The Fabrication of Historical Truth
The Yoorrook Justice Commission's report, "Truth Be Told," claims to expose the realities of Australia's colonial past, branding it unequivocally as "genocide." Yet, it fails to define this loaded term or substantiate its use with evidence, instead relying on vague abstractions like "cultural genocide" and "linguicide." This is not history, but a rhetorical sleight-of-hand, aligning with Alexis de Tocqueville's warning about abstract words as vessels for unchecked ideas. By sidestepping the need for concrete proof, the commission constructs a narrative tailored to evoke moral outrage rather than withstand scrutiny.
True historical inquiry, rooted in centuries of Western historiography from Hecataeus to Leopold von Ranke, demands scepticism, rigorous testing of sources, and engagement with opposing views. Yoorrook rejects these principles outright, asserting "First Peoples' sovereignty over their stories" as a substitute for evidence. Oral histories, inherently subjective and shaped by present-day perspectives, are accepted without cross-examination. The commission's explicit stance that "truth-telling was not about debate" exposes its intellectual cowardice, choosing ideological conformity over the pursuit of truth.
Woke Ideology and the Black Armband Lens
The report epitomises the woke ideology that dominates contemporary Leftist discourse, framing history as a simplistic binary of oppressors versus oppressed. This black armband view, named for its focus on colonial guilt, assumes Indigenous cultures would have thrived absent European settlement, ignoring global patterns of acculturation where modernisation usually erodes traditional practices. The commission's claim that better settler behaviour could have preserved Indigenous languages and cultures, lacks any historical grounding, betraying a romanticised view of the past shaped by present-day activism.
Moreover, Yoorrook's selective engagement with scholarship is damning. It cites historians who have explored genocide claims, but omits their near-universal rejection of the term in Australia's context, often with sharp criticism. This deliberate silence violates the Roman principle of audi alteram partem (hear the other side), rendering the report not just biased, but dishonest. Its refusal to grapple with counterarguments or explain its divergence reveals a project designed to preach, not persuade.
The Arrogance of Condescension
The report's tone drips with arrogance, attributing the Voice to Parliament's failure to Australians' unwillingness to "hear the truth," rather than its own flawed design. This condescension extends to Indigenous Australians, who are implicitly held to lower standards of evidence and accountability. Such patronising attitudes fuel the report's unchecked demands for ever-larger wealth transfers, land, royalties, subsidies, while ignoring their failure to alleviate disadvantage. The commission sidesteps the possibility that these transfers, like crony capitalism, enrich elites while trapping communities in dependency, a pattern well-documented in human history.
Yoorrook's refusal to consider how wealth transfers disincentivise ingenuity and effort, further exposes its ideological blind spot. By framing Indigenous disadvantage solely as a product of historical injustice, it avoids the harder question of fostering agency and prosperity without perpetuating victimhood. This is not truth-telling; it's a recipe for stagnation dressed in moral superiority.
Eroding Australia's Civic Soul
The broader cost of Yoorrook's approach is a fractured civic identity. Australia's curriculum, saturated with identity politics, has sidelined the nation's democratic heritage, Magna Carta, the rule of law, milestones like Federation, in favour of fragmented narratives celebrating minority grievances. NAP-CC data paints a dire picture: only 26% of Year 8 students understand basic civic concepts, with proficiency dropping steadily. This civic vacuum, as historian John Hirst lamented, leaves young Australians disconnected from their shared history, primed for ideologies of protest over principles of unity.
Yoorrook's report exacerbates this divide, erasing the British democratic "thread" that once anchored Australia's civic story. By vilifying the past without nuance, it alienates Australians from their heritage, replacing it with a culture of guilt and division. The irony is palpable: a commission claiming to end silence creates a new one, stifling discussion of Australia's authentic democratic achievements.
Conclusion: Reclaiming History from Ideology
The Yoorrook report is not a triumph of truth but a travesty of history, warped by woke ideology and a black armband obsession with victimhood. Its rejection of evidence, debate, and nuance marks it as propaganda, not scholarship. Australia deserves better: a civic narrative grounded in facts, open to scrutiny, and inclusive of all its people.
"The most serious, and by far the most depressing, aspect of the final report of Victoria's Yoorrook "truth-telling" royal commission is that anyone would take it seriously.
To say that is not to dismiss the sincerity of the many Indigenous witnesses the commission interviewed. Nor is it to deny that the encounter between European settlers and the continent's Indigenous people was tragic, in the deepest sense of the word, as even the many administrators and settlers who were full of good will lacked the means and the understanding to mitigate its consequences.
But a commitment to "truth-telling" imposes weighty responsibilities, made all the weightier by the commission's official status. For if there is a fact of life it is that the truth is hard to find, and once found, may be easily lost. Moreover, no truth is more elusive than that about the distant past, where the "what" and the "how" are frequently uncertain, while the "why" is shrouded in the complex interaction of intentions, constraints and contingencies.
