Did Four Corners offer a new direction for a War Memorial that has lost its way?

The war memorial to me is one of Australia's most important places. It is sacred, but it's missing ... a profound element. And until it truly comes to terms with the foundational war that made this country what it is, it will never be truly whole ... So why, why do we still deny it happened and why, more fundamentally, in the place that calls itself the Australian War Memorial, why do we not give just recognition to the war that actually founded the Australian modern nation? ...

My family were run down by men on horseback with Snyder repeater rifles and murdered in their hundreds. Those warriors who are involved in trying to defend their families and their country in that moment, do not get recognition in the war memorial. Explain that to me. (Rachel Perkins, film and television producer and presenter, 'The Australian Wars')

Four Corners on 10 March was a tour d'horizon of the Australian War Memorial, an institution that neither the mainstream media nor official accountability processes have devoted enough attention to in recent years. Spokespersons for the Memorial did not come out of the program well. What stood out most, though, were the remarks of Arrernte-Kalkadoon woman and documentary director, Rachel Perkins, and Gunditjmara man, veteran and musician, Richard Frankland. We'll come to them.

First, here are some highlights (in italics) from the program transcript and some comments. The sub-headings are Defending Country's.

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The Big Build

MARK WILLACY: Why was an expansion of the war memorial required?

MATT ANDERSON, DIRECTOR, AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL: Because we ran out of space. (Mark 01.25 in the video)

Comment: All cultural institutions can display only a small proportion of their collections, say 5-10 per cent. The Memorial argues space is needed to adequately recognise recent conflicts. Against this, Defending Country (and Honest History before it) have argued that, rather than continually push for more space, it would be a greater tribute to the recent dead if difficult decisions were made about the use of existing space.

‍MARK WILLACY: It was done without a detailed business case having been completed or considered. Do we know why that happened?

MATT ANDERSON: The government had everything it needed at the time that it took the decision to, to take that decision with 75 per cent confidence. And that was all then backed in by the detailed business case.

MARK WILLACY: What about a hundred percent confidence? Wouldn't that have been better?

MATT ANDERSON: Oh, well, I think that's, that's the ideal world. (Mark 13.23)

Comment: Honest History analysis of the process is here, based on material obtained under FOI. It shows the funding deal was clinched independently of the development of the Detailed Business Case. Also, it is not about ideal worlds but compliance with the Department of Finance’s mandatory Commonwealth Property Management Framework which says (para 74), ‘[t]he purpose of the Second Stage Approval Process is to secure government approval and funding for implementation and delivery of a project in accordance with the DBC [Detailed Business Case]’ (emphasis added).

MATT ANDERSON: I'm very, very confident that what we've done won't affect that historic silhouette. (Mark 20.43)

Comment: Here's another opinion (entry for December 2024):

The overwhelming impression from this [Limestone Avenue] perspective is the breaking of the old link between the building and the forecourt. This is broad, treeless space, with the Memorial appearing as an afterthought, half-hidden from below by the new bladed wall, behind which is the new underground entrance.

The proportions are all wrong: too much concrete, too much red gravel, too many banks of seating space, not enough Memorial. The Stone of Remembrance (‘Their Name Liveth for Evermore’) sits isolated in that broad space like a pie-cart outside the MCG ...

At least, the Director is no longer claiming that the redevelopment would not affect the historic facade of the Memorial (entry for 18 July 2020), a claim which was always nonsense.

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The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report on the Memorial redevelopment project

Comment: Considering the remarks of the Memorial Director and Council Chair, Minister Matt Keogh, Senator Shoebridge, and Geoffrey Watson SC from the Centre for Public Integrity, it is difficult to see why heads did not roll at the Memorial after the ANAO report. Honest History and Defending Country wrote up the story here, with a link to a document released under FOI which shows the Minister was not pleased at the Memorial's handling of the ANAO report. The material also shows the reluctance of the Minister's office to admit what Minister-Memorial contact had occurred soon after the report landed. The Minister on Four Corners had the appearance of being wise way, way after the event.

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The Memorial's donations from and connections with arms manufacturers

Comment: Over the years, the Memorial's Annual Reports made it more and more difficult to establish just how much money was coming in from these sources. The gunrunners' donations are quite small when compared with the funding the Memorial gets from government - perhaps that is part of the reason why the Memorial is not embarrassed at the donations - and certainly in comparison with the turnover of these companies. The real point, though, is the public relations benefits Lockheed, Boeing or Thales get from the small change that they hand over to the Memorial. That is the military-industrial-commemorative complex in operation.

On Thales, the program missed what may have been a link between Director Nelson's lobbying for Thales and the redaction by then Attorney-General Porter of an ANAO report dealing with the Thales Hawkei project.

On disclosure, Mark Willacy was correct to point out that the Memorial's website still does not disclose Chair Beazley's Luerssen and Lockheed Martin connections. Council member Dan Keighran VC's Thales job is disclosed on the website.

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Ben Roberts-Smith

Comment: Professor Peter Stanley's comment about the Memorial's 'very intense emotional connection' with its 'mascot' Roberts-Smith was apposite, as was the vision of Roberts-Smith and Director Nelson hugging. There was a lot of that about before the bromance faded.

