Let’s talk about Captain James Cook.

One of the greatest mariners and scientists of all time, Cook arrived on Silver Beach in Botany Bay on April 29, 1770. I believe April 29 should be celebrated every year as James Cook Day.

Thanks to Captain Cook, Australia was colonised by the British and, as John Howard said recently:

‘I do hold the view that the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British. Not that they were perfect by any means, but they were infinitely more successful and beneficent colonisers than other European countries.’

No doubt the Garma festival last weekend featured a recognition by speakers of all those benefits that flowed through to the progeny of those ancient Australians who occupied this continent for so long: the medicine, the abundant food supplies and agricultural practices, the technology, the education, the rule of law, democracy, and female emancipation. Indeed, it is a great source of pride for this nation that in one of our colonies, South Australia, Aboriginal women had full voting rights long before any women, black or white, had them back in Britain.

I presume that recognition cuts both ways? Or does it… Let’s check out what our kids are being taught in school about Captain Cook…

Little kids are being told 'our country' is sad after Captain Cook. WHAT?
PARENTS PROTECT YOUR KIDS.
VOTE NO to this indoctrination!
It will only get worse if they are 'given a mandate'. pic.twitter.com/YmpIQMVPMl

— JILL (@1Swinging_Voter) July 30, 2023

That’s it? That’s what young impressionable kids are being taught?

‘Captain Cook arrived and Aborigines were treated badly and ignored and have been sad ever since but we’ve made it all better by protesting because this nation has no heart?’ Really? What a disgrace. Talk about misinformation or disinformation. Is this what ‘truth-telling’ will look like? I think we can guess.

Labor seems to have forgotten Bob Hawke’s speech at the Bicentennial Celebrations in 1988. Yes, we proudly celebrated Captain Cook’s voyage with a replica of the HMS Endeavour pride of centre on Sydney Harbour. Bob Hawke clearly stated that Australia is stronger because of our multicultural heritage and that we are all equal.

Specifically, Bob Hawke said: ‘There must be no privilege of origin.’

Well, Albo and Labor, that is precisely what the Voice offers, ‘privilege of origin’.

In March I spoke about the papers that One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson read out in Parliament that had been picked up in a Canberra café, allegedly left there accidentally by some employees of the NIAA, the multi-billion dollar National Indigenous Australians Agency. The paper outlined an 11 point plan for the Voice. Its detail included suggestions for job quotas for a minimum 10 per cent Indigenous appointments for judges, magistrates, Australian Defence Force officers and state and federal police, and so on. All beaches and national parks were to be given exclusively to the relevant Indigenous tribe with non-Indigenous Australians being charged a fee to go to the beach. There was a whole list of discounts for Indigenous Australians at all sorts of events along with Indigenous Australians’ tax rates being half of non-Indigenous.

At the time, those claims were strenuously denied by the NIAA and they were ‘fact-checked’ and dismissed as misinformation, indeed at one point they were described as ‘a flurry of Voice misinformation’.

I won’t go through the 11 points one by one, but the ruling was specifically that it was misinformation ‘to say the NIAA had an 11 point plan’. But here’s the thing. We now know thanks to the revelations by Peta Credlin and others that the full Uluru Statement from the Heart proposes many of those same ideas that were earlier dismissed as ‘misinformation’. Indeed, the full Uluru Statement from the Heart goes much further, talking about self-government and reparations based on a percentage of GDP, along with changes to land, water, and other rights, as I write in my editorial in the magazine this week.

If Albanese’s new Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill had been in place back in March, and ACMA had agreed (which it probably would have), and also declared that letter to be misinformation, then claims by social media users that it was true may never have seen the light of day. There would have been – potentially – very heavy penalties for social media companies involved if anybody posted them. Because that’s what the Bill is designed to do: to clamp down and remove anything from social media that ACMA decrees to misinformation, based on what other government departments or bodies tell it is misinformation.

Fast forward a few months, and thanks to freedom of information and also just how the debate on the Voice has evolved, we now know that many of those items listed for discussion are indeed some of the demands that many activists and activist organisations want the Voice to lead to, such as the right of self-determination, redefining ownership, land and sea rights, sovereignty and so on.

Issues that were raised in that letter, such as different taxation regimes, job quotas, restricted access, and so on are all potentially on the agenda if the Voice gets up.

I’m all for such ideas and suggestions being debated in the open. But my fear is that if we get this insidious Misinformation Bill that Labor are determined to get through Parliament, it will invariably censor things as misinformation that later up people find out are actually true, but only after it’s too late. That sort of dystopian world is what awaits us if Labor’s Misinformation and Disinformation Bill becomes law, which it very well soon may. Allow me to quote a few words written by author and philosopher John Leake that caught my eye this week:

‘If the citizenry is compelled to leave all examination and deliberation of major public policy issues – and the physical reality on which these policies are based – to favored experts, the citizenry will soon be mere subjects of the favored experts.’

‘Favoured experts’. What a great line, and yet that is who increasingly controls our world. The favoured experts.

And speaking of dystopia, a few weeks ago I spoke here of the importance of cash. In my opinion, cash equals freedom, enforced digital currency equals tyranny. Since then I have been going out of my way to use cash wherever possible – it’s easy to quickly get back in the habit – and to my astonishment, I have not only received so much gratitude and encouragement from small businesses, but I’ve also noticed just how much we are getting ripped off every time we use those tap and go things. By my crude maths, simply by carrying cash wherever possible, I am probably saving myself over a thousand dollars a year. And so would you. Just think how much cash the banks and big business are pulling every single day, every hour, for nothing. But worse than that, increasingly big businesses are refusing to take cash, and insisting we use digital forms of payment. And it’s all about control and about driving out small businesses. And like sheep we are happily being led straight into this dystopian freak show.

Well, not everyone’s a sheep. Here’s the maverick Piers Corbyn, the brother of former UK Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, taking a stance.

Piers Corbyn and team at Aldi APP ONLY store Greenwich Thurs 27 July. Piers gained entry. Chose a Box of strawberries ? and put down CASH Payment on the HELP TABLE while the security said he wasn't allowed to pay by cash. And then left the shop advising the staff to call the… pic.twitter.com/oVjSKBKu21

— Stan Voice of Wales (@StanVoWales) July 31, 2023

And finally, just in case you were still tempted to buy Prime Minister Albanese’s insistence that the Voice has nothing to do with a treaty, or with paying reparations, or ceding our sovereignty – you can listen to the man himself…

After claims made by Prime Minister Albanese to @PatsKarvelas and @BenFordhamLive, downplaying Labor's support for a race-based federal treaty, I thought I would share the following footage of Mr Albanese in the House of Representative saying:

"The voice must be followed by… pic.twitter.com/F9mUPxcR35

— Pauline Hanson ?? (@PaulineHansonOz) August 2, 2023

‘Shackled to the demons of our history’ … that’s not how I view being an Australian. That is not how I view five generations of my family being proud and decent Australians. Which is why I, for one, will be voting No.

And I respectfully suggest you might consider doing the same.