talking about democratic politics and about how it can be a long, hard slog. We…
Eureka 162 years on: resources on the Honest History site
Tomorrow, 3 December, is the 162nd anniversary of the attack on the Eureka Stockade at Ballarat. Honest History has a number of resources on the site, links to lectures by Andrew Leigh MP and historian Humphrey McQueen, a post about…
Australian War Memorial opens permanent display on Holocaust
The Australian War Memorial has opened a permanent display on the Holocaust. (SBS report.) The exhibition, The Holocaust: Witnesses and Survivors, builds on the memories of 30 000 Holocaust survivors who made their homes in Australia after World War II.…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (18): The Prime Minister is determined to carry on
The Divided Sunburnt Country series ‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (18): The Prime Minister is determined to carry on’, Honest History, 26 November 2016 The referendum (plebiscite) had been held on 28 October. Prime Minister Hughes was the guest of…
Frances, Raelene & Bruce Scates, ed.: Beyond Gallipoli: New Perspectives on Anzac
Frances, Raelene & Bruce Scates, ed. Beyond Gallipoli: New Perspectives on Anzac, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2016 Much of the scholarship on the Great War, and especially the Dardanelles/Çanakkale campaign, has been viewed through a narrow national prism and focused…
New views from a little way beyond Gallipoli (review of Scates & Frances ed., Beyond Gallipoli)
‘New views from a little way beyond Gallipoli’, Honest History, 21 November 2016 David Stephens reviews Beyond Gallipoli: New Perspectives on Anzac, edited by Raelene Frances and Bruce Scates This book is a collection of 15 papers (plus introduction) from…
Green, Jonathan: Why must a war define us? Honest History highlights reel
Green, Jonathan ‘Why must a war define us?‘ ABC The Drum, 24 April 2014 (Honest History highlights reel) Over the last three years Honest History has tried to collect significant pieces written about Australia’s relationship with war. We have commissioned…
‘The Call to the People of Australia’, Remembrance Day, 1951: highlights reel
‘” The Call to the People of Australia”, Remembrance Day, 1951: highlights reel’, Honest History, 11 November 2016 This Remembrance Day is the 65th anniversary of one of the stranger documents of early post-war Australia. Titled ‘The Call to the…
Stanley, Peter: AWM sixtieth anniversary: the Memorial and its people
Stanley, Peter ‘AWM sixtieth anniversary: the Memorial and its people, 11 November 2001‘, Australian War Memorial Today, Peter Stanley is Associate Director of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales Canberra, as well…
When a motley crew of Canberra stirrers protected the War Memorial from competition
David Stephens ‘When a motley crew of Canberra stirrers protected the War Memorial from competition’, Honest History, 11 November 2016 Twelve years ago, some Canberra citizens conceived the idea of building in the city new war memorials, one for World…
Two years of commentary on the Australian War Memorial: from the Honest History archives
Rationale Critiquing the Anzac-centred received view of Australian history necessarily involves forensic examination of the work of our premier commemorative institution, the Australian War Memorial. The Memorial – rather surprisingly, in view of its interest in warlike matters – has…
Donalds are Trumps: going deeper after the breast-beating
There is so much being said on the US election result that we are not going to add to it (yet). Except to say three things: roughly half of eligible Americans did not vote; roughly a quarter of eligible Americans…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (16): Conscription miscellany – and mainstream avoidance
The Divided Sunburnt Country series ‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (16): Conscription miscellany – and mainstream avoidance’, Honest History, 4 November 2016 updated Update 16 November 2016: review of Archer, et al, ed., The Conscription Conflict and the Great War.…
Brophy, Kevin: Friday essay: Judith Wright in a new light
Brophy, Kevin ‘Friday essay: Judith Wright in a new light‘, The Conversation, 28 October 2016 Everyone loves Judith Wright [Brophy begins]. Her poetry was consistently brilliant and stunningly lyrical. She opened Australian eyes in the 1940s to the possibilities of…
Australian War Memorial Annual Report, another new exhibition and Story Time
The Australian War Memorial’s Annual Report 2015-16 is now available on the Memorial’s website. From our quick look the Memorial’s overall visitor numbers seem much the same as last year though there are the usual quirks in measurement which mean…
Veterans’ Affairs team visits Estimates Committee for another round
Last week, the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee hosted a phalanx of officers from the Defence portfolio which included, as usual, a team from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and a smaller team from the Australian War Memorial.…
‘Awkward humility’: The speeches of the Hon. Dr Brendan Nelson AO: Part II: Long bows, Holly Golightly and political baseball bats
David Stephens ‘“Awkward humility”: The speeches of the Hon. Dr Brendan Nelson AO: Part II: Long bows, Holly Golightly and political baseball bats’, Honest History, 20 October 2016 updated In our previous article we looked at the structure, themes and…
Honest History E-newsletter No. 38, 11 October 2016
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New on the Honest History website (honesthistory.net.au) Honest History: Beyond Anzackery: announcing the Honest History book due out in April 2017 ‘Awkward humility’: the speeches of Brendan Nelson (Part I: Thrice more with feeling): David Stephens writes Turks did the…
‘Awkward humility’: The speeches of the Hon Brendan Nelson AO: Part I: Thrice more with feeling
David Stephens ‘“Awkward humility”: The speeches of the Hon. Dr Brendan Nelson AO: Part I: Thrice more with feeling’, Honest History, 11 October 2016 The received Australian view of war can be encapsulated in phrases like ‘Lest we forget’, ‘the…
Centenary Watch updates October-December 2016
[Links checked 17 November 2017 and all found to be live. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Update 2 December 2016: Holocaust exhibition at War Memorial…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (13): DVA materials help children today debate conscription then
‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (13): DVA materials help children today debate conscription then’, Honest History, 11 October 2016 updated Update 21 October 2016: Queensland Government Anzac Centenary website has a useful summary on conscription in 1916. The Divided Sunburnt…
Honest History goes to the pictures: movie and TV reviews from the Honest History archives
Quite early in the Honest History project we realised that it was important to review movies and television series that came within our areas of interest. (We even explained why we were doing it.) Practically (due to resource limitations), this…
Pearls and Irritations an antidote to Main Stream Media: asylum seekers, SA outage, submarines, CEO remuneration and other matters
John Menadue’s blog Pearls and Irritations continues to canvass a wide range of issues with a large collection of writers and usually from a different angle than is occupied by the remains of the Main Stream Media. In the latest…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (12): The conscription battle hots up
‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (12): The conscription battle hots up – 100 years ago’, Honest History, 30 September 2016 The Divided Sunburnt Country series Our intrepid researcher, Steve Flora, has worked his way through the National Library’s excellent Trove…
Haigh, Gideon: Stroke of Genius: Victor Trumper and the Shot that Changed Cricket
Haigh, Gideon Stroke of Genius: Victor Trumper and the Shot that Changed Cricket, Penguin Random House, Sydney, 2016 If Trumper is a legend, George Beldam’s ‘Jumping Out’ has become an icon. But that image has almost paradoxically obscured the story…
Life and work in the city and suburbs adds up to lots of Australian stories: Honest History miscellany
The Australian story has always had a gumleaves and distance tone to it even though most of us for most of our history have lived in cities. Yet our cities have grown so big and spread so far – as…
Snyder, Don: Poland poised to put ‘bad’ historians in prison
Don Snyder ‘Poland poised to put “bad” historians in prison‘, The Forward (New York), 2 September 2016 updated Poland’s parliament is considering a law which would make it a criminal offence to implicate Poland, or the Polish people, in the…
Centenary Watch updates September-October 2016
[Links checked 17 November 2017 and all found to be live. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Updates 30 August 2016: Minister Tehan back in harness;…
Lord Northcliffe (egged on by Keith Murdoch) talks up the Anzacs after Pozieres: Honest History document
‘“These young giants from the furthest corner of the earth”: Lord Northcliffe (egged on by Keith Murdoch) talks up the Anzacs after Pozières: Honest History document’, Honest History, 30 August 2016 The document below is taken from The Sun (Sydney)…
From the Honest History archives: ‘Defining Moments’ at the National Museum of Australia (September 2014 and since)
Honest History has tracked the ‘Defining Moments’ project at the National Museum of Australia pretty much since it began. The project was an expression of the NMA’s claim to be ‘Where our stories live’ – ‘stories’ plural – which we…
Hell No! We Won’t Go anti-conscription project goes to the Australian War Memorial
Australia’s Vietnam War had many facets, some of which we explored in our recent Honest History series. One of these facets, local Australian opposition to the war and to conscription, gets some coverage in the galleries at the Australian War…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (9): Billy Hughes girds his loins for the conscription battle
The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series On 31 July 1916, Prime Minister WM Hughes returned to Australia (Fremantle) after six months in Britain and Europe, where he had raised Australia’s profile in Allied war councils. He spoke at the Melbourne Town…
Viet Thanh Nguyen : Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
Australia’s Vietnam War – and keeping it in context: others in the series ________________________________ Viet Thanh Nguyen Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2016 This is the final post in our series…
From the Honest History archives: People who turn up – nurses in Vietnam (June 2016)
Australia’s Vietnam War – and keeping it in context: others in the series ________________________ This week’s commemoration of Australia’s Vietnam War (hanging off the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan) underlines that history is made by those who…
From the Honest History archives: What happened to Australians after the Vietnam War (June 2015)?
