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Articles by Tim Rowse
A new history of ‘blackbirding’ favours moral condemnation at the expense of complexity
In the second half of the 19th century, colonial agriculture and pastoralism in Queensland were hungry for labour, and people of the South Pacific supplied much of it. Ryan Butta is not the first author to write the history of their maltreatment, but Blackbirding is a readable reminder of a shameful source of Queensland’s prosperity – he calls it “slavery” – that will make it known to new audiences.
A new history of ‘blackbirding’ favours moral condemnation at the expense of complexity
Islanders loading sugar cane near Childers, Queensland, 1896. State Library of Queensland, Australia, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons In the second half of the 19th century, colonial agriculture and pastoralism in Queensland were hungry for labour, and people of the South Pacific supplied much of it.
Aboriginal historian Barry Corr vividly investigates colonisation – but is less convincing on politics
© 2026 Tolerance.ca ® Inc. All reproduction rights reserved. All information reproduced on the Web pages of www.tolerance.ca (including articles, images, photographs, and logos) is protected by intellectual property rights owned by Tolerance.ca ® Inc. or, in certain cases, by its author. Any reproduction of the information for use other than personal use is prohibited.
Aboriginal historian Barry Corr vividly investigates colonisation – but is less convincing on politics Original
Surveying the Wild Abyss, by Aboriginal historian Barry Corr, is a history of colonial invasion of the Nepean–Hawkesbury rivers (“Dhurabang”) and the Sydney Plain they enclose. Part one, just over half of the book, covers this. Then Corr turns his attention to Australian historical consciousness – what he refers to as “settler memory” and the “settler narrative”. In the second part, he points to resonance between the “settler narrative” and other texts.
AUKUS takes on parliament • Tim Rowse
Will the Australian parliament ever debate AUKUS? The latest opportunity came up in April this year, when the Albanese government released its latest National Defence Strategy; its text is yet to be debated in parliament. The opposition’s criticism of government defence policy has been limited to arguing overall spending must increase to 3 per cent of GDP if the costs of AUKUS (which it supports) aren’t to reduce or delay expenditure on other weapons and programs.
Consent of the governed • Tim Rowse
One measure of the significance of a political concept is the persistence of contests over its meaning.
Who was First Nations resistance fighter Musquito? A historian investigates a legend Original
Not much is known about the Aboriginal man known as “Musquito” (c.1780–1825). This does not make him unusual among the Aboriginal people who faced the first 40 years of British colonisation of eastern Australia. But in three respects, his life is noteworthy.
Who was First Nations resistance fighter Musquito? A historian investigates a legend
© 2026 Tolerance.ca ® Inc. All reproduction rights reserved. All information reproduced on the Web pages of www.tolerance.ca (including articles, images, photographs, and logos) is protected by intellectual property rights owned by Tolerance.ca ® Inc. or, in certain cases, by its author. Any reproduction of the information for use other than personal use is prohibited.
‘A country to be heard and danced’: journeying into Australia’s menacing interior spaces
In the four parts that make up Yilkari – “Valentin”, “Dylan”, “Captain” and “Master” – men spend a lot of time engaging in venturesome outback driving and superbly eloquent talking.
‘A country to be heard and danced’: journeying into Australia’s menacing interior spaces
In the four parts that make up Yilkari – “Valentin”, “Dylan”, “Captain” and “Master” – men spend a lot of time engaging in venturesome outback driving and superbly eloquent talking.
‘A country to be heard and danced’: journeying into Australia’s menacing interior spaces
© 2025 Tolerance.ca ® Inc. All reproduction rights reserved. All information reproduced on the Web pages of www.tolerance.ca (including articles, images, photographs, and logos) is protected by intellectual property rights owned by Tolerance.ca ® Inc. or, in certain cases, by its author. Any reproduction of the information for use other than personal use is prohibited.
Black bushranger brothers Jimmy and Joe Governor were hanged in 1901. But were they ‘wicked’ or wronged?
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people. The homicidal actions, flight, capture, trial and punishment of Jimmy and Joe Governor (and their accomplice Jack Underwood) in 1900 are relatively well known. They were immortalised in Thomas Keneally’s historical novel, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972) and the 1978 film version by Fred Schepisi.
