Right: Really? Indigenous inhabitants of the southern continent would probably have been puzzled by Cook's claim to have discovered it. Neverthless, many present-day Australians are outraged that the great captain is in danger of being stripped of his 'title'.
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Arguments in favour of commemorating Captain Cook as the discoverer of Australia
1. The inscription is essentially accurate from a British perspective
It has been argued that from a British or more broadly European perspective, Captain Cook did discover the east coast of Australia. This point was made by Brian Keighran in a letter published in The Australian on August 27, 2017. Mr Keighran wrote, ' It is absolutely correct to say that Captain Cook "discovered" the east coast of Australia, when you know that discover means "to reveal" and "to make known".
The first documented exploration of Australia (New Holland/Terra Australia) was on the west coast by the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606 and other contacts followed over the next 100 years or so by European explorers.
Captain Cook, after making observations of the Transit of Venus at Tahiti in 1769, sighted the south-eastern coast of Australia on April 19, 1770 and became the first recorded European to explore the eastern coastline.
His report obviously revealed to the British Government the potential for a settlement in this country and we know that happened in 1788.'
Associate Professor Carol Liston of Western Sydney University has made a similar comment, stressing that for Cook and the burgeoning British Empire of which he was an agent, the navigational work he undertook along the east coast of Australia was discovery. Professor Liston has stated, ' The word "discovery" is problematic... I often use the word explore. But Cook did not know the Great South Land was there and that was a discovery to Cook and his colleagues.'
2. The inscription is accurate in terms of the scope of Captain Cook's explorations
It has been claimed that the inscription on the Hyde Park statue describing Captain Cook as the discoverer of 'this territory' is accurate. According to this line of argument, Captain Cook was the first man to discover the whole east coast of Australia.
This point has been made by Keith Windschuttle, the editor of Quadrant, who has stated, ' It is perfectly accurate, if we take the word "territory" to mean the eastern coast of the Australian continent. Cook was in fact the first person in history to traverse the whole of this coastline and view its 2000 miles (3200km) of shores and hinterland. No Aboriginal person had done that before - they never had the maritime technology to do it.'
Windschuttle went on to explain, ' On the other hand, if the Hyde Park inscription had said Cook discovered Botany Bay, Port Jackson, Moreton Bay or any other small local area on the coastline inhabited by the Aboriginal people Cook met, it would have been inaccurate and probably worth correcting. The local Aborigines clearly knew their own areas better than any foreign seaman. But in their lifetimes they remained confined to these areas and, although their predecessors had gradually spread themselves across the continent over thousands of years, none of them gained the view of it that Cook had in his four-month journey from Port Hicks to Cape York in 1770. He was the genuine discoverer of the whole entity.'
This view has been echoed by some of those living in Witby, in England, the area within which Cook trained as a seaman. MP Simon Clarke, who represents Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, has stated, 'The Australia of today is owed to James Cook; Australia should take huge pride in him. The nation of Australia is not imaginable without Captain Cook. He was the first person to see the eastern seaboard in its entirety, and that was a pioneering feat. The nation of Australia was discovered by Cook - there were some monsters of that time, but James Cook was not one of them.'
3. The inscription is historically significant as a reflection of former cultural attitudes
Defenders of nineteenth and twentieth century statues that commemorate attitudes that are no longer universally accepted argue that the statues should remain because they are a part of Australia's history. These statues are seen as sculptural primary sources, real world pieces of historical evidence that reflect Australia in the 1800s, the early 1900s and beyond.
It has been argued that no statue or contemporary record is a complete reflection of the past. Its value lies in serving as evidence of the particular views of a given time. On August 25, 2017, a columnist for The Australian, Peter Hoysted, writing under the nom de plume 'Jack the Insider' stated, ' Statues are a form of dead history. No reasonable person expects them to contain a comprehensive, tell all biography of the subject or the subject's historical context.'
This position has been put by Australia's prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who has stated with regard to Stan Grant's comments, 'I'm an admirer of Stan's but he is dead wrong here. Trying to edit our history is wrong.
Now all of those statues, all of those monuments, are part of our history and we should respect them and preserve them.'
Malcolm Turnbull was more critical of attempts to damage or remove statues. He condemned such actions as 'Stalinist', referring to the efforts of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to remove from the historical record those whose whom he opposed. Malcolm Turnbull stated, ' This is what Stalin did. When he fell out with his henchmen he didn't just execute them, they were removed from all official photographs - they became non-persons, banished not just from life's mortal coil but from memory and history itself.'