Australia’s Vietnam War – and keeping it in context: others in the series _____________________________ Parades, recognition and misremembering Part of the narrative of Australia’s Vietnam War in the more than 40 years since our commitment ended has been that Australian…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (8): Jennie Scott Griffiths: ‘She Fought Where She Stood’
The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series Victoria Haskins writes in her Anzac Her Story blog about Jennie Scott Griffiths, born in Texas in 1875, mother of ten children, newspaper editor, and anti-war campaigner in World War I Australia and just after…
Australia’s Vietnam War – and keeping it in context: Honest History series
‘Australia’s Vietnam War – and keeping it in context: an Honest History series’, Honest History, 15 August 2016 updated UPDATE 11.45 am FRIDAY: Still difficulties with access. UPDATE 6.00 AM THURSDAY: Restricted access to be allowed. STOP PRESS: Cancellation of…
Lamperd, Ruth: Families speak about military loved ones lost and how we failed them
Lamperd, Ruth ‘Families speak about military loved ones lost and how we failed them‘, Sunday Herald-Sun, 13 August 2016 The story reveals 41 military personnel and veterans died this year from suicide, the same as the number of Australians who…
McKinley, Michael: The ANZUS Alliance-as-disastrous diffusion
McKinley, Michael The ANZUS Alliance-as-disastrous diffusion: The political virology of a wartime liaison: Presented to the Panel WA 71 Diffusion-as-Empire: Theory and Comparative Studies in Disastrous Circulations of Power, 54th Annual Convention, The International Studies Association, San Francisco, California, USA,…
From the Honest History archives: Hiroshima 1945; Managing Hiroshima
Update 31 August 2016: an article on The Millions website commemorating the 70th anniversary of the publication in The New Yorker of John Hersey’s long article Hiroshima. The anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings tends to creep up on…
McQuire, Amy: 200 years of trauma through a CCTV lens (Don Dale and after)
McQuire, Amy ‘200 years of trauma through a CCTV lens‘, New Matilda, 3 August 2016 The best piece that we have seen on this issue. Darumbul journalist, Amy McQuire, looks behind the Royal Commission kneejerk reaction. Aboriginal affairs moves at…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (7): An overview of the 1916-17 conscription referenda
The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series Michael Hamel-Green wrote in Green Left Weekly earlier this year an article called ‘When Australia voted no to war: the 1916-17 conscription referenda‘. The article is a useful brief introduction to the conscription struggle, an…
Rizzetti, Janine: Graeme Davison on visions of the future
Rizzetti, Janine ‘Graeme Davison on visions of the future‘, The Resident Judge of Port Phillip, 31 July 2016 Nice piece from this excellent blog. It riffs off an exhibition in Melbourne (about to close) and an article by Graeme Davison…
Riches, Leah & James Bennett: We can’t see the war for the memorials: balancing education and commemoration
Riches, Leah & James Bennett ‘We can’t see the war for the memorials: balancing education and commemoration‘, The Conversation, 25 July 2016 This article raises issues similar to those that have concerned Honest History over the last three years; some…
E-newsletter No. 36, 19 July 2016
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New on site ALLIANCES AND IMPLICATIONS Is this the most sycophantic speech by an Australian prime minister? David Stephens does the analysis. Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (6): ‘I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier’. Peter…
Kelly, Sean: Trump and circumstance
Kelly, Sean ‘Trump and circumstance‘, The Monthly Today, 22 July 2016 updated The teaser to this piece runs, ‘How Donald Trump is exploiting the rules of politics and media, and what it means for Australia’. The article is about much…
Centenary Watch updates July-August 2016
[Links checked 17 November 2017 and all found to be live. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Update 15 August 2016: Australia’s Vietnam War – and…
Is Julia Gillard’s speech to the US Congress the most sycophantic speech by an Australian PM?
David Stephens ‘Is this the most sycophantic speech by an Australian prime minister? Julia Gillard’s address to the United States Congress, March 2011’, Honest History, 19 July 2016 Former Prime Minister Rudd gets Anzac biscuit, 2012 (Courier-Mail/Brad Cooper) Anzackery precedents:…
American historians use Facebook to blow the whistle on Donald Trump
A number of distinguished American historians, led by David McCullough (Truman, John Adams) and Ken Burns (The Civil War), have started a Facebook page to oppose the candidacy of Donald Trump. While the group is conscious of the need to…
Five uneasy pieces on the mainstream media and the election
Update 3 August 2016: Richard Denniss in The Monthly on Brexit, election, perceptions, the media and the whole damn thing. Update 22 July 2016: Sean Kelly in The Monthly Today on some of the issues below. ____________ The founder of…
Australian War Memorial Council prefers not to hear about Honest History’s Alternative Guide to the Memorial
On Anzac Day Honest History posted on our website our Alternative Guide to the Australian War Memorial. The Guide is intended for students from middle to senior Secondary level, for teachers and for members of the general public. Since Anzac…
From the Honest History archives: An old Queen and a new nation (Constitution Day, 9 July)
‘From the Honest History archives: An old Queen and a new nation (Constitution Day, 9 July)’, Honest History, 6 July 2016 Victoria by Charles Léandre, Le Rire, 12 June 1897 (Wikimedia Commons) Update: National Archives of Australia events on Constitution…
Wide-ranging AHA conference in Ballarat nicely captured from a distance via Tweets
Yvonne Perkins, who blogs as Stumbling through the Past, didn’t go to the Australian Historical Association conference in Ballarat this year but she is still keeping in touch by following and collating the Tweets coming out of it (#ozha2016). Yvonne’s…
Coombs, Anne: It seems like a good time to ask: what are governments for?
