Please don’t applaud Turnbull’s ode to white supremacy.
Malcolm Turnbull wrote a tirade against people who vandalised statues of Captain Cook and Governor Macquarie. Here are the images, because they’re worth seeing:

It’s worth noting that “vandalising” a statue isn’t the same as erasing it. No one tore down a monument, but people engaged with them, reframed them and ensured a crucial part of the history that the monuments mask, was given equal weight.
What’s more insidious is the way Turnbull talks about Australian history. “Dark chapters” is so much more poetic than genocide. “Dispossession” such a polite way of saying stolen land. He does with words, what the statues do with bronze — try to point away from the violence, because if you see it, really see it for a moment, the white supremacy behind it is laid bare, the suffering is intolerable. To understand those statues and what they stand for is to turn away from them.
The argument that people of color in Australia want to erase history is insulting and a clear indication of how out of touch someone like Malcolm is. Especially given how hard Indigenous Australians have fought for this country’s history to be told accurately, for as long as their stories are sidelined in our folklore, the longer they can continue to be sidelined in our politics and economics.
For people who have been on the receiving end of the horror of white supremacy history is crucial. We pass down the stories from generation to generation so our children can recognize the warning signs of when we’re being hunted. We pull each other close when we’re humiliated on streets, in airports or at funerals for ones that pass too young, because justice was never going to come through for them.
I believe the monuments should be taken down — but in no way do I think that we should erase that history. Those monuments belong in a museum, next to the white Australia policy immigration tests, and council resolutions banning Aboriginal people from swimming pools.
A society is only free if that freedom extends to everyone. There’s no mistaking the message those monuments standing in our public spaces today carry to people who aren’t white: if you get too loud, too organized or too demanding, we can wipe you out and relish in our own glory.
