PDF (Whole Thesis) - USQ ePrints - University of Southern ...

Further in his lecture, Manne then refers to the phrases coined by Blainey eight years prior to
making this speech, further demonstrating the extent to which these phrases had entered the
common lexicon. Manne commented on the polarising effect Blainey’s ‘Black armband’ and
‘Three cheers’ phrases had on the general Australian population.
At present, on the Aboriginal question, Australians are polarised between what we
have come to call the black armband and the white blindfold points of view. If I can
put this division in Cold War terms –while the left is churlish about the great
achievements of Australian history but clear sighted about the Aboriginal tragedy,
the Right understands the genuine accomplishments of Australian civilisation but is
incapable of acknowledging, without equivocation, the self-evident truths about the
terrible wrongs inflicted on the Aborigines in the building of the nation.
In Australian history very great achievements and very great injustices
occurred. Neither column in this moral ledger will cancel the other out. It is my hope
that one day the large majority of Australians will be able to accept the ambiguity at
the heart of our history without the need to flinch and turn away. (Manne, 2004, p.
68)
To further demonstrate the way that the history/culture wars have entered public interest and
debate, the ABC Radio National’s high profile annual Boyer Lectures series has often been
used as a way for the invited presenter to discuss issues of significance to Australian social
and cultural history. In particular, in the period from the Australian 1988 Bicentennial, nine
series of lectures have concentrated on this topic. Blainey’s 2001 lecture series, This land is
all horizons: Australia’s fears and visions, picks up on his 1993 assertion of the
misrepresentation of Australian history through an overemphasis on negative aspects of
Australia’s past (especially colonial history). In the opening statement of his first lecture in
the 2001 Boyer series, Blainey stated:
For much of my lifetime - and long before it - there was one dominant vision for
Australia. Expressed in a short sentence: all of the vast continent had, somehow, to
be filled with people...
You may say - and you are entitled to - that you are not impressed with this
old-time, optimistic point of view. Certainly, this goal of national development is
now in decline. Its decline is one of the main ideological changes within Australia in
472