Tambu,

May I suggest an explanation, at the risk of tarring an innocent few with the same brush, to your question about Australian academics? Many are filled with self-loathing and resentment, and have been pursuing an agenda of hate against their own nation that has had as its aim the refashioning of Australian society in their self-image. They are, in large number, guilt pedlars. So much the better for them if there is a substantial element of truth in their reports of the now seen to be reprehensible official attitudes and policies of former days. Their aim has been to peddle paralysing guilt to present day Australians, and they could not, nor did they ever, give a toss about how that might adversely affect Papua New Guineans or Solomon Islanders in the course of their Jihad.

For all the arrogance, insensitivity, and fake racial superiority that may have typified the Australian colonial regime, that regime delivered largely good governance that was corruption-free. Those official attitudes were, even in pre-WWII days, not truly representative of the attitudes of the large majority of a population of overwhelmingly British origin that had (and still has) a British constitutional heritage.

The term 'multiculturalism' has come from academe, and it has been designed to deliver a payload of paralysing guilt to the vast majority of ordinary Australians every time it is proclaimed. Its real meaning is anti-Britishness. People have migrated to Australia from all over the earth in recognition of the existence of this British heritage and identity. This product of the academe you observe, Tambu, is what has helped to cheat migrants, native born Australians, and perhaps your own people of the good governance we all need. That as a sub-culture Australian academe has prospered as it has may well be due to the outworking of a long-running sophisticated unobtrusive form of electoral fraud. You may well, through bitter experience, now be able to more easily conceive of this possibility than most Australians. It may explain your situation, and ours.

Totally agree with Leigh and ForestGump.Ron Crocombe is aptly named.It is definitely a croc of the proverbal.

Very recently John Howard and Julie Bishop gave the entire country a lecture about the poor state of Australian history teaching. JWH, while reviling the "black armband" brigade, has called for history teaching to be based on facts.

Why is it so hard to face up to our history? No one seems to be disputing the facts of the article. I'd say most are undeniable, enshrined within legislation.

Why can we not, as JWH suggests, look at the facts. I think they speak for themselves. We as a nation, are culpable for some of the wrongs of the past. Many of these acts still echo today.

This does not mean that Australia has not done good things in the past. It doesn't mean that nothing has changed since. But to say that Australia's history is has been nothing but smiles and flowers is to deny the truth.

The "black armband" brigade at least has the courage to call a spade a spade, and to acknowlegde the wrongs of the past. It's about time we took history seriously

Labeling Ron, as a self-hater is cheap and reeks of inflated egoism and lacks depth in issues of “only yesterday”. How can any thinking person shrug it off like that?

One wonders how and under what criteria, the keenly and oft quoted “Australian values” was coined.

My Prime Minister, (Sir Michael Somare) a straight shooter that he is was spot on to label Howard and his crew as "hypocrites" at the Pacific Islands Forum meeting yesterday. A fitting description, I reaffirm.

A statement that I posted earlier on another thread, is worth restating here.

Australia has advanced in practically everything that there is to pursue, but unfortunately John Howard and his crew have been overdosed by an expired foreign diplomacy pill that that is sadly making them look more and more foolish each passing month. The sooner the 21st century cupboard of pills is exploited, the better it is for Australia. Otherwise, prepare not to despair.

Thank you Ron for telling it like it is. You're a real man and a rare great friend.

Talk about a one sided article! Papua was very primitive economically when it became an Australian protectorate. Bits of it were still lost to the outside world - they had never been visited until planes were able to fly overhead in the 1930s. There's no way that you could suddenly go from this condition to an advanced capitalist economy. Under Australian protection some of the first steps were taken: contact was made, a system of justice (including native police) was instituted, plantations were established, roads were built, Port Moresby was established.

Some great personal sacrifices were made just to get this far. Some of the Australian patrol officers endured very difficult circumstances to carry out their pioneering jobs; some died attempting to do so.

In the records left by these patrol officers there is often an expression of interest in, respect for and protectiveness toward the native Papuans.

I get the feeling that some of the Melanesian and Polynesian nations are now looking to Australia for solutions to their economic problems. If so, such nations should first ask where they themselves have gone wrong in economic policy, and what they can do to improve their economic performance.

The strategy of arguing that "the evil white man is responsible and must now make amends" is not the most dignified path to follow - and will be very difficult to justify except in the most biased renderings of history.

Yes, the Pacific Islanders are aware of what Australia did during those times including Lyall Howard’s dummy racket in plantation business in Karkar (Madang Province in PNG)

No Pacific Islands countries are sweating hard to frame up strategies to blame "the evil white man" for his responsibility in the grand "failed states” agenda. Nor is anyone of them begging them to make amends" by soliciting insipid so-called AID funds.

What we the Pacific Islanders are telling the "dummy racketeers" son and his crew is to stop lecturing to us and inflate their ego by over publicizing AID. The Aid a smokescreen and a clearly engineered strategy to suppress and treat PNGeans and other Pacific Islanders just the way his father did to his native plantation laborers in PNG.
Any when his intentions are challenged, the usual old tactics of blackmailing is dished out. The same old tactic repeating itself in a subtle disguise of alms. Come off that skewed and flawed attitude. This is 21st century for heaven sake. The unabated gut kicking of us is even no longer acceptable.

Many of Islanders can survive as a nation without Australia's aid. The world is open for business and it is indeed bigger than what Australia would have us believe.

We’re simply fed up. Cut your AID. It will make infinitesimal difference. The notion that PNG is surviving because of Australia is a faulty and inaccurate belief.

The glaring history of rot should not be repeated (as is the case now) but treat the Pacific Islanders like a 21st century self-proclaimed saviour.