Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull supports an attempt by former prime ministers Howard and Abbott to impose an elitist world view

Here is public comment on and by the main characters in what looks remarkably like an ill-considered and rather crude attempt at a beer hall putsch against academic freedom.

With one of the eight Ramsey Centre directors, Tony Abbott, giving the game away when he revealed that half of the proposed four-person Partnership Management Committee had an expectation that this committee would directly set the Bachelor of Western Civilsation curriculum and hire academic staff.

An expectation which appears confirmed by a statemet attributed to the Ramsey Centre CEO that; “If we feel like it’s not going to go to appreciation of Western Civilization, then we can withdraw the funding.”  

Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation vision statement:

Paul Ramsay was a leading Australian businessman who was passionate about education and wished to educate future generations in the traditions and practices of western civilisation: its history, philosophy, literature, science, theology, music, art and architecture.

He also wanted to create over time a cadre of leaders – Australians whose awareness and appreciation of their country’s Western heritage and values, of the challenges that have confronted leaders and people, with that broad heritage in the past, would help guide their decision making in the future.

The Ramsay Centre Scholarships will provide students from across Australia the opportunity to study western civilisation in this spirit at one of our partner universities. Places will also be available within the BA degrees to non-scholarship holders. [my yellow highlighting]

The ANU Observer, 8 March 2018:

ANU announced plans for a $25,000 a year scholarship associated with a proposed Bachelor of Western Civilization on Tuesday, subject to student consultation. The announcement occurred at a forum for staff and student feedback, where more details of the proposed program were given, though some students voiced concerns.

At $25,000, the scholarship is the largest ever offered at ANU. It will be larger by just above 15% than the Tuckwell Scholarship, which is set at $21,700 for 2018.....

In a question at the forum, one attendee quoted the CEO of the Ramsay Centre, Simon Haines, as saying, “If we feel like it’s not going to go to appreciation of Western Civilization, then we can withdraw the funding.”  [my yellow highlighting]

Australian National University, FAQ - Potential ANU-Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation Partnership, excerpts:

*The proposed program comprises 16 core courses, typically taken over three years, with an additional Honours year sequence open to outstanding students. Students may replace up to 4 of the 16 BWC courses with 4 courses of classical or modern European language study. Students will be able to take the program alongside other disciplines offered by the University and (in the case of double-degree students) other degrees.

*The different courses within the program consider books from a variety of genres or disciplines (predominately works of literature, history, philosophy, religion, politics) but also including architecture, art and music, 

*The program will be capped at 60 students consisting of up to 30 scholarship recipients in the first year and up to 30 non-scholarship recipients. Up to 10 further scholarships will be made available to students in the second year of the degree.

*A distinct aspect of the proposed program is the use of the ‘Socratic’ approach. The program aims to create active learners engaged with primary texts in classes of no more than six to eight students. These small-group discussions will be supplemented by a series of panel-style discussions where academics from different perspectives engage in discussion with each other and with students.

*Curriculum recommendations will be made by the Partnership Management Committee (consisting of two academic staff from the Ramsay Centre and two academics from the ANU, one of whom is the Dean of CASS) and considered through the normal ANU academic processes. [my yellow highlighting]

Liberal MP for Warringah Tony Abbott in Quadrant Online, 24 May 2018:

“The key to understanding the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation is that it’s not merely about Western civilisation but in favour of it. The fact that it is “for” the cultural inheritance of countries such as ours, rather than just interested in it, makes it distinctive. The fact that respect for our heritage has largely been absent for at least a generation in our premier teaching and academic institutions makes the Ramsay Centre not just timely but necessary. This is an important national project. It’s not every day, after all, that such a big endowment is dedicated in perpetuity to raising the tone of our civic conversation…..

A management committee including the Ramsay CEO and also its academic director will make staffing and curriculum decisions.” [my yellow highlighting]

Brisbane Times, 7 June 2015:

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will personally intervene in the ANU's decision to pull out of a controversial new degree in Western Civilisation, saying he wants to talk to the university's vice-chancellor about it directly.

On Thursday, Mr Turnbull became the latest Liberal politician to wade into the furore over the course, which was to be funded by the John Howard-headed Ramsay Centre.

The Prime Minister said he was "very surprised" by the ANU's decision last week to end six months of negotiation with the centre and would be speaking to vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt personally "to get his account of it".

"I find it very hard to understand why that proposal from the Ramsay Foundation would not have been accepted with enthusiasm," Mr Turnbull said….

[my yellow highlighting]

Professor Brian Schmidt AC, Vice-Chancellor and President, Australian National University, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 2018:

The news came yesterday that Australian National University remains ranked by QS as number one in Australia and in the top 25 universities in the world. It is a global reputation we take seriously. One that is built on the basis of academic autonomy and free academic inquiry.

ANU has declined donations in the past and will again where we are unable to meet the wishes of the donor within our normal practices. It is right that we explore opportunities openly and in good faith, but it is also right that we let prospective donors know when we cannot provide them with what they want.

Our decision to end negotiations with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilization has attracted a great deal of interest. In this case, the prospective donor sought a level of influence over our curriculum and staffing that went beyond what any other donor has been granted, and was inconsistent with academic autonomy.

This would set a precedent that would completely undermine the integrity of the University.

While there has been plenty of noise from all ends about the merits of the study of Western civilisation, the decision at our end has nothing to do with the subject matter.

