to the Editor of The Age

Erik Vahl Meyer wants Big Brother ("our governments" in his terminology) to decree "the true history" of human settlement in our continent (31/12). He overlooks the fact that there is widespread disagreement among Australians about the story of British settlement and the shortcomings and benefits of that profound change to human society here.

     As for reference to "the 60,000 years of Indigenous occupation", that needs to be set next to the tens of thousands of years of ancestry in lands overseas that other Australians can call upon to provide them with dignity and political clout. 

     Real "truth-telling" is unlikely to justify the current mischievous campaigns to delegitimize our nation's status and engage in an inevitably inauthentic "constitutional recognition" of an inadequately defined small minority of present-day Australians.

Nigel Jackson, Belgrave