Good history demands the full and uncomfortable story be in the official account

Suggestions that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is impeding or trying to censor an official history of Australia’s East Timor peacekeeping mission are disturbing but unsurprising.

They’re disturbing because good history must have as bedrock an independence from national reputation-shaping and political interference. The line between that and propaganda is fine.

Related: Australia cast itself as the hero of East Timor. But it was US military might that got troops in | Paul Daley

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