Rhetoric of Redress: Australian Political Speeches and Settler Citizens' Historical Consciousness

ABSTRACT

This article traces the convergence of state redress and the educational construction of citizenship from the 1990s onwards in Australia. It examines how successive settler political leaders used the education of a historical consciousness—settler citizens’ relation to past, present and future—as a core strategy to seek resolution to the problematic national past. The article examines key political speeches that sought to mediate the settler nation's past in light of growing international and domestic pressures, including Keating's 1992 Redfern Park speech and Rudd's 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations, and one of conservative backlash: Howard's 1996 Menzies Lecture. Rudd's subsequent national policy agenda of apology and an Australian Curriculum sought to inaugurate a new era in the settler nation's history. That program was embodied by the figure of the future citizen positioned to reckon with the nation's unjust past, a task inscribed in the inaugural national history curriculum.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• civics and citizenship education
• history education
• curriculum
• nation-building
• apology
• settler colonialism

Acknowledgements

I thank Beth Marsden and Anna Clark for their incisive comments on earlier drafts of this article, and the reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 James Curran, The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2004); Tom Clark, Stay on Message: Poetry and Truthfulness in Political Speech (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2011).

2 In this sense, “citizenship education” is to be distinguished from the Australian Curriculum's Civics and Citizenship education subject. See Daniel Tröhler, Thomas S. Popkewitz, and David F. Labaree, eds., Schooling and the Making of Citizens in the Long Nineteenth Century: Comparative Visions (New York: Routledge, 2011); Daniel Sergio Friedrich, Democratic Education as a Curricular Problem: Historical Consciousness and the Moralizing Limits of the Present (New York: Routledge, 2014).

3 I use “settler state” as a general descriptor for the Australian nation-state and its modes of governance. I use “settler citizen” and “settler nation” to distinguish settler-colonial claims to nationhood and sovereignty from First Nations sovereignty, governance systems and understandings of nationhood.

4 Anna Clark, Teaching the Nation: Politics and Pedagogy in Australian History (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2006).

5 Paul Smeyers and Marc Depaepe, eds. Educational Research: The Educationalization of Social Problems (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2008); Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, “The Aesthetic and Ascetic Dimensions of an Ethics of Self-Fashioning: Nietzsche and Foucault,” Parrhesia 2 (2007): 55.

6 Jörn Rüsen, History: Narration, Interpretation, Orientation (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005); Kenneth Nordgren, “Boundaries of Historical Consciousness: A Western Cultural Achievement or an Anthropological Universal?,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 51, no. 6 (2019): 779–97.

7 Stephen Winter, Transitional Justice in Established Democracies: A Political Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Danielle Celermajer, The Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

8 Naomi Hodgson, Citizenship for the Learning Society: Europe, Subjectivity, and Educational Research (West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2016); Ian Hunter, “Assembling the School,” in Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and the Rationalities of Government, ed. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose (Hoboken: Taylor & Francis Group, 2013), 143–66.

9 Stephen Winter, “Legitimacy, Citizenship and State Redress,” Citizenship Studies 15, no. 6/7 (2011): 799–814.

10 Jörn Rüsen, “Historical Consciousness: Narrative Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development,” in Theorizing Historical Consciousness, ed. Peter Seixas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 63–85.

11 A challenge faced by state-builders was how to construct citizens who were at once imperial subjects of the British Crown but also citizens of a newly defined, distinctive nation. After Federation in 1901, there was growing emphasis on Australian nation-building; however, Australian citizens were still imagined as members of a British Empire conceived in both racial and economic terms. See Leigh Boucher, “Victorian Liberalism and the Effect of Sovereignty: A View from the Settler Periphery,” History Australia 13, no. 1 (2016): 50; Mati Keynes, “History Education, Citizenship and State Formation,” in Handbook of Historical Studies in Education, ed. Tanya Fitzgerald, Springer International Handbooks of Education (Singapore: Springer, 2020); Andy Green, Education and State Formation: Europe, East Asia and the USA, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

12 Mario Carretero, Constructing Patriotism Teaching History and Memories in Global Worlds (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2014).

