The new chair of the Australian War Memorial, Kim Beazley, says he supports “proper recognition of the frontier conflict” as part of the institution’s $500m expansion, questioning how the institution can “have a history of Australian wars without that”.
The memorial has faced persistent criticism over its failure to properly commemorate the frontier wars, despite the conflicts being at the heart of Australia’s history.
Previous AWM leaders have cited the memorial’s governing legislation, the Australian War Memorial Act, as preventing it from covering the frontier wars, and have said its mission “does not extend beyond the experience of deployed Australian forces overseas in war and in peace”.
But Beazley, appointed chair a month ago, told the ABC on Monday that he saw no such limitation and wanted a “proper recognition of the frontier conflict” as part of the institution’s controversial $500m expansion.
“We do have to have a proper recognition of the frontier conflict, now how we do that is not yet settled because the curating committee will not be formed until next year,” he said.
“People think this is around the corner – unfortunately it is not. All the additions to the memorial, which are huge, will be completed by 2028, and that’s when we’ll see the revised display related to the frontier wars.”
The previous chair, Brendan Nelson, last year flagged support for “much broader, a much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people, initially by British, then by pastoralists, then by police, and then by Aboriginal militia”. But the memorial council quickly appeared to pour cold water on Nelson’s comments, telling News Corp it would not create a major permanent feature and that its focus on colonial wars would only be “modest”.
Nelson’s comments also prompted an immediate backlash from the Returned Services League and the shadow veterans’ affairs spokesperson, Barnaby Joyce, who said the Coalition “opposed any move that could put the Australian War Memorial at the centre of partisan political debate”.
Asked about the opposition to a more substantial recognition of the frontier wars, Beazley said: “How can we have a history of Australian wars without that? It’s a simple question, because we long since abandoned the idea that the memorial only depicted events from world war one onwards,” he said. “If you do that – which we have, comprehensively moved away from that – you have to have frontier wars reflected in it because it is by that means we established ourselves.”
Beazley also suggested that the memorial had new legal advice about the restrictions in the AWM Act, previously cited as a reason for its failure to properly commemorate the conflict.
“There was a legal interpretation at one point of time that said that and then more recently we’ve had legal representations that within the broader mandate you can do it,” he said
Beazley said the memorial’s commemoration could not be the only one of its type. He said there must be depictions “in every museum, in all the state museums, and the Australian Museum”.
“We have to be prepared as we go through truth telling processes to consult with different Aboriginal nations as to how they want massacres reflected, commemorated,” he said.
According to conservative estimates, the frontier wars caused the deaths of at least 20,000 Indigenous Australians at the hands of Australian-based military regiments, police forces and settlers’ militia from 1788 to 1928. The battle for sovereignty is considered a critical but often untold part of Australia’s history.
The Australian Financial Review reported last year that the veterans’ affairs minister, Matt Keogh, had told the memorial council that Labor was supportive of the creation of new frontier wars exhibits.
