![gov aborigines](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/gov-aborigines.png)
Rounding Up the Usual Suspect ‘Facts’
Australia Day has come and gone, when we — well, most of us anyway — celebrate the First Fleet’s arrival and the instant of a nation’s conception, the birth coming 112 years later. It’s a day when those of goodwill take it easy, enjoy beach and barbecue and enjoin others to do likewise, the other 364 days providing more than enough opportunities for kvetching about the invasion that wasn’t and a ‘genocide’ requiring the word’s meaning be entirely redefined. A day of peace and good fellowship is the ideal, so what follows is presented with regret. In regard to a date that should have been dedicated to amity, what celebrated theatrical luvvie David Berthold presented as history in the SMH and Age was so so far removed from fact and context that it cannot be allowed to pass without comment.
Under the headline ‘Why do we choose to celebrate turning a black continent white?‘ Berthold kicks off his piece with a howler. “Australia is the only nation on the planet that takes the…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins