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On the evening of 18 October 1884, a group of at least five Aborigines, were sitting round a camp fire boiling the billy and yarning in blackfellow talk when they were fusilladed. Tommy jumped up and ran for it; followed by the thwacks and zings of the bullets as they whizzed after him. The others stayed where they fell. The next day, Alicky, a town blackboy spoke to John Moffat, a leading citizen about the incident, who asked to be shown the campsite.On reaching the camp, a gruesome scene of partially burnt Aborigines confronted the eyes of Moffat. Driven by curiosity and trepidation, he examined the bodies. One was the body of an old blackfellow, the two others were adult females and one was a picaninny whose sex was unknown. The bodies were lying side by side. Two with their heads one way and the other two in the opposite direction. The fire being in the middle of them. There were no observable marks of violence on the bodies other than that caused by the fire. The faces were turned somewhat downwards and it could not be established whether they were disfigured or not.Mr. Mowbray, the Police Magistrate at Herberton was notified. On 23 October 1884, when he arrived in Irvinebank to conduct an inquest on the bodies of the four Aborigines, all that he found was the remains of a large fire. The fire was still smouldering but no bodies were found. Constable Moroney raked the fire and several pieces of bone were recovered from the ashes. But nothing could be identified. Nevertheless, Mowbray held an inquest and suspicion fell on the native police who were in Irvinebank at the time.The Attorney-General then requested the police to investigate the matter. They arrested the Nigger Creek native police including Sub-Inspector William Nichols, and the rest is history.

The Governor-General of Australia is not a mere figurehead. Governors-General possess real power which is given to them by the Constitution. It is intended that these 'reserve' powers should be used only very rarely. One of these is the power to withdraw the commission of a Prime Minister, and this was invoked in 1975 by Governor-General Sir John Kerr to resolve an intractable political impasse. As a result of his actions, Kerr has been vilified mercilessly ever since.Villain or Victim argues that Kerr acted constitutionally, judiciously and effectively. It also postulates that the campaign against him has been crafted and sustained to undermine those reserve powers and to intimidate future Governors-General against their use. This compelling book explains the constitutional basis for Kerr's decision, clarifies the role of the Monarch in Australia and warns that circumstances under which the use of any of the reserve powers may be called for, could very easily arise in the near future. Australia needs a Governor-General well versed in the nature of these powers and prepared to use them when necessary. And we need an informed public that is able to understand such action.Peter O'Brien graduated from the Royal Military College Duntroon in 1970 and was posted as an infantry platoon commander on operations in South Vietnam with the Fourth Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment. He served in the Australian Army for twenty-one years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. During his military service he gained a Bachelor of Science degree, a Graduate Diploma in Data Processing and a Diploma of Military Studies.After retiring from the Army, Peter spent twenty years in business and scientific computer sales. He has contributed frequently to Quadrant and Spectator Magazines and is the author of Bitter Harvest - the illusion of Aboriginal agriculture in Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu.

Acclaimed by many as Australia's greatest prime minister, John Curtin overcame alcoholism and a troubled relationship with the Scullin Labour Government to win the Labor leadership by one vote in October 1935. Rescuing the Labor Party from division and humiliating defeats in 1931 and 1934, he put it in a position to win in the years after 1937. A constructive wartime Leader of the Opposition, he engineered the creation of an Advisory War Council to help minority Coalition and Labor governments manage a divided House of Representatives. From October 1941 he steered his wartime Labor Government through perhaps the greatest strategic challenge that Australia has ever faced. In doing so, he led Labor to one of its most emphatic electoral victories in 1943 and put his party in a position to enshrine long-held aspirations such as national control of banking and provision for a welfare state. His death in July 1945 was met with a national outpouring of grief that underlined the extent to which Curtin had been recognised as a national leader above party. David Lee is Associate Professor in History, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Canberra. He was General Editor of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Documents on Australian Foreign Policy series from 1997 to 2019. His publications include Australia and the World in the Twentieth Century (2005), Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist (2010) and The Second Rush: Mining and the Transformation of Australia (2016).

