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America had a row over its Confederate statues, and now Australia is struggling with its British colonial ones

A war of words has broken out over the colonisers’ treatment of Australia’s indigenous people in the late 18th century.

AFP news agency / YouTube

A WAR OF words over colonial-era statues in Australia has taken a further twist with calls for the addition of plaques acknowledging the nation’s indigenous history after several monuments were defaced.

Debate over the statues of early British explorers, including Captain James Cook, was sparked following American protests over Confederate statues that hark back to the nation’s slave-owning past.

In Australia the focus has been on the role of Aboriginals, whose cultures stretch back tens of thousands of years before Cook’s arrival in 1770, and the colonisers’ treatment of indigenous people.

The controversy ratcheted up a notch last weekend when vandals defaced a number of statues in Sydney, including one of Cook with the words “change the date” in reference to Australia Day, which marks the 1788 arrival of the British First Fleet.

The vandalism sparked a furious response from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who again brushed off calls for the statues to be torn down, adding that the defacement was “what Stalin did” in denying history.

afp A statue of Captain James Cook, the first European to reach the east coast of Australia, in Sydney AFP / YouTube AFP / YouTube / YouTube

“It (the vandalism) is also part of a deeply disturbing and totalitarian campaign to not just challenge our history but to deny it and obliterate it,” he said.

This is what Stalin did. When he fell out with his henchmen he didn’t just execute them, they were removed from all official photographs.

A different solution was instead raised by opposition Labor MP Linda Burney – the first Aboriginal woman elected to the country’s lower house of parliament – who called for Cook’s plaque to be updated to reflect that he had not “discovered” the nation.

She was backed by Labor leader Bill Shorten, who said the country “doesn’t need to have (an) ‘us and them’ debate between Aboriginal Australians and other Australians”.

“So an additional plaque on Captain Cook’s statue is fine by me,” he said.

But Turnbull has now said that such changes were “basically rewarding vandalism”, and the statues had value in providing one perspective of Australian history.

“A free society, does not burn old books, it writes new ones. It doesn’t tear down old statues, it builds new ones,” he told Adelaide commercial radio station FIVEaa.

Aborigines remain the most disadvantaged of Australians. They were believed to have numbered around one million at the time of the first British settlement, but now make up only about 3% of the total population of 24 million.

© – AFP, 2017

Read: Coveney ‘deeply worried’ as North Korea tests missile capabilities over Japan

Read: Australian placenames containing racist n-word are to be replaced with new names

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    Mute Bairéid Rísteard
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:20 AM

    Time to bulldoze british georgian architecture in Ireland.

    188
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    Mute Gulliver Foyle
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:34 AM

    @Bairéid Rísteard: time to take in the roads, then.

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    Mute Avina Laaf
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:41 AM

    @Gulliver Foyle:
    What did the romans ever do for us?…

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    Mute Liam flag
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:55 AM

    @Avina Laaf: the aquaduct?

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    Mute tom
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 12:56 PM

    @Liam flag: where do you guys get your history from game of thrones ?

    Romans did venture further west than England

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 1:05 PM

    @tom: hear that whistling sound? That was the joke flying right over your head

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    Mute Mick Jordan
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 1:15 PM

    @Dave O Keeffe: Must be one of the few that never saw the classic “Life of Brian”.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 1:26 PM

    @Mick Jordan: I never thought I’d live to interact with one, a true oddity of modern life

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    Mute The Throwaway
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 8:48 PM

    @tom: where you getting your history from??? The Romans went as far west as Wales, and further still to occupy the Isle of Wight. I dare you to say either the Welsh or those on Wight that they are just ‘england’.

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    Mute The Throwaway
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 8:50 PM

    @tom: my bad, I misread your ‘did’. You were quite right. Pity there’s not a delete button for these comments. Now I just have to look like an idiot who can’t read.

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    Mute Niall Byrne
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    Jun 10th 2020, 12:17 AM

    @Bairéid Rísteard: Statues vs Houses/Buildings. Not the same, dumbo. Try again.

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    Mute Awkward Seal
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:25 AM

    I hate these type of US-centric people. They see political issues in the US and then protest for them here. Like Black Lives Matter in the UK blocking the route to the airport. I saw a poster for a PPP alliance protest against “Trump and his white-supremacist agenda”. These people need to get a life. Concentrate on your local issues and stop the virtue signalling. You’re not as cool as you think you are.

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    Mute John Smith
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 12:06 PM

    @Awkward Seal:

    There’s zero problem with one country raising an issue about its past and another thinking, you know what, we should look at ours. I took a tour of Sydney Harbour about 10 years ago. There was a loudspeaker giving the history of the area. The calm, soothing voice explained that around 200 years ago Captain Cook came to Australia, and took an aboriginal as his butler. It went on to say that he thought the aboriginal to speak English, and the the aboriginal “loved it”. I highly doubt that being ripped from your lands and people, being made to wear a monkey suit, being forced to speak a different language and being turned into a slave for a foreign invader was something that he “loved”. It was stated in such a jovial fashion, that the greatest thing that happened to the occupants residing in Australia was the arrival of foreign forces who took over, subjugated the locals and turned the country into a prison camp for mainly impoverished Irish and Scottish people.