Coombs, Anne ‘It seems like a good time to ask: what are governments for?‘ Guardian, 24 June 2016 This piece was re-run in the latest Guardian Weekly (1-7 July) where it earned the additional headline: ‘We give them power to…
Review note: Irish Easter Rising commemoration has lessons for Australia
‘Review note: Irish Easter Rising commemoration has lessons for Australia’, Honest History, 23 June 2016 I am just one-eighth Irish and by no means an expert in being Irish or in Irish history. But Honest History’s recent collecting of material…
Ward, Stuart: Brexit wounds
Ward, Stuart ‘Brexit wounds‘, The Monthly, June 2016 updated On the eve of the vote in Britain, the author looks at the history of Australian attitudes towards British attitudes and actions towards Europe. ‘Whatever the fallout’, the author concludes, ‘it…
New anti-war song is counterpoint to War Memorial rejigging donations policy
There is an anti-war event in London this weekend, organised by the No Glory in War and Stop the War coalition. The event commemorates the Battle of the Somme. A feature will be the song ‘Dandelions’ by Steve Donoghue, the…
Review note: Meanjin short of funds but maintains high quality
‘Review note: Meanjin short of funds but maintains high quality’, Honest History, 17 June 2016 Meanjin Quarterly has been around since 1940 but now it is struggling for funds as the Australia Council cuts its cloth to fit reduced funding…
Honest History Miscellany of the June Long Weekend
Some of our Honest History software fell over late on Thursday last week. Thanks to some sleuthing by our indefatigable Webmaster we got it back on track by late Saturday but it meant there was a buildup of new posts…
Steele, Colin: How The Sex Lives of Australians upset a PM and the PM’s Literary Awards
Steele, Colin ‘How The Sex Lives of Australians upset a PM and the PM’s Literary Awards‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 June 2016 updated Update 23 June 2016: Patrick Allington in The Conversation discusses the issues. The author of this article…
RSL members miffed as PM mentions Soldier On
The ABC has a story today that some RSL members who heard the prime minister’s speech to the RSL National Conference were upset that he mentioned the work of veterans’ organisation, Soldier On. A reading of the PM’s speech shows…
A quick skim through some subscription journals: review note
‘Review note: a quick skim through some subscription journals’, Honest History, 7 June 2016 updated Update 18 June 2016: Nicholas Farrelly and James Giggacher write in the Canberra Times about the history of their highly successful academic blog, New Mandala,…
Keepers of the flame: making war memorial councils more representative
David Stephens ‘Keepers of the flame: why do the people who control our war memorials look so different from the rest of us and why does this matter?’ Honest History, 7 June 2016 Contents The Australian War Memorial Act 1980…
Centenary Watch updates June-July 2016
[Links checked 16 November 2017 and all found to be live. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Update 13 July 2016: Official World War I memorial…
From the Honest History Archives: Tangled up in red, white and blue
‘From the Honest History archives: Tangled up in red, white and blue (September 2013)’, Honest History, 7 June 2016 The Honest History website now includes more than 2000 posts and pages, many of them containing original writing. Readers can find…
Tendering for the knight: film-makers bid to document Sir John Monash for the green fields of France
Regular readers of Honest History will have followed our coverage of the proposed Sir John Monash Interpretive Centre to be built next to the Australian memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in France. We have described the Centre as a boastful Aussie boondoggle.…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (2): the War Census
The ‘Divided sunburnt country’ series ________________ In 1915 Australians took part in a special census, called the War Census, ostensibly to help organise the country’s resources for total war but effectively to prepare for the introduction of conscription for war…
Wolf, Charlie & Athol Bittley: AFL club songs ranked by ambition and boastfulness
Wolf, Charlie & Athol Bittley ‘AFL club songs ranked by ambition and boastfulness‘, Thermocow, 27 May 2016 Now that we’ve got your attention … This article on a comedy blog is just a bit of fun but go beyond the…
Divided sunburnt country (1): Australia 1916-18: recruiting in Gippsland
This post is by way of being a ‘soft launch’ for a new Honest History series. We are using the series to explore a crucial question: whether what happened at home in Australia during the Great War was actually more…
Kirby, Tim (dir.): Gallipoli: When Murdoch went to war
Kirby, Tim (dir.) ‘Gallipoli: When Murdoch went to war‘, BBC Two (2015); rebroadcast on SBS, 22 May 2016 One-hour documentary on the Keith Murdoch letter and subsequent events of September-October 1915. The letter is described by one of the talking…
Babkenian, Vicken & Peter Stanley: ‘Armenian propaganda uses the ANZAC’ [sic]: A response
Babkenian, Vicken & Peter Stanley ‘”Armenian propaganda uses the ANZAC [sic]”: A response’, Honest History, 19 May 2016 The Australian Turkish Advocacy Alliance (ATA-A) website has published a review of Armenia, Australia and the Great War, by Vicken Babkenian and…
Pascoe, Bruce: Dark Emu: Black Seeds, Agriculture or Accident?
Pascoe, Bruce Dark Emu: Black Seeds, Agriculture or Accident? Magabala Books, Broome WA, 2014 Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the “hunter-gatherer” tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify…
Newton, Douglas: The Centenary of the Great War – and Anzac (five articles)
Newton, Douglas ‘The Centenary of the Great War – and Anzac‘, Pearls and Irritations, 7 May 2016 This overview article links to four others on changing war aims during the Great War and lost opportunities for peace 1914-18. As well…
Douglas Newton confronts the really important questions about war
‘Douglas Newton confronts the really important questions about war’, Honest History, 16 May 2016 David Stephens reviews five articles by Douglas Newton that take us ‘behind the scenes’ in the Great War. The piece also appears in John Menadue’s blog,…
A rectangular state of mind: Australian-American relations then and now – still soldiering on
Many years ago, President Lyndon Baines Johnson thought of Australia as ‘the next large rectangular state beyond El Paso‘. Other American presidents may have felt similarly and some Australian governments have done their best to reinforce this attitude – with,…
Snyder, Timothy: Poland vs history (Australian comparisons not far beneath)
Timothy Snyder ‘Poland vs history‘, New York Review of Books, 3 May 2016 updated In its exhibitions, the Museum of the Second World War [in Gdańsk, Poland] promised to tell the story of the 1930s and 1940s in an entirely…
McLean, Ian: With secrecy and despatch (review of exhibition)
McLean, Ian ‘With secrecy and despatch‘, Artlink, April 2016 This is a review of an exhibition (With Secrecy and Despatch, 9 April-12 June) at the Campbelltown Arts Centre on Australian and Canadian contemporary Indigenous art. It also touches on When…
The dogs of war at home and abroad: miscellany
(Australian Electoral Commission) As the election is announced, complete with warlike metaphors, it is timely to look at some other slices of our history, past and present, where war is rather more real or more possible. (Honest History will probably…
Review note: Griffith Review 52 ‘Imagining the future’
‘Review note: Griffith Review 52 ‘Imagining the future’’, Honest History, 2 May 2016 updated This quick look at Griffith Review 52 ‘Imagining the future’ is more of an alert than a review. It is difficult to keep up with the…
Anzac Day miscellany 2016
Update 30 August 2016: Mick Cook (The Dead Prussian Podcast) talked to Sharon Mascall-Dare about Indigenous and non-Anglo Celtic Anzacs. Thirty minutes but no transcript. Update 27 May 2016: we found this one much later, paragraphs lurking at the beginning…
Ankara calling: the rush to build the Ataturk Memorial in Anzac Parade, Canberra, 1984-85
‘Ankara calling: the rush to build the Atatürk Memorial in Anzac Parade, Canberra, 1984-85’, Honest History, 26 April 2016 (Note: a summary version of this article appeared in Pearls and Irritations.; an extended two-part version, using more sources, commences here.)…
More on the Australian pilgrimages to Gallipoli, 1960 and 1965
‘More on the Australian pilgrimages to Gallipoli, 1960 and 1965’, Honest History, 26 April 2016 In Honest History’s work on the provenance of the alleged ‘Atatürk words’ of 1934 (‘Those heroes that shed their blood …’), we have found isolated…
Review note: a reasonably flexible Anzac Day package from DVA for little kids
‘Review note: a reasonably flexible Anzac Day package from DVA for little kids’, Honest History, 26 April 2016 Honest History has often been critical of the products the official commemoration industry puts in front of children. We thought the prize-winning…
Centenary Watch updates April-June 2016
[Links checked 16 November 2017 and all found to be live. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Update 26 May 2016: Camp Gallipoli board statement regarding…
Review note: Vietnam – the war that made us what?
