Following Scott John Morrison's announcement today of a 41-day political party campaign in leadup to the 21 May 2022 federal general election polling day - as promised total listing to date of the 316 nicknames & descriptive political terms applied to Morrison on social media demonstrating how much he is 'admired'

Self-proclaimed ‘Scomo’ Scott Morrison’s other nicknames and the descriptive political terms applied to him by the general public up to 8 April 2022

Listed in no particular order and presented as hashtags for readers’ convenience. Some of these nicknames and descriptive political terms surfaced for a single tweet or post while others were repeated and shared multiple times. Sometimes similar hashtags appear to represent different aspects of Scott Morrison’s behaviour over time. This is not an exhaustive list – it is likely there are tweets and posts I did not happen to see. One hashtag has been left off this list because the level of profanity was problematic.

#LiarFromTheShire #ScottyFromMarketing #ScumMo #SloMo #SmoKo #StuntMo #ScamMo #ScoMoFo #ScoMocchio #ProMo #FauxMo #CoalMo #GunnaDoMorrison #CrimeMinister #PrimeSinister #MorriScum #SloganBogan #ScoMoses #KoalaKiller #SmirkyMcSmirkface #TyphoidScotty #Bullshitboy #NotMyPM #ScottyFromSportsRorts #GrottyScotty #SideshowScott #TheJerkWithTheSmirk #TheEngadineShitter #HappyClappySloganBogan #ScottyNoMates #ScottyBornToShill #SnollygosterInChief #TrumpsBitch #ScoMoron #SmirkingSnake #SignificuntScotty #DeathMaker #ScottyTheAnnouncer #TheSmugThug #ScuntMo #JobShirker #JobDodger #ShirknSmirk #ScottyTheSaviour #MissionCreepMorrison #ScottyTheSimp #ScottyFromGilead #MaliciousMorrison #TrumpLite #ScottyTheBully #ScoFuckingMo #ScottyGanda #FoghornLiehorn #MansplainerInChief #Scooter #ScottyForPhotoShoots #ScottyThePoser #PerformativeShitclown #BunningsBoy #ScoVid #ScottyTheSkiver #PinchfartMorrison #ScottyWotty #ScottyNeverHelped #SnottyTheGrifter #RoboScomo #ScumNut #ScottyFromGasMarketing #ScottAllMouthNoTrousersMorrison  #KimJongScottyUn #Scrotum #Fullofshiticus #ScottyGaveMeShingles #CaptainSmirk #McFuckface #SideshowScott #ScottyFromPhotoOps #DoughMo #ScottyTheUninvited #ScottyStoppedTheExports #ScottyThePutz #scottyfkntrump #SmirkAndMirrorsMorrison #ScottyNeverHelped #ScottyMIA #Slomoaf #InactionMan #SnakeOilScumo #NoShowMo #WhatsInItForScotty #ScottyTheFukwit #ScottyTheCharlatan #ScottyDoNothing #SnottieTheSpiv #ScottyTheVile #ShonkyFromTheStartScotty #ScottyKnew #ScottyFromCoverUps #ScottyTheRapistProtector #ScottyTheUnsavoury #ScottyTheQueueJumper #ScottyTheMisogynist #ScottyDoesNothing #PastorBumblefuck #ScottyIPromiseNotToShootWimmensMorrison  #Squirmo #Scrotum #ScottyTheUnhinged #ScottyUnfitForOffice #LordSmirkington #ScottyTheGaslighter #ScottyFromDamageControl #SpinMeisterMorrison #ScottyTheLiar #ClotMorrison #Scoflake #ScareMo #MilkshakeMorrison #MealeyMouthMorriscum #ScottyBlahBlah #CanDooDooMorrison #MorrisonTheSpiritualAbuser #ScottyTheChosenOne #ScottyFromHillsong #ScottAlmighty #ScottyTheIntern #SquattyFromMarketing #MilkshakeTwerkinJerkinMotormouth #PariahFromTheShire #scroto #ElSmirko #ScottTheArseholePrick #ClottyTheEagleOfGod #TheLastKingofCookland #ScottyFromBlathering #Scomozzle #ScottyFromCarpeting #Scoff #Scovid #ScottyFromQanon #ScottyTheTosser #FakeScott #Moronson #ScottytheChildAbuser  #ScottytheMonster #ScottyTheSerialUnderachiever #QanonPM #RoboSco #ScottyNoFriends #sQomo #Sqotty #QanonPM #ScottyFromStuffUps #LunaticInTheLodge #ScottyTheSuperSpreader #CrookFromCook #ClotMo #Smuggo #ScottyTheFaker #ScottyInHiding #ScottyTheProtocolCreep #ScottyTheObserver #ScottyTheAntichrist #SCOalMOle #ScottyTheDictator #ScottyFromHairPlugs #MorrisonTheOneManBand #WallpaperGuy #ScottyTheMaliciousAdvisor #ScottyFromMuppeting #ScottyTheBlameShifter #ScottyTheCoward #HuffMuffMorrison #SirMoron #MassMurdererMorrison #GotOffScottFreeMorrison #EvilBully #Clotty #Morrisogynist #AlohaScotty #IonlyHoldAPoseMorrison #JesusMorrison #ShoutyMcDickhead #ShoutyMcShoutface #ScottyFromGlasgow #PrimeMinisterForNSW #ScottyTheClimateFake #ComboverMorrison #LordOfTheLies #MorrisonTheDestroyer #TheAustralianWayPrimeFailure #PrimeFailureMorrison #ScottyHasAPamphlet #ScottyHasAPlan #ScottyThePariah #ScottyTheTraitor #ScottyTheLeaker #MorrisonPantsOnFire #DimwitDipshitDropkickClown #MorrisonNoShow #ScottyThePalterer #ScottyTheCoalFondler #LooseLipsMorrison #PrimeArsonist #ScottyThePathologicalLiar #TickTockScuntMo #ScottyTheSmugBastard #HawaiiScoMo #ScottyDontHoldAHose #ScottytheDogWhistler #ScottyTheNasty #TickTockScottym #CanDoCapitalismAndWontDoGovernmentMorrison #PrimeMemeMinister #ShanghaiScott #SnotMorrison #ScottytheLiarbyOmission #BooooScottyBoooo #BooHooScotty #ArrogantScott #SmirkingLumpOfSentientPizzaDough #Scomicron #ScottyCouldntGiveaRats #ScottyFromEugenics #RATPM #RestingSmugFace #PapaSmirk #ScottytheFailure #RentaGospelScottMorrison #MotormouthMorrison #PrimeMonsterMorrison #ScottyTheMediaWhore #GoSlowScomo #ScottTheUnlikeable #CantCountMorrison #ScottNoIdea #ScottyTheCreep #AbsoluteArseholeMorrison #ScottyFromHairdressing #ScottyNoEmpathy #ScottyTheWanker #PrimeIncompetent #ScottyTheIdiotInCharge #SensitiveScotty #ScottyTheTool #ScottyTheFraud #MorrisonTheCallousHypocrite #MorrisonFail #ShitshowMorrison #ScottyTheDickhead #ScottyTheShitMagnet #ScottyThePsycho #Psychomo #ScottyTheAbsolutePsycho #KirribilliHillbilli #ScottyTheBludger #ScottyTheGutlessWonder #ScottyFromDressups #MorrisonTheManipulator #MachiavellianMorrison #ScottyDoesSweetFA #ScottyFromWelding #PartTimeMPScott #JustForShowMorrison #BubbleMerchant #Scumo4Armageddon #ScottyTheGreatPretender #ShysterFromTheShire #ScottyTheScumbag #ScottyTheGutless #MorrisonTheNarcissist #MorrisonTheCallousChristian #MorrisonTheChristianHypocrite #MorrisonTheShapeShifter #MorrisonTheBully #LameSinister #ScottyTheRacist #TwoTimesSackedScotty #ScottyTheWarmonger #ScottyTheApocalypse      #ScottyheClotProtector #ScottyFromAnnounceables #ScottyThePrick#RortMan #MorrisonFromEugenics #NotFitToBePrimeMinisterMorrison #ScottyTheWrecker #ScaredyCatScotty #ScottyDontManAFloodboat #CaptainAustralia #BooedAtAFuneralMorrison #DelusionalScotty #Scomocron #Slimo #ScottyWetPants #ScottyThe[insert emoji here] #ScottyTheBlamer #ScottyTheShitMagnet #ScottyTheSmirkingAssassin #ScottytheDodger #ScottyTheScuttler #ScottyTheBlowHard #ScottyTheBullshitter #ScottyTheBulky #ScottyTheThief #ScottyTheBaldy #ScottyTheBusBoy #Scottythe[fill in the next word] #ScottyTheController #ScottyThe-fill-in-fuckup #ScottyTheDrongo #ScottyFromSky #ToxicScotty #ScottyFromSkidMarketing #KingOfKirribilli #PrimeGaslighter #worstPMever