    There needs to be a long and hard look at the misery the British Empire created all over the world. The belief is that the Empire was something great, to such an extent that Brexit is a reality. It was not, it was an effort to stripe countries of their assets to enrich an elite in the United Kingdom.

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    Mute Harry Whitehead
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 7:35 PM

    @Awkward Seal: We recently had some clown in the Grauniad calling for Lord Nelson to be removed from his column in Trafalgar Square, on the grounds that he personally endorsed slavery back in the day. She was invited onto C4 news to discuss her article – ironically it was an Irishwoman who was arguing against her, mentioning the case of Nelson’s Pillar.

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    Mute Padraig
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:31 AM

    For starters they should come up with something better than that awful flag they have.Same goes for New Zealand.

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    Mute Kevin Slater
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:30 AM

    Tearing down statues is revisionism. You can pretend the past didn’t happen but what’s done is done. Even the Russians preserved their Czarist monuments

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    Mute Brendan Hughes
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:14 AM

    @Kevin Slater: . The victor writes the history. But…… If you are on the losing side, wait a few hundred years, continue to bleat and moan about the unfairness of the battle, people descent from the victors will be sad and you yourself can rewrite the history by going back to the way things were.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:33 AM

    @Brendan Hughes: except the confederacy lost. They fought an armed rebellion against the United States and lost.

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    Mute Malachi
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 5:51 PM

    @Kevin Slater: The former Soviets weren’t big fans of preserving communist monuments though, were they?

    Can you blame them?

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    Mute WinSomeLoseSome
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 7:14 PM

    @Kevin Slater: I didnt see many statues for the leaders of the nazi regime in Berlin. Public statues are not a record of history, but a reflection of a communities values. There may exceptions to that, like the example you gave, but they are not the norm ( and you know it). Books and museums are used for historical record keeping.

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    Mute Alan Kelly
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:35 PM

    @Kevin Slater: They’ll be burning books soon, now where did we see that before? History is history, good or bad.

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    Mute Aine O Connor
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:45 AM

    Just goes to show how easy it is to influence opinion. Someone starts off a rant about about statues , the next thing it has spread worldwide , people get worked up about statues they probably never noticed before or knew nothing about their history. And I reckon when the fuss dies down they won’t care anyway. My view is that Monuments should be left where they are with a plaque with authentic information on it to reflect what it stands for be it good or bad. Nazi Concentration Camps were preserved lest we forget the horrors that took place in them.

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    Mute Pat Price
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:00 AM

    @Aine O Connor: I would agree with a lot of what you have said , however to compare the significance of maintaining a concentration camp for the purpose of educating people to the dangers of racism etc. to that of leaving a statue erected to honour a perpetrator of evil in all his glory is not quite the same ,

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    Mute Aine O Connor
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:06 AM

    @Pat Price:
    True, what I often wonder is why and who decided to erect a statue to a non deserving person in the first place. Who writes history and how do we know when we have the true story.

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    Mute P.J. Nolan
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:24 AM

    I think Daniel O’ Connell farted in public once!
    Time to pull down that statue in Dublin, can’t have his sort memorialised.

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    Mute Jonathan Byrne
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:29 AM

    @P.J. Nolan: padrig pearse was gay, let’s take down the statues , oh the painful iriony of the so called alt-left

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    Mute KSI
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:02 AM

    @Jonathan Byrne: @Jonathan Byrne: “Little lad of the tricks…
    I forgive you, child
    Of the soft red mouth…
    Raise your comely head
    Till I kiss your mouth…
    There is a fragrance in your kiss
    That I have not found yet
    In the kisses of women.”

    Padraig “Paedo” Pearse. All monuments to this pervert should be torn down or renamed.

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    Mute Jonathan Byrne
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:07 AM

    @KSI: like Oscar wilde?

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 1:28 PM

    @Jonathan Byrne: he sure was

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    Mute Tommy Duke
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:27 AM

    This is Frankfurt school cultural marxism run amok.

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    Mute Fiona deFreyne
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:54 AM

    @Tommy Duke: laughing.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:37 AM

    @Tommy Duke: books still exist right?

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    Mute Liam flag
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 12:11 PM

    @Tommy Duke: Marx Culture Ism Frankfurter Mustard.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 1:06 PM

    @Liam flag: sounds delicious

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    Mute Fiona deFreyne
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:44 AM

    There are major social inequality and social exclusion problems in Australia which are more deserving of priority attention.

    Most statues are irrelevant, disregarded and of no interest. They are just the redundancies of the past, not worth bothering with, either to defend or to criticise.

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    Mute Chris Kirk
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:57 AM

    @Fiona deFreyne: There are social exclusion problems in lots of countries these days, Ireland included. But tearing down statues is just a distraction from the real issues such as homelessness, poverty and a deficient health system.

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    Mute Fiona deFreyne
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:07 AM

    @Chris Kirk: agreed. We have far more to be concerned about, specifically the issues which you list.