In fact, the reason we entered into discussions and, no doubt, why we were of interest to the donor, is our global reputation for scholarship and teaching across the full breadth of the Western liberal tradition from classics, history and literature to philosophy, art and music. We offer more than 150 courses in western scholarship. It would take 18 years of study to complete all of those courses.

The opportunity to augment our teaching and research in these areas, along with a generous scholarship program for students, was an attractive proposition for ANU and we were grateful to the Ramsay Centre for considering ANU as a partner.

But at the end of the day, the University operates on the same principles with all donors, whatever their area of interest. Whether it is funding to support the study of Persian language or the study of classics, the same principles apply. The University retains full control of all curriculum and staffing decisions. This actually gets to the crux of the issue here for us. In this case, the donor sought a level of influence over our curriculum and staffing that went beyond any existing arrangements we have.

[my yellow highlighting]

UPDATE

VC's Update - our viewpoints on Ramsay, 25 June 218:

On 1 June The Australian National University announced that it was withdrawing from negotiations to create a degree program with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. We took our decision for no other reason than the Centre's continued demands for control over the program were inconsistent with the University's academic autonomy.

We anticipated attacks from some for even contemplating introducing the degree, and from others for being anti-Western civilisation. What we had less reason to expect was the protracted media firestorm which has continued daily for nearly a month, in certain sections of the press, with ANU constantly assaulted for capitulating to pressure from those hostile to the Ramsay Centre, but without evidence or new information being offered. Scrutiny from the press is crucial in western democracies in holding public institutions to account - and universities should not escape it. But does stating over and over again a false narrative make it true? 

We have intentionally refrained from going into the details of the University's negotiations with the Ramsay Centre, partly because of our respect for what we had understood to be the confidentiality of those negotiations, partly to allow the Centre clear air to rethink its position after exploring options with other institutions, and partly because of our unwillingness to personalise the arguments in the way that others have been all too ready to do. But it has become obvious that we need now to further explain our decision "in the public square".

If ANU had withdrawn from the program simply because some people within our ranks were uncomfortable, for essentially ideological reasons, with the very idea of it, we would deserve all the criticism hurled at us.  But that was absolutely not the case. There was, and remains, strong support across the University for a major enhancement of our teaching and research capacity in the area of Western civilisation studies. We are attracted by the wide-ranging liberal arts courses taught in some prominent American universities, and remain wholly willing to craft a similar degree course here. Designed to convey understanding and respect for the great Western intellectual and cultural traditions - albeit in our own way:  analytically rigorous, not triumphalist, and open to comparisons being drawn, as appropriate, with other major intellectual and cultural traditions.

ANU has long been ranked number one in Australia in humanities disciplines, and we already teach some 150 undergraduate subjects addressing Western civilisation themes. The attractiveness of having major new resources to advance them, is why an enormous amount of effort has been invested by our staff in developing a very detailed proposal, including a draft syllabus, in support of a Ramsay gift, and why negotiations for common ground continued as long as they did.

So what went wrong? We withdrew from negotiations because there were irreconcilable differences over the governance of the proposed program, not its substance.  We were willing to accept the Ramsay Centre having a voice in curriculum design and staff appointments. But only a voice, not a controlling influence. From the outset, however, the Centre has been locked in to an extraordinarily prescriptive micro-management approach to the proposed program, unprecedented in our experience, embodied in a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of some 30 pages with another 40 pages of detailed annexures.

It has insisted on a partnership management committee to oversee every aspect of the curriculum and its implementation - with equal numbers from both the Ramsay Centre and ANU, meaning an effective Ramsay veto.

It has been unwilling to accept our own draft curriculum, and has refused to accept our preferred name for the degree ('Western Civilisation Studies').  While acknowledging that any curriculum would have to be endorsed by the ANU Academic Board, it has made clear that to be acceptable to the Ramsay Centre it would have to find favour with the joint management committee - with its representatives being able to sit in the classes that we teach and undertake "health checks" on the courses and the teachers.

It became clear that there are fundamental differences in our respective conceptions of the role of a university.  The Centre has gone so far as to insist on the removal of "academic freedom" as a shared objective for the program: this remains in the draft MOU as an ANU objective, not a Ramsay one. For us academic freedom doesn't mean freedom to underperform or to teach without regard to the disciplines or agreed objectives of a particular syllabus. But it does mean appointment or retention of staff on the basis of their demonstrated academic merit, not political or ideological preference.

A continuing concern has been that the proposed Ramsay funding is provided short-term, up for renewal in eight years. A time-limited gift is not in itself problematic, but building a major program involving the hiring of a dozen staff, and then being held hostage to its continuation by a donor whose most senior and influential board members appear to have manifestly different views to ours about university autonomy, is not a happy position for any university to be in.

Ramsay CEO Simon Haines, in an interview in last weekend's Fairfax Press (The Age, 23 June), has now at last engaged in a little circumspect distancing from the Tony Abbott article in Quadrant, which was very explicit about the controls envisaged. But that dissociation has been a long time coming, and it remains to be seen whether there will in fact be a change in the Ramsay board's position.  In successive conversations with the Centre, ANU sought public assurances that Ramsay's position had been misstated, and that the University's autonomy in actually implementing agreed objectives would be fully respected.  But no reply we have received has given us any cause to believe that the MOU, with all its over-reach, would be fundamentally revised.  In the result, it was simply impossible on our side to believe that there was sufficient trust and confidence for the project to proceed.

