I don’t believe Captain Cook discovered Australia. How can I? People were standing on the shore as he weighed anchor!

I don’t believe Australia was settled – it was invaded. How else do we explain a foreign power planting a flag, taking land and extinguishing the rights of the nations of peoples living here? My Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi ancestors resisted and fought the invaders to their lands.

Discovery and settlement and invasion: these words frame the debate about our history. A debate that should be based on fact and logic and respectful cogent persuasion and argument.

I know what I believe. I am prepared to make my case but I don’t wish to force that on anyone else, in fact I welcome people who disagree and I absolutely reject any organisation, government, or institution instructing or guiding or forcing anyone how to think.

This is what is happening now at the University of New South Wales.

Students are being told it is offensive to use terms such as settlement, they are being instructed not to use words like Aborigine or Aboriginal.

It is suggested that students not refer to dates of Indigenous occupation of Australia. No more should they speak of 40,000 years of history, instead they should refer to the time of the dreaming.



This is wrong.

Education is about evidence and fact. It is about the freedom to disagree, to hold unpopular or sometimes offensive beliefs. Evolution was once considered offensive.

Education is about science, not belief or faith in the unseen or unknown.



I take great pride in the science of Indigenous antiquity of our land, the fossil evidence, the carbon dating of human made fire and art. This speaks to the great story of humankind.

There is a place for myth, and it enhances our understanding of the world. There is a place for our great religious traditions and the moral code and transformational power of faith. The dreaming and our oral traditions inform my identity and my sense of place.

Let’s learn of it all, all of it in its place without substituting one for the other; without forcing some orthodoxy or group think.

There are those who will argue for settlement over invasion. They can point to the legal basis for the establishment of the colony: the concept of Terra Nullius or empty land. It is enshrined in judgements like that of high court chief justice Gibbs in Coe v the commonwealth:

It is fundamental to our legal system that the Australian colonies became British possessions by settlement and not by conquest.



The 1992 high court ruling in the Mabo case overturned Terra Nullius but still upheld the basis for British assertion of sovereignty in 1788.

As the law may support an argument for settlement for many Indigenous people, this remains contentious and the fight for recognition of sovereignty continues.

This is as it should be – a battle of ideas in an open democracy founded on free speech. This isn’t helped by any university shaping how students should think.

I like irascible argumentative feisty people. I like those with strong ideas with the courage to challenge the status quo, those who reject intellectual or political correctness who can do so without resorting to rudeness, bigotry or hatred.

There are those who have spoken today criticising the University of New South Wales out of ignorance, or trying to fuel controversy, others opposed to anything that may dare to concede the humanity or dignity of Indigenous people. They seize on issues like this to wrap their bigotry in faux outrage.

I don’t need a university to protect me from these people or their views. I don’t want them silenced.

I want to be free to call them out in whatever language I choose.

