OPINION
So-called “fact-checkers”, as anyone with a functioning critical faculty is well aware, have very little interest in actual facts. Instead, they function almost universally as narrative-confirmation machines. Contrary to the media’s self-serving palaver about “speaking truth to power”, “fact-checkers” are in the business of telling lies for power.
The worst kind of lies, as William Blake warned us, are those which tell just a little bit of the truth, but bend it into a lie. This is why “fact-checkers” so often indulge in straw-man arguments, pretending to “check” something their target never actually claimed, or tacitly admitting that what they’re “checking” is absolutely true, “but…”
The thoroughly disgraced “RMIT ABC Fact Check”, which is so dodgy that even Facebook won’t touch them, tries the same trick on Geoffrey Blainey. Word to the not-so-wise: when you’re going up against Australia’s most eminent historian, you better come armed with something better than a bunch of straw men and irrelevant waffle.
Which, of course, is precisely what they’ve done.
In an opinion piece published in The Australian, historian Geoffrey Blainey called on Australians to “get our facts in order” ahead of the Voice to Parliament referendum and challenged Yes campaigners on several historical claims.
These included a statement contained in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which reads: “In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard.”
As Blainey points out, this is utter bollocks.
“On the contrary, they had been counted in every federal census since 1901, and counted moreover in the face of obstacles confronted by few other national statisticians.”
So, were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people counted in every Commonwealth census before 1967?
The short, honest, answer is “Yes”. But these are “fact-checkers” we’re dealing with, so naturally they try and squirm around telling the short, honest truth.
Yes, Indigenous people were enumerated in federal censuses prior to 1967, but there is more to the story than Professor Blainey’s claim suggests.
Now here comes the bullshit.
The numbers of so-called “full-bloods”, as they were referred to in early censuses, were not included in the final population figures. Basic counts of the “full-blood” Aboriginal population were instead published separately, often with no further analysis of that population’s characteristics.
(People deemed to be less than “half” Aboriginal were included as part of the European population, with so-called “half-castes” then analysed by “race”).
So, they were counted in every Commonwealth census before 1967.
But a “fact-checker”, least of all the ABC, will never admit that. So, naturally, they resort to bullshit and straw men.
Experts consulted by Fact Check said that whether Professor Blainey’s claim was correct ultimately boiled down to whatever meaning people ascribed to the word “counted”.
How many meanings can they make up? To calculate the total number of people, things, etc. in a particular group.
Of course, no “fact-check” is complete without a straw man, and the ABC has a doozy. Instead of just admitting that Blainey was right that Aboriginal Australians were always counted, the ABC sidesteps into a quibble about what the government did with the information. Essentially, the Constitution banned using the count of Aboriginal Australians from the census for Constitutional purposes.
Most notably, this included the population count used to determine the number of seats held by each state in the federal House of Representatives.
ABC Australia
Aboriginal Australians were also not included in calculations of federal customs revenue to each state.
These complicated, legalistic prestidigitations were a consequence of the realities of getting the former colonies to agree at all on a federal Constitution, not to mention the general attitudes of 120+ years ago.
Nonetheless, the claim that Aborigines were not counted in Australian censuses until 1967 is a blatant, race-baiting lie from the Yes23 campaign.
Just don’t rely on a “fact-checker” to be honest about that.