Manne on ABC radio
In response to my case in Quadrant Online that he had given a false account of Commonwealth government support for policies on “breeding out the colour” in the 1930s, Robert Manne appeared on the ABC radio program Late Night Live on Tuesday night February 2. Manne said he had a document that proved my accusations wrong. He read it aloud to interviewer Phillip Adams.
The document was nothing more than one he had used in 2001 in his Quarterly Essay, In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right, and whose existence I acknowledged in Volume Three of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. It was an internal memo from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Foreign Affairs in December 1938, which did not have the meaning Manne attributed to it in either his 2001 essay or in his ABC radio interview. This was the sole document Manne was able to provide in response to my charge that he failed to report:
(i) a cabinet decision in September 1933,
(ii) advice from the head of…
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