“Sacrifice”, the ABC Four Corners episode of 10 March, was a train-wreck for the Australian War Memorial. Its spokespersons came across as dismissive, timid, or too clever by half. The critics of the Memorial, however, were passionate, regretful, and, in the case of Geoffrey Watson SC from the Centre for Public Integrity, downright angry.

We know the Memorial is considering the fallout from the program. There are two options. First, the Memorial could circle the wagons, throw up the Anzac cloak — “criticising the Memorial is disrespecting our dead Diggers” — and continue as before, while reverting to its long-time stance of not engaging with critics.

A better option, though, would be to return to what Memorial Council chair, Kim Beazley, said when he first came to the job just over two years ago: the Memorial should provide “substantial” treatment of the Australian (Frontier) Wars, in a “special section”, and giving First Nations people “the dignity of resistance” (depicting incidents where they fought back, as well as where they were massacred).

More recently, in Perth on 29 October, Beazley said this:

They [Aboriginal people] were very difficult to get on top of and that’s something that I will make sure the war memorial makes all of us understand exactly what that means, because they’re entitled to the dignity of resistance. [Strong emphasis in original.]

The Memorial Council has not fully backed the chair. Council member Major-General (retired) Greg Melick, who is also national president of the RSL, has been prominent. “From my perspective, no”, he said on Four Corners, “the war memorial is more appropriately devoted to uniform conflicts, fighting enemies against Australia, rather than internal conflicts …” He has been saying that since October 2022.

Where might the other members line up? There is Tony Abbott, former prime minister and rusted-on Anglo-Celtic Anzacker, Daniel Keighran VC, who works for arms company Thales but has kept his views on the Australian Wars to himself, and, also difficult to categorise, Sharon Bown, former RAAF nurse and aide to then defence minister, Brendan Nelson.

The three ex-officio members, Vice-Admiral Mark Hammond, Lieutenant-General Simon Stuart, and Air Marshal Stephen Chappell, are hard to predict. They often send proxies to Council meetings.

The remaining six are Beazley, defence families advocate Dr Karen Bird, Quandamooka woman and veteran Lorraine Hatton, Glenn Keys of Aspen Medical, Professor Susan Neuhaus, and former Labor minister Warren Snowdon. The latter five’s public remarks suggest they might support the chair if he pushed strongly for the Memorial to show “the dignity of resistance”.

The problem, though, is that the Council mostly avoids votes and instead seeks consensus. A public mood for change could influence consensus.

Four Corners juxtaposed Melick’s remarks with those of Gunditjmara man, veteran and singer-songwriter, Richard Frankland, and Arrernte-Kalkadoon woman and film and TV producer (“ The Australian Wars”), Rachel Perkins. Frankland’s uncle died at Kokoda and is commemorated in the Memorial. Not so his other ancestors, the ones not wearing uniforms:

These are First Nation Australian unsung heroes who died bravely fighting for their country, fighting for their families, fighting for their land, and waters, fighting for their dignity. The only way that we’re gonna heal is if we examine the past.

Rachel Perkins said this:

The War Memorial to me is one of Australia’s most important places. It is sacred, but… until it truly comes to terms with the foundational war that made this country what it is, it will never be truly whole… So why, why do we still deny it happened and why, more fundamentally, in the place that calls itself the Australian War Memorial, why do we not give just recognition to the war that actually founded the Australian modern nation?

The War Memorial has precisely recorded on its Roll of Honour Australian deaths in uniform in our overseas wars. We will never know how many men, women and children died in the Australian Wars, the wars at home, though it was somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000. Bodies were burned and buried, records lost, and stories suppressed.

My family [Perkins continued] were run down by men on horseback with Snider repeater rifles and murdered in their hundreds. Those warriors who are involved in trying to defend their families and their country in that moment, do not get recognition in the war memorial. Explain that to me.

Surely it’s time those deaths — deaths defending country, just like those on the Memorial’s Roll of Honour — were properly commemorated in our most sacred place. Since that Four Corners episode about the Memorial, the program has looked at the work of the Victorian Yoorrook Justice Commission, which shows how much of our dark history has been hidden. Lest We Forget.

*David Stephens is editor of the Honest History and Defending Country websites. Defending Country is campaigning for the Australian War Memorial and other national commemoration sites to properly recognise and commemorate the Australian (Frontier) Wars.