We withdrew from the negotiations for governance reasons of this kind. Boiled down, the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation simply did not trust the ANU to deliver a program acceptable to it, and consequently asked for controls on the University's delivery of the degree that ANU could not - and should not - agree to.  

ANU, accepts gifts from individuals, foundations, groups, entities, government agencies, and foreign governments. In no cases are these gifts allowed to compromise the University's academic integrity, nor are they allowed to impose on our academic freedom, or autonomy. Regarding historical gifts surrounding our Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS), Australia's leading academic capability in its area, let us be clear: if the Ramsay Centre were to take the same approach to a gift to ANU as the donors to CAIS, we could reach an agreement in less than 48 hours.

The University has never accepted gifts with such restrictions as demanded by Ramsay, and under our watch as Chancellor and Vice Chancellor we never will.

Let us offer this frank assessment as things stand at the moment, as the Ramsay Centre seeks other partners: to succeed, either they will have to change its approach and trust its partners to deliver a program in Western Civilisation studies, or be limited to a university willing to make concessions on academic autonomy. If the Ramsay Centre and its board are prepared to understand and respect the autonomy of Australia's national university, our door remains open.

Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC and Professor Brian Schmidt AC are Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, respectively, of The Australian National University.

 [my yellow highlighting]

CONSERVATION GROUP FOUNDED TO COMBAT PULP MILL CELEBRATES ITS HISTORY

"No Pump Mill" memorabilia - image supplied

The Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition celebrated its “almost” thirty years of activity at a Re-Weavers’ Awards Dinner in Grafton on 1^st June.

The Re-Weavers Awards, which are held annually on the Friday nearest to World Environment Day, recognise the valuable contribution individuals and groups have made to environmental protection over many years.

The Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition was founded almost thirty years ago because of a proposal for a chemical pulp mill in the Clarence Valley.

On 30^th August 1988 The Daily Examiner’s front page headline shouted: “$450m valley mill planned by Japanese”.  Daishowa International had made an in-principle decision to build a chemical pulp mill on the Clarence River near Grafton. This, it was claimed, would create about 1200 direct and indirect jobs in the region.

This fired up the local community.  Some community members welcomed the announcement, claiming the mill would provide an enormous boost to the local economy. 

But not everyone welcomed it.  Many feared the impact such a large industrial development would have on the local environment – not just of the Clarence Valley but of the whole North Coast because it was obvious that such a large mill would be drawing its feedstock from across the region.  Concerns included the amount of water this mill would use, the decimation of the forests, the likelihood of poisonous effluent being released into either the river or the ocean and air pollution.

On 19 September 1988 concerned people met in Grafton to discuss the proposal and consider what action should be taken.  This meeting resulted in the formation of the Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition (CVCC).

Rosie Richards became its President.  She was an ideal person for the job in many ways.  In the conservative Clarence community she was not publicly associated with any of the recent or on-going conservation issues. While she was concerned about environmental impacts, both short and long-term, and made no secret of the fact, she did not look like a greenie – or the conservative view of what a greenie looked like. Rosie was 56 years old.  She was a grandmother. Her background was not that of a stereotype greenie either. She grew up in Pymble and in the early fifties was a member of the Liberal Party Younger Set.  Her other life experiences included years as a farmer’s wife and the wife of a professional fisherman.  (Her husband Geoff had been both.)

Rosie’s personality also qualified her for this leadership role in the pulp mill campaign.  She ran both the CVCC committee and general meetings efficiently.  She was calm, sincere, friendly, articulate and very much “a lady” in old-fashioned terms.  But she was also determined and possessed a “steel backbone”.  This “steel backbone” and her courage were very necessary in the campaign to obtain information and disseminate it to the North Coast community. 

Courage was necessary to the campaigners because those promoting the benefits of Daishowa’s plans attacked the CVCC, referring to its spokespersons as scaremongers and “a benighted group who distort the facts.” Those in power locally and at the state level weren’t in any hurry to provide facts but they decried the efforts of community members who were trying to find information on pulp mill operations.  However, this did not deter the CVCC.  It sought information on pulp mills and pulping processes from around the world, asked questions of those in power and disseminated information to the community.

Other important campaigners included media spokesperson Martin Frohlich and Bruce Tucker whose time in Gippsland had shown him what it was like to live near the Maryvale Pulp Mill. Others who played vital roles were John Kelemec, Rob Lans, Geoff Richards and Bill Noonan as well as core members of the Clarence Valley Branch of the National Parks Association. These included Peter Morgan, Stan Mussared, Celia Smith and Greg Clancy.

Public meetings were held in Grafton, Iluka, Maclean and Minnie Water as well as in other North Coast towns.  In addition the group produced information sheets, issued many media releases, participated in media interviews, distributed bumper stickers, circulated a petition, met with politicians both in the local area and beyond, and wrote letters to politicians and The Daily Examiner.

And there were many others who wrote letters of concern to the paper as well as some who wrote supporting the proposal.  It was an amazing time as there was a deluge of letters to the Examiner. There has been nothing like it since!!