TOTAL 316

Addendum

added 13 May 2022

#ScottyMustGo #ScottyTheWelder #ScottyTheCloseFriendOfChildren #OneJobMorrison #CowardFromCook #AllTinselNoTreeMorrison #ScatMo #PrimeMinisterForPenmanship

TOTAL 324

 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison cannot even give a speech on the 14th anniversary of the historic Apology to the Stolen Generations without causing many to call into question his world view

POST SUBTITLE: In which Scott Morrison's personal philosophy markedly resembles that of those religious institutions which historically assisted successive colonial and state governments to oppress First Nations people within Australia and its island territories whilst pursuing the eradication of First Nations spirituality, cultures and languages.

Apology to the Stolen Generations
A section of the invited guests, 
Australian Parliament, Wednesday, 13 February 2008
IMAGE:Mark Baker/AFP/Getty Images in The Guardian

On 14 February 2022 the Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook, Scott Morrison, rose to his feet in the House of Representatives to acknowledge the 14^th anniversary of the 13 February 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations given by then Prime Minister & Labor MP for Griffith, Kevin Rudd.

In part Morrison’s speech stated:

“Mr Speaker, we are on a journey to make peace with our past. And it’s a difficult journey and it is an important one, to draw together the past, the present, and future, so we can truly be one and free.

We belong to a story - from time immemorial, a continent that contends with us all, and the work of building a strong, sovereign and vibrant democracy that gives us all a voice.

But we don’t seek to sugarcoat this story. We don’t turn aside from the injustices, contentions and abrasions. That’s what successful liberal democracies do. We must remember if we are to shape the future, and to do so wisely.

So as we do this at this time every year, we remember the Stolen Generations. Children taken from their parents. I say it again, children taken from their parents. No parent, no child could fail to understand the devastation of that, regardless of whatever their background is. Children taken from their parents. Families and communities torn apart. Again and again and again.

With that trauma, disconnection, and unquenching pain, came a national shame and a deep wound. Separated from country, from kinship, from family, from language, from identity. Becoming even strangers to themselves.

Fourteen years have passed since we had said sorry here in this place.

Sorry for the cold laws that broke apart families.

Sorry for the brutalities that were masked even under the guise of protection and even compassion.

Sorry for believing that Indigenous people were not capable of stewarding their own lives.

Sorry for the failure to respect, to understand, to appreciate.

Sorry for the lives damaged and destroyed.

So on this day, and every year since, we are right to remind ourselves of times past - not to re-ignite the coals of pain, or to bring division where there are the beginnings of healing, but to be mindful of the lessons learned. To turn again from the great Australian silence, and towards each other.

And to again say: we are sorry.

And as I said when I spoke in support of the original motion here in this place on the other side of the Chamber 14 years ago, sorry can never be given without any expectation of forgiveness. But there can be hope.

I said an apology “involves … standing in the middle ground exposed, vulnerable and seeking forgiveness”.

Forgiveness is never earned or deserved. It can never be justified on the simple weighing of hurts and grievance. Such measures will never rationally tip the balance in favour of forgiveness.

Forgiveness transcends all of that. It’s an act of grace. It’s an act of courage. And it is a gift that only those who have been wounded, damaged and destroyed can offer.

I also said fourteen years ago, “sorry is not the hardest word to say, the hardest is I forgive you”.

But I do know that such a path of forgiveness does lead to healing. It does open up a new opportunity. It does offer up release from the bondage of pain and suffering that no simple apology on its own can achieve.

And nor do I believe that such forgiveness is a corporate matter. It can only begin with the individual. And forgiveness does not mean forgetting. Nor does it mean that there are not consequences for actions, and the need for redress and restitution.

