Similarly, Hendo appeared to be reacting to a press release. Now these characters are held up as “public intellectuals” and their assemblage of titles (thinktank director, educator/consultant, etc) supposedly represent authority and expertise. Obviously, they’re just going to push the political line they run with constantly, but what’s happened to the idea that you should actually inform yourself about what you comment on?

(Hendo, I suppose, doesn’t have time, what with having to write 50 emails a day to Robert Manne about what they each thought about Indonesia in the 1960s, or monitoring the ABC all day for “bias”…)

Something very similar is operating with the reaction of Warren Mundine to the NT Intervention Review. Andrew Bartlett asks some pointed questions:

Yet almost all the attacks seem to be ignoring the evidence about what has been happening on the ground, and the views of the people that live there, instead treating policies such as universal compulsory quarantining of welfare payments and scrapping the permit system as sacred totems which cannot be touched, regardless of the evidence.

NSW based Warren Mundine, described by The Australian newspaper, as an “ALP powerbroker and indigenous leader”, provides a range of insults of the Indigenous leaders involved in the review, saying the report is “touchy-feely nonsense” and “a joke” written by “people who want to accept second-best.”

The inference that any changes to the Intervention constitutes a ‘softening’ is particularly ludicrous given the strong comments at the time of the original legislation setting up the Intervention was passed by Noel Pearson – The Australian’s main standard bearer in justifying their strident support for every original facet of the Intervention and attacking anyone who raised concerns – that the Intervention process “needs to be decisively improved” and it would be a “grave mistake” to be intransigent to any amendments.

If memory serves, I think Mundine has previously been critical of Indigenous leaders who he claims are disconnected from folks on the ground and sip lattes in Paddington or wherever all day. But I can’t for the life of me see that Mundine has made any attempt to respond to the report with anything other than his usual schtick, and a range of ad homs which probably reflect struggles within the Indigenous community more than the Welfare Wars script they get written into.

Elsewhere: Marni Cordell on the substance and politics of the report at New Matilda.

History classes should start with the history of the Jews, then move on to the Greeks and Romans, then the history of Britain, Mr Abbott said.

None of this seems to me to be particularly informed comment, or worthy of the importance the history warriors themselves supposedly place on the issue. It’s clearly absurd to teach Australian history as if it doesn’t have a global context.

Stuart Macintyre’s views are outlined in this interview.

What surprises me, though, is that no one has picked up on the fact that Macintyre’s justification draws heavily on Anna Clark’s work in her book History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom. Clark interviewed a large number of both Australian and Canadian school students on what they liked and disliked and would like to see in the teaching of national history. A world history context was a theme brought up by the students again and again. Some of Clark’s research is highlighted in this article in Overland.