One of my memories is taking part in a Jacaranda procession, probably in 1989.  We used Geoff Welham’s truck which was decorated with eucalypt branches, and driven by Rob Lans with Bill Noonan beside him. Others of us, wearing koala masks, were on the back.  As we drove down Prince Street, Bill had his ghetto blaster on full volume blaring out John Williamson singing “Rip, rip woodchip.” I think we drowned out music of the marching bands.

Following Daishowa’s announcement that it would not be proceeding with its pulp mill proposal, CVCC President Rosie wrote to the Examiner (4 April 1990) praising the efforts of the community in defeating the proposal:

“It has been an interesting nineteen months; a period that has seen the resolve of north coast people come to the fore; we have seen People Power used in a democratic way to say ‘No’  to something that we knew would harm our existing industries and our air and water.  If it had not been for the people of the Clarence Valley and their attendance at public meetings, their letters to politicians, to newspapers in Tokyo and our own Daily Examiner, and their strong support of the Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition, we may have had a huge polluting industrial complex set down in our midst, without a whimper.”

People Power did do the job – but Rosie Richards and the others on the Coalition Committee played a very important part in organizing and channelling that people power.

The lessons of history never seem to be learned.  Those campaigning to protect the environment from the greed of pillagers face the same problem today.

What Rosie wrote in a letter to The Daily Examiner in November 1990 still applies today:

“It seems that every time we stop for breath another issue crops up that summons us to speak up for common sense and common interest.  Most of us would much rather be doing other things besides acting as watchdogs for what we see as poor bureaucratic decisions and flawed advice to governments.”

In the same letter she answered a criticism that conservationists were “greedy”:

“We speak out as we do because we believe that the people of today’s and tomorrow’s Australia will not be well served by a country whose finite resources have been exhausted by sectional interests that have until now not had to make long term plans for the sustainability of their industries.”

The pulp mill campaign was significant both in the Clarence and further afield.  It reinforced the message of the other earlier environmental victory – the success of the Clarence Valley Branch of the National Parks Association in campaigning to save the Washpool Rainforest.  Both of these campaigns showed the state government and local councils as well as the North Coast community in general that there were people who were prepared to campaign strongly for effective protection of the natural environment.

            - Leonie Blain

Leonie Blain (left) & Lynette Eggins (right) - image supplied

Memo to Clarence Valley Council, NSW Police and Berejiklian Government: This is just not good enough

Sometime in the past a number of unrecorded burials occurred in the little coastal village of Iluka, NSW, est. population 1,728 people.

These historic burials were done with care and at least some were marked out by timber posts.

This is how much care Clarence Valley Council, NSW Police and the Berejiklian Coalition Government are displaying towards the newly discovered dead.

BEFORE AND AFTER PHOTOS OF FIRST UNKNOWN GRAVESITE IN ILUKA 

BEFORE: First unmarked gravesite where Ground Penetrating Radar confirmed one burial with a 9/10 chance it was human remains.

AFTER: First unmarked gravesite after desecration by police. Vegetation flattened and posts have disappeared leaving no trace of grave.

* Photographs taken by Iluka resident

Singing the heavens, singing the land, singing the lore, singing the people and their history - weaving memory

And those of us whose forebears stumbled off a handful of British boats in 1788 are still trying and often failing to understand this rich, enduring culture.......

The Monthly, September 2017:

Epic of Gilgamesh” is Google’s answer to “what is the oldest known literature”. Unknown scribes in the city of Ur picked the poem out in cuneiform letters some 4500 years ago. These clay tablets preserved an older oral tradition, but that part of the story is usually left out. Instead, the Mesopotamian epic fits easily into that cartoonish diagram of the Ascent of Man, where civilisation means writing, a sequence of metals and a procession of capitals: Memphis, Babylon, Athens, Rome.

Compare this lineage to the ceremonial songs of Aboriginal Australia. Their absolute vintage is unknowable, but the best estimates run to at least 12,000 years old. At this distance in time, the study of literature needs not just linguists but geologists. There are songlines that accurately describe landscape features (like now-disappeared islands) from the end of the Pleistocene epoch. Their provenance may stretch even further back, all the way into the last ice age. They are also alive. The last person to hear Epic of Gilgamesh declaimed in her native culture died millennia ago. Songlines that may have been born 30,000 years ago are being sung right now.

Read the full article here.

The oldest continuous culture in the world just became est. 18,000 years older

The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 July 2017:

Jabiru, Northern Territory: Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for a minimum of 65,000 years, a team of archaeologists has established - 18,000 years longer than had been proved previously and at least 5000 years longer than had been speculated by the most optimistic researchers.

The world-first finding, which follows years of archaeological digging in an ancient camp-site beneath a sandstone rock shelter within the Jabiru mining lease in Kakadu, Northern Territory, drastically alters the known history of the trek out of Africa by modern humans, according to the leader of the international team of archaeologists, associate professor Chris Clarkson of the University of Queensland.

The findings, which are already causing intense interest in archaeological circles across the world, have been peer reviewed by internationally recognised scientists and are published this week in the world's most prestigious science journal, Nature.

Among the trove of discoveries are the world's oldest stone axes with polished and sharpened edges, proving that the earliest Australians were among the most sophisticated tool-makers of their time: no other culture had such axes for another 20,000 years.

"The axes were perfectly preserved, tucked up against the back wall of the shelter as we dug further and further," Professor Clarkson told Fairfax Media.