13 A. R. Trethewey, “Social and Educational Influences on the Definition of a Subject: History in Victoria, 1850–1954,” in Contemporary Studies in the Curriculum, ed. Peter William Musgrave (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1974), 95–112.

14 Andrew Bonnell and Martin Crotty, “Australia's History under Howard, 1996–2007,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617, no. 1 (2008): 149–65.

15 Russell McGregor, “Another Nation: Aboriginal Activism in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s,” Australian Historical Studies 40, no. 3 (2009): 343–60.

16 James Curran and Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation: Australia after Empire (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2010).

17 Keynes, “History Education, Citizenship and State Formation”.

18 Danielle Celermajer and Joanna Kidman, “Embedding the Apology in the Nation's Identity,” Journal of the Polynesian Society 121, no. 3 (2012): 230.

19 Calermajer and Kidman, “Embedding the Apology,” 231.

20 Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000).

21 Smeyers and Depaepe, Educational Research.

22 Thomas S. Popkewitz, “The Production of Reason and Power: Curriculum History and Intellectual Traditions,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 29, no. 2 (1997): 131–64; Daniel Friedrich, “Historical Consciousness as a Pedagogical Device in the Production of the Responsible Citizen,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 31, no. 5 (2010): 649–63.

23 I use “curriculum policy” to denote major reports, syllabus guidelines and curricular frameworks. See Lyn Yates and Cherry Collins, “Australian Curriculum 1975–2005: What Has Been Happening to Knowledge?” (paper delivered at AARE Conference, Brisbane, Queensland, December 2008).

24 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody: National Report (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1991), http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/rciadic/.

25 Paul Keating, “Redfern Speech,” transcript of speech, Redfern Park, 10 December 1992, https://antar.org.au/sites/default/files/paul_keating_speech_transcript.pdf.

26 Archie Thomas, Andrew Jakubowicz, and Heidi Norman, Does the Media Fail Aboriginal Political Aspirations?: 45 Years of News Media Reporting of Key Political Moments (Sydney: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2020), 99.

27 Thomas, Jakubowicz, and Norman, Does the Media Fail Aboriginal Political Aspirations?, 103.

28 Keating, “Redfern Speech”.

29 Andrew Jakubowicz, “Carved in Stone: The 1992 Redfern Statement,” in Thomas, Jakubowicz, and Norman, Does the Media Fail Aboriginal Political Aspirations?, 103.

30 Jakubowicz, “Carved in Stone,” 103.

31 Keating, “Redfern Speech”.

32 This focus echoed one of the main points of Stanner's Boyer Lectures, where he points out the limitations of history books to deal with historical truth. See W. E. H. Stanner, 1968 Boyer Lectures: After the Dreaming, Seventh Printing edition (Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1974).

33 See Robert J. Parkes, “Teaching History as Hermeneutics: Critically and Pedagogically Engaging Narrative Diversity in the Curriculum” (paper given at Biennial Conference of the Australian Curriculum Studies Association, Melbourne, 2007), 386.

34 History: Study Design (Carlton, VIC: Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board, 1990), 2.

35 History: Study Design, 47–49. The emphasis on women was removed in the subsequent 1996 syllabus and replaced by “men and women”.

36 Parkes, “Teaching History as Hermeneutics,” 384.

37 History: Study Design, ed. Surendra Verma (Carlton, VIC: Board of Studies, 1996), 74.

38 History: Study Design, 1996, 75.

39 History: Study Design, 1996, 79.

40 Anna Clark, “History Teaching, Historiography, and the Politics of Pedagogy in Australia,” Theory & Research in Social Education 32, no. 3 (2004): 384; Parkes, “Teaching History as Hermeneutics,” 388.

41 Anna Clark, “History in Black and White: A Critical Analysis of the Black Armband Debate,” Journal of Australian Studies 26, no. 75 (2002): 1–11.

42 Anna Clark, “The Great History Debate,” Age, 9 February 2004, sec. National, https://www.theage.com.au/education/the-great-history-debate-20040209-gdx9x8.html.

