Writer
David Stephens
Dr David Stephens is a member of Defending Country Memorial Project (DCMP) Inc. and editor of the Honest History website. The other members of DCMP are Noel Turnbull, Professor Peter Stanley, Dr Carolyn Holbrook, and Pamela Burton. Its founding Patrons are Professors Megan Davis, Clare Wright, and Henry Reynolds.
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DAVID STEPHENS. Afghanistan infinitum or walking away? The possible cost of shared values
Where do Australia’s values come from and what are they? Ten years ago, Australia’s then Minister for Defence, Brendan Nelson, was convinced that our Australian values were forged on the battlefield:No group of Australians has given more, nor worked harder to shape and define our identity than those who have worn – and now wear Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. How we commemorate our wars in other people’s countries.
‘We need to talk about how we commemorate our wars in other people’s countries – and our own’, Honest History, 18 August 2016 “How would we feel if 1,000 Japanese turned up in Darwin wanting to celebrate the bombing of 1942.” Apart from the Frontier Wars against Indigenous Australians, all of Australia’s wars, from New Zealand in Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Is this the most sycophantic speech by an Australian prime minister? Julia Gillard’s address to the United States Congress, March 2011
‘All the way with LBJ’ has become the cliche that associates Conservative dependence on the US alliance. But Julia Gillard’s address to the US Congress is hard to beat! John Menadue. Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. A review of Douglas Newton’s five articles that take us behind the scenes in the Great War.
Douglas Newton confronts the really important questions about war David Stephens reviews five articles by Douglas Newton that take us ‘behind the scenes’ in the Great War Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Honest History’s Alternative Guide to the Australian War Memorial
Questioning the received view: Honest History’s Alternative Guide to the Australian War Memorial Which word should we use to describe what happened on 25 April 1915: ‘landing’ or ‘invasion’? Why do we refer to dead soldiers as ‘the fallen’? Does the ‘freedom’ we are said to have fought for in our many wars include the Continue reading »
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David Stephens. How did Canberra get its memorial to Kemal Atatürk?
The Atatürk Memorial in Anzac Parade, Canberra, was unveiled on Anzac Day 1985. Over the signature ‘Kemal Atatürk’, the memorial bears an inscription which commences like this: Those heroes that shed their blood And lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly Country. Therefore rest in peace. There is Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Bill Shorten’s Royal Commission proposal.
Labor and the banks go way, way back Bill Shorten’s proposal to have a Royal Commission into the banking system is not just good politics. It also taps into a long Labor tradition: banking Royal Commissions – and banking policy generally – occupy a special corner in Labor’s history. We need to see terms of Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Invading our smugness: thoughts on a diversity toolkit
Wednesday, 30 March, must have been a slow news day at the Daily Telegraph. It is difficult to find any other reasonable explanation for the fuss the Telegraph made about the ‘diversity toolkit’ it discovered on the website of the University of New South Wales. What followed, however, spoke volumes about how careless some in Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Malcolm Turnbull’s post-Anzac pitch to the Australian Defence Force
Tony Abbott admired soldiers. He liked to be around them, to talk about the fortunes of war (“shit happens,” as he memorably muttered to troops in Afghanistan). He quoted Samuel Johnson about how men despise themselves if they have never been a soldier. His Anzac Day Dawn Service speech last year at Gallipoli portrayed the Continue reading »
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David Stephens. ‘There will be blood’: ministerial remarks on the responsibility of children.
There will be blood from the sword up to the belly of a horse, and the thigh of a human, and the hock of a camel. And there will be great fear and trembling upon the earth. And those who see that wrath will be terrified, and trembling will seize them. (6 Ezra, Old Testament Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Why is Australia spending so much more on the Great War centenary than any other country?
Current Affairs The question at the head of this article has intrigued Honest History since we began our coalition and our website. This was in the floundering days of the Labor Government. When Abbott replaced Rudd II, the federal commitment to the Anzac centenary already stood at $140 million, it has been going up ever Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Atatürk’s famous words of 1934 questioned
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers, who Continue reading »
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David Stephens. The magic Anzackery pudding
Norman Lindsay was busy during World War I. When he wasn’t doing propaganda posters of slavering Huns or sketching buxom young women he was writing a children’s book called The Magic Pudding: being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff. The magic pudding was remarkable for its ability to keep Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Anzackery in the time of Anzac
Anniversaries sharpen sensations and heighten moods. Christmas brings on good feelings, New Year provokes resolutions, siblings’ faults are set aside on their birthdays. Centenaries accentuate this quite normal process. The centenary of Anzac has brought on a welter of commemoration, slopping over into celebration, with a good lashing of commercialisation as well. Honest History revived Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Is this justifiable delicacy or insidious censorship?
The Battle of Bita Paka occurred in then German New Guinea on 11 September 1914. It saw the deaths of the first six Australians killed in the Great War, as well as the deaths of a German officer and 30 Melanesian soldiers. It was really a series of skirmishes rather than a battle. On the Continue reading »
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David Stephens. The children suffer.
Osbert Sitwell’s The Next War, published in 1918, depicts some plutocrats deciding what would be an appropriate war memorial. The senior plutocrat puts a suggestion which his colleagues eagerly take up. “What more fitting memorial for the fallen Than that their children Should fall for the same cause?” Rushing eagerly into the street, The kindly Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Parochial commemoration of war.
Australians are not alone in the world in being parochial but we are very good at it, especially in the way we commemorate our men and women who die in war. The Australian War Memorial is missing many opportunities to expand our commemorative horizons and put our war deaths in context. Under its legislation, the Continue reading »