"There was one on the surface, another further down that we dated at 10,000 years. Then there were quite a few further down still which were able to date at 35,000 to 40,000 years, and finally one at 65,000 years, surrounded by a whole bunch of stone flakes."

The team had also found the oldest known seed-grinding tools in Australia, a large buried midden of sea shells and animal bones, and evidence of finely made stone spear tips.

Professor Clarkson said one of the most striking finds was the huge quantity of ground ochre, right from the oldest layers. This suggested the first humans to populate Australia were already enthusiastic artists, and had continued to be so through their continuing culture in an area known for its spectacular rock art…..

The discovery also confirms that Australian Aborigines undertook the first major maritime migration in the world - they had to sail a minimum of 90 kilometres across open sea to reach their destination whatever route they took in their long journey out of Africa.

No other humans had undertaken such a journey 65,000 years ago. However, after crossing between islands, they could have walked the last stretch between Papua New Guinea and northern Australia because sea levels were so low at that time, Professor Clarkson said.

Nature, Published online 19 July 2017, Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago:

Abstract

References• 

Author information• 

Extended data figures and tables• 

Supplementary information

The time of arrival of people in Australia is an unresolved question. It is relevant to debates about when modern humans first dispersed out of Africa and when their descendants incorporated genetic material from Neanderthals, Denisovans and possibly other hominins. Humans have also been implicated in the extinction of Australia’s megafauna. Here we report the results of new excavations conducted at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in northern Australia. Artefacts in primary depositional context are concentrated in three dense bands, with the stratigraphic integrity of the deposit demonstrated by artefact refits and by optical dating and other analyses of the sediments. Human occupation began around 65,000 years ago, with a distinctive stone tool assemblage including grinding stones, ground ochres, reflective additives and ground-edge hatchet heads. This evidence sets a new minimum age for the arrival of humans in Australia, the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa, and the subsequent interactions of modern humans with Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Extended Data Figure 3: Grinding stones, residues and usewear of specimens collected from phase 2 at Madjedbebe.

Mouth of the Clarence River in Yaegl Country

“Always” by Frances Belle Parker

https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/visit-us/BaduGili.html

Australia Past & Present: always was, always will be........ *This post may contain the names and links to voices of peope who have passed away*

River Peoples

The Peoples Council of the Murrawarri Republic

Left to right: Evelyn Barker, Sharni Hooper, Kevin Hooper, Julie Johnston, Gloria Johnston, Phyllis Cubby, Fred Hooper(Chairman), Phillip Sullivan and Alison Salt.

(Absent from the picture are Sam Jefferies and Desmond Jones)

Sydney Criminal Lawyers, transcript of Paul Gregoire interview with Murrawarri Republic Chair Fred Hooper, 22 April 2017:

This weekend in Brisbane, the Referendum Council is holding the last of the Dialogues: a series of meetings with First Nations peoples to discuss the issue of recognising the nation’s Indigenous people within the Australian constitution.

The findings from the meetings will be reported at the First Nations Convention at Uluru in late May.

However, for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people constitutional recognition is a token gesture. And what needs to be established is a framework of treaties between the government and each of the continent’s Indigenous nations.

But over recent years, there are some First Peoples nations that have gone a step further and declared independence.

Never ceded

On March 30 2013, the Murrawarri Republic made a formal declaration of independence. The Murrawarri people pointed out that they’ve been living on their land – situated on the border of NSW and Queensland – for tens of thousands of years, and sovereignty had never been ceded.

The People’s Council of the Murrawarri Republic sent their declaration to the Queen of England requesting documents proving Crown title within 21 days. But no response was received and this was interpreted as proof that indeed the republic was an independent state.

According to the council, “there were three legally recognised doctrines that governed the taking over or acquiring of new land under 18^th century British and international law.” These were a declaration of war, the negotiation of a treaty or the principle of terra nullius: the concept that the land had no owners.

The British didn’t declare war on the Murrawarri Nation, and the Murrawarri people never sign a treaty. Great Britain actually claimed the land was terra nullius, however, the local Murrawarri people were actually living there at the time.

And as the council further outlines, the High Court of Australia abolished the legal fiction of terra nullius in its 1992 Mabo versus Queensland (No 2) ruling. The court recognised native title – or that Indigenous people had a prior claim to the land – in Australia for the first time.

Sovereign Nations

The Murrawarri Republic encompasses an area of around 82,000 square kilometres and has a population of about 3,500 people. It was the first Indigenous nation on the continent to declare its independence, but others have followed.

The Euahlayi Nation declared their independence in August 2013. The Wiradjuri Central West Republic did so in January 2014. And the Yidindji Tribal Nation renounced legal ties with Australia that same year. All the nations have independent governments, and some have established police forces.

Fred Hooper is the chair of the People’s Council of the Murrawarri Republic. During his time, the Murrawarri elder served six years in the Australian Navy as a submariner and spent nine years working in the public service.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke with Fred Hooper about the process the republic went through to declare its independence, their guiding principles, and what he thinks about constitutional recognition.

The Murrawarri Republic declared independence from Australia in March 2013. Can you outline the process you undertook in order to do this, and the reasoning behind it?

Firstly, we didn’t declare our independence from Australia. We declared that we were always independent from Australia. We declared our continued independence and statehood. Because we’ve never ceded our sovereignty or allodial title to the Crown of Great Britain.