43 Parkes, “Teaching History as Hermeneutics”.

44 The 1996 syllabus marked a turn towards more detailed content descriptors as well as closer attention to the significance of global events in the national story. In the subsequent 1999 iteration, “colonisation” and “settlement” are used in place of “invasion”, and “dispossession” is listed as taking “possession of the land”. The chronological approach in 1996 and 1999 saw the return of familiar developmental narratives in the syllabus, including the idea that “Australia's history is characterised by expansion”. See History: Study Design, 1996; History: Study Design, 1999; Clark, “History Teaching,” 386.

45 Clark, “History Teaching,” 386; History: Study Design, 1996; History: Study Design, 1999.

46 Parkes, “Teaching History as Hermeneutics,” 393.

47 Barry Down, “From Patriotism to Critical Democracy: Shifting Discourses of Citizenship Education in Social Studies,” History of Education Review 33, no. 1 (2004): 14.

48 Whereas the People: Report of the Civics Expert Group (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1994).

49 Whereas the People, 52.

50 Tony Taylor, “Under Siege from Right and Left,” in History Wars and the Classroom: Global Perspectives (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2012); Clark, Teaching the Nation; Alan Reid, “Selling Civics: The Curriculum Development Process in a National Project,” Social Educator 14, no. 1 (1996): 9.

51 Whereas the People, 52.

52 Down, “From Patriotism to Critical Democracy,” 14.

53 Kerry J. Kennedy, “More Civics, Less Democracy: Competing Discourses for Citizenship Education in Australia,” in Citizenship Curriculum in Asia and the Pacific, ed. David L. Grossman, CERC Studies in Comparative Education 22 (Berlin: Springer Netherland, 2008), 181.

54 John Howard, “The Liberal Tradition: The Beliefs and Values Which Guide the Federal Government,” PM Transcripts, https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-10171 (accessed 9 April 2023).

55 Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997).

56 During the 1980–1990s, more than 20 countries established truth commissions to investigate historical crimes. See Julia Paulson and Michelle J. Bellino, “Truth Commissions, Education, and Positive Peace: An Analysis of Truth Commission Final Reports (1980–2015),” Comparative Education 53, no. 3 (2017): 351–78.

57 Tony Taylor and Stuart MacIntyre, “Cultural Wars and History Textbooks in Democratic Societies,” in Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 613–36.

58 Four Corners, featuring interview with John Howard, aired 19 February 1996, on ABC, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-08/an-average-australian-bloke---1996/2841808.

59 Geoffrey Blainey, “Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture, Appeared as ‘Drawing up a Balance Sheet of Our History’,” Quadrant 37, no. 7/8 (1993): 10–15.

60 Anna Clark, “Politicians Using History,” Australian Journal of Politics & History 56, no. 1 (2010): 120.

61 As Hughes-Warrington has remarked: “History changes. At first blush, this point seems so obvious as to be hardly worth making.” Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Revisionist Histories (London & New York: Routledge, 2013), 18.

62 Howard, “The Liberal Tradition,” para 11.

63 Howard, “The Liberal Tradition,” paras 13–14.

64 Howard, “The Liberal Tradition”.

65 Parkes, Interrupting History, 135.

66 John Howard, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Parliament of Australia, 30 October 1996, http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/doc/howard_1.pdf.

67 Kerry J. Kennedy, “More Civics, Less Democracy: Competing Discourses for Citizenship Education in Australia,” in Citizenship Curriculum in Asia and the Pacific, ed. David L. Grossman, CERC Studies in Comparative Education 22 (Berlin: Springer Netherland, 2008), 182–83; Catherine Harris-Hart, “National Curriculum and Federalism: The Australian Experience,” Journal of Educational Administration and History 42, no. 3 (2010): 304.

68 Rebecca Cairns, “‘Western Civilisation’? History Teaching Has Moved On, and So Should Those Who Champion It,” The Conversation, 6 June 2018, http://theconversation.com/western-civilisation-history-teaching-has-moved-on-and-so-should-those-who-champion-it-97697.

69 John Howard, “A Sense of Balance: The Australian Achievement in 2006” (address to the National Press Club, Parliament of Australia, 25 January 2006), PM Transcripts, https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-22110 (accessed 9 April 2023).

70 Harris-Hart, “National Curriculum and Federalism”.

71 Anna Clark, “Teaching the Nation's Story: Comparing Public Debates and Classroom Perspectives on History Education in Australia and Canada,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 41, no. 6 (2009): 749.