There was scope for the program to explore the possible connections between Nelson's and Council Chair Stokes' support for Roberts-Smith, Stokes' guarantee of the original $500m estimate for the Big Build, the Morrison government's secret additional $50m, Stokes' resignation from the Council, and Nelson's brief sojourn in the Chair. The complexity of these possible links might not have made - to use a Trumpian term, 'great television' - but complexity is also great camouflage.

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The Australian Wars: a new direction?

Comment: The above is mostly about yesterday's Memorial, the Anglo-Celtic, male, 'service and sacrifice', Charles Bean, laconic, lanky Digger Memorial, the Memorial whose spruikers took a (polite) battering from Mark Willacy on Four Corners. Yet, right at the end of the program there was a hint of how the Memorial might reinvent itself around forceful recognition of the Australian Wars - if it only had the guts to do so.

This website has charted the tortuous path of the Memorial over 30 months towards proper recognition and commemoration of these wars, known also as the Frontier Wars (here; here). It is still a long way short of that goal. Meanwhile, Gunditjmara man, Richard Frankland, and Arrernte-Kalkadoon woman, Rachel Perkins, have made the case better than we at Defending Country ever have (from Mark 37.20 in the video):

MARK WILLACY: The sacrifice of Richard Frankland's uncle [died on the Kokoda Trail] is recognised at the Australian War Memorial … but that's not the case with other ancestors who fought and died in conflicts, here, on Australian soil… conflicts known as the Frontier Wars.

RICHARD FRANKLAND, DEFENCE FORCE VETERAN AND MUSICIAN: For us to grow as a nation, for us to be united, for us to have a common vision for victory, we have to have the courage to recognize the past for what it truly is.

MARK WILLACY: For 20 years, Richard Frankland has been campaigning for the Australian War Memorial to recognise his ancestors, the Indigenous warriors, who fought back against the white settlers ...

RICHARD FRANKLAND: These are First Nation Australian unsung heroes who died bravely fighting for their country, fighting for their families, fighting for their land, and waters fighting for their dignity. The only way that we're gonna heal is if we examine the past. And if organisations very important, bodies like the Australian War Memorial step up. They need to lead the charge in this. They need to step up.

RACHEL PERKINS, FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCER AND PRESENTER (THE AUSTRALIAN WARS): The war memorial to me is one of Australia's most important places. It is sacred, but it's missing. It's missing, it's missing a profound element. And until it truly comes to terms with the foundational war that made this country what it is, it will never be truly whole ... So why, why do we still deny it happened and why, more fundamentally, in the place that calls itself the Australian War Memorial, why do we not give just recognition to the war that actually founded the Australian modern nation?

MAJ GEN (RET'D.) GREG MELICK, COUNCIL MEMBER, AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL: From my perspective, no, the war memorial is more appropriately devoted to uniform conflicts, fighting enemies against Australia, rather than internal conflicts, which I think is more better dealt with in the overall history of Australia. [MAJ GEN Melick is also National President of the RSL.]

RACHEL PERKINS: Greg Melick should walk in our shoes. My family were run down by men on horseback with Snyder repeater rifles and murdered in their hundreds. Those warriors who are involved in trying to defend their families and their country in that moment, do not get recognition in the war memorial. Explain that to me.

MARK WILLACY: Some historians argue that the colossal scale of killing in the Frontier Wars has not been adequately recognised by the war memorial … and still won't be in the new expanded galleries.

PETER STANLEY: It's planning to depict frontier conflict in the so-called pre-1914 gallery, and that's one per cent of the memorial's floor space.

MARK WILLACY: To this day, the war memorial refuses to recognise the frontier conflicts as a war.

MATT ANDERSON: I think council has resolved clearly, that we would portray frontier violence more broadly and more deeply in the galleries. That's the council's position, that's the memorial's position.

‍Comment: No, it hasn't 'resolved clearly'. The Director knows very well that the Council's position, the Memorial's position, is equivocal, qualified, and mealy-mouthed:

It was agreed that Frontier Violence perpetrated against Aboriginal Australians would, as in the previous Colonial Galleries, continue to be presented in the new Pre-1914 galleries.

It would provide a broader and deeper depiction and presentation of the violence perpetrated against Indigenous Australians.

Wherever possible it would relate to and inform, subsequent Indigenous military service to Australia, providing a context for that service.

The gallery will inform visitors of the significant institutions whose charter it is to tell the full story of Frontier Violence.

The gallery will be developed in full consultation with the Council throughout its development.

(Memorial Council decision of 19 August 2022. We have added the emphasis to highlight the extent of the equivocation. The Director tried in Senate Estimates on 31 May 2023 (sub-heading 'The changed game ...') to explain the qualification in the third sentence. A letter dated 22 July 2024 from the Memorial's Acting Director contains the same misleading summary of Memorial policy.)

The Memorial needs to move on from that dishonest, dissembling policy decision and instead focus honestly on the Australian Wars, the wars fought in Australia to defend Country, as well as on Australia's overseas wars, the wars fought by expeditionary forces for reasons often only dimly understood at home. The Four Corners train-wreck provides a jumping-off point.

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Related: previous post; post-program article from Four Corners team, with quotes and illustrations; comment from Defence Minister Marles on the issue of arms company donations; more from Marles; Paddy Gourley in Pearls and Irritations on Beazley on Four Corners and on defence matters generally..

This article was also posted on our sister site, Honest History.