O'Brien said:
You didn’t read anyone produce any evidence to prove that what he asserted was factually incorrect …???
I can only assume that you have not read “Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History” by R. Manne, or if you have, gave it a cursory glance, and upon discovering that it did not conform your jaundiced views of aboriginal history, you concluded that it ‘MUST’ be full of left wing lies and propaganda!!
Allow me to inform you then, that Manne goes into great detail to examine and debunk many of Windschuttle’s claims. Now whilst you can question many of Manne’s conclusions, you cannot with a straight face claim that no serious effort has been made to debunk/examine many of Windschuttle’s assertions.
Incidentally can YOU cite specific examples of where Manne has been proven to have lied or deliberately misled his readers? Nah didn’t think so.
There have been numerous examples of Manne been proven to be incorrect. The number of aborigines removed in the alleged stolen generations for example, the number of aboriginals killed in frontier wars, alleging that authorities carried out a systematic process of genocide etc.
His (and others in his book) rebuttals of Windschuttle attack him not so much on his figures but in the manner in which he describes aboriginals, their lifestyle and the attitude of settlers and the govt towards them. There are three accounts of killings which they accuse him of stuffing up, he has posted substantial evidence to back up his claim in each of these cases. Slightly more believable than someone like Ryan who claimed a Tasmanian newspaper article as proof for one attack at a time when the paper wasnt even in publication.
Manne is a very confused and twisted individual. From being editor of quadrant to being an ultra lefty. A similar road to Mal Fraser and about as irrelevant.
The Age 3 April 2001
One believer in the "stolen generations" claim, Robert Manne, has now conceded serious errors in the report by Sir Ronald Wilson, Bringing Them Home. But Manne and others continue to promulgate the myth without producing substantive evidence.
Contrary to the claim in Manne’s new book "In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right"(an extract of which appeared in Saturday Extra), no significance at all can be attached to the 1994 ABS Household survey reporting that one in ten Aborigines (compared with Sir Ronald’s one in three) believed they had been "stolen".
The ABS survey made no checks on the authenticity of these beliefs, a process that was demonstrated as essential in the subsequent Williams case in NSW and Cubillo-Gunner cases in the Northern Territory. As Justice O’Loughlin pointed in his judgment on the latter, mixed-race children who were removed at an early age could not themselves have personal knowledge of what actually occurred, and would have to rely on stories they had been told.
When properly tested in court, such stories were revealed as close to fantasies.
The failure of the self-appointed true believers to find any living Aborigine who was stolen, and the realization that there are some questions about the Wilson report, has now forced Manne to retreat to claiming:
That 25,000 children were "stolen" between 1900 and 1970 - but without acknowledging that reliance on childhood memories, and on subsequent stories relayed by a parent who would naturally tend to blame others, provides no substantive evidence of the reason for removals;
That these removals are for Aboriginal Australians what the term Holocaust was for Jews;
That there has been a campaign against the stolen generations thesis by alleged right wingers whose motive is to deny that Aborigines suffered as a result of the occupation of Australia. There is no evidence to support this and it is fanciful to imagine such a large number of individuals with diverse views and backgrounds could mount a campaign. Manne seems unable to distinguish between a campaign and the obvious concern of these individuals to establish the truth.
To support their views, generation myth-makers such as Manne are selectively quoting statements by one or two officials who were administering Aboriginal policy as implying such policies were founded on racist objectives, rather than providing protection and succor for children.
However, whatever the views of those administrators, no evidence has been produced that such objectives formed part of government policies themselves. Indeed, the 1937 Government policy statement by the then responsible Commonwealth Minister, John McEwen, clearly indicated there were no such objectives in the Northern Territory .
Manne dismisses sworn evidence on the stolen generation question, subjected to cross examination, by patrol and other officers in the Cubillo-Gunner cases, while effectively claiming that statements by one or two other officers reflected government policy.
It is important to recognize that:
The removals of children from parents involved part-Aborigines, not full bloods;
These children were often not accepted as members of traditional communities and in such cases were subjected to discrimination within such communities. Indeed, some of such children were subjected to infanticide. Baldwin Spencer’s report of the late 1920s, which revealed that numerous part-Aboriginal children born during the construction of the Ghan railroad had been abandoned and become wandering waifs, inspired responses from those who saw a clear need to provide care for such children.
Many removals were made by administrations because of neglect or abuse of the children, as continues to the present day (in 1998-99, for example, over 3,000 Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from a parent for this reason across all States and in the Northern Territory). As the Wilson report itself reveals, legislation going back to the early nineteenth century provided that such removals had to be authorized by boards and/or courts.
The Christian churches took the lead in establishing institutions to help protect such children and provide education that would not otherwise have been available.
Not a few removals were made voluntarily by a parent or parents in order to provide better opportunities, particularly educational, for the child. The evidence in the Cubillo-Gunner case showed such children were generally well cared for in the N T.
An interview with Manne where he argues against the judgement in that case which demolished his arguments re the stolen generations.
http://www.atsic.gov.au/News_Room/ATSIC_News/September_2000/change_view_aust.asp
You have said that O’Loughlin’s judgment in the Gunner-Cubillo case is flawed. Why do you say this?
I don’t mean that the decision is wrong in law, because I’m not able to say that. I know that there are good lawyers who think it’s wrong in law and that will be tested.
The judge had to consider a vast amount of historical evidence brought to the court—far more evidence than researchers for Bringing Them Home were able to afford. The submissions are the best historical documentation we’re ever likely to have on child removal in the Northern Territory.
I think O’Loughlin made three very fundamental errors of judgement in considering this history.
First, he claims
there was no "general" policy of removal. He seems to confuse a general policy with a "blanket" policy, thinking that every so-called half-caste child had to be taken. The policy was never as universal as that, and only implemented patchily—there were periods, for example in the Second World War, where the policy went into abeyance. He construes that to mean there was no general policy. But I am convinced that from about the mid-1920s to the Second World War, and into the early 60s at least, you can speak about a general policy to remove a particular kind of so-called half-caste child—those born to Aboriginal mothers and European fathers, who were living in traditional ways. To say there was no policy of child removal (let alone no general policy), as Peter Howson did recently, is a terrible distortion of the truth.
The second flaw in the judgement is that
O’Loughlin disputes the idea there were forcible removals. He thinks they were by and large not resisted, that mothers more or less voluntarily gave their agreement. But I’ve read interviews by administrators who said they were shocked at having to take the children away. There’s the famous Wave Hill incident where patrol officer Ted Evans said he saw sights the like of which he never wanted to see again in his life. Before the Second World War, I’m certain policemen simply rode into the camps. There are endless cases where we know— O’Loughlin knew—the children were covered with charcoal to darken their skin, or the mothers and children fled, before the patrol officers arrived.
The third really big flaw goes so deep it astonishes me. He says that while the removals were misguided and paternalistic,
they were not based on considerations of race. That is fundamentally wrong. The idea was always to rescue these part-European babies from the fate of Aboriginality, and in certain periods the policy was even worse than that, it was the policy of breeding out the colour—to get rid of the Aboriginal blood in three or four generations. This was a policy which the chief protector of the Northern Territory, Cecil Cook, was behind, and which the Commonwealth Government supported. O’Loughlin denied this. Here, he is simply factually wrong. His idea that these removals were not based on race involves a staggering misunderstanding.