It is for that reason that ever since Hecataeus of Miletus – who, in the 6th century BC, prefaced his work by saying that the pre-existing "accounts of the Greeks", which he aimed to supersede with a more accurate analysis, "were many and ridiculous" – the hallmark of Western historiography has been its incessant focus on historical method.
Fundamental to that method, as it developed over the centuries, is an abiding scepticism about relying on individual memory, which is an account of the past constructed in the present. It is, by its very nature, subjective; it may also be irrational, inconsistent, deceptive and self-serving.
It must therefore be tested, as must all the material on which the historian relies. And the historian's duty is not just to rigorously test the evidence. It is also to scrupulously present any authoritative material that tells against the conclusion that is eventually reached.
It is those principles that differentiate "history" from a "story". Both set out coherent accounts; however, only "history" can, in Leopold von Ranke's famous phrase, credibly claim to present the past "wie es eigentlich gewesen", as it had really been.
But centuries of Western historiography are treated by the commission as if they had never existed. Cavalierly dismissing conventional evidentiary standards, it replaces them by what it calls "a profound assertion of First Peoples' ongoing sovereignty over their stories, knowledge and futures".
In its proceedings, it frankly states, "truth-telling was not about debate" – and indeed there was none. Nor was there any testing of evidence, presentation of contrary views or attempt to engage with critics. Comfortably ensconced in the realm of naked assertion, the commission found the truth because it knew it.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in its "finding" of "genocide". Not once, in its 230-page report, does it define the term or specify exactly what was allegedly involved. Rather, its discussion bears out with unusual force Alexis de Tocqueville's dictum that "an abstract word is like a box with a false bottom; you may put in what ideas you please, and take them out again without being observed".
Thus, it refers at one point to a "cultural genocide"; at another to "linguicide". In both cases it blithely assumes, without a shred of evidence, that had the European settlers somehow acted "better", Indigenous languages and cultures would have resisted the pressures of acculturation. In reality, everything suggests they would have disappeared far more quickly and comprehensively had there been less discrimination and segregation than there was.
To make things worse, the commission's report is, if not plainly dishonest, less than candid. To take but one example, the commission cites historians who have examined the contention that there was a genocide. What it never discloses is that they largely dispute, often with considerable asperity, the conclusion it so starkly states. And it therefore never explains why greater credence should be placed on its conclusion than on those of others.
That is not history; it is tarted up propaganda. Having rejected the ancient Roman axiom of justice, "Audi alteram partem" (hear the other side), the commission assumes its claims are true, or at least useful to its cause, and on that basis attempts to clothe them in as rhetorically effective a form as possible.
Why, then, would anyone take its report seriously? There is surely a patronising element of condescension at work, as if we should not hold Indigenous Australians to the standards we would demand of anyone else. That is not just unfortunate; it is completely counter-productive.
To begin with, it incites the unvarnished arrogance that pervades this report. Why did the proposed voice to parliament fail? Because "beneath the rhetoric of reconciliation" most Australians "did not want to hear the truth". The possibility that the proposal was ill-conceived is never contemplated, much less examined.
Even more important, the condescension encourages demands that are increasingly extreme and increasingly poorly founded. Why have the enormous, ongoing transfers – of land, of royalties, of public subsidies – failed to alleviate entrenched disadvantage? According to the report, because they just weren't enormous enough.
The possibility that, like all forms of crony capitalism – which flourishes where political insiders control resources and allocate them to their relatives, friends, and supporters – the transfers enrich a privileged elite while condemning entire communities to hope-destroying social pathologies is, again, conveniently ignored.
Nor does the commission consider the risk that being gifted valuable mines, forests and fisheries will discourage, rather than promote, the ingenuity and effort that underpins enduring wealth creation and human flourishing. Transferring wealth is simple; what is difficult – and this is what the commission studiously avoids addressing – is making it possible for people to do anything without trapping them in a life of doing nothing.
It would, however, be wrong to blame the commission alone. It is the faithful mirror of a fatuous political culture that has for decades amply rewarded those absurdities: not because it cares too much but because it cares too little. After all, as Montesquieu caustically observed about "the class of superior people", it is "a thousand times easier, and more pleasing, to seem good than to do good". Yes, keeping up appearances is costly; but what is public spending for, if not to paper over society's cracks?
The Yoorrook commission's work is now over. As the Victorian government prepares to introduce a voice to parliament and negotiate a treaty, it will undoubtedly be followed by others.
But for so long as hard realities are not faced, rather than erased, Indigenous policy will continue its rush on the road to nowhere. The savage pity of it is that so much needless misery will be inflicted on the truly disadvantaged along the way."
