The Fabrication of Aboriginal Voting

A Reply to Brian Galligan

 This article was originally written as a reply to a critique of my work by Brian Galligan, published on 22 December 2016 on Inside Story, a current affairs website published by the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. I submitted my article on 31 January, expecting it to be treated on roughly equal terms with the original, that is, to be published as an article in its own right, and in full. In the past, when I have been faced with similar critiques of my other books, several academic journals have given me the right of reply. However, this time, the editor of Inside Story, Peter Browne, refused to follow this practice. Instead, he told me he would only publish my response in the “comments” option at the end of Galligan’s article, and I had to cut my article by more than 75 per cent. The invitation was clearly intended to be unacceptable, so I declined, holding my nose against the stench of yet another…