The process that we went through. First of all, it came out of the fortieth anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, where sovereignty was the main focus of the anniversary.

We then consulted other members of the Murrawarri people. We researched forms of independence and forms of republics as well.

From a meeting of Aboriginal people in Wollongong, we then went away and researched it. And found that a republic was the best for us, because we were never a kingdom. We didn’t have Kings and Queens. And we didn’t claim our seat to the throne through God.

We decided to go with a republic.

So the process was that we researched declarations of independence. How other countries declared their independence. And we decided to go with something similar to Israel’s declaration of independence through the United Nations in the creation of the state of Israel.

We wrote the declaration. And then it was a matter of getting people to sign it. We hit the road and went to sporting events and got Murrawarri people to actually sign the declaration.

From there we wrote to Queen Elizabeth II notifying her – because she is the head of state of the country – of our intentions and our declaration.

The High Court in the 1992 Mabo case recognised native title in Australia for the first time. In response to that judgement the federal government passed the Native Title Act 1993.

Can I ask why the people of the Murrawarri nation didn’t instead decide to make a native title claim under the provisions of this Act?

Well we found that the Act didn’t work. We found that the Act was established for white Australia and all the benefits went to white Australia. All the benefits, except for one right, the right to negotiate.

Then that right to negotiate within the Native Title Act, if you don’t negotiate with mining companies within six months, and you don’t come to an agreement, then the Federal Court or the judicial system of Australia can overturn the native title.

They can force you into arbitration or they can rule in terms of development. So it’s unjust and unfair legislation.

But also, we found that in Mabo there were a number of things that the High Court said. One was that the Crown did not gain absolute beneficial ownership to the land. The Crown did not gain allodial title to the land.

They did not gain the original title off the Murrawarri to our traditional land. So therefore, we felt that our ownership of that land has continued, and that’s supported by Mabo in that statement by the judges.

Mabo did two things. It overturned the fiction of terra nullius. And it created a new principle of occupation that was outside the international law and outside of international norms, because it created a principle of peaceful settlement. Nowhere else in the world is there a principle of peaceful settlement.

We believe that we have a much stronger case. The research that was done in terms of Murrawarri people found that we’re actually not citizens of Australia, because citizenship comes through the Citizenship and Naturalisation Act of 1948.

That Act actually screens First Nations people in this country from becoming citizens of Australia. So we felt that we were alien from this nation, and that our nation was here prior to 1788.

And there was one other very interesting thing that we looked at as well. There was this old farmer in Western Australia, who declared himself independent from Australia. He pays no taxes. He declared himself a principality.

So we thought, well, if somebody from Europe can come out here and declare their independence from Australia and consider themselves a micro-nation and get acceptance, then the First Peoples should have some claim to the land as well.

We felt that Mabo gave us that opportunity, because the High Court actually said that the Crown did not gain absolute beneficial ownership to the land.

The Murrawarri Republic has its own constitution drafted in April 2014, and its own government: the People’s Council of the Murrawarri Republic.

Can you tell us about the guiding principles of the republic?

We have the constitution. It’s a draft constitution. The declaration set up the principle of the People’s Council, which looks at different types of legislation, emblems, seals, symbols and negotiations.

Our principles are that we don’t exclude anybody from our nation. The constitution does not exclude non-Murrawarri people from living within our nation. And it does not exclude them from being a part of our nation, benefiting from it, living on our nation, or owning land.

We’re looking at the governance of that land, and how the Murrawarri can govern that land for all of its citizens, not only just the Murrawarri people that live there, and the Murrawarri people that don’t live on country as well.

Some of the guiding principles are based on sharing our country. The other thing we don’t want to do is kick people off our country. It’s about benefits for all our citizens, both ancestral and non-ancestral citizens.

It’s been four years since the Murrawarri Republic declared independence. How would you say life has changed over that period for the local people?

Life continues. This is a political process. It’s a fight that we’re taking on politically.

We’ve had no benefits from government. But one of the other things that happened is that some of the development that’s happening, they actually talk to us as well. They just don’t leave us alone. They talk to us.

Also our People’s Council is looking at how we can look at projects that can benefit the whole of the nation. We’re looking at renewable energies in some of our communities. We’re looking at how we can get those renewable energies into those areas. So those type of benefits.

We’re a little bit further down the track. We’re more recognised now as a nation.

I also sit on an organisation that recognises 22 Sovereign First Nations on what they call the Murray-Darling Basin.

And we’ve managed to get the traditional owners and our nations recognised in Commonwealth legislation, through the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It’s recognised through statute law that sits under the Water Act.

From that we’re looking at doing other things with other Aboriginal nations, like the Euahlayi Nation.

And one of the big things that came out of a meeting in Canberra last year was that overall there’s 48 Sovereign First Nations in the Murray-Darling Basin. Those 48 nations are now looking at how and what are the processes of us negotiating treaties with each other.

Under international law, a nation can be recognised as treating with other nations if it has trade. So through those treaty negotiations, and those negotiations with those other nations, we’re looking at how we can look at trading amongst ourselves.

How we can look at overseas trade with other First Nations, say in America, Canada and Maori in New Zealand.

These some of the things that are coming out of what we did in 2013.

The Murrawarri Republic was the first Indigenous nation on this continent to declare independence, and there are a few others now.

