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…