Did the events at Pinjarra WA in 1834 merit yet another official apology to Aboriginal people?

Until recently, I had thought that the race to wokeness across the States and Territories was a simple contest between Victoria and the ACT.  I now think there is a “third horse” in the race, namely Western Australia, especially under Premier Roger Cook.  Cook has been described by WA TODAY as “a factional warlord in the left”.  The recent Apology is a case in point. 

The Apology raised eyebrows for several reasons.

The relevant events took place about 80 km south-west of Perth in 1834.  (This was almost 200 years ago and only five years after the foundation of the Swan River Colony in 1829).  The colony was granted Responsible Government in only 1890, the last of the Australian colonies to become self-governing, and it federated with the other colonies in 1901.

Since all this happened under British colonial administration and the settlers were overwhelmingly British born, one has to ask the question of why the contemporary WA Government feels the need to apologise, and why did the Apology take the form that it did.

My interpretation is as follows. 

Left-wing Labor is big on things like “truth-telling”, treaties, reparations, and apologies to Indigenous peoples, and it looks like the current WA Government was seeking a way for the State to engage in “truth-telling” and make its own apology to acknowledge “frontier wars” and atrocities.  The timing of the deaths at Pinjarra, some 56 years before the founding of the state of Western Australia, however, represented a bit of a problem.

To get around this the Cook Government seemingly got its Governor to do the apology or at least acquiesced to his apology.  (It is inconceivable that the Governor apologised unilaterally without consulting the WA Government.)  Premier Cook endorsed the apology in an on-line post . 

Governor Dawson’s apology referred to “dreadful wrongs perpetrated by the first Governor of Western Australia, Sir James Stirling, to Bindjareb Noongar people” and drew an analogy between Dawson’s own position of Governor and the role of Stirling as Governor in his day.

 “Governor Stirling came to this place in 1834 with an intent to punish the Bindjareb Noongar people.   I come to this place today as a Governor with a different intent …. The time has come – and the time is right – for the Governor to acknowledge the truth of the past actions of a predecessor”.  

I don’t buy the alleged equivalence at all.  Colonial Governor Stirling had very wide powers in his day and served the British Government, whereas contemporary State Governors in Australia have a largely ceremonial role.  The fact that both men are given the term “Governor” is largely coincidental.  It is drawing a very long bow for a present-day Governor to refer to a colonial Governor (200 odd years previous) as their “predecessor”.  Would anyone seriously seek to equate the present-day role of Margaret Beazley in NSW to the far greater responsibilities of Arthur Phillip in his day?

The whole apology seems contrived and an attempt at virtue signalling.  It is also aimed at promoting a particular interpretation of history and reinforcing the left’s political brand.  The WA Governor and the present State of WA were not responsible for the events at Pinjarra.  Any apology, if appropriate, should come from the British Government.

The Apology is also tainted by serious omissions and because some of the facts are contested.  Many first-hand accounts of what happened (written by the colonial side) were recorded in writing and are worth reading.  Aboriginal groups on the other hand had no written tradition, so no record (accurate or otherwise) exists from their side.