Wow. Just, wow. Who is Windshuttle, and what is his relation to the journal in question? It would be easy to do some kind of whitewash sensationalist defense of free expressionism, but if Windshuttle is an editor, why would *anyone* send *anything* there?
http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2...-manne/comment
"Windschuttle’s argument can be summarised like this. While there were many separations of Aboriginal children from their mothers, families and communities during the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the numbers have been wildly exaggerated by the “orthodox” historians and by the authors of the 1997 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s report Bringing Them Home. More importantly, the Aboriginal children removed by force were not “stolen”. They were removed for the same welfare reasons neglected white children were. While some of the compounds or “half-caste” institutions to which the children were removed were not ideal, others were no worse and indeed often better than the equivalent institutions that housed white children at the same time. Anti-Aboriginal racism played virtually no part in the removal process. Even though Windschuttle now accepts that the Protectors in interwar Western Australia and the Northern Territory advocated a program known as “breeding out the colour”, it was neither an instance of eugenics nor at any time a formal government policy. Nor was it even connected to their child-removal practices. Far from being concerned to destroy Aboriginality, let alone perpetrate genocide on the Aboriginal people, the removals were almost always justified and motivated by good intentions. For all these reasons, Windschuttle regards the idea of the stolen generations as an un-Australian left-wing myth, whose purpose is to defame both the many decent Australians who worked selflessly on behalf of Aboriginal children and, even more importantly, the nation."
I don't know if that's a good faith summation of Windshuttle's argument. But if it's even close...
Oh, and calling people "Insufferable Prigs" in a headline isn't very likely to generate much rational discourse.
Best,
Bill
(ps. John, reading Minter's Vitae (
http://sydney.edu.au/arts/english/st...minter.330.php) I'm not sure the word 'silly' was the first thing that came to mind. 'Dedicated to his causes,' perhaps, but some of that stuff looks fairly interesting.