This is a hard conversation. I know that Danny Abdallah, who together with his wife Leila knows a lot about loss and grief, and they have begun this conversation with Indigenous community leaders through the i4Give you foundation that he has established in memory of their children Antony, Angelina and Sienna and their niece [Veronique].

Out of great tragedy and loss there can rise hope. And I wish them all the very best for these conversations.” [my yellow highlighting]

The response to Morrison’s words on "forgiveness" was immediate.

Our official* response to what Scott Morrison said today:

*polite pic.twitter.com/DRsrdGvcV1

— First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria (@firstpeoplesvic) February 14, 2022

News.com.au, 14 February 2022:

“I said 14 years ago, ‘Sorry is not the hardest word to say … the hardest is I forgive you.’”

 Mr Morrison’s statement immediately came under fire, with some people labelling the last six words as “utterly reprehensible”. 

Indigenous Greens senator Lidia Thorpe said Mr Morrison’s statement was “not an apology”. 

“This is outright disrespectful to all those affected by stolen generations in this country,” she said. 

“How dare you ask forgiveness when you still perpetrate racist policies and systems that continue to steal our babies.”

Australian Federal Election 2022: moment meant to boost the reputation of Morrison Government goes spectacularly pear-shaped. Again

 

https://www.sea.museum/explore/maritime-archaeology/deep-dive/finding-endeavour

In 1788 during the American War of Independence a British troop transport & prison ship believed to have once been styled His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour was deliberately sunk along with six other vessels across the outer entrance to Newport Harbour, in an attempt to stop America’s ally France from taking possession of the town during the Siege of Newport.

The graveyard of these wrecked ships were rediscovered in modern times and are now the subject of archeological investigation begun in 1993 on what is a complex site. The Australian National Maritime Museum has been part of on-site investigations for the last four years.

Approximately 15 per cent of one particular wreck is relatively intact while the remainder of that ship lies scattered across one section of the seabed to the north of Goat Island. It is now known as RI 2394 and is possibly Lieutenant (later Commander) James Cook's former command

 HMB Endeavour.

It appears that prior to being scuttled RI 2394 was stripped of all fixtures of value and thus has no clear identifying features remaining except for its now predominately disconnected broken timbers.

Part of what Australian authorities believe is James Cook’s famous vessel. IMAGE: ABC News

Pre-disturbance mapping of RI 2394
The Search for Capt. Cook's Endeavour in Newport Harbour
Dr. D.K. Abbass PhD in The Redwood Library & Athenæum
Magazine ETC., Winter 2019

To date RI 2394 has only been identified as "the most likely to be the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®".  A sufficient level of archeological findings has not yet been produced.

Nevertheless, the federal government owned Australian National Maritime Museum – one of the research partners in the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project apparently decided sometime between 1- 2 February 2022 to issue a media release which resulted in similarly worded articles being published online by the The Senior, Daily Liberal Leader, Shepperton News, U.K. Daily Mail, and Australian National Geographic on 3 February 2022.

Australian Community Media’s Daily Liberal Leader, 3 February 2022:

British explorer James Cook's ship Endeavour has been identified after languishing in US waters for more than two centuries.

Cook famously sailed the ship around the South Pacific before landing on the east coast of Australia in 1770.

Australian National Maritime Museum CEO Kevin Sumption announced that after a 22-year program of archival and archaeological research, "we can conclusively confirm that this is indeed the wreck of Cook's Endeavour".

"This is an important moment," he told reporters at National Maritime Museum in Sydney on Thursday.

"It is arguably one of the most important vessels in our maritime history."

The ship played an important role in exploration, astronomy and science and was an important artefact in the history of Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and now the US, he said.

A "preponderance of evidence" had led to the conclusion that an archaeological site known as RI2394 in Newport Harbour, Rhode Island, "does indeed comprise of the shipwreck of HM Bark Endeavour," he said.

Since 1999 maritime archaeologists have been investigating several 18^th century shipwrecks in a two square mile area of Newport Harbor, Rhode Island.

The Endeavour was scuttled there by the British 244 years ago and lay forgotten for more than two centuries.

Although only about 15 per cent of the vessel remains, several details on the wreck convinced archaeologists they had found Endeavour after matching structural details and the shape of the remains to those on 18th century plans of the ship.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher applauded the discovery, saying it fulfilled the museum's mission to record and display the story of Australia's maritime heritage.