Black bushranger brothers Jimmy and Joe Governor were hanged in 1901. But were they ‘wicked’ or wronged?
© 2025 Tolerance.ca ® Inc. All reproduction rights reserved. All information reproduced on the Web pages of www.tolerance.ca (including articles, images, photographs, and logos) is protected by intellectual property rights owned by Tolerance.ca ® Inc. or, in certain cases, by its author. Any reproduction of the information for use other than personal use is prohibited.
All in the family • Tim Rowse
In a government led by Peter Dutton, Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price would be appointed to the powerful Expenditure Review Committee to help end “government waste.” “I think she’s got a real practical understanding of what’s happening in the real world,” Dutton told SkyNews’s Andrew Glennell after she was appointed shadow government efficiency minister in February.
‘Shame, disgust, horror’: Kate Grenville faces her family history of stolen land in Australia - and asks us to feel it with her
By Tim Rowse, Emeritus Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University Kate Grenville’s book successfully intertwines national and personal history to evoke Australia’s past – but multiculturalism challenges her idea of collective memory. Read complete article © The Conversation -
‘Shame, disgust, horror’: Kate Grenville faces her family history of stolen land in Australia - and asks us to feel it with her
How do Australians feel about knowing the territory we inhabit was violently stolen from First Nations people? In Unsettled, Kate Grenville explores this through her own feelings. “I’ve been circling this book for years,” she writes. But its immediate context is the 60% “No” vote in the 2023 referendum to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to parliament, and to the executive government, which develops laws and policies.
Lidia Thorpe, the UN Declaration and the mob out there • Tim Rowse
How has the defeat of the Voice referendum affected public debate about Indigenous affairs? One way to answer this question is to look at what’s been said since October 2023 by Indigenous leaders for whom the referendum vote was a victory, not a defeat: the crossbench senator Lidia Thorpe for example.
Why did Australia reject the Voice? • Tim Rowse
On 14 October last year the Yes campaign needed just under eight million votes distributed in a way that achieved a majority in four or more states. But only 6.35 million people voted Yes, and in no state were they in the majority. The result was no surprise: pollsters had measured a steady decline in Yes support since October 2022, with roughly twenty percentage points shed in the twelve months leading up to the vote.
Voices off • Inside Story
Lost amid the polarities of the Voice campaign was a more muted message: not only Labor but also the Coalition believes the gap will only be closed if governments listen to regional Voices. The referendum was defeated by a No campaign that included a promise by the Liberal Party to legislate Voices across the regions. If these Voices are to be among the next government initiatives to deal with Indigenous disadvantage then we would be wise to study their history — for the idea is not new.
A steady path to sovereignty?
A steady path to sovereignty?
Yes and No: the official cases
We might have expected the texts of the Yes and No pamphlets, prepared by federal parliamentarians and released yesterday, to distil the key points made by the 118 MPs who spoke in May and June when parliament debated legislation authorising the Indigenous Voice referendum.
Three “bloody difficult” subjects • Tim Rowse
In 1958, while she was employed to write history materials for schools, New Zealand historian Ruth Ross (1920–1982) made a close study of the development and text of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s two-language founding agreement between Māori chiefs and the Pākehā (Europeans). Her first essay about her findings, which she unsuccessfully submitted to Northland Magazine, made two claims that would transform scholarly and eventually public understanding when they were published in 1972.
The referendum’s lines in the sand • Tim Rowse
When the joint parliamentary committee on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice reported last Friday, it recommended the government’s proposed wording of a new section of the Constitution proceed to a referendum. That wasn’t a particular surprise — the committee had a majority of government members — but along the way the report and the testimony to the committee throw light on questions that will become increasingly urgent as the referendum approaches.
The Debate Over the Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians: National Unity and Memories of the 1967 Referendum
Abstract In the debate over constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians since 2010, the high “Yes” vote in 1967 has been recalled as a benchmark of national unity and goodwill towards Indigenous Australians, something to which Australians must return. The 1967 referendum has been evoked as a “step” towards reconciliation, with constitutional recognition presented as the next step.
Yunupingu, the translator • Tim Rowse
Yunupingu’s introduction to the arts of balanda (whitefella) politics came early, courtesy of Methodist missionaries at Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land. The late Bernard Clarke, a missionary who later worked with Yolngu people, recalls hearing that Yunupingu took the role of “prime minister” in the school parliament created by headmaster Ron Croxford. Contact with the real parliament came not long after.