‘Review note: Vietnam – the war that made us what?’ Honest History, 26 April 2016 SBS showed a three-part series on the Vietnam War, Vietnam: The War that Made Australia (now on video), which had an unusually narrow focus and…
Minister Tehan unpegs Camp Gallipoli
Update 14 May 2016: a further investigative report on Adelaide TV on 9 May with Hendrik Gout busts a myth about Chris Fox’s Smith relatives from World War I. (The Honest History post you are reading at the moment played…
From the Honest History Archives: Five arguments for downsizing Anzac
Added to our collection ‘From the Honest History Archives: five April takes on Anzac and Anzackery‘ is this article from March last year by David Stephens. It was originally published in Teaching History, the journal of the History Teachers’ Association…
From the Honest History Archives: Will you be whistling this sentimental ditty for Anzac Day 2016?
Added to our collection ‘From the Honest History Archives: five April takes on Anzac and Anzackery‘ is a link to extracts from a speech by Honest History committee member, Carolyn Holbrook, in Fremantle about this time last year. We noted…
Reynolds, Henry: Unnecessary Wars
Henry Reynolds Unnecessary Wars, NewSouth, Sydney, 2016 Update 21 October 2017: Henry Reynolds on unnecessary wars (Brisbane Peace Lecture 2017, as broadcast on ABC RN) ‘Australian governments find it easy to go to war. Their leaders seem to be able…
Fathi, Romain: Is Australia spending too much on the “Anzac centenary”? (plus HH background on spending politics)
Update 14 April 2016: Kaching! Another $5 million from corporates The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac, Dan Tehan, has announced a $5 million donation to the Anzac Centenary Public Fund from Suncorp, one of Australia’s…
Stanley, Peter, et al: From the Honest History Archives: five April takes on Anzac and Anzackery
Stanley, Peter, et al. ‘From the Honest History Archives: five April takes on Anzac and Anzackery’, Honest History, April 2016 Honest History as a coalition has been going for three years. We have been publishing newsletters since May 2013 and…
Invasion, massacre and the Queen’s uniform: Honest History miscellany
‘Invasion, massacre and the Queen’s uniform: Honest History miscellany’, Honest History, 4 April 2016 updated This little collection pulls together a few threads relating to the following: the event of 1788 and afterwards that some of us call ‘white settlement’…
Daley, Paul: It’s not “politically correct” to say Australia was invaded, it’s history
Daley, Paul ‘It’s not “politically correct” to say Australia was invaded, it’s history‘, Guardian Australia, 30 March 2016 updated This article comments on the Daily Telegraph‘s comment on a diversity guide at the University of New South Wales, pointing out…
Review note: Certain Admissions by Gideon Haigh is a very Melbourne story
‘Review note: Certain Admissions by Gideon Haigh is a very Melbourne story’, Honest History, 24 March 2016 Update 30 August 2016: the book won the Ned Kelly award for 2016. This is a gripping ‘true crime’ story by a prolific…
Many more Kiwis at Gallipoli than previously thought
New evidence uncovered in New Zealand strongly suggests twice as many New Zealanders served in the Dardanelles campaign than has previously been thought. Research by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the New Zealand Defence Force shows more than…
Five Inside Stories and four Conversations: Honest History miscellany
‘Five Inside Stories and four Conversations: Honest History miscellany’, Honest History, 22 March 2016 updated Recent update on the Reef 20 April 2016: ABC report on the extent of bleaching, including map, showing particularly the extreme position in the northern…
E-Newsletter No. 33, 15 March 2016
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New on the site In the matter of Agent Orange: Vietnam veterans versus the Australian War Memorial. Jacqueline Bird describes a 20 year struggle to properly tell the story of servicemen’s exposure to chemicals in Vietnam. Constructing nationalism:…
Walsh, Michael JK & Andrekos Varnava, ed.: Australia and the Great War
Walsh, Michael JK & Andrekos Varnava, ed. Australia and the Great War: Identity, Memory and Mythology, MUP Academic, Carlton, 2016 Australia and the Great War explores both the immediate and long-term consequences of the war on this complex relationship, looking in…
Martyrs’ Day in Turkey and what probably did not happen on 18 March 1934
‘Martyrs’ Day in Turkey and what probably did not happen on 18 March 1934: recent research from Cengiz Özakinci’, Honest History, 15 March 2016 updated Background The date 18 March marks the anniversary of the Ottoman naval victory in 1915,…
After the Fall: Singapore conference on World War I (review of Walsh and Varnava)
‘After the Fall: Singapore conference on World War I’, Honest History, 15 March 2016 updated David Stephens reviews Australia and the Great War: Identity, Memory and Mythology, edited by Michael JK Walsh and Andrekos Varnava Conference papers that wait too…
Centenary Watch updates March-April 2016
[Links checked 16 November 2017 and all found to be live. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Update 24 April 2016: Minister Tehan unpegs Camp Gallipoli…
Doing interesting history and want a gig on ABC Radio?
For two years now, Honest History and ABC Local Radio Canberra 666 and online across Australia have been co-operating in a fortnightly spot on Tuesday mornings. Honest History finds the talent and presenter Genevieve Jacobs makes the final pick and…
Bentley, Tom & Jonathan West: Time for a new consensus
Bentley, Tom & Jonathan West ‘Time for a new consensus: fostering Australia’s comparative advantages‘, Griffith Review 51 supplement, March 2016; available as pdf and electronically Australia has emerged from a spectacular resources boom without any clear approach to achieving growth…
Defending the national tuckshop (again): Defence White Paper miscellany
Update 1 April 2016: four pieces on the South China Sea from former diplomats Broinowski, Miller and Woodward, published in Pearls and Irritations. ____________________ The title of this piece is pinched shamelessly from that of Michael Cathcart’s excellent book…
Review note: Remembering Ben Chifley by Suzanne Martin: well meant but flawed
‘Review note: Remembering Ben Chifley by Suzanne Martin: well meant but flawed’, Honest History, 5 March 2016 This is a well meant but flawed book about one of our most attractive prime ministers. The author is Chifley’s great-niece, her sisters…
PM’s remembrance rhetoric and alleged DVA performance: a fascinating juxtaposition
Two events in the last week juxtaposed enlightened commemorative rhetoric and complaints about bureaucracy. The rhetoric came from the prime minister on 26 February, opening the new Soldier On Robert Poate Reintegration and Recovery Centre in Canberra. It is critical…
Abjorensen, Norman: The meaning of John Howard
Abjorensen, Norman ‘The meaning of John Howard‘, Inside Story, 1 March 2016 updated Written to mark the 20th anniversary of the coming to power of the Howard Government. Abjorensen is the doyen of the rise and fall of prime ministers,…
Murphy, Katharine: The politics we deserve
Murphy, Katharine ‘The politics we deserve‘, Meanjin, 74, 4, Summer 2015 The writer is deputy political editor of Guardian Australia. We are posting this link not much more than four months after the article was written – we had missed…
New Minister gets (smaller) commemoration bandwagon rolling
The latest Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac, Dan Tehan MP, was on his feet today in the Parliament taking note of the 25th anniversary of the end of the Gulf War in 1991 and setting…
‘The Australian War Memorial is happy to let your opinion stand as it is’: AWM response to recent Honest History posts
David Stephens ‘“The Australian War Memorial is happy to let your opinion stand as it is”: the Memorial’s response to recent posts on the Honest History website’, Honest History, 22 February 2016 Honest History readers will recall our articles remarking…
Bombing of Darwin remembered – in context
Update 10 March 2016: a new book by Brett Bowden on the bombing of Darwin. The new Minister for the Centenary of Anzac, Dan Tehan MP, has issued his first media release. It marks the 74th anniversary today of the…
Einstein, gravitation and the scientists of the Empire c. 1919: highlights reel
‘Einstein, gravitation and the scientists of the Empire c. 1919: highlights reel’, Honest History, 16 February 2016 The recent announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves (described as the scientific discovery of the century) set Honest History in search of…
Could Veterans’ Affairs portfolio changes follow departure of Minister?
