Writer
Henry Reynolds
Henry Reynolds is an eminent Australian historian.
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Peter Dutton urging war with China
Last week Defence Minister Peter Dutton announced that, what he called a Chinese spy ship, had been discovered off the Western Australian coast farther south than any similar vessel had ever previously been seen. He didn’t inform his public that it had been observed 250 kilometres offshore and therefore 50 kilometres outside Australia’s Exclusive Economic Continue reading »
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Competing sovereignties and the voice to Parliament
Policy towards the First Nations has attracted very little attention during the current election campaign. The Labor party has given a commitment to holding a referendum to enshrine the voice to parliament in the constitution as proposed by the Uluru Statement of 2017. Continue reading »
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ANZAC’s contested legacy
The evidence suggests that the Federal government sees Anzac as an attractive tool to open a new front in the culture wars and one where the Labor party might well be wedged. Continue reading »
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At war with the autocrats
‘ I think we are in a contest’ President Biden declared in June last year, ’not with China per se but with autocrats, autocratic governments around the world ,whether or not democracies can compete with them in this rapidly changing 21st century.’ Continue reading »
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The Americans are coming! ASIO looks away as hate groups gain foothold
What does our security agency have to say about an insurgency linked to local fanatics who take their cues from Trump and the Republican right? Continue reading »
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Conservatives venerate January 26. Do they even understand how it happened?
The British government knew almost nothing about Australia, assuming it was uninhabited and available to be exploited. Continue reading »
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Right-wing protesters in Canberra lit a fire under democracy, but did we care?
The assault on Old Parliament House in Canberra last month illustrated the depth of pernicious American influences on Australian public life. Continue reading »
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Britain’s ‘enduring stranglehold’ on Australia
Australia is still tied to British legal decisions from 1786. It should come as no surprise that the Uluru Statement of the Heart directly challenges Australia’s entrenched legal doctrine. Continue reading »
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History repeats as Morrison provokes China hostility
The official visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014 was the high point in Sino-Australian relations. It has been all downhill ever since. Continue reading »
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The terrible effects and disastrous consequences of war. But we keep doing it.
The chaotic end to the war in Afghanistan coincides with a debate in the Senate on a bill which would curtail the unrestrained power of the executive to take the country to war. Continue reading »
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Anzac Day and the frontier wars
Anzac Day in Hobart in 2019 did not turn out in the way that participants expected. The Hobart Mercury explained why the following morning. The front page was dominated by a large and arresting headline. ‘Battle Cry’ it declared and went on to explain that ‘Anzac Day Marchers Highlight Black War.’ Underneath the headline was Continue reading »
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Truth and Treaties: the ongoing legacy of the Uluru statement
The 27th of October 2017 was the most shameful day in Malcolm Turnbull’s tenure as Australia’s Prime Minister. It was the moment when he peremptorily rejected the Uluru Statement which had been addressed to the people of Australia five months earlier. He declared that the projected voice to parliament would not be ‘either desirable or Continue reading »
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Book extract: It’s time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars
Whether as paramilitary troopers, workers, trackers, guides, servants and sexual partners, many hundreds of Aboriginal Australians were participants in the outward thrust of the frontier. The implication is inescapable. Many Indigenous families have ancestors who were pioneers in the precise meaning of that term. Continue reading »
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Australian ‘patriots’ wrap themselves in the flag of a colony
By choosing to stick with January 26 (1788) as Australia’s National Day, conservatives are celebrating a date that highlights the very worst of British imperialism – a ‘rule of law’ belonging to a tiny aristocratic oligarchy with a vicious criminal code defending private property through capital punishment and transportation. Continue reading »
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In hunting for Chinese spies we hang on for dear life to Anglo-Saxon allies
Like so many members of the security establishment Director of ASIO Duncan Lewis adopted the time-honoured tactic of implicitly saying to the public  ‘trust us because we know things you don’t know and which we can’t tell you’. Continue reading »
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The Australian Army’s inauspicious birth. From the Boer War to the Afghanistan War.
With such intense focus on the army’s record in Afghanistan we might look more closely at its history. It had an inauspicious birth on the first of March 1902 in South Africa, three months before the end of the Boer War. Continue reading »
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Those dangerous and subversive sister cities.
Sister cities provide opportunities for coercion, according to Professor John Blaxland. Continue reading »
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China: are we asserting Australia’s independence or America’s?
The recent determination to make an enemy of our important trading partner China is the most egregious foreign policy blunder since John Howard’s reckless decision to join George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Continue reading »
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When the war on terror turns inward
We now have evidence of a campaign conducted in Australia to attack the credibility and the reputation of individuals and organisations seen as being too close to China. Continue reading »
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The extraordinary ambush of China Matters.
We have been caught in the slipstream of Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic struggle against overwhelming adversity . Continue reading »
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History Hits the Headlines.Our Troubled Past
History haunts many countries at the moment. This is especially true of the United States. But Australia , New Zealand, Britain, France and Belgium are being forced to once again face up to their legacy of colonial brutality and attendant racism. Continue reading »
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The American Alliance: More incantation than inquiry.
Our chosen national heroes are the young men who died fighting for King and Empire on the coast of the Ottoman Empire in 1915. When will our focus shift to the many thousands of indigenous men and women who died fighting for their kin, their customs and their country all over the continent for well Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Australia goes fishing in troubled waters.
A few weeks ago Foreign Minister Marise Payne condemned ‘ China’s  actions in the South China Sea’, adding that in recent days the Australian frigate HMAS Parramatta had been conducting exercises with two American naval vessels as they ‘passed through the waters.’ Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Between America and China?
 In his Lowy lecture delivered in Sydney last October Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that ‘Australia does not have to choose between the United States and China.’ Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. James Cook and the Contested ‘Discovery’ of Eastern Australia
With the widespread reporting of this year’s diminished Anzac Day, it seems we have forgotten another notable Cook cancellation. Continue reading »
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Thoughts on an unusual Anzac Day
This Anzac Day we should question the relentless militarisation of our history and the cult of the digger. These ideals make it easier for Australian governments to commit to wars overseas and more difficult for critics to engage in serious debate. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS supports Pearls and Irritations.
As a daily reader of Pearls and Irritations and an occasional contributor, I am keenly aware of how important it is both to me personally and to the community at large. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS.- When will we see a cost-benefit of our meddling in the Middle East?
By the end of this year Australia will have begun the process of removing our armed forces from the Iraq and Afghanistan or at least be considering what can fairly be termed a retreat after a series of engagements lasting almost twenty years. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Australia Day or dying in a ditch for January 26.
Australia Day divides rather than unites the community which we presume is the key reason for having a national day in the first place. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. ‘Strange situation’: Why Australia must strike a treaty. (SMH 1.6.2019)
In ringing tones the Uluru Statement declares the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign nations of the Australian continent and possessed it under their own laws and customs. Sovereignty has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown. There is, as well, demand for a Voice Continue reading »
