How do we settle the 'statue wars'? Let's start by telling the truth about our past | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on Fri, 29/06/2018 - 4:00am

Colonial-era statues don’t of themselves teach us anything. But they can be portals to inquiry that lead to honest history

Nothing divides community sentiments about the history of Australia’s violent frontier quite like a vandalised statue dedicated to a killer of Indigenous people.

And so it was in 2017 after the vandalisation of statues dedicated to James Cook, the man who purportedly “discovered” Australia, and Lachlan Macquarie, the “gentleman” fifth governor of New South Wales who ordered his red coats to employ the tactic of “terror” in slaughtering the colony’s Aboriginal people in 1816.

I’ve long argued the need to change the names afforded to state and federal electorates, suburbs and some public places