"What the museum has done ... over 20 years to verify the location of the vessel ... is of extraordinary importance", he said…… [my yellow highlighting]

However, this ‘historic’ co-announcement by the National Maritime Museum and the Morrison Government appears to be somewhat premature as I can find no published record of Mr. Sumption's confirmed discovery claim*, nor did he cite any publication date. It seems he was in something of a rush to inform the world. 

*It should be noted that in his LinkedIn entry Kevin Sumption lays no claim to having qualifications directly related to archeology or to having been employed as an archeologist. His skills lie in museum management, planning, projects & exhibitions. 

And then there is this......

STATEMENT FROM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR - D.K. ABBASS PhD:

February 2, 2022

The Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) report that the Endeavour has been identified is premature. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) is now and always has been the lead organization for the study in Newport harbor. The ANMM announcement today is a breach of the contract between RIMAP and the ANMM for the conduct of this research and how its results are to be shared with the public. What we see on the shipwreck site under study is consistent with what might be expected of the Endeavour, but there has been no indisputable data found to prove the site is that iconic vessel, and there are many unanswered questions that could overturn such an identification. When the study is done, RIMAP will post the legitimate report on its website at: www.rimap.org. Meanwhile, RIMAP recognizes the connection between Australian citizens of British descent and the Endeavour, but RIMAP's conclusions will be driven by proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics.

One can’t help but suspect that there is one particular person who will be disappointed in how the National Maritime Museum's announcement is going down.

That person is Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison, the well-known fan of all things 'Captain' Cook & Endeavour. 

Who it happens is also a prime minister in search of feelgood election campaign stories which might allow him to bathe momentarily in a little reflected glory. 

Now faced with the prospect that quite a few voters might believe that this particular 'historic' Endeavour announcement was a somewhat hysterical attempt on the part of PMO staff to present a different media narrative in order to paper over the very recent revelations that certain members of Morrison's own party see him as “a horrible, horrible person”, “just obsessed with petty political point scoring”, “a complete psycho”, “desperate and jealous”, and that “the mob have worked him out and think he’s a fraud”.

Australians will be prompted to include traditional place names when addressing letters and parcels from July 2021, after a community campaign

 

ABC News, 5 July 2021:

Australians will be prompted to include traditional place names when addressing letters and parcels from July 2021, after a community campaign.(ABC News: Margaret Paul)

Australians will now be prompted to include traditional place names when addressing letters and parcels, after a community campaign.

The new Australia Post packaging will include a dedicated spot where customers can choose to include the First Nation country, just above the street address on a letter or parcel.

It will be phased in as stock becomes available, as part of NAIDOC week.

Gomeroi woman Rachael McPhail has been petitioning Australia Post to make the change, as part of a campaign to include traditional place names in all addresses.

"For every town, for every place in this country, we have an original name, and it's important to use them as a celebration and to recognise the history and the connection of First People to country," she said.

She said the next step was compiling a comprehensive database of all traditional place names, so people could easily work out where to send their mail.

She said that would require a national, collaborative effort.

"What that entails is comprehensive and respectful consultation with First Nations people, elders, and community leaders, all around the country," she said.

"We need to make sure we are recording and collating that information all around the country."…….

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ordered an urgent review of the 42 year old National Australia Day Council

On 1 May 2021 The Saturday Paper reported that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ordered an urgent review of the board of the National Australia Day Council, established as the Australia Day Committee in 1979. 

National Australia Day Council Limited (NADC) is a not-for-profit Commonwealth owned corporation, within the Prime Minister's portfolio responsibilities, as well as being a tax exempt charity which is the “coordinating body for Australia Day celebrations across the nation and for the Australian of the Year Awards. The NADC heads a network of eight state and territory Australia Day affiliate organisations and 780 local Australia Day committees….reports to the Commonwealth Parliament under the provisions of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. The operations of the company are overseen by a board of Directors appointed by the Prime Minister”.

The NADC board of directors in 2019-20 were:

Ms Danielle Roche OAM Chair

Ms Robbie Sefton Deputy Chair

Ms Stephanie Foster PSM

Dr Robert Isaacs AM

Dr Stepan Kerkyasharian AO

Ms Jane McNamara

Major General (Ret’d) Maurie McNarn AO

Mr Richard Rolfe AM

Mr Norman Schueler OAM

Ms Naseema Sparks AM appointment ended 25 June 2020.

