Nation's political bloodshed 'ignored'

Malcolm McCusker has become the subject of a rare public challenge after deputy Labor leader Roger Cook yesterday contradicted the WA Governor's assertion that Australian government was achieved without bloodshed.

Mr Cook said the claim, which Mr McCusker made in a speech opening the new term of Parliament last week, ignored scores of indigenous massacres by white settlers, which Australia had to acknowledge to progress as a nation.

In his speech to the joint sitting of Parliament, Mr McCusker said: "Australia has one of the oldest democratic systems of government in the world, a system achieved without civil war or bloodshed, and which is the envy of many."

Yesterday, Mr Cook told the Legislative Assembly in reply to that speech that the remarks were symptomatic of a wider attitude in society "that blood was not shed in terms of the growth of this colony".

"On this particular occasion, I'm taking the opportunity to remind the Governor of our history," he said.

"Many people died in terms of the assertion of the new legal rights, which the British colony enforced upon the original habitants of this area.

"Unless we come to terms with that, we will continue to repeat the injustices that were done at the time."

Mr Cook cited bloody conflicts including the "killing times" in the Kimberley from about 1888, the 1841 Rufus River massacre in NSW and the Flying Foam massacre on the Dampier Archipelago in 1868.

The Flying Foam massacre was a series of clashes that wiped out the Yaburara tribe of the Burrup Peninsula, sparked either by the theft of a bag of flour from a pearling boat or the rape of an Aboriginal woman by a policeman.

"The moment we turn our back and pretend that those things don't exist, we will forever be a small-minded colony that continues to be based upon ignorance," Mr Cook said.

Aboriginal Legal Service WA chief executive Dennis Eggington said Mr McCusker's assertion was a common view but not a correct one.

"The founding of this country was most certainly built on bloodshed and murder and genocide," he said.

"This country should be able to recognise that and deal with it in a mature way. Roger Cook has to be commended for pointing this matter out in the manner in which he did."

Mr McCusker declined to comment.