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A1.5.4 October and November 1996: John Howard enters history/culture wars
debates as Prime Minister.
In many ways, the history/culture wars debates and associated neo-conservative views of
Australian history and culture can be viewed as a key defining issue of Howard’s eleven
years as Prime Minister. He expressed his views on Australian history prior to his election
victory in March 1996, and continued with the same conservative, Three cheers view
throughout his three terms; influencing and in many ways defining the nature of the
associated debates, assisted by a large number of conservative journalists and commentators
in the mainstream press, who are ideologically aligned with Howard. It was during his first
nine months as prime minister, that Howard first started using the term originally coined by
Blainey in 1993, the “black armband view of Australia history” (Howard, 1996, p. 6158.). It
is regarding Blainey’s speech that Sally Warhaft writes retrospectively,
What he described as ‘historical realism’ was subject to unprecedented attack,
although his 1993 speech on ‘The black armband view of history’ attracted little
attention until Prime Minister John Howard borrowed the phrase three years later.
Then it ‘took off like a rocket’ and entered the vernacular, although its originator
contends that most of its critics ‘had no idea what it signified’. (2004, pp. 267-8)
It is during two key speeches delivered two weeks apart, that the black armband term was
used by Howard, quickly appropriated by both sides of the debates in the history/culture wars
to assert their viewpoints on which perspectives and versions of Australia’s past should be
remembered. The first use of the term was on Wednesday, October 30 in the House of
Representatives, where in introducing four statements affirming Australia’s racial tolerance
and equity (developed as a bipartisanship undertaking) and in one further point specifically
denouncing racial intolerance, and perhaps channeling a distinct opposing view of former
Prime Minister Keating, Howard stated:
...I profoundly reject with the same vigour what others have described, and I have
adopted the description, as the black armband view of Australian history. I believe
the balance sheet of Australian history is a very generous and benign one. I believe
that, like any other nation, we have black marks upon our history but amongst the
nations of the world we have a remarkably positive history.
I think there is a yearning in the Australian community right across the
political divide for its leaders to enunciate more pride and sense of achievement in
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