As of 1 May 2021 the position of Chair, Deputy Chair, and two Director/Non Executive Director positions are vacant. Danielle Roche and Maurie McNarn are no longer on the board. Robbie Sefton is no longer Deputy Chair but remains a Director/Non Executive Director and Alison Page became a board member in September 2020.

NADC employs around 12 people full-time and is located in Canberra, ACT.

In its last published annual report NADC stated that:

During the period ended 30 June 2020, the NADC and Network continued to deliver both national and state programs. The Australian Government, through the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, provided a total of $14,665,913 funding for the company. Sponsors provided a total of $2,109,860 for national programs, and part of this funding was allocated to state and territory Australia Day affiliates for local projects.

NADC does not appear to have any significant debt. There appears to have been no ministerial directions received, no government policy orders received and no judicial decisions or decisions of administrative tribunals were made concerning NADC during the 2019-20 reporting period.

So what has made the Prime Minister hot under the collar? After all, he makes those NADC board appointments.

Could it be that Morrison is uncomfortable with the fact that from January 2020 NADC through its “The Story of Australia” advertising placed a much greater emphasis on the histories and stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? That he didn't like the NADC commitment for 2020-21 to "work to expand the reach of our Respect, Reflect, Celebrate: We’re all part of the story message into Australia Day events in every State and Territory, every town and city"?

Or was he incensed to the core of his narrow, historically inaccurate world view by this event?

"At dawn on Australia Day 2020, Port Phillip City Council in Melbourne and the Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council, with the support of the NADC, held a We-Akon Dilinja (Mourning-Reflection) ceremony."

Chronologically it seems that Morrison's unusually short extension of Danielle Roche's contact as a NADOC director, which saw her ending her association with the National Australia Day Council on 31 March 2021, possibly may have followed on from his personal dissatisfaction with the 2020 Respect, Reflect, Celebrate Australia Day message which acknowledged Aboriginal dispossession commencing in 1788.  Within four weeks of becoming prime minister Scott Morrison in 2018 was on record as viewing any such acknowledgement as "indulgent self loathing".

Or is it that in 2021 NADC made Grace Tame @TamePunk Australian of the Year and she refused be cowed by his ‘eminent’ position or pull her punches when it came to publicly speaking of institutional sexual abuse, sexual assault and sexual harassment? 

Or is Morrison upset that on 25 January 2021 the NADC Board made a referral to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) of the leak of some Australia Day award recipients' names, given strong suspicions that there was an attempt by a person or persons to manipulate the betting market? For operational reasons about 180 individuals were informed of the winners names in December 2020 and that possibly would have included one or more staff in the Office of Prime Minster and Cabinet. No award finalists are ever informed before the official announcement on 26 January.

A Quote for Australia Day-Invasion Day 2021

 

“I'm astounded at the comment [from the Prime Minister]…..

"It indicates to me a very shallow understanding of the arrival of the First Fleet and the impact of that on Aboriginal Australia.

"It's a very selfish comment. He said nothing about the arrival of that fleet on the Aboriginal owners who own the place.

"There's no empathy there at all. He's turning it inward. It's all about self-praise and aggrandisement of white fella colonisation.

"It's so shallow in that it doesn't involve inclusion or diversity.

"I just think he's very lightweight when it comes to understanding Australian history and Aboriginal perspectives about the British colonisation of the country.”

[Former Australian of the Year. Northern Territory Treaty Commissioner and ANU Professor of Law, Michael Dodson AM, a proud Yawuru man, quoted in ABC News online, 22.01.21]

An example of how Australian colonial history was re-written

In 1803 the first British soldiers and convicts landed in Van Diemen's Land and in 1824 it became a separate colony to New South Wales. 

By then the colonial population of the island numbered est. 11,967 souls and a population explosion had begun which expanded across more of the land.