72 “Mixed Response for PM's Reconciliation Bid,” ABC News, 11 October 2007, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-10-12/mixed-response-for-pms-reconciliation-bid/696438; Clark and Macintyre, The History Wars.

73 Miranda Johnson, “Reconciliation, Indigeneity, and Postcolonial Nationhood in Settler States,” Postcolonial Studies 14, no. 2 (2011): 187–201.

74 Nobles, The Politics of Official Apologies, 71.

75 Celermajer, The Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apology, 197.

76 The Hon Kevin Rudd AC, “Apology to Australia's Indigenous Peoples,” Parliament of Australia, https://www.aph.gov.au/Visit_Parliament/Art/Exhibitions/Custom_Media/Apology_to_Australias_Indigenous_Peoples#:~:text=On%2013th%20of%20February%202008,continuing%20cultures%20in%20human%20history (accessed 9 April 2023).

77 Celermajer, The Sins of the Nation, 197; Nicola Henry, “From Reconciliation to Transitional Justice: The Contours of Redress Politics in Established Democracies,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 9, no. 2 (2015): 199–218.

78 Tom Bentley, Empires of Remorse: Narrative, Postcolonialism and Apologies for Colonial Atrocity (London: Taylor & Francis, 2015), 24.

79 Dian Million, Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2013).

80 Rudd, “Apology to Australia's Indigenous Peoples”.

81 Johnson, “Reconciliation, Indigeneity, and Postcolonial Nationhood in Settler States,” 196.

82 Alan Reid, “National Curriculum: An Australian Perspective,” Curriculum Perspectives 39, no. 2 (2019): 199; Neil Cranston et al., “Politics and School Education in Australia: A Case of Shifting Purposes,” Journal of Educational Administration 48, no. 2 (2010): 5.

83 The Australian Curriculum emerged from a neoliberal policy landscape of which the clearest iteration is the policy report Quality Education. See Quality Education: The Case for an Education Revolution in our Schools (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 27 August 2008), 5, https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2008-08/apo-nid9133.pdf; Glenn C. Savage, “Who's Steering the Ship? National Curriculum Reform and the Re-shaping of Australian Federalism,” Journal of Education Policy 31, no. 6 (2016): 833–50.

84 Carole Kayrooz and Stephen Parker, “The Education Revolutionary Road: Paved with Good Intentions,” in The Rudd Government: Australian Commonwealth Administration 2007–2010, ed. Chris Aulich and Mark Evans (Canberra: ANU Press, 2010), https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p6031/html/ch09.xhtml?referer=&page=14.

85 Kayrooz and Parker, “The Education Revolutionary Road”; Harris-Hart, “National Curriculum and Federalism,” 298.

86 Louise Zarmati, “A History of Misinformation: Pyne Spreads Curriculum Myths,” The Conversation, 25 July 2012, http://theconversation.com/a-history-of-misinformation-pyne-spreads-curriculum-myths-8413; Deborah Henderson, “History in the Australian Curriculum F–10: Providing Answers without Asking Questions,” Curriculum Perspectives 31, no. 3 (2011): 58.

87 Kelsey Halbert and Peta Salter, “Decentring the ‘Places’ of Citizens in National Curriculum: The Australian History Curriculum,” The Curriculum Journal 30, no. 1 (2019): 8–23.

88 For comparison, consider history curricula in the state of Victoria in the two decades prior to the implementation of AusVELS in 2012 (the development of the national curriculum in Victoria). Neither the 1995 and 2001 Curriculum and Standards Frameworks I & II, nor the 2005 Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS), which remained in place until 2013, contained any explicit references to historical child removal. Mati Keynes and Beth Marsden, “Ontology, Sovereignty, Legitimacy: Two Key Moments When History Curriculum Was Challenged in Public Discourse and the Curricular Effects, Australia 1950s and 2000s,” History of Education Review 50, no. 2 (2021): 130–45. In contrast, the 2012 AusVELS syllabus listed “Stolen Generations” as part of the curricular content at Levels 2, 6, 9 and 10, for example. See Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, “The Humanities – History,” AusVELS, 2012.

89 Keynes and Marsden, “Ontology, Sovereignty, Legitimacy”.