At the end of a Catholic Mass, the priest bids the congregation farewell by telling parishoners "go in peace, to love and serve the Lord" to which those in the pews respond "thanks be to God."*
Now, imagine that a member of said congregation in attendance at Mass the previous Sunday was accused of committing a brutal murder the following Thursday. Under police questioning, the lead investigator tells our chruchgoer, "you can't account for your whereabouts at the time of the murder, your DNA was found under the victim's fingernails, and a bloody hammer was found in your car. How do you explain all this?"
Our devoutly Catholic murderer explains "I couldn't possibly have done it. I was in church last Sunday, and the priest told us all sorts of things about loving our neighbours and told us to go in peace. No one could disobey such Godly commands!"
Homicide detectives would roar with laughter at such a ridiculous turn of logic.
But it's the exact same argument used by Sky News's latest Very Conservative Young Man, Alexander Voltz, to argue that far from being predicated on genocide and dispossession, colonisation was good for Aboriginal Australians; that colonisers only had their best wishes at heart. Nothing bad happened to local Aboriginal people during colonisation, because King George III told the colonisers to be nice.
George III gave the following instructions to Arthur Phillip, Captain of the First Fleet:
“You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them,” the King wrote.
“And,” he continued, “if any of our subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, it is our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the offence.”
You see? George III told the colonisers to behave themselves, and surely no one would disobey instructions like that! This statement, "in addition to Governor Phillip’s diligent and philosophic leadership", Voltz argues, "ensured that, from day one, the colony of Sydney Cove began as a humanitarian settlement".
It's laughable, but that's what gets you published in a major right wing outlet these days (likely published in their newspapers too - I can't be bothered checking). Voltz offers no other evidence to back up his claims.
There's plenty of evidence, however, that everything was not all sweetness and light between colonisers and local Aboriginal people.
In the 1790s, there were a series of attacks by colonisers on local Aboriginal people in the Hawkesbury region on what is now the outskirts of Sydney. In one attack, a boy was dragged through a fire, thrown into the river and shot dead; in another a pregnant woman died of gunshot wounds, her newborn baby delivered as a result of shock also dying. Another infant was also shot dead in that attack. Surviving women and children were taken by colonists as forced labour. This is documented in records of the time. No one faced charges.
Or how about the Appin Massacre, when that paragon of humanity, Phillip's successor Governor Lachlan Macquarie authorised a "campaign of terror" against local Aboriginal people. Troops under Macquarie's orders to clear land south west of Sydney of Aboriginal groups, launched a night raid against Aboriginal families found asleep near the Cataract River, indiscriminately shooting men, women and children and herding the survivors off of cliffs. Macquarie's specific orders were to offer conditions of surrender - the survivors to be captured as slaves - but when he learned of the slaughter, no charges were brought on the perpetrators, no penalties applied. Rather, Macquarie launched an even harsher crackdown on Aboriginal people, limiting where they could travel and even what they were allowed to carry.
(In a seperate column, Voltz refers to this as "in the spirit of amity and kindness the governor... offered passports, land and tools to those Aborigines who abided by British law." Pardon me while I go be sick in the corner, though not as ill as I was when I saw this:
And when was this tribute to Lachlan Macquarie and its grovelling tribute now standing proudly in Sydney's Hyde Park erected you wonder? 2013. Tear it down.
What they were offered was the chance to work as slave labour for colonists, and given land and tools to do so. The passports stated that this was where they laboured, and were allowed nowhere else).
And what was the reaction of King George III to the disobedience of his antipodean subjects? None whatsoever. No commissions were recalled, no heads were offed. Macquarie reported the sad details to his superior in London, accounting that his brave troops had no other choice, and the matter went no further.
There are many, many other examples of massacres of Aboriginal people, 417 documented in all as of 2024, accounting for 10,372 deaths. But Alexander Voltz had space for none of them. His claims of that colonists only had the best in mind for local Aboriginal people are only to make his larger point: demonising politicians and public figures who refuse to recognise Australia Day as a day of celebration. "[P]oliticians who attack Australia Day misunderstand the psyche of the Australian people", Volk sniffs:
Since 1808, Australians have been celebrating 26 January to commemorate Arthur Phillip’s raising of the Union Jack with, as Manning Clark reminds us, “drinking and merriment”.
In fact, official, Crown-endorsed celebrations did not begin until 1818 under Lachlan Macquarie’s governorship, when Elizabeth Macquarie threw a ball that “continued with spirit to a late hour.”
Were they also celebrating on 26 January 1838 when a party of mounted police killed possibly as many as 50 Kamilaroi people at the Gwydir River in north west NSW, an event now known as the Waterloo Massacre or Australia Day Massacre? Police had no authority to use lethal force, but no one was ever convicted for their role in the massacre.
I get depressed thinking of people like Alexander Voltz being paid to write this rubbish, but I know it's not a smidgen of a toenail clipping compared to what Aboriginal people must feel every January 26. How does Sky News find these people though? Alexander Voltz appears to be something of a compositional prodigy, and spokesperson for the Australian Monarchist League (reflecting that he was an infant during the 1999 constitutional referendum). There's no indication he has any qualifications or justification to write about history, politics or social issues, though. Perhaps in the interests of balance, ABC Classic FM could have me on to talk about orchestral works, about which I know nothing, but if I look up a few half baked notions and pad them out with much hubris, I'm sure I'll do about as well as Voltz does at Sky.
* As a child my sister thought "thanks be to God" was parishoners saying "thank God it's over and we can go."
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