REWRITING HISTORY

The word Eureka is back in the news 150 years after troops stormed the stockade and more than thirty men died.

Fist there was the musical, Eureka, which from most accounts, that was a case when “Eureka, they didn’t find it”. I didn’t see it but I am told it was a poor man’s Les Mis.

And now Eureka and the Eureka flag and the 150th anniversary celebrations are causing some controversy because Prime Minister Howard will not attend any of the month long celebrations in Ballarat.

And the Eureka flag will not fly over Parliament House in Canberra.

The organizers of the celebrations are claiming that the PM is snubbing them. Which hardly seems the case. The Government has approved special-issue Eureka coins and stamps launched by historian Geoffrey Blainey and a Eureka flag will be flown at the entrance to the Senate and in the office of Ballarat Labor MP Catherine King. It will also fly over the Victorian and New South Wales State parliaments and in the ACT the streets will be festooned with the distinctive blue and white “starry banner”.

The theory is that Prime Minister Howard wants to distance himself from the flag and the birthday celebrations because of the flag’s connections with Labor and union causes. It was the rallying banner for the old Builders’ Labourers Federation. It has also been mooted as a possible new flag for Australia.

It seems to me that criticism of the PM over this is a bit rich. I mean he

doesn’t go to Sydney to observe anniversaries of The Rum Rebellion. Too many people have re-written history over the Eureka Stockade and the labour movement hijacked what was really a right-wing cause.

My interpretation of the Stockade rebellion is that greedy, self-centred and self-serving gold miners didn’t want to pay a tax in the form of a mining licence when local and state services were being swamped by the influx of miners.

They revolted. The law responded and tragically thirty men died. The tax was repealed and the rebel leader Peter Lalor went on to become a state member of Parliament.

I know that brief interpretation is a mite simplistic but I think it is closer to the truth than the legends of rebellious heroes manning the barricades.

Friday, November 19, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004