Stuart Robert MP, the Minister for Human Services, Veterans’ Affairs and Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac is leaving the Ministry. While the departure of the Minister arises from matters unconnected with his current three jobs, it…
E-newsletter No. 32, 2 February 2016
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New Singing country: the musical legacy of David Morrison, Australian of the Year – and a straw in the wind? A story about John Schumann’s song ‘On every Anzac Day’ and what it means for recognition of Indigenous…
Fitzkrieg halted at New Directions in War and History Conference, Canberra
About 70 people attended this conference at ANU on 4-5 February, jointly run by the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU and the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society at UNSW Canberra. Front-line conference wranglers…
Singing country: the importance of the song On every Anzac Day
David Stephens ‘Singing country: the musical legacy of David Morrison, Australian of the Year – and a straw in the wind at the Australian War Memorial?’, Honest History, 2 February 2016 Before David Morrison became Australian of the Year he…
‘Visitation’ numbers at the Australian War Memorial since 1991: is this joint really jumpin’?
David Stephens ‘“Visitation” numbers at the Australian War Memorial since 1991: is this joint really jumpin’?’ Honest History, 2 February 2016 updated The title of this piece needs some explanation. First, ‘visitation’. The author thought this word meant the visit…
It’s a system, dammit, not a horse-race (review of Griffith Review 51)
‘It’s a system, dammit, not a horse-race’ (review of Griffith Review 51), Honest History, 2 February 2016 David Stephens reviews Griffith Review 51, ‘Fixing the system’, edited by Julianne Schultz and Anne Tiernan Once upon a time gentlemen who made…
Schultz, Julianne, Anne Tiernan, et al.: Fixing the system
Schultz, Julianne, Anne Tiernan, et al. ‘Fixing the system‘, Griffith Review, 51, January 2016, available online to subscribers Collection of nearly thirty essays on how to foster ‘a society that really works’. Authors include the editors, Carmen Lawrence, Chris Wallace,…
Centenary Watch updates February-March 2016
[Links checked 16 November 2017 and all found to be live. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Update 4 March 2016: PM’s remembrance rhetoric and alleged…
McLoughlin, Liam: Australia Day: BBQs, beer goggles and Oi, Oi, Oi
McLoughlin, Liam ‘Australia Day: barbecues and beer goggles and Oi, Oi, Oi,’ New Matilda, 20 January 2016 Young writer surveys the big day, looking at jingoism, toxic masculinity, a horror movie from 1988, an Ocker video and a parody thereof,…
Minister defends expensive Monash boondoggle* while sod is turned
Update 25 October 2017: the publicity machine cranks up as the opening of the centre approaches. Update 21 January 2016: augmented version now up on Independent Australia. FRENCH COVERAGE NOW ADDED; SEE BELOW Anzac centenary minister, Stuart Robert, has wielded…
Walsh, Nick: Kokoda Track
[Note: this post was originally published in January 2016] Nick Walsh Kokoda Track, The author, 2nd edition, Melbourne 2012 This little book (70 pages, a dozen photographs, two clear maps) was written by a veteran who died recently aged 100…
FitzSimons, Peter: Fromelles and Pozières: In the Trenches of Hell
Peter FitzSimons Fromelles and Pozières: In the Trenches of Hell, Random House, Sydney, 2015; electronic version available On 19 July 1916, 7000 Australian soldiers – in the first major action of the AIF on the Western Front – attacked entrenched…
The Fitzkrieg reaches Fromelles and Pozières (review of FitzSimons)
‘The Fitzkrieg reaches Fromelles and Pozières’, Honest History, 11 January 2016 David Stephens reviews Peter FitzSimons’ Fromelles and Pozières: In the Trenches of Hell. This is a better book than this reviewer expected. He edited a trenchant but balanced review…
Villers-Bretonneux boondoggle construction contract announced
Update 26 December 2015. It is interesting that the Minister’s media release says nothing about the cost of the project ($A100m) but mentions employment and investment benefits in Picardy, France, where the project is located. Meanwhile, the Minister’s announcement has…
A century since we stole quietly away
David Stephens ‘A century since we stole quietly away’, Honest History, 23 December 2015 To judge from Trove (the National Library’s newspaper database) the first news of the successful evacuation from Gallipoli arrived in time for the evening editions of…
Honest History Christmas miscellany 2015: lots to read and ponder
‘Honest History Christmas miscellany 2015: lots to read and ponder’, Honest History, 20 December 2015 Christmas often brings a reckoning and it is the same in our compact little enterprise. We would have loved to have afforded some of the…
Former Anzac centenary minister Ronno to resign; ex-Digger to head War Graves
Ronno pulls the plug Victorian Senator Michael Ronaldson is to resign from Parliament. The former Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac (and Special Minister of State) announced his intentions today. Honest…
Villers-Bretonneux boondoggle survives blunt Budget axe
The annual Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) has been released, along with the list of Budget tweaks. The Treasurer claimed $10.6 billion in savings, offset by $10.2 billion in new spending since the May Budget, which amounts to net…
e-Newsletter No. 31, 1 December 2015
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New on the site There is a new Minister for the Centenary of Anzac. Will he be too busy with his other jobs to do the Anzac job properly? David Stephens writes. Seeking him here, there and everywhere.…
Eltham, Ben: for a new thing, innovation has been around for a while
Eltham, Ben ‘Malcolm “Boom Boom” Turnbull is an old ideas man‘, New Matilda, 10 December 2015 Anyone older than 40 should be able to remember at least three ‘innovation statements’ by Australian governments. They may also have a shelf of…
Review note: where are all the war books this Anzac centenary Christmas?
‘Review note: where are all the war books this Anzac centenary Christmas?’ Honest History, 13 December 2015 Any bookshop these days seems to include a lot of military history books. The present reviewer is duty bound (as a website wrangler)…
Minister tweets a response to Honest History post
We don’t often get public responses from government (though we see evidence from time to time of official attitudes to our work – there’s a list below) so it was nice to hear from the Hon. Stuart Robert MP, Minister for…
Scates, Bruce, Rebecca Wheatley & Laura James: 100 Stories
Scates, Bruce, Rebecca Wheatley & Laura James World War One: A History in 100 Stories, Penguin, Melbourne, 2015 A long-awaited product of a complex project to tell the stories of many people affected by the Great War. There is also…
What is history? (review of Scates et al)
‘What is history? An old question; a new answer?’ Honest History, 1 December 2015 Jim Windeyer* reviews World War One: A History in 100 Stories by Bruce Scates, Rebecca Wheatley and Laura James. Another review by David Stephens. Jim Windeyer…
Subversive stories of an old war (review of Scates et al)
‘Subversive stories of an old war’, Honest History, 1 December 2015 David Stephens reviews World War One: A History in 100 Stories, by Bruce Scates, Rebecca Wheatley and Laura James. Another review by Jim Windeyer. __________________________________ This book is sentimental…
Will the new Anzac centenary minister be too busy to bother?