Australian history is much more than toiling convicts, Aboriginal massacres and posturing bushrangers. It is more than a critical race theory account of oppressors and oppressed, where victimhood and white tyranny take precedence over fact and reality. Genocide, white privilege and white supremacy are modern day woke fictions, promoted to destroy belief in Aussie values and tear down the past. It is a woke delusion unproven and unprovable.We need to view Australian history as it truthfully was not as we imaginatively would like it to be. The history of the pioneers needs to be recounted with understanding and empathy, not simply turned into a modern-day morality tale for political and social justice ends. Even-handed balance and a genuine respect for all past Australians needs to be restored to the national narrative: a national narrative where past generations are not unfairly demonised to suit the politically correct agenda of those who would control the present by inventing a fake version of the past.Doug Morrissey has written a book which is in part social history and autobiographical. It is also systematic in its exposure of the false nostrums of much of today''s anti-Western cult, which has gripped educational institutions and much of the media.John Howard, Former Prime Minister of Australia.Doug Morrissey has written a fresh, forceful, and provocative critique of the two clashing Australias: the new and the old. Professor Geoffrey Blainey.

The ABC was established in 1932, following in the footsteps of the BBC. In its early years it was a shining example of a revered public broadcaster.The key to its early success was having two strong minded, long serving General Managers who ensured that the place was well run, with everyone knowing their place.But as the years went by senior management progressively outsourced responsibility to producers and celebrity presenters and the organisation lost its way, so that now it is little more than a mouthpiece for "progressive" outpourings.It still remains an important national institution, especially in regional Australia, but its political obsessions, catering almost exclusively for inner suburban elites, render it in dire need of reform.As Alston argues, the fundamental problem is that the ABC is a protected entity, with a guaranteed income in excess of a billion dollars, while commercial media outlets struggle to stay alive.With no competitors it doesn't have to earn a living and has no incentive to perform or innovate, let alone live within its means. Instead of catering for its audience it prefers to lecture to them.Effectively accountable to no one, it feels free to ignore its charter obligations, or the interests of its audience, ignoring valid criticism or contemptuously dismissing it.Despite being founded in the depths of the Depression it has long since lost interest in the joys and struggles of the middle class.Instead of relating to basic issues such as jobs, families and incomes it prefers to pander to the elite, inner urban instincts of people like themselves.Alston concludes with a practical reform agenda for adoption by government, but no doubt it will be strenuously contested by the organisation.Richard Alston AO has been a barrister, a senior Cabinet Minister, Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Federal President of the Liberal Party. He is currently a businessman and company director.

Now that fifteen years have passed since I began writing the Question Time column for The Catholic Weekly and this fifth volume of questions and answers sees the light of day, it is time to write a new Introduction.How did this whole project begin? It started in 2004 when I was Director of the Catholic Adult Education Centre of the Archdiocese of Sydney and was receiving occasional questions about the Catholic faith. I duly answered them and filed the answers in a folder on my office computer. In December of that year I was sitting with the editor of The Catholic Weekly at a lunch and offered to use this material to write a question-and-answer column for the paper. His eyes lit up because the Archbishop had asked him to find someone to write such a column and now here was someone offering to do so.I began writing the column in January 2005 and have done so every week since then. Soon I was receiving reports of people who were cutting out the columns and pasting them on paper for future reference, or photocopying them for others. Over those first years numerous people asked if there was any plan to publish the columns as a book.As regards the structure of the book, it seemed appropriate to arrange the questions and answers systematically by topic, following the general structure of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Thus, in all the volumes Chapter 1 deals with matters of Catholic doctrine, Chapter 2 with questions relating to the sacraments and the liturgy in general, Chapter 3 with matters of morals and Chapter 4 with questions relating to prayer and Christian devotions.People sometimes ask if I am running out of questions. The answer is an emphatic no. I receive an envelope from The Catholic Weekly from time to time containing questions sent in by readers and from that source alone I have more questions than I can answer. But questions also come directly by email from around the country, and even from abroad, and many others come from personal conversations and from classes I give. So there is no shortage of questions.How long can I keep this up? God only knows. I continue to write the column and all the new ones go into a folder on my computer titled Question Time 6. So my intention at present is to write long enough at least to bring that book to light. After that, we shall see.