A Letter from Robin Gollan

Robin Gollan is by any standard an eminent senior Australian. He is 88, and retired (with the honorary position of Emeritus Professor of History, Australian National University). He lives in Canberra. He retired in 1982 after 29 years as a historian at ANU. >From 1976-82 he was Manning Clark Professor of Australian History, Australian National University. In WW2 he served in the Royal Australian Air Force. His collected papers are at

http://www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/9372.html#bio

Here is a letter from him highlighted in the Canberra Times yesterday 13 August 2005, as our weekend 60th Anniversary celebrations in Canberra of VP Day (Victory in the Pacific War, 1945) was getting under way here. We should heed his words.

"This two-faced Government rules through fear and lies" – letter from Robin Gollan, Canberra Times, 13 August 2005

A few days ago, like thousands of other old men and women, I received a shiny medallion and a letter signed by John Howard and De-Anne Kelly.

They thanked me for my part in protecting "the Australian way of life in times of conflict" and for helping to build "our community in times of peace".

It made me think of Ivan Barber, a Western Australian wheat farmer, who substituted for me on an operation so that I could take a few days leave, and died in my place.

I wondered what he and the more than 40,000 men and boys who died defending our country in World War II would feel about John Howard's Australia.

Certainly most people are materially much better off than we were in 1939-45.

We have shared in the bounty of the one-fifth of the world which has become rich.

But we have become a country which is governed by lies and fear.

John Howard has surrendered the self-reliance, for which we fought, to curry favour with the most dangerous military power in history.

He has stoked the fear of terrorists who may target us because of his fawning subservience to United States President George W.Bush.

He boasts that he stands for mateship and egalitarianism at the same time as he attempts by his industrial relations "reforms" to destroy the institutions on which those qualities have been nurtured.

The chief law officer seems not to understand the principles of the rule of law, and calls those who do "armchair critics".

He and Howard are undermining the very principles of democracy in the name of defending them.

The Foreign Minister rails against those who don't accept his opinion as fools.

He supports his stand by some weird interpretations of history.

Yes. We would not have survived without the American alliance, but the Americans I served with believed, correctly, that we were defending a great democracy.

Today the alliance, for which Howard and his coterie are prepared to sell our soul, is a militaristic plutocracy.

I'm sorry, Ivan.

Robin Gollan, Scullin"