David Stephens ‘Will the new Anzac centenary minister be too busy to bother? Honest History, 1 December 2015 updated [Note: earlier, edited versions of this article appear in the Public Servant Informant supplement of the Canberra Times for 1 December…
No sign of Ataturk’s minister at Anzac, April-May 1934
‘Gold, rum but no sign of Ataturk’s minister at Anzac, April-May 1934’, Honest History, 1 December 2015 We return to the provenance of the famous ‘Ataturk words’ of 1934 – the ones commencing ‘Those heroes that shed their blood and…
Centenary Watch updates December 2015-January 2016
[Links checked 15 November 2017 and a few were found to be broken, due to removal of material from websites or simply the passage of time. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link…
Anzac, Lest We Forget feature in Reclaim Australia rallies
Small Reclaim Australia rallies in a number of centres at the weekend were notable for featuring Anzac-related slogans and flags. At Melton, near Melbourne, Reclaim Australia demonstrators carried a banner bearing poppies, silhouettes of marching troops and the words ‘Lest…
Spittel, Christina: Australia in the Great War (review of AWM WWI galleries)
Spittel, Christina* ‘Australia in the Great War‘, reCollections, vol. 10, no. 2, October 2015 This review of the refurbished World War I galleries at the Australian War Memorial was published in the online journal of the National Museum of Australia.…
100 Great War stories book well and truly launched
World War One: a History in 100 Stories has been written by Bruce Scates, professor at Monash, and Monash PhD students Rebecca Wheatley and Laura James, but the clearest message that emerged from its launch this evening in Melbourne was…
Another sniff at Rose of No Man’s Land
For those who want to splash out: 100 ml of Rose of No Man’s Land will cost you a smidgen over $A300 ($US200) and 50 ml will cost you around $A200 ($US145). For our earlier kicking up a stink on…
Another Monash juggernaut rolls across Northern France: boondoggle update
Lots of things happen late at night in Parliament House, Canberra: destructive testing of furniture; plotting against leaders; inappropriate propositions in the private dining rooms. And Additional Estimates hearings by Senate Committees. Typically, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the…
Canberra Youth Theatre & Long Cloud Youth Theatre, New Zealand: Dead Men’s Wars
Canberra Youth Theatre & Long Cloud Youth Theatre, New Zealand Dead Men’s Wars A play by Ralph McCubbin Howell, directed by Brett Adam, a joint Aotearoa New Zealand-Australia production, which premiered in Canberra, 14 October 2015 with support from The…
Trans-Tasman youth production asks important questions about Anzac
‘Trans-Tasman youth production asks important questions about Anzac’, Honest History, 15 October 2015 David Stephens reviews Dead Men’s Wars by Ralph McCubbin Howell, presented by Canberra Youth Theatre (Australia) and Long Cloud Youth Theatre (New Zealand) Like another co-production a…
Change and continuity at Honest History
‘Change and continuity at Honest History’, Honest History, 13 October 2015 There are some changes under way at Honest History, leading up to the second anniversary of our website early in November. But there is continuity as well. Let us…
‘After all these years’: Wilfred Burchett highlights reel
‘After all these years: Wilfred Burchett highlights reel’, Honest History, 30 September 2015 Wilfred Burchett shouldered his way back into Honest History’s consideration recently, first, when we revived his justly famous article about Hiroshima and, secondly, when we were pointed…
Leslie, Tim, et al: Prime Ministers’ careers graphically presented
Leslie, Tim, Louis Stowasser, Ben Spraggon & Matthew Liddy ‘From Menzies to Malcolm: the careers of Australia’s prime ministers visualised‘, ABC News, 25 September 2015 Handy graphic version on one screen of the careers of 18 prime ministers, showing periods…
Adoniou, Misty, et al: meaning of changes to national curriculum
Adoniou, Misty, Bill Louden & Glenn C. Savage ‘What will changes to the national curriculum mean for schools? experts respond‘, The Conversation, 23 September 2015 We have been following this issue closely, particularly in relation to the history curriculum, ever…
Big Ideas on ABC RN Monday features ‘defining moments’
Honest History went along last evening to a session at the National Museum of Australia on its ‘Defining Moments’ project. We have followed this initiative closely – partly because of the way it contrasts with the narrowly conservative interpretation of…
Review note: commemoration theme sits lightly on an old Canberra perennial
‘Review note: commemoration theme sits lightly on an old Canberra perennial’, Honest History, 22 September 2015 When an event has been going for 27 years it will be looking for new twists. Canberra’s venerable Floriade spring festival has done night-time…
Ministerial reshuffle leaves Anzac centenary minister out of a job
Update 21 September 2015: farewell media release from Senator Ronaldson. Prime Minister Turnbull’s new ministry does not include Senator Michael Ronaldson, formerly Miniser for Veterans’ Affairs and Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac. The prime minister…
Defining Moments in Australian history: events at National Museum
Honest History has been a fan of the Defining Moments project at the National Museum of Australia. We are pleased to see a program of events around Defining Moments is getting under way in Canberra next week, 24 September, with…
Less twaddling by the lake: three Canberra art exhibitions
David Stephens ‘Less twaddling by the lake: three art exhibitions in Canberra’, Honest History, 16 September 2015 The three exhibitions covered in this review offer a multi-hued picture of parts of our history. The first show, Reality in flames, has…
Talking Turkey
Those heroes that shed their blood And lost their lives… You are now lying in the soil of a friendly Country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies And the Mehmets to us where they lie…
Commemoration focus shifting, says Minister
Not the most memorable output from Parliament House today, but worth noting nevertheless, was a media release from Minister for the Centenary of Anzac, Senator Michael Ronaldson, entitled ‘Funding round opens for Vietnam War Commemorative Grants’. The release provided details…
Honest History
Honest History promotes balanced consideration of Australian history by offering contesting, evidence-based interpretations to students, teachers, universities, journalists and the public. We challenge the misuse of history to serve political or other agendas. Growing up Aboriginal in Australia: an important…
Minister’s bloody fantasies emerge in his speeches
Honest History’s secretary and editor, David Stephens, writes in Fairfax today about the obsession with blood sacrifice that has characterised the thoughts and actions of authority figures and their acolytes down the ages. He finds plenty of examples in the…
Honest History evidence on Anzac centenary splurge featured in News Limited
Ian McPhedran’s article on the News website ‘Government spending more than $8800 for every digger killed during WW1‘ draws upon material on the Honest History site about commemoration spending (especially here and here) and quotes Honest History’s David Stephens along…
Memorial to acknowledge families affected by war
The Canberra Times reports progress on a plan to erect in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial a shrine or monument to the families of Australian service personnel. Public and corporate donations will be sought. The leader of the…
Centenary Watch updates September 2015
[Links checked 15 November 2017 and a couple were found to be broken, due to the passage of time. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Update…
Freedom and the Australian War Memorial: is Honest History not a force for good?