Albo room • Inside Story
In a candid and anguished op-ed in Saturday’s Australian, emeritus professor Greg Craven, one of the constitutional experts advising the Albanese government on the Indigenous Voice constitutional amendment, predicted the referendum’s failure.
Where No to the Voice meets Yes • Tim Rowse
Now that the government has agreed to issue a pamphlet stating the Voice referendum’s Yes and No cases, someone in the public service will have to write it. (ChatGPT might do it — if it could join the CPSU.) The all-too-human writers will need to distinguish between two questions: whether provisions for an Indigenous Voice should be added to the Constitution, and whether Australia would benefit from an Indigenous Voice even if it were merely legislated.
Peter Dutton’s questions • Tim Rowse
“Almost every major institution in our society supports the Voice: woke corporates, Big Tech, the elite media, civic organisations, sporting codes, places of worship, and schools and universities,” the Institute of Public Affairs’s Daniel Wild lamented in October last year.
Price and Pearson, uneasy allies? • Tim Rowse
If it existed right now, the Indigenous Voice to Parliament would be facing a troubling social policy question: should income management ever be compulsory for people receiving government income support? The spending choices of many welfare recipients have been managed since 2008 by the Basics Card or, since 2017, by the Cashless Debit Card, or CDC. If you receive income support via either card you can’t make purchases deemed harmful to you and/or your community.
Does the Indigenous Voice proposal need “more meat on the bones”?
Should the Indigenous Voice to Parliament be created legislatively — according to the model proposed by Tom Calma, Marcia Langton and their colleagues on the government-appointed co-design committee — and only then put to a referendum? Or should the Voice come after treaty-making and truth-telling, as the Australian Greens propose? Or should we forget altogether about creating an Indigenous Voice, as Country Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price seems to recommend?
Electric ambition • Jock Given
Elon Musk and his enterprises make news most days. He asks Twitter users if he should sell a big block of shares in Tesla, where he is the largest shareholder. A spacecraft made by his company SpaceX delivers astronauts to the International Space Station for a five-month stay. A mother gives birth in a Tesla Model 3 set in self-drive by a father who helps with the delivery.
Thinking Black - Inside Story
William Cooper: An Aboriginal Life Story By Bain Attwood | The Miegunyah Press | $34.99 | 296 pages What makes a documentary trace of an Aboriginal person’s life?
Jostling giants - Inside Story
In his recent book The Long Game, White House national security staffer Rush Doshi argues that China has a “grand strategy” for world domination. He urges a counter-strategy for the United States, one in which Australia and other American allies would be expected to participate. Since Doshi is now the China desk officer on Joe Biden’s National Security Council staff, we should pay attention.
Noel Pearson, radical centrist • Tim Rowse
Mission: Essays, Speeches & Ideas By Noel Pearson | Black Inc. | $49.99 | 608 pages Noel Pearson believes in human plasticity: people can and should remake themselves. Indeed, because his style is so autobiographical, Pearson is himself a prominent example of our capacity for reflection, revision and renewal. Mission includes fifty-seven items — twenty-eight of them first published in the Australian or the Weekend Australian.
Noel Pearson, radical centrist
Noel Pearson with fellow Referendum Council member Megan Davis at the conclusion of the First Nations National Convention in Uluru in May 2017. Alex Ellinghausen/Sydney Morning Herald Noel Pearson believes in human plasticity: people can and should remake themselves. Indeed, because his style is so autobiographical, Pearson is himself a prominent example of our capacity for reflection, revision and renewal.
9/12 • Jim Middleton
The question was simple; the answer anodyne; the implications to this day profound, especially with the Taliban back in control in Afghanistan. This is a story of 9/12, not 9/11, but sometimes the response to an act of murder and aggression can be just as telling as the act itself, and every bit as pertinent to the present. Howard was in Washington on 11 September 2001.
Telling truths | Inside Story
When the Uluru Statement from the Heart called for a national process of truth-telling, supervised by a Makarrata Commission, it left open the question of which stories would be considered truthful and in need of being told. Answering that question isn’t as straightforward as it might seem: as the four reports of Reconciliation Australia’s Reconciliation Barometer suggest, Indigenous Australians have differing views about history’s “truths” and their implications.