Even Stan Grant has not called for the statue of Cook to be removed, merely for its inscription to be changed. Of it and similar statues he has stated, ' They are a symbolic starting point to discuss who we are today and who we wish to be in the future...Those statues are our history; they tell us who we have been which is why I would not want them removed.'
A related position has been put by some of those who support the retention of historical monuments in the United States which commemorate leaders of the Confederacy. In an article by Zachary Fine, published in The New Republic on March 11, 2016, it was argued, 'By purging historical monuments in the name of contemporary values, we risk effacing [evidence of] the grievous errors that continue to inform the present.'
4. The inscription should be contextualised not changed
Opponents of editing or altering the inscriptions on statues commemorating colonial figures argue that a better strategy is to contextualise the sculpture and the original inscription.
This means that an additional plaque is attached to the statue explaining the historical background of the piece.
University of Sydney historian, Professor Mark McKenna, has stated, ' It is better to add to the story than erase history - to understand how and why people believed what they did in the past such as White Australia.
Obviously we don't believe in White Australia any more but we need to understand how and why people did that and then explain in the same breath why we don't believe in it any more.
I would put an additional inscription explaining why they thought the way they did and why we no longer think that.
It is part of understanding how ideas have changed and why. In 1901 we didn't entertain the proposition of recognising Aboriginal people in the constitution and now we do.'
Referring specifically to the inscription on the Hyde Park statue of Captain Cook which Stan Grant has criticised, Professor McKenna has stated, 'My attitude to inappropriate statements is to leave them there and then add something because that allows you to show why people thought those things at the time.'
Gary Sturgess, chairman of Public Service Delivery at the Australia and New Zealand School of Management and an expert on Governor Arthur Phillip, who led the First Fleet in 1788, has stated, 'I'm not in favour of tearing down statues, but we need to ðrecontextualise statues or other public art. We've had a very British interpretation up until now. For a lot of my life, we were assuming it was discovered by Cook. If that is offensive, I get that. Should we rework the plaque? I suspect we should leave the older one and put another alongside.'
Historians around the world have adopted a similar attitude to the importance of establishing a context for historical monuments and their inscriptions. In an opinion piece originally published in The Times (and then republished in The Australian) on August 17, 2017, David Aaronovitch stated, 'So my own preference, where possible, is not destruction but...contextualisation. In Lincoln cathedral is the old stone shrine to Little Sir Hugh, supposedly ritually murdered by Jews in 1255. This filthy medieval libel might have warranted destruction, but better, as the cathedral did, to leave it and add a plaque explaining the monument and the "blood libel" against the Jews. That way people can learn something.'
5. Additional monuments commemorating Indigenous losses and achievements should be erected
It is argued that rather than altering inscriptions on existing monuments, Australia should memorialise events from an Indigenous perspective as well as a colonial or Euro-centric one. This point has been made by Warren Mundine, a prominent Indigenous spokesperson and the former National President of the Australian Labor Party. Mundine has stated, ' All this nonsense about changing things - we cannot look back at history with our modern minds otherwise we would have to tear down the pyramids because they were built by slaves...
In Australia, the problem is an absence of memorials, we need more about our own people, our indigenous people.'
A similar point has been made by Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Senior Lecturer in Tourism at the University of South Australia in a comment published in The Conversation on August 25, 2017. Higgins-Desbiolles stated, 'This recent discussion concerns memorials that glorify men or events that brought direct harm to others, in the case of Australia through invasion and dispossession. But there are...recent memorials to events telling the experience of invasion from Indigenous points of view.'
Higgins-Desbiolles went on to give an example of memorialisation from an Indigenous perspective. She wrote, 'An illustrative example is the case of Myall Creek, New South Wales. In 1998, Sue Blacklock, a descendant of a massacre survivor, collaboratively formed a Memorial Committee to see the Myall Creek massacre commemorated. In 2000, the Myall Creek Massacre Memorial was opened and attended by descendants of the victims, survivors and perpetrators of the massacre.'
Higgins-Desbiolles then gave a further example, 'The first monument acknowledging Indigenous diggers who served in Australia's wars was opened in 2013 in Adelaide. It was the result of community fundraising and activism to ensure that Anzac commemorations no longer overlooked the service that Indigenous people have given in Australia's wars, despite not having full citizenship rights in many cases.'
Similarly it has been suggested Indigenous warriors' defence of their country from colonial invasion should also commemorated when Australia honours its war dead. In an opinion piece published on the ABC's Internet site on August 23, 2017, Stan Grant stated, 'Our frontier resistance warriors deserve a place on the war memorial wall of remembrance.'