David Stephens ‘Freedom and the Australian War Memorial: is Honest History not a force for good?’, Honest History, 1 September 2015 Communication has always been central to warfare. Carrier pigeons, flags, field telephones, Mel Gibson rushing through the trenches in…
Inequality – six of the best from Andrew Leigh MP: highlights reel
‘Inequality – six of the best from Andrew Leigh, MP: highlights reel’, Honest History, 1 September 2015 updated Inequality has been a special interest of Honest History, as we have noted the procession of reporting organisations confirming Australia’s growing reputation…
Farewell Les Jauncey, wandering radical (1 September 2015)
Leslie Cyril Jauncey has surprised us all. When we first planned the Honest History website two years ago we thought it would be nice to have a column, a place where various invited authors could write about things that interested…
Honest History criticism of sanitised war history from AWM/DVA
Honest History’s criticism of a Children’s Book Council award to the book Audacity was reported on the ABC today. Honest History secretary and editor, David Stephens, described the book as sanitised, distorted and bizarre war history. He gave the example…
Talking about Turkey in the 1960s: highlights reel
‘Talking about Turkey in the 1960s: highlights reel’, Honest History, 22 August 2015 The Returned and Services League (RSL) papers in the National Library of Australia constitute about the largest of that cultural institution’s massive collection of manuscripts. And about…
War propaganda for children should not win prizes: Honest History media release 21 August 2015
Update 24 August 2015: ABC report ‘It is disgraceful that a piece of sanitised war propaganda has won a Children’s Book Council Award’, the Honest History coalition said today. ‘Giving a prize to the book Audacity endorses promotional material from…
Review note: Stuart Macintyre’s Australia’s Boldest Experiment
‘Review note: Stuart Macintyre’s Australia’s Boldest Experiment‘, Honest History, 19 August 2015 updated World War I is far enough back for spruikers of a particular view of it to extract bits selectively from, say, the ambivalent Charles Bean and impress…
Public Works Committee’s paddle in Monash museum
David Stephens ‘Public Works Committee’s paddle in the Monash museum’, Honest History, 19 August 2015 This is the third in our series considering the Monash project at Villers-Bretonneux, France. Earlier articles looked at the submission from the Department of Veterans’…
Comment on Salahi Sonyel’s 1989 Ataturk biography
David Stephens ‘Comments on Salahi Sonyel’s 1989 Ataturk biography’, Honest History, 14 August 2015 Thank you to Turkish correspondents on Twitter for passing on details of the book by Salahi R. Sonyel, Ataturk: the Father of Modern Turkey, Turkish Historical…
Ozakinci, Cengiz: two more articles on ‘Ataturk words’ of 1934
Ozakinci, Cengiz Updates 14 August 2015: (1) we provide a comment on Turkish-supplied information about a 1989 book; (2) note that, for footnote 5 to the second (August) Ozakinci article, you need to go to the notes in the original…
Centenary Watch updates August 2015
[Links checked 14 November 2017 and a couple were found to be broken, due to the passage of time. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Update…
Monash interpretive centre, Villers-Bretonneux (II)
David Stephens ‘Monash interpretive centre (Immersion II of II): Public Works Committee dips toe in water’, Honest History, 4 August 2015 We find it difficult to treat this project as anything other than a massively self-indulgent and boastful boondoggle*, replete…
And the children went: Hands on History at the War Memorial
David Stephens ‘”And the children went”: Hands on History at the Australian War Memorial in the school holidays’, Honest History, 4 August 2015 During the last school holidays, the Australian War Memorial ran some ‘Hands on History’ sessions for children.…
Menadue, John: militarisation the new norm
Menadue, John ‘Militarisation, the new norm‘, Pearls and Irritations, 27 July 2015 Menadue, distinguished former senior public servant, writes on his blog about the increasing militarisation of Australia, through the creation of the Australian Border Force, military vice-regal appointments, warlike…
Griffiths, Tom: on Graeme Davison’s Lost Relations
Griffiths, Tom ‘The story behind the story’, Inside Story, 24 July 2015 A long essay on Graeme Davison’s new book, Lost Relations: Fortunes of My Family in Australia’s Golden Age, which also provokes musings by Griffiths about the nature of…
Halloran, Neil: Fallen of World War II
Halloran, Neil ‘The fallen of World War II‘, Vimeo, 4 May 2015 Fifteen minute interactive video illustrating comparative deaths, military and civilian, by country. Comparisons with other wars. Should be compulsory viewing for Australians fixated on our national figures. David…
Centenary Watch updates July 2015
[Links checked 14 November 2017 and none were found to be broken. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where they find a link is broken. Please contact admin@honesthistory.net.au. HH] Update 7 July 2015: Minister still…
Terzis, Gillian: hashtag activism and online grief
Terzis, Gillian ‘Death trends: hashtag activism and the rise of online grief‘, Kill Your Darlings, July 2015 Our constant connection to the news and to the opinions of others means that grief can easily become a viral phenomenon … I…
Money, Monash and motive: analysing a project in France (I)
David Stephens ‘Money, Monash and motive: the Sir John Monash Centre, Villers-Bretonneux (Immersion I of II)’, Honest History, 7 July 2015 The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works (PWC) considered the Sir John Monash Interpretive Centre on 26 June and…
Review note: Penleigh Boyd’s Salvage
‘Review note: Penleigh Boyd’s Salvage – sketching and writing on the Western Front’, Honest History, 7 July 2015 Theodore Penleigh Boyd (1890-1923) was a landscape artist and member of the multi-talented Boyd family. The Wikipedia entry is also useful. Bridge…
War powers reform book launched
Update 13 August 2015: extracts in Pearls and Irritations John Menadue’s blog Pearls and Irritations reprints the chapters by Michael McKinley on ‘Alliance ideology, the myth of sacrifice and the national security culture‘ and the late Malcolm Fraser on ‘We…
Teaching children about war: 2014
Update 2 December 2014: Audacity for 10 year-olds and an 1897 predecessor A comparative review of a jingoistic classic from 1897, Deeds that Won the Empire, and Audacity: Stories of Heroic Australians in Wartime, a recent publication from the Australian…
First Peoples, Frontier Wars and the Queen’s uniform: 2014
Update 19 December 2014: Black Anzac teaser Background to the Redfern mural (see Update 5 December below) and teaser for documentary. This link came from street artist Hego, who tweets @artisthego. Update 15 December 2014: Ben Quilty paints frontier massacres…
No-go zones: review of James Curran’s Unholy Fury
‘No-go zones: review of James Curran’s Unholy Fury’, Honest History, 15 June 2015 Alison Broinowski reviews James Curran, Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War Has anyone else noticed that the world has a growing number of places that are…
e-Newsletter no.26, 9 June 2015
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New on the site http://honesthistory.net.au/ Getting right with Vietnam: some myth-busting is needed Ataturk in the City of Hume: an exchange of correspondence Anzac and Anzackery: David Stephens contrasts the ideal and the caricature Sex on the…
How does Australia go to war? Book launch
How does Australia Go to War? is a new publication by Australians for War Powers Reform and it will be launched in Canberra on 24 June by Senator Scott Ludlam, Melissa Parke MP and Andrew Wilkie MP. The details of…
Centenary Watch updates June 2015
[Links checked 13 November 2017 and some were found to be broken, due to removal of material from websites or simply the passage of time. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is…
Anzac and Anzackery: Kogarah speech
David Stephens ‘Anzac and Anzackery: speech to Kogarah Historical Society, 14 May 2015′, Honest History, 9 June 2015 I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of this land, and their elders past and present. I…
Ataturk in the City of Hume, Victoria: Honest History Factsheet
‘Ataturk in the City of Hume, Victoria: Honest History Factsheet’, Honest History, 9 June 2015 Update 19 June 2015: media coverage in Hume Leader. _______________ Honest History’s research on the ‘Ataturk words’ of 1934 is here, summarised in a media…
Mythbusting about Vietnam: highlights reel
‘Mythbusting about Australians returned from Vietnam: Honest History highlights reel’, Honest History, 9 June 2015 updated UPDATE 14 July 2015: further volume planned on medical aspects of Vietnam War service. Comment by Alison Broinowski. UPDATE 18 June 2015: Dr Sheralyn…
Review note: accessing three special editions
