Main points from the podcast
The Hon. Tony Abbott:
I think that we need to tell the full story of Australia, which is neither black nor white. It is the story of a country which has an Indigenous heritage, a British foundation, and an immigrant character.
Rachel Perkins:
It may not appear as war in the same way as it has been quantified at Vietnam and all those other theatres of war that you described, but it's the nature of the things that it was fought over, not the way it was fought. It was fought over our lives, our livelihood, our culture, and our land.
Professor Henry Reynolds:
George Arthur [Governor of Tasmania], in his official correspondence, mentioned war specifically about 20 times. For a soldier who had seen war, what was happening in Tasmania was war.
The Hon. Tony Abbott:
The question is, was it [deaths at the hands of settlers] an atrocity? I don't think we can reasonably say it was.
The Australian War Memorial is putting effort into podcasts. This one, 'The Frontier Wars', has John Barrington introducing and rounding up but the bulk of it is Rachel Perkins chairing a chat with Tony Abbott and Henry Reynolds.
Perkins is a renowned documentary maker (The Australian Wars) and editor-author (again The Australian Wars). Abbott is our former prime minister and more recently author of a history of Australia. Reynolds is our pre-eminent authority on the Australian (Frontier) Wars, another editor-author of The Australian Wars, and one of Defending Country's distinguished Patrons.
All three are keynote speakers at the forthcoming Australian War Memorial conference, Imperialism and Resistance. So, the podcast is a promo for the conference but revealing as well. The tone is respectful of opposing points of view.
The opening 'executive summary' is reproduced above. Main points follow, paraphrased or summarised and with some (unedited) quotes. The complete transcript is 9000 words.
Our aim in this post has been to summarise some of what was said in the podcast but we've added a brief comment at the end.
Perkins, Reynolds and Abbott all pay respect to the Memorial, Reynolds saying, 'And in so many ways, it's not that we want to diminish the War Memorial, we want to join the War Memorial'.
Abbott argues that Australia's story is 'not all good ... not all bad'.
Reynolds notes the advances over the last 50 years in our appreciation and knowledge of our First Nations people. His own immersion in this history gave him an appreciation of the violence of the colonial period against Indigenous people.
Abbott wants to emphasise, however, that there was cooperation as well as conflict. Perkins agrees there was 'complexity' and 'good intentions often'.
The speakers discuss at length the colonial histories of Canada, New Zealand and Australia and return to the Australian story.
There's so many examples [says Perkins] of people on the frontier who were trying to accommodate Aboriginal people, protecting Aboriginal people on their pastoral runs, writing letters saying, "This is not right. The native police shouldn't be doing this" objecting. And it's these records. I mean, that is one of the things that all of the records mostly that we draw from are records from European witnesses and participants to reconstruct this history. Although I should say that I have a oral history that's handed down in my family of my great-grandmother who survived an extremely large massacre of our families.
Reynolds talks about 'irregular warfare' in America and the Napoleonic wars; the early governors were familiar with this concept.
But [Abbott responds] to describe that as warfare in the same way that the South African War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Vietnam War, et cetera, was warfare, and to think of the Australian involvement in the same terms, I just think is not quite right. By all means, let us learn as much as we can and continue to research the frontier conflict and let us, as it were, popularise it in all sorts of ways. My own view is that this work would be better done at the Australian National Museum rather than at the Australian War Memorial.
Perkins comes back:
I can't speak for all Aboriginal people, but it's the nature of the things that it was fought over, not the way it was fought, and I'm paraphrasing Henry, that make it for us warfare because it was fought over our lives, our livelihood, our culture, and our land. And indeed, as Henry has said, the sovereignty of a whole country. So those elements, whether you can live on your country, whether you can survive as a people, are what makes it warfare because it's about those very important issues, not the way it was fought. So people didn't wear uniforms. Well, they wore ochre and spears, and we were certainly in battle with people in uniforms, but it was different. There's no question it was different, but it was about life itself.
And Abbott responds again:
Look, I hear what you're saying, Rachel. And obviously we want Aboriginal Australians to have just as much a sense of ownership over the War Memorial as anyone else. I guess the issue here is to the extent that it was a war, it was, if you like, a civil war, it was Australian against Australian. And I guess the fundamental purpose of this museum is to build pride and unity. So, I think that the story that you so rightly are concerned about does need to be told. It's a question of where it is best told. Now, I think there should be an acknowledgement of it here at the War Memorial, but I don't think this is the place to dwell on it.
Reynolds wraps up:
I wouldn't be concerned if it was a separate institution, probably run by the Institute of Aboriginal Affairs, properly funded and establish a separate museum of frontier conflict. I think that would be a good idea ... Now there are such so many organisations, land councils for instance, all over Australia, they could decide whether they wanted to commemorate the wars in their country with or without the European pioneers, part of it, in whatever way they wanted and be given some funding so that you would get war memorials separately in every mob's country, as well as a big national institution.
MC John Barrington concludes:
The focus [of the Memorial's future coverage] is expected to be on organised campaigns of warfare and resistance between British colonists and Aboriginal peoples across Australia. Through the development of a national narrative encompassing conflicts from across the country, the gallery will position frontier conflict within broader histories of imperial expansion, dispossession, and Indigenous resistance.
As the galleries are developed, the AWM will continue to navigate the complexities of representing these contested histories. Whilst drawing on a range of perspectives and experiences, the gallery development team will work collaboratively with First Nations communities to creating a space for stories that have too often been absent from national accounts of war and conflict.
For the Australian War Memorial, these new galleries represent an opportunity to be part of an important and ongoing national conversation about conflicts that have shaped Australia.
At the beginning of the podcast, Gomeroi man and Memorial curator, Garth O'Connell, talks at length about both sides of his family history. 'I am one of them [First Nations] but I'm also a descendant of one of the men that was on the other side pulling triggers.'
YouTube audio. Podcast images and video extracts. Canberra Times article. Sydney Morning Herald article. Memorial media release and media pack.
Comment from Defending Country
One of the key documents on the Defending Country website includes these words:
[W]hat we commemorate as a nation shows what we regard as important. What we commemorate becomes important. Failing to properly commemorate the Australian Wars shows we do not regard them as important.
One of Defending Country's members, Carolyn Holbrook, author of the seminal book, Anzac, The Unauthorised Biography (2014), said something similar just recently, after reading the Memorial podcast transcript:
There is a connection between recognising war experience and the national community - the nation-state, like any human grouping, is defined by boundaries and who is in and who is out, and war commemoration seems to play an important role in defining who belongs inside the borders of the nation-state. So, acknowledging these wars is a significant act of recognition: this group of people belongs inside the national community. There is a connection between recognition of the wars and inclusion of Indigenous peoples in the national community.
Photo credits: Rachel Perkins 2023, used with permission (photo Dylan River); Henry Reynolds 2023, used with permission; Tony Abbott 2025 Wikipedia/Christian Ursilva (no changes).
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