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    Mute Liam flag
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:27 AM

    Great. More people trying to prevent potential offense to people who never asked them to do it. Self appointed moral police. Funny how these statues only became SO OFFENSIVE!! recently ain’t it? And people capitulate to these babyish thugs… Tell em to fuk off I say

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 1:29 PM

    @Liam flag: triggered? Chill, stop getting offended on the behalf of people that didn’t ask you to.

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    Mute Fiona deFreyne
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:57 AM

    Too many people care far too much about statues. A statue is a statue, a monument to past ego. They do no good and they do no harm. They are just irrelevant.

    They are not worth attacking and they are not worth defending.

    Much ado about nothing.

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    Mute winston smith
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 12:06 PM

    The fact is the majority of Australians are of European colonial stock so this is their heritage, even though many Irish wouldn’t be too pleased about the heavy british slant on things considering the country has the highest percent of citizens of Irish ancestry. We dumped a statue of Vicky over there when we rightly removed the old prude from Leinster house.

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    Mute
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:22 AM

    You can not think of history isuess with today’s mind set things those days were different. At the end of day the people on street don’t care and those who general stir these issues are biggest racist. If people really hated this why is the royal family world wide followed, why do millions each year come to see the Buckingham palace, take pictures of buildings, statues etc…. Cause most have moved on.

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    Mute Brian McDonnell
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 11:37 AM

    Tearing down statues/monuments seems to be the in vogue trendy solution to every kind of social problem at the moment, however, it solves eff all, it doesn’t give any one any more rights, it doesn’t provide funding to promote ethnic minorities, it doesn’t improve education or future prospects of excluded peoples.
    As far as I can see all it does is provide a platform for people to act offended on other peoples behalf, and call for something to be done, when in fact, nothing is actually being done to solve the systemic under lying problems.

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    Mute DeFonz
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 3:14 PM

    @Brian McDonnell: It has been trendy for thousands of years..

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    Mute David Saunders
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:32 AM

    And the Australian people are keeping up the tradition

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    Mute Chris Kirk
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 9:53 AM

    @David Saunders: Didn’t we give a statue of Queen Victoria to Australia about twenty years ago and they put it outside a Sydney shopping mall.

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    Mute Remy
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:31 AM

    Statueophobia.

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    Mute Liam flag
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 12:10 PM

    @Remy: Crap joke mate.

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    Mute Seamus Mc Meel
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 6:19 PM

    @Liam flag: Yeah,pretty limp.

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    Mute Remy
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    Sep 3rd 2017, 2:47 AM

    @Seamus Mc Meel:

    I see you have a cat in your profile pic, I’m gonna take a wild guess, but I reckon that’s the only pussy you’ve ever had, yes?

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    Mute Remy
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    Sep 3rd 2017, 2:48 AM

    @Liam flag:

    Joke, what joke?… Buddy.

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    Mute
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:29 AM

    When are the Zulus going to call the removal of Xhosa Nelson Mandela statues he oder for Zulus to be killed when they march in Johannesburg just before 94.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 11:01 AM

    Before 94? Maybe you should talk about the guy that was in charge before 94 then. It wasn’t Mandela

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    Mute John Belton
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 2:58 PM

    Australia is not ‘struggling with colonial statues’. A small unrepresentative group of the ‘usual suspects’ are jumping on a bandwagon.

    Will they, like elsewhere else get ‘kid gloves’ treatment from a sympathetic media?
    Their thuggery minimised and their significance exaggerated.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 10:33 AM

    This guy seems to know what he’s talking about, best explanation of how it’s not a race issue in America https://youtu.be/U1Rv6vUxPMs

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    Mute Mark Andrew Salmon
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 12:52 PM

    The issue I have with all of this is the distinct whiff of neo liberalism. Kick up a fuss about statues, be liberal about particular social issues while at the same time maintaining and/or supporting a system that allows for poverty, homelessness and the unequal burden of taxation to the advantage of the few.
    Will tearing down statues relieve the disadvantages of the aboriginal peoples? Will tearing down statues and flags ease long term racial tension and discrimination in the US? No, its the old Roman Empire trick of bread and games in new clothes. F**k the flags and statues we can sort them out AFTER we sort out the real problems they represent.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 1:32 PM

    @Mark Andrew Salmon: free Cromwell statue on its way to you

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    Mute Chris Kirk
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 3:14 PM

    @Dave O Keeffe: via Barbados

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    Mute FlopFlipU
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 1:47 PM

    We should put up a statue of Fitzpatrick and pull it down again

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    Mute Chris O Keeffe
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 7:05 PM

    3% of 24 million is still pretty close to a million and any empire that ever existed did awful things to win and then maintain it problem is the Roman empire isn’t within living memory so we just study it with awe instead of complain about it …history is exactly that history live in the present ffs

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    Mute Fiona deFreyne
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 5:20 PM

    As long as the moving statues don’t return.

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    Mute DeFonz
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    Sep 2nd 2017, 3:13 PM

    Should we stick King Billy back up on Dame Street for the sake of history?

    How about Lord Nelson on top of the spire and Queen Victoria in front of the Duke of Leinsters town house..

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