Anthony Albanese is right that the Australian state has been sovereign for more than a century and its close military alliances with Britain and the US were not just struck freely, but enthusiastically. Peter Boyle argues that his big deceit is asserting that this is in our common interest.
John Curtin
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is failing to win people to Labor’s commitment to the United States on AUKUS, which, as Peter Boyle argues, explains why he was less-than-honest in his John Curtin Oration speech.
A deceitful historical narrative, at best, dismisses the systematic dispossession and genocide of First Nations peoples as being in the distant past. It isn't and it needs to be stopped, argues Peter Boyle.
On October 28, the 100th anniversary of the first conscription referendum, historian Michael Hamel-Green gave a talk at the Brunswick Library entitled "When Australians said no to war".
Hamel-Green said that in official commemorations of World War I there is "amnesia" about the divisions among the Australian people over the war.
When the initial high level of voluntary recruitment to the army declined, Labor Prime Minister Billy Hughes decided to introduce conscription for overseas service — conscription for service within Australia was already legal.
Forty people attended a public meeting in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick on the campaign against conscription during World War I.
Michael Hamel-Green, a draft resister during the Vietnam War who is now an emeritus professor at Victoria University, gave a talk on the history of the anti-conscription campaign, with a particular emphasis on the role of local residents.
Prime Minister Billy Hughes called two referenda on conscription for military service outside Australia, in 1916 and 1917. Both were defeated, the second by a greater margin than the first.