Between 1825 and 1831 - when the British-European population had almost tripled - Aboriginal resistance to invasion and occupation of their country increased, with 219 colonists and 260 Aboriginals reported killed. [Nicholas Clements, 2014] 

Though the reality is that Aboriginal deaths were likely considerably higher as this number may not have counted all men, women and children gratuitously murdered, as it is believed that few so-called 'reprisal' incidents were officially recorded at the time they occurred. [Hobart Town Gazette December 3, 1823; Ryan, 1996:86-88; Bonwick, 1870:99, Hobart Town Gazette May 5, 1827; Colonial Times May 11, 1827; George 2002:13, Lee 1927:41; AOT VDL 5/1 No.2, 14/1/28 in SciencePo, 5 March 2008]

However, contemporary colonial history often tried to paint a different picture......

 

Legend reads: "Why Massa Gubernor", said Black Jack. "You Profflamation all gammon.
"How blackfellow read him eh? He no learn him read book."
"Read that then", said the Governor, pointing to the picture.'

“Images are treacherous; labels more so. As it happens, Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines 1816 had nothing to do with Governor Davey. It does not date from 1816. And it is not really a proclamation. It was commissioned by Lieutenant Governor Sir George Arthur; in 1830, around one hundred copies were published by the government printer in Hobart, placed on wooden boards, and disseminated. The misattribution dates from its re-discovery in the 1860s and might be explained in two ways. First, by setting the date back almost a generation, the notion that the British colony was founded on the principle of the rule of law is thereby promoted.

Law always needs some mythic retrospectivity to shore up its legitimacy—a penal colony established by dispossession and maintained by violence over whites and blacks alike, especially. The violence and chaos that mark the birth of any new legal order thus become cloaked in a myth that emphasizes instead its inevitability, its order, and its naturalness. By the 1860s, it surely served the interests of Tasmania’s free settlers to inject the rule of law into their narrative of legitimate settlement, as early as possible.

Secondly, Thomas Davey cuts a more attractive figure as author of the Proclamation than Sir George Arthur. As governor, Davey had protested in 1814 his “utter indignation and abhorrence” about the kidnapping of Aboriginal children. But Governor Arthur was an altogether more paradoxical figure, a man who oscillated wildly between expressions of concern for the Aborigines and military campaigns against them; between inciting white settlers to kill Tasmania’s first inhabitants and expressing outrage when they did. He was a man who combined eruptions of extreme action with outbursts of remorseful reflection. Above all, as the man behind the notorious Black Line, the dragnet which attempted to corral like cattle the Aboriginal population of the whole island, Arthur symbolizes a way of thinking about the original Tasmanians that “would be laughable were it not so criminally tragic.” Such a background surely taints and complicates the promise of the rule of law.

The cartoon was suggested and apparently drawn by Arthur’s Surveyor-General George Frankland, and he in turn was inspired by Aboriginal bark paintings.....

The paradox that this drawing raises lies in the difficulty of squaring “the real wishes of the government,” as the Proclamation presents it, with the “the actual state of things” in Van Diemen’s Land. At the very same time that Governor Arthur’s Proclamation elaborated an expansive commitment to the rule of law, he was extending martial law throughout Tasmania. Martial law had initially been declared in 1828 in the face of Aboriginal resistance to colonial settlement. In February of 1830, a reward of five pounds was proclaimed for the capture of adult Aborigines (two pounds for a child), describing them as “a horde of [s]avages” consumed by “revengeful feelings.” In October of 1830, faced by “continued repetitions of the most wanton and sanguinary acts of violence and outrage,” Arthur extended martial law to “every part of this Island.” On October 7, “the [white] community . . . en masse” was to spread out like a human chain across the whole island and, by moving forward, herd the Black or Aboriginal Natives on to Tasman’s Peninsula where they could be penned in once and for all.

Yet martial law had always been understood as involving the suspension of the rule of law. In 1829, the brutal murder of an Aboriginal woman was deemed by the Solicitor-General to be beyond the reach of the common law precisely because it fell under the very broad rubric of “necessary operations against the enemies.” Subject to “an active and extended system of Military operations against the Natives generally” and until the “cessation of hostilities,” Aboriginal Tasmanians were specifically placed outside the rule of law. The Black Line, a dismal and notorious folly, led to the capture of a grand total of two Aborigines and the shooting of two more, but it was powerfully evocative of the colonial government’s attitude towards them…." 

[Desmond Manderson (January 2013) in NYLS Law Review, Vol 57, Issue 1, “THE LAW OF THE IMAGE AND THE IMAGE OF THE LAW”, pp. 157-158]