Do you think there will be more Indigenous nations following suit in the future?

normal Yes. I think it’s people’s understanding, because they’ve been so colonised over the last 200-odd years.

It’s their understanding. And it’s showing those nations that we think we have a case here legally through international law.

We always say Australia is still a colony of Great Britain. And Australia’s constitution even says that, or be it a self-governing colony. There’s still a string there to Great Britain.

What we’re looking at is recognition from Great Britain that we have never ceded our sovereignty. That we have never ceded our lands.

Hopefully now, a lot more nations will come on board. People are ringing and asking about how we did it.

And we have a package that we send out to people that are looking at declaring as well. So we are assisting other nations around the country. And every now and then, another will pop up and declare their independence.

A few years back, you were in the process of contacting the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation and requesting to be placed on the non-self-governing territories list.

Can I ask how that process is going? And could you explain the benefits of being placed on the list?

We have written to the Decolonisation Committee. To date, we haven’t got a response and we’re planning to write to them again to request to be put on the decolonisation list.

By being placed on the list, there’s an international obligation for Great Britain as the colonising country of the continent of Australia to decolonise under United Nations Resolution 1541.

If you are placed on that list, you are in the process of decolonisation. And there are other small countries that are on the decolonisation list. There’s one in the Pacific that only has 50 citizens.

We’re looking at firstly, trying to get onto the list. And secondly, negotiating with Great Britain, through the Queen’s ministers in Australia, in regards, to decolonising and also, self-governing of our territory.

This will benefit the people that are living in our territory, instead a lot of the benefits of the funds and the revenue that are generated within our country, leaving our country.

At the time the British arrived on this continent there were over 500 different nations already existing here. There’s never been any formal treaties set up between the Commonwealth of Australia and the various First Peoples nations.

Instead of looking towards formal treaties, the federal government is pushing for recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian constitution.

What are your thoughts on constitutional recognition?

I attended the Dubbo Dialogue on constitutional recognition. And I was elected to go to Uluru in May for the Dialogue.

Our position is we need to talk sovereignty and treaty.

One of the other reasons we declared our independence was that John Howard made a statement when he was prime minister and they were talking treaty with Aboriginal people. He came out and said in public that we cannot treaty with our own citizens.

Being recognised in the constitution, we feel, will wipe out our identity. There will no longer be separate Indigenous nations within the continent of Australia. We will all be labelled Australian Aborigines. We won’t have identity back to country.

A lot of the services that are helping people that are recognised in the constitution will dry up.

But also, through the treaty process there is a real opportunity for us to negotiate tangible outcomes, in terms of revenue and looking at governing our own nations as well. Making decisions about that and providing health services. Which is a bottom up approach, and not a top down approach which is happening now.

For us, we can’t have real constitutional recognition without a treaty document to back it up. And a treaty document is a legal document registered with the United Nations.

The constitution forgot us when it was written and I don’t think being recognised in the constitution is going to change anything for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people around the country.

And lastly, Fred, it’s Anzac Day next week. On that day in 2015, you were stopped from marching alongside the Submarine Association in the Anzac parade in Canberra, because you were holding a Murrawarri Republic flag.

You were also stopped from laying a wreath because you’d been leading the Frontier Wars march, which honours those Indigenous people who lost their lives fighting the British as they took over the continent.

This First Peoples procession has followed the Anzac Day march for the past six years.

Could you tell us whether the Frontier Wars march will be taking place in Canberra this Anzac Day? And what it means to the Indigenous people of this continent that the government still won’t officially acknowledge that these wars took place?

Yes it will be happening this year. I’m hoping to get down to it.

For us, it’s the recognition that this country was not peacefully settled. They are saying this country was peacefully settled, but it wasn’t.

We fought the British. We fought the colonisers. And there were great warriors fighting all the way that aren’t being recognised in this country. They recognise conflicts overseas, but what about conflicts on our own soil?

For a lot of Aboriginal people that’s the issue. We know that these things happened. We know that people were massacred. We know that the British declared martial law.

If you look at America and you look at the Battle of Little Bighorn, a lot of that has been recognised by the Americans.

One of the things the War Memorial said was that they don’t recognise wars before Federation. But there’s one war they recognise and that they celebrate pre-Federation which is the Boer War. And there were Aboriginal people that were taken to that war as well.

So I think that’s not a very good excuse for not recognising that there were wars and conflicts in our own country.

Fred thanks very much for speaking with us today. And best of luck going into the future with further establishing the Murrawarri Republic as independent nation.

No worries. Thank you.

Trove, Australian Women’s Register:

Essie Coffey was a Muruwari woman born in southern Queensland. She was co-founder of the Western Aboriginal Legal Service and served on a number of government bodies and Aboriginal community organisations.

Born at Essiena Goodgabah in southern Queensland, Essie Coffey and her family were fortunate to avoid forced relocation to a reserve. Instead they lived on the move, following seasonal rural work.

Coffey went on to be co-founder of the Western Aboriginal Legal Service and the Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Museum in Brewarrina, serving on several government bodies and Aboriginal community organisations including the Aboriginal Lands Trust and the Aboriginal Advisory Council. She was an inaugural member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.

Coffey was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) on 10 June 1985, for service to the Aboriginal Community. She was nominated for an MBE but refused it, explaining "I knocked the MBE back because I'm not a member of the British Empire".