"Yoorrook Justice Commission's vice-chair Travis Lovett recently walked 500km from Portland in western Victoria to the state's Parliament House to deliver the final report of the nation's first formal truth-telling process. Greeted by an enthusiastic crowd on the Spring Street steps, Lovett declared that "the silence ends here. The time of not knowing – of choosing not to know – is over."
Yoorrook means "truth" in the Wemba Wemba language of northwest Victoria. The four-year inquiry – the longest with the power of a royal commission in Victoria's history – collected thousands of witnesses' statements and prompted 16 ministerial apologies. The final report, "Truth Be Told", tabled this week in parliament, purports to tell the true story of colonisation, which it unequivocally describes as genocide.
Genocide is an accusation of the highest order. Beyond the immediate calls for compensation, it fundamentally shapes our grasp of history and the very freedom to discuss its interpretations.
Regardless, Premier Jacinta Allan has welcomed the report, describing the "truth-telling process" as "a historic opportunity to hear the stories of our past that have been buried".
But if Allan and the commissioners believe Indigenous history is enveloped in a pall of silence, they need to get out more.
The national curriculum, its state versions, and every Australian university history department have become a cacophony, dedicated to topics they deem to have been shamefully muted.
Museums, state libraries and art galleries have made Indigenous experience a mainstay of their exhibitions, alongside other minorities and women. Just a few days ago, Melbourne University's Potter Museum of Art launched an exhibition on Indigenous art that its curator proudly describes as consciously and deliberately "anti-colonial".
At the same time, social progressive separatism – in the form of multiculturalism and Indigenous self-determination – has become unquestionable orthodoxy. To challenge them publicly means professional ostracism.
Reflecting that, the Australian curriculum, particularly within Civics and Citizenship and Humanities and Social Sciences, foregrounds the experiences of minorities, often over the common, shared experiences of most Australians. It is through the lens of identity politics, which relentlessly divides society into smaller and smaller groups, that students are encouraged to engage with contemporary political and social issues.
As these preoccupations have become dominant, Australia's national student assessments (NAP-CC) have found an ongoing, now accelerating, collapse in civic knowledge and understanding, the critical foundations of democratic citizenship.
This knowledge collapse is particularly acute in key areas: constitutional structure, the head of state's role, referendums, and pivotal historical events, especially those linked to British institutions.
Even in 2004, the baseline was pitifully low. Only 50 per cent of Year 6 students and 39 per cent of Year 10s met basic standards, as a majority struggled with "iconic knowledge" such as the history and significance of the Australian flag and of Anzac Day.
Since then, results have only worsened. Today, a mere 43 per cent of Year 6 students and 28 per cent of Year 10 pupils achieve proficiency.
Australia's democratic identity has always been primarily attitudinal, locked into its cultural DNA, rather than grounded in a deeply felt recognition of the nation's pivotal moments.
Unlike the US with its Declaration of Independence or France with its Republican fervour, our political milestones – convicts gaining equal justice in 1788, early self-government and franchise in the 1850s, or the direct vote for nationhood achieved in 1901 – have never made the Aussie heart beat faster.
But we at least tried to ensure students knew about them. Moreover, school civics celebrated British achievements – individual liberty, Magna Carta, the rule of law – as our own, which of course they were. Until the 1970s, the British thread in our school curriculum told a clear story: the hard-won fight for political rights through British history, making Australia's own democratic strides instantly recognisable.
Since then, the emphasis has changed dramatically. What we now celebrate are the victories of the excluded – women's suffrage, the 1967 referendum – and rightly so. But what about the central trunk of that story, the very foundation from which these branches of increasing inclusion extend? That trunk is gone.
As historian John Hirst, who chaired the "Discovering Democracy" civics program under the Howard government, bitterly noted, in losing our British heritage, our very sense of ourselves as Australian citizens has paradoxically weakened. We've shredded everything that united us and replaced it with anything that shoves us apart.
The result is not a culture of forgetting, where past sins are denied. It is a culture of ignorance. It derides at best, denies at worst, the past achievements that make it possible to recognise democratic deficiencies and seek to address them. We have, in other words, created a civic vacuum, too easily filled by climate activism, or anti-racism initiatives that can morph into poisonous anti-Semitism, all dominated by an ideology of protest and post-colonial revolt.
We are no longer Britons, of course. But must we also disown our genuine civic heritage? The political traditions and achievements stretching back to Magna Carta? Yes, there is a pall of silence: it hangs over our national culture. The authentic origins and deep roots of who we are remains not just unspoken but unspeakable.
Even after the decisive repudiation of the politics of difference in the voice referendum, and with figures such as Jacinta Nampinjimpa Price articulating a more concrete politics of equality than any politician since John Howard, we seem to remain bewitched.
Bewitched and bewildered, by the constant repetition of claims that bear no relation to the reality of history. Surely, after more than 50 years, it's time to shatter the real silence and reclaim our full civic story."