The Oliphant in the Room

Sir Mark Oliphant has long been a darling of the Australian left. Not only was he a pioneering nuclear physicist, but he was also tacitly blackballed by the Americans and the Menzies government in the 50s (call it an early form of shadowbanning). Nothing was more calculated to endear someone to the Australian left than being a suspected pinko. No wonder famously pinko-progressive South Australian premier Don Dunstan appointed him State Governor in 1971.

But today’s left, prone as they are to subjecting past figures to posthumous inquisition by the standards of contemporary Wokeism, would be unlikely to spare Oliphant. Were they to apply their mania for “truth-telling” less selectively than is usually the case, it’s unlikely Oliphant’s memory would survive a Woke auto-da-fe.

The [Australian Academy of Science] is big on bagging colonial oppressors of Aborigines, so why whitewash Oliphant, as it does here and here? Of course, I’m not advocating smashing of any Oliphant busts or statuary, as per Oxford radicals’ “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign, or Hobart’s planned removal of its olden-day Premier William Crowther. I’ll leave that civic work to the ABC’s Julia Baird — toppling statues thrills her heart.

While Oliphant’s puritanical views on pornography would no doubt be congenial to Third Wave Feminists, his views on homosexuals and Aborigines would send a Wokeist into a fit of screaming cancel culture mee-mees.

After Oliphant retired from the Academy, SA Premier Don Dunstan in 1971 appointed him State Governor. They soon fell out over Oliphant’s strong and outspoken views, such on Dunstan’s relaxing of sex censorship. Oliphant had requested samples of pornography from the simpatico Police Commissioner Harold Salisbury including images of male and female homosexuality. Oliphant asked Dunstan to his office to see and resile from such alleged depravity, but Dunstan after inspection said he merely found pornography boring and abruptly walked out of Government House.

Oliphant worsened relations by complaining to the Queen about Dunstan and pornography.

Even worse, Oliphant came down on the wrong side of leftist history by backing the bete noire of the Australian left, the dismissal of the hapless, incompetent far-left Whitlam government.

The breach widened when Oliphant backed Governor-General Kerr for sacking Whitlam in 1975. He even threatened Dunstan that he’d go public in support of Kerr. Dunstan in turn warned Oliphant that he’d get the Queen to sack him.

Oliphant’s pro-Dismissal stance so angered Dunstan that he resolved to appoint as Oliphant’s successor someone who wouldn’t similarly rock the boat.

Dunstan’s choice was Aboriginal pastor and footballer Sir Doug Nicholls. Never mind that Nicholls was almost illiterate.

Oliphant’s response, when he learned of Dunstan’s scheming, was enough to send a “words-are-violence” snowflake reaching for the vapours.

The first problem likely to be faced by an Aborigine as Governor would be the natural assumption by all other Aborigines that what is his is theirs. The House may well be filled to overflowing by his relatives and tribesmen to whom by custom and duty, he cannot say no. The results could be chaos, inability to find or keep domestic staff, and even loss of valuables because of the “sharing” habits of his people.

Although, given the endemic nepotism and corruption we’ve seen in so many “indigenous” quangos, ol’ Oliphant may have been onto something.

Oliphant cited Lois [also Lowitja] O’Donoghue on her difficulties as an Aboriginal maintaining dual ties to family and the Aboriginal Affairs Department. where she worked. He also cited experiences of white adoptive parents who found their Aboriginal adoptees at puberty reverting to tribal culture. “There is something inherent in the personality of the Aborigine which makes it difficult for him [sic] to adapt fully to the ways of the white man,” Oliphant wrote.

Ouch. Mind you, Dunstan’s sniffy reply would hardly pass the “racism” test of a modern Wokeist. Nicholls, Dunstan wrote, was “long detribalised” and “living in a largely European community”.

The uber-woke Canberra Times wasn’t much better, worrying that members of Nicholls’ family might set up their humpies on the grounds of Government House.

If all this sounds like pettifogging over the mores of very different times, it is. The problem is, that that sort of inquisitorial wokeness is the Australian Academy of Science’s stock-in-trade.

The Academy wants its Fellows and staff to celebrate NAIDOC Week, National Sorry Day, National Reconciliation Week, “Survival Day” (once known as Australia Day, January 26), Close the Gap Day, and at least one UN Indigenous day. I’m surprised they ever get any work done.

The Australian

But when it comes to their own past heroes, it seems that “truth-telling” is the last thing they want.