Senate Estimates hearings often reveal interesting evidence, even if sometimes you wonder whether the witness realises the significance of what they are saying. On the other hand, the common Estimate witness technique of dribbling out important stuff, without telegraphing it, could be a way of surreptitiously getting said stuff on the public record without anyone noticing. (Remember the Yes Minister! trope of making important announcements in a party full of noisy people.)
There was some of the above at Estimates on 2 June, the transcript of which has become available. (We watched the video the day after the hearing and couldn't quite believe what it disclosed, so we waited till the transcript landed.) We read about the wording of the Memorial's interpretative plaques about Ben Roberts-Smith, about donations the Memorial receives from two arms companies, Boeing and Leidos (both matters covered in depth at Estimates previously), and about the imminent recruitment of three additional (First Nations) curators to add to the current team of six.
Here's what particularly piqued our interest (page 74 of the Proof Hansard).
Senator SHOEBRIDGE: We might move on to where the War Memorial is up to in terms of commemorating the Frontier Wars and the acknowledgement of First Nations deaths and First Nations' defence of their land in the Frontier Wars. Where are we up to?
Mr Anderson: I'll pass to the director of the development shortly, but the last time I appeared here I said that, as soon as we'd opened Anzac Hall, we would start the process. I'm pleased to report that we've actually started the process before we've opened Anzac Hall. The project team that will have responsibility for the pre-1914 galleries—which includes the Frontier Wars, the so-called colonial wars and the Discovery Zone learning centre—has been stood up, and we're now in the process, imminently, of going through and selecting the curators that we need to tell that story, including Indigenous curators ...
Senator SHOEBRIDGE: Have you identified the amount of space that's going to be devoted to the Frontier Wars and truth-telling in that regard?
Mr Hitches [Executive Director Development]: What we have for the pre-1914 galleries, which is the area that went through in the original business case, is 408 square metres that cover both the Frontier Wars and the colonial wars.
Senator SHOEBRIDGE: Alright, so some of that will be covering Sudan and some of it will be covering the first part of the Boer War. I'm asking you: how much is going to be dedicated to the Frontier Wars?
Mr Hitches: There are two specific galleries either side of the main concourse where you walk into the memorial. One side of that will be totally devoted to the Frontier Wars.
Senator SHOEBRIDGE: Is it half Frontier Wars, half other pre-1914 conflicts?
Mr Hitches: That's correct. We currently have 204 square metres.
While the square metre figures have differed marginally every time they have been quoted since 2019, the disclosure that one side of the concourse in the 2021 map below will be totally devoted to the Australian Wars is new. The space Mr Hitches is talking about is labelled 'PreFirst World War Gallery West (1) 198 m2' in the map.
So, compared with previous statements, there's no sharing with the New Zealand Wars 1840-60, and no bunking in with the Sudan expedition good old boys 1885. Just the Australian Wars.
This looks like the 'separate gallery' that was one leg of Council Chair Kim Beazley's Australian Wars trifecta, although at around one per cent of total gallery space it is certainly not 'substantial coverage', another leg of the trifecta. Punting New Zealand and the Sudan from that gallery and making it entirely for the Australian Wars is what Defending Country proposed nearly a year ago although, after what looked like an initial nibble, Director Anderson fobbed us off.
We also proposed adding mentions of the Australian Wars to the list of war theatres and the Roll of Honour on the Memorial's walls but there's no word here about that. We'll follow up.
The other Beazley leg was giving First Australians 'the dignity of resistance'. That term reminds us that there was more to the Australian Wars than whitefellers massacring blackfellers, though there was a lot of that, too.
Resistance features in recent remarks by Director Anderson. Interviewed in April by Peter FitzSimons he said this:
So there’s absolutely a place, and there will be a place in the new gallery for the recognition of frontier wars at the Australian War Memorial. Because, you know, it was warfare, it was guerrilla warfare and they should be given the dignity of people understanding that they formed war councils, that they actually fought a war of manoeuvre. They were outgunned, they were outmanned, but they still resisted, and they resisted in war-like ways, and that’s the story that will be told in the galleries.
That paragraph makes us ask this: is the Memorial proposing to fill that one per cent of gallery space with depictions of notable battles between First Nations and settler-invaders but steer away from the uncomfortable context - that the Australian Wars were about settler-invaders wresting control of the land from First Nations people and that massacres of non-combatant First Nations women, children and old men were part of the Australian Wars, just as mass non-combatant deaths were part of World War I, World War II, and the current war in West Asia? Again, we'll follow up.
There may be a clue in those advertisements for First Nations curators. We'll follow that up, too, to see if the emphasis is on First Nations service in uniform - the main interest of the existing Indigenous Advisory Group - or on the Australian Wars.
We welcome a response from the Memorial and will publish it without amendment, taking account of our Moderation Policy.
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