‘Review note: accessing three special editions’, Honest History, 9 June 2015 The title of this note is chosen deliberately: while, like any review, this one will do some assessing it is also concerned with accessing – with how the reader…
Centenary Watch: May 2015
[Links checked 6 November 2017 and some were found to be broken, due to removal of material from websites or simply the passage of time. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is…
Dyrenfurth, Nick: Mateship
Dyrenfurth, Nick Mateship: A Very Australian History, Scribe, Brunswick, Vic., 2014 In the first book-length exploration of our secular creed, one of Australia’s leading young historians and public commentators turns mateship’s history upside down. Did you know that the first…
Wilson, AN: The Book of the People
Wilson, AN The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible, Atlantic Books, London, 2015 A. N. Wilson has been thinking about the Bible, and reading it, since he read theology for a year at university. Martin Luther King…
Still the good book? (review of AN Wilson)
‘Still the good book?’ Honest History, 27 May 2015 David Stephens reviews AN Wilson’s The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible My grandmother was 96 when she died. Her eulogy mentioned that she had read her Bible…
Esterman, Matt: Undermining education
Esterman, Matt ‘Undermining education‘, My Mind’s Museum, 24 May 2015 Blog post from Sydney history teacher about the development of professional learning networks which throw open ‘the question of precisely which school one belongs to and which students are the…
Militarism, fascism, Anzacism: Australian progress report 2015
David Stephens ‘Militarism, fascism, Anzacism: an Australian progress report 2015: speech to Solidarity Forum, University of Technology, Sydney, 9 May 2015’, Honest History, 23 May 2015 (For an associated speech.) I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, the…
Anzac and the militarisation of Australian society
David Stephens ‘Anzac and the militarisation of Australian society: Politics in the Pub, Glebe, 9 April 2015’, Honest History, 23 May 2015 (A video of the speech is on the Politics in the Pub website. Q&A. An associated speech.) I…
Broinowski, Alison: Australians for War Powers Reform initiative
Broinowski, Alison, et al ‘Australians for War Powers Reform initiative‘, PerthIndyMedia, 11 May 2015 Alison Broinowski is with AWPR, is Honest History’s vice president and the co-editor of a book shortly to be published, How Does Australia Go to War?,…
Ronaldson, Michael: Ministerial statement Anzac centenary 2015
Ronaldson, Senator Michael ‘Ministerial statement on the centenary of Anzac and Anzac Day 2015‘, Minister’s Web Site, 13 May 2015 Statement tabled in the Senate, along with ministerial remarks. This is the third such statement and it reports on the…
40 years on, reflections on the fall of Saigon: Honest History list
’40 years on, reflections on the fall of Saigon: Honest History list’, Honest History, 18 May 2015 STOP PRESS: 8.00pm, 19 May: Sam Bateman of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute asks whether the US knows what it is doing sending…
Australian military and Anzac
Don Gray* ‘The Australian military and Anzac’, Honest History, 17 May 2015 This article is intended as a supplement to the recent article by David Stephens, ‘Rebooting Anzac for the next century’. That timely article questions the hyperbole and jingoism…
China, the US and Australia: Honest History Factsheet
’18 months of China, the United States and Australia: Honest History Factsheet’, Honest History, 16 May 2015 (updated) UPDATE 22 June 2015: James Laurenceson and Hannah Bretherton discuss the ACRI poll (see below 3 June) and other aspects. ‘What does…
CEDA: entrenched economic disadvantage in Australia
Committee for Economic Development of Australia Addressing Economic Disadvantage in Australia, CEDA, Melbourne, 2015 This report was released on 21 April 2015. It was described as ‘a policy perspective examining issues associated with the economics of disadvantage’. In other words,…
Centenary Watch: April 2015
Update 27 April 2015: more Anzac angles and more Anzac spend We brought out another set of links to Anzac centenary commentary to add to the first batch. We noted that, with the announced spend of $100 million on the…
Kent, James (dir.): Testament of Youth
Kent, James (dir.) Testament of Youth, BBC Films and other production companies, UK, 2014 Movie adaptation of Vera Brittain’s memoir, Testament of Youth, first published in 1933. The movie is scripted by Juliette Twohidi and stars Alicia Vykander, Kit Harington,…
This Testament not silly at all
‘This Testament not silly at all’, Honest History, 3 May 2015 David Stephens reviews Testament of Youth, the movie adaptation of Vera Brittain‘s memoir Peter Stanley’s review of the Russell Crowe Great War movie, The Water Diviner, has been viewed…
Centenary Watch: March 2015
[Links checked 2 November 2017 and some were found to be broken, due to removal of material from websites or simply the passage of time. Honest History may be able to help users track down resources where a link is…
Honest History miscellany: more angles on Anzac 100
Update 1 May 2015: Last posts? On the Mcintyre case, Gillian Triggs in Fairfax noted the limited mileage in free speech arguments, given Australia’s current legal arrangements. Anticipating some of Mcintyre’s remarks, Tasmanian Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson had his thoughtful…
Dawn, Emily Bay, Norfolk Island, Anzac Day 2015
Peter Stanley ‘Dawn, Emily Bay, Norfolk Island, Anzac Day 2015’, Honest History, 27 April 2015 What may be Australia’s first dawn service is held each Anzac Day at Emily Bay on Norfolk Island. (They may get up as early on…
Tracking Ataturk: Honest History research note
Tracking Ataturk: Honest History research note Introduction Myths often take the place of history, particularly when stories are complex, facts are lacking, and audiences need comfort. This outcome seems to have occurred, and these factors been at play, in the…
Freedom of speech in Burwood: Honest History Factsheet
Update 7 May 2015: further light shed Open letter by Socialist Equality Party to University of Sydney. Update 28 April 2015: meetings held The Socialist Equality Party meetings were held, with audiences of workers and youth. Update 2.30 pm 18…
TV3NZ News: Australia’s Anzac obsession
TV3NZ News ‘Australia’s Anzac obsession‘, The Nation, 18 April 2015 Anzackery gets introduced to the people of Aotearoa New Zealand by producer-presenter Tony Wright with interviews with Peter Stanley and David Stephens from Honest History. There is to be a…
Anzac commemoration spending around $500 million – and rising: Factsheet
Update 7 May 2015: local spinoff in latest spend? (updated; later update estimating spend at $551.8 million) Minister Ronaldson (lifetime resident of Ballarat) has announced that $8.8 million of the additional $35.5 million (below) will go towards ceremonies including ‘major…
Schultz, Julianne, Peter Cochrane, et al.: Enduring legacies
Schultz, Julianne, Peter Cochrane, et al. ‘Enduring legacies‘, Griffith Review, 48, 2015; available online to subscribers Update 7 May 2015: Honest History attended a discussion at the National Library with about 150 others. Julianne Schultz, editor of this volume, wrangled…
Investing our legacies
‘Investing our legacies’, Honest History, 16 April 2015 David Stephens reviews Griffith Review 48, ‘Enduring legacies’, edited by Julianne Schultz and Peter Cochrane The title of this excellent collection is, at one level, obvious but, at another, full of possibilities.…
E-newsletter no. 24, 14 April 2015
ISSN: 2202-5561 © New on the site http://honesthistory.net.au/ Women’s power to stop war: Margaret Bearlin on the 100th anniversary of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Gallipoli 1915: a century on: Peter Stanley reports on the Australian War Memorial-ANU…
National Portrait Gallery: All That Fall exhibition
National Portrait Gallery All That Fall: Sacrifice, Life and Loss in the First World War The exhibition runs from Friday, 27 March until Sunday, 26 July 2015. Focussing on the wide-ranging theme of loss and absence, this exhibition provides a…
Small but powerful: two Canberra Great War exhibitions
‘Small but powerful: two Canberra Great War exhibitions’, Honest History, 13 April 2015 David Stephens reviews All That Fall at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, and When Hall Answered the Call at the Hall School Museum, Hall, A.C.T. You only…
Anzac’s wars: remembering and its resistances
Judy Hemming & Michael McKinley ‘Anzac’s wars: remembering and its resistances’, Honest History, 10 April 2015 A prefatory comment This paper speaks of the regional responses by Australia and New Zealand to certain major wars. This does not imply that…
What Kemal (probably, possibly) did: Ataturk’s letter
The Gallipoli 1915: a century on conference last week heard mentions of the famous ‘Atatürk letter’. We have a number of relevant references on the Honest History website, some of them incorporating research that others may not have done. These…