With Martha Ansara, Coffey made the award-winning film [“My Survival As An Aboriginal”] (1978), which she gave to Queen Elizabeth II as a gift at the opening of Australia's new Parliament House in 1988. The sequel, [“My Life As I Live It”] , was released in 1993. Coffey also appeared in the film 'Backroads'.

Essie Coffey and her husband, Doc, had 18 children, 10 of whom were adopted.

Parks Australia, 14 July 2012:

The Murrawarri people of central New South Wales have celebrated the return of their country and the declaration of the Weilmoringle Indigenous Protected Area. The Murrawarri have been working with the Indigenous Land Corporation for many years to purchase Weilmoringle, a 3,500 hectare property on the New South Wales and Queensland border.

NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, 21 August 2006:

Brewarrina Aboriginal Mission…..

Statement of significance:

The Brewarrina Aboriginal Mission was the oldest institutional-type community in the state that was still managed in 1965. Brewarrina Mission was the first institution formally established by the Aborigines Protection Board as part of its policy to segregate Aboriginal people. Over the years, the Brewarrina Mission was used to house other Aboriginal people from Tibooburra, Angledool, Goodooga and Culgoa to form the reserve which operated between 1886 - 1966 and was one of the longest running reserve stations in NSW. During the reserve period many Aboriginal people died and were buried in the reserve cemetery. The cemetery is no longer used by the community its integrity is held high within the values of the Aboriginal people. The entire site of Brewarrina Mission including its cemetery is a significant place to the many Aboriginal tribes including Ngemba and Murrawarri tribe as a 'place of belonging'. The place retains its high integrity in its cultural, spiritual, social and historical values to many Aboriginal people across NSW.

Paroo: Oral History of Lorna McNiven - an Indigenous woman who was born in Eulo in south-western Queensland. Her family, known as river people, are the Budjari and Murrawarri peoples.
Lorna and Liz McNiven's evidence to the Australian Parliament Joint Committee On Native Title AndThe Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Land Fund, 2 October 1996. 

Excerpt from McKellar on behalf of the Budjiti People v State of Queensland [2015] FCA 601 – Native Title consent determination, 23 June 2015:

A number of Budjiti People recall activities with their parents and grandparents on the waterways and lakes found within Budjiti country. Dinny McKellar was taken to Lake Wyara and Lake Numalla by his grandparents to collect swan eggs. The flowering of the gidgee trees was a signal that the swans were laying. Lorna McNiven remembered how she went on a rowboat with her parents to fish in Caiwarro Waterhole.

Fish from the lakes and the Paroo River has featured in the diet of generations of

Budjiti People. Analysis of material at archaeological sites in the application area found evidence that people included in their diets both fish and shellfish. The practice of utilising the waterways and lakes continues to the present today. As stated by Lorna McNiven,“Budjiti People are always fishing on the Paroo”. Nina Prasad goes fishing two or three days a week when the fish are biting. Dinny McKellar goes fishing and sometimes takes his cousin Dulla McKellar with him. Favoured fishing locations would be revisited several times a year.

Seasonal events such as the flooding of the Paroo River are remembered by many

witnesses as times of celebrations. People would walk upstream to meet the flood waters after rains as they signalled when fish stocks along the Paroo would be replenished and there would be food for everyone. Today people return to the river after heavy rains. Sam Eulo returns with his whole family, including his mother Ruby Eulo, to Caiwarro after a fresh flow of water passes down the Paroo.

These activities require care and respect as the landscape contains potential dangers. A story recounted to Philip Eulo was how Grandma Toogler had to swim back from an island on Lake Numulla after collecting swan eggs. The creature Muddan-gaddah had caused the lake to rise. Whilst fishing Nina Prasad and Rhonda Cavanough heard the slapping of the Muddan-gaddah in the river. They packed up and returned home as they were wary of the creature.

Smoking ceremonies involving burning leaves of the dogwood bush or sandalwood bush are used as protection by the Budjiti People. Millie Shillingsworth for example, smokes herself when near the Paroo River to ward off the Muddan-guddah. Smoking is a means of calling on the good spirits to offer protection to the performer of the ritual. Dinny McKellar conducted a smoking ceremony so that he would be safe when he swam amongst the reeds to collect swan eggs. The spirits would also bring good fortune. Dinny was taught to smoke his fishing line so that the ancestors would know who he was and assist with a catch.

Budjiti People perform other rituals when out on country. Judy Shillingsworth throws dirt into the water and calls out “Gouyoo Gouyoo” before throwing in her line. She learnt this from her mother Ruby as well as her grandmother. The same ritual is performed by Nina Prasad to attract the fish. Nina Prasad spits on her bait just as her mother once did.

Lorna McNiven remembers when Budjiti People used to meet with neighbouring

groups. They used to have ceremonies at the lakes, it had to be when there was an abundance of food. There would be meetings or ceremonies or anything after there had been “a big wet” and the lakes would be full of fish and birds. Millie Shillingsworth also recalls being told about a big ceremonial ground up at Caiwarro. In her outline of evidence she says that she remembers her “Granny saying that all the tribes have different ceremonial sites and the different tribes would meet and exchange things. Aunty Kate told me about ceremonies on Caiwarro, the men would all get out there and have a big feed and dance and do a corroboree and exchange things. Granny used to say it was men’s business, it was a meeting place”.