What’s not to like? • Jane Goodall
Laura Tingle was trending on Twitter again not long after Monday’s 7.30. Aside from remarking on her adventurous taste in earrings, most of the commentary focused on her interview with former Liberal MP Julia Banks. It was, in fact, less an interview than an extended opportunity for Banks to detail the “shocking allegations” she makes against parliamentary colleagues in her new memoir, Power Play.
A Liberal’s case for the Voice to Parliament • Tim Rowse
Buraadja: The Liberal Case for National Reconciliation By Andrew Bragg | The Kapunda Press | $34.95 | 320 pages When Noel Pearson refers to “the radical centre” of Australian politics, he has people like Andrew Bragg in mind. Bragg, a Liberal senator from New South Wales and former employee of the Business Council of Australia, is an intelligent, energetic, reforming liberal.
Sydney’s wave of modernism • Meg Brayshaw
If you walk along the waterfront at Circular Quay and look down at the pavement, you’ll likely encounter a series of circular metal plaques, each one bearing a brief passage about Sydney and the name of the famous writer who penned it.
The teller and the tale • Tim Rowse
Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate By Peter Sutton and Keryn Walsh | Melbourne University Press | $34.99 | 264 pages There’s no mystery about the strong sales of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu and its sequel for younger readers, Young Dark Emu: A Truer History. They have helped articulate a desire among non-Indigenous Australians who love their country to credit Indigenous Australians with its foundation. At least, this seems to be Pascoe’s appeal.
The 1967 referendum: inspiration or burden?
What did Australian voters do on 27 May 1967?
Come in spinner • Judith Ireland
It is a time-honoured political strategy — when in doubt, call a review. And when things are particularly doubtful, call a whole bunch of them. This approach was on full display after former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins told her story in February. Caught off guard by the outpouring of outrage that followed her devastating claims, the Morrison government ordered no fewer than five reviews.
How the light gets in | Jane Goodall
When the Danish series The Killing was first broadcast to English-language audiences ten years ago, its runaway success shocked the television industry. Besides defying the assumption that a subtitled series with a complex, slowly evolving plot could never get viable ratings, it threatened British television’s pre-eminence in the genre of the crime thriller. This new Danish series had many of the familiar elements of the forensic detective story, but took psychological realism to another level.
The moral complexity of truth-telling | Tim Rowse
Truth-telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement By Henry Reynolds | NewSouth Publishing | $34.99 | 288 pages Return to Uluru By Mark McKenna | Black Inc.
The moral complexity of truth-telling | Tim Rowse
Truth-telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement By Henry Reynolds | NewSouth Publishing | $34.99 | 288 pages Return to Uluru By Mark McKenna | Black Inc.
Is the Voice already being muted? | Tim Rowse
Since 9 January, when Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt released the interim report of the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process, dismayed advocates of the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians have been wondering whether the Voice still has anything to do with constitutional change. Wyatt has issued an invitation to the public to comment on several issues of Voice design.
Bridgerton isn’t alone. Period drama is back with a vengeance | Jane Goodall
After a year of social distancing and working from home, the appeal of tracksuits and pyjamas may be waning. Was there really a time when people took two hours to dress for an elegant soiree, the opera, a late party and then, perhaps, discreet assignations in the small hours? A longing to at least imagine such things while eating takeaway on the couch is understandable. Major television producers were prepared.
Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia
Description Histories of the colonisation of Australia have recognised distinct periods or eras in the colonial relationship: ‘protection’ and ‘assimilation’. It is widely understood that, in 1973, the Whitlam Government initiated a new policy era: ‘self-determination’. Yet, the defining features of this era, as well as how, why and when it ended, are far from clear. In this collection we ask: how shall we write the history of self-determination?
Tim Rowse reviews 'Hidden Histories: Black stories from the Victoria River Downs, Humbert River and Wave Hill stations' by Deborah Bird Rose
If the stories brought together in this book had been arranged according to a chronological narrative, it would go something like this: Around the middle of the nineteenth century, Aboriginal people in what would later be called the Victoria River country (Northern Territory) were affected by a new disease, smallpox, which came from the north; many succumbed to its hideous embrace.
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