Howard's history for dummies

As we all well know, John Howard is not happy with the teaching of Australian history in our schools and has called for a return to traditional history, taught by dates with a proper narrative that reflects our proud past rather than the abstract random thoughts of the jaded post modernist lefties who currently write and teach our history. Mr Howard’s historian-in-residence - Keith Geoffrey Blaineyschuttle has been working around the clock to produce this landmark text. Xavier Duff has obtained some leaked excerpts.

Howard's History for Dummies

A New Australian Narrative (according to a proper historian)

April 1770:
Captain Cook discovers an old continent left lying around in the southern hemisphere that no one seemed to be using, so he claims it for England. King George thought it a perfect place to realise his dream to rehabilitate England’s most notorious bread thieves, through worthwhile and meaningful work that would prepare them as useful members of society after serving their sentences of life imprisonment.

January 26 1788
Captain Arthur Phillip arrives in Sydney to set up the King’s bold new social experiment. A few hecklers with dark skin - now known to be S11 anti-globalisation activists - want to spoil the party claiming they were here first. As if. Had they studied their history properly at school they would have known King George had declared Australia, “terra nullius” which is Latin for "We bagsed it first".

February 6: 1788
The rent-a-crowd as expected, resort to violence to air their grievances by stealing and killing a few sheep.  Violence escalates and a few white settlers are massacred but who in return stoically and maturely resist hitting back. Most of the protest is about illegitimate claims on the land. As if. The trouble-makers couldn’t produce one legal title to justify their claim.

February 7, 1788.
The ferals’ grievances solved with practical reconciliation which involves converting them to Christianity, giving them their own nice missions to live on and encouraging them to take up careers as stockmen, boxers and tennis players. Any future reference to wars, genocide and general unhappiness among the dark skinned, is just mischievous speculation by black arm band historians who can’t get a real job.

1789
The land shows great promise - plenty of valuable real estate to capitalise on around the harbour while interest rates remain at record lows and lots of land to develop elsewhere for farming, mining and pulp mills. It would be a sin not to develop such great bounty from God.

1790:
Governor Phillip soon realises Australia could be more than just a very big prison farm but a proper farm - and a mine as well, with natural resources to burn. What vision. Immediately sets up a business migration scheme - only good white Anglo-Saxon ones with money of course - prepared to gamble it all on outsmarting the anti-globalisation lot who still insist they have been invaded.

1793 :
The first New Australians arrive, affectionately known as squatters - and put this sunburnt country to good use by grazing sheep and cattle and providing jobs to otherwise lazy locals who can earn a fortune in tea and flour if they just apply themselves.

1795
The convicts don’t seem to appreciate their free passage to their new country or their opportunities here and frequently moan about their work and even attempt escape. Ungrateful sods.

February 1851:
Gold discovered. Great stuff but word spreads fast and everyone around the world wants a slice of the action creating a bit of a problem in being able to decide who comes to this country and the circumstances they come in. Asian migration poses its first real challenge with the Chinese among the first to hear the news. Not all bad though as Australia is introduced to one of the greatest benefits of multi culturalism - the dim sim.

1861
Loony left state governments decide that a few individuals holding the vast bulk of private property in Australia is unfair and decide to nationalise it, carving up the runs and letting the peasants have a crack at it. Oh well, at least they are small business battlers who can live off the smell of an Australian workplace agreement and won’t be needing the dole or other welfare hand outs.

1868:
Some of the settlers whinge that the squatters, many of whom are respected members of the Liberal Party, are trying to rort the land selections by claiming more than their fair share and cutting off the selectors’ access to water. As if. The problem is there’s not enough land because those bloody states just want to lock it all up as national parks for the greenies.

January 1891
Australia’s first strike. Union thugs hold the country to ransom by refusing to shear sheep unless they get a pay rise. Obviously inspired by the unionists’ political party of choice - the AL bloodyP, pretty soon the comrades are infiltrating parliaments all over the country and ordering everyone to strike.

1894 :
Women get the vote: What’s the point when your husband can do it for you?

November 1907:
That café latte sipping leftie Judge Higgins passes the Harvester judgement giving all workers a minimum wage, for goodness sake. What sort of precedent is that? This irresponsible union/ALP-inspired socialism gives birth to a century of whinging by bleeding hearts for more, more, more. Sure enough, it’s not long before demands are being made for such rorts as an eight hour day, sick leave and Sundays off.

August 1908
The Messiah comes to Bowral. Who would have thought he’d come back as an Australian cricket captain?

April 25 1915
Mates are invented. To stop everyone thinking the war being a total tragic misadventure, the ANZAC tradition is born showing that something good can come out of something so bad. Mates are those who stick by you and look out for your back while part of a futile and badly executed military campaign thought up by a government that is not yours. Later, the term mate takes on wider meaning, referring to any big donor to your political party who wants you to get them out of any sort of sticky situation.

1930s
The great Depression. Time of character building where battlers learned valuable skills like how to feed a family of eight for a week on one rabbit and a potato, and how to resole your shoes with newspaper and spit.

1965
Australia called in to help the US beat the commies at a game called dominos in Vietnam. Somehow it all turns nasty and ends up in war. So many of our boys want to go, the government introduces an exciting new lottery based on birthdays to decide who can go and who has to stay. It’s called conscription. Seems to work out in the end and means plenty more diggers to keep the old ANZAC Day parade going for years to come. Everybody’s a winner.

November 1975:
Australia’s worst ever Prime Minister gets the sack and then has the gall to claim unfair dismissal.

1996.
Australia’s greatest ever prime minister elected.

September 11 2001
Australia’s greatest prime minister anointed the world’s deputy sheriff by none other than the greatest president of the United States.

October 2001:
Norway tries to invade Australia. The Norwegian government sends its navy ship cunningly disguised as a freighter and attempts to approach Australian shores in a bid to land a 200-strong special commando unit disguised as Middle Eastern refugees. Brave PM counter attacks by sending its own crack SAS forces that capture the vessel with superior fire power, decisively winning the battle for Aussies and send the enemy packing. Just as well, as state-of-the-art POW camps in Woomera and Baxter are full, after previous Australian military counter-insurgencies.

March 2003:
Deputy sheriff asked to join the sheriff’s posse to run out of town the world’s biggest threat to world peace since Hitler - Saddam Hussein, that well known despot, architect of the World Trade Centre terrorism and cause of Hurricane Katrina, world poverty, the AIDS epidemic and global warming, (if there were such a thing). Well known to have had the world’s biggest arsenal of conventional nuclear and biological weapons that mysteriously remains hidden to this day.

24 November 2007:
The end of history.  The king is dead. Long live the King.