Those UNSW Guidelines That The Daily Tele Cracked It Over Are 4 Years Old

If you missed the Daily Telegraph‘s sepia-soaked front page this morning, they’re all up in a tizz over the University of New South Wales‘s diversity guidelines, which recommends students and teachers refer to Captain Cook invading Australia (true) rather than the far more colonial-era language of ‘discovering’ it.

They also accused the university’s stance as having “reignited the history wars”, a decades long argument in academia over the early colonies treated Aboriginal people (relatively minor conflict vs a massacre).

As well as the wide-spread backlash the ‘exclusive’ report ignited – which could only have been their intention, really – it also churned on the right wing megaphones to throw their two (supportive) cents in.

Alan Jones: “[the guidelines would make] smoke come out of your ears!”


Kyle Sandilands: “It divides society. All the flogs at uni reckon we invaded the joint… I’m not interested in who was here first and who did what, get out it already, it’s 200 years ago.”

But, as we’ve seen recently with the Safe Schools program (to disastrous affect), something doesn’t have to be ‘new’ for News Corp papers to pen outrage about it – it just has to exist.

And these guidelines? Well, they’ve been around for four fucking years, UNSW has confirmed.


A UNSW spokeswoman confirmed as much to PEDESTRIAN.TV, and that no changes had been made that would possibly cause the Daily Tele to suddenly pounce (our words, not theirs). She also confirmed that the Daily Tele had simply not even asked.

“We weren’t even given a chance to rebuff,” she said, sounded as bewildered as everybody else.
So, yeah. “Reigniting the history wars?” Thanks for playing, Daily Tele, but that’s definitely your bad.
Photo: Daily Telegraph.

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