Scott Morrison Captain Cook Australia Day
(Image: AAP/Marc McCormack)

Scott Morrison’s new and bewildering plan to “honour” Captain Cook (which Guy Rundle said was going against his confected suburban dad image) surprised some readers yesterday, but many others thought that such a stunt was to be expected. Elsewhere, readers responded to Warren Mundine’s candidacy in Gilmore (where Keane predicts Mundine will run the gauntlet faced by any Indigenous conservative), and to Emily Watkins on the disappearance of science journalists.     

On Morrison’s sudden obsession with Captain Cook

Peter Schulz writes: As a Gen Xer, Morrison would have grown up on spin, which would have been further normalised when he was paid to spin as a professional BS artist in the marketing industry. Truth and consistency would not be concepts he understands.

Cara MacNish writes: Rundle recounts the moment it became clear that the “high school history in which Cook was the ‘discoverer’ of Australia was a piece of national narcissism”. To be more correct, it’s a piece of eastern states narcissism at best. At school in the west back in the day we learnt that the Dutch “discovered” Australia more than 160 years before Cook. Of course this was also only a small part of a rich and much longer history.

Wayne Robinson writes: The only thing worth writing about Cook’s first voyage was that it was to observe the 1769 transit of Venus in order to work out the size of the solar system (or at least, pin its size down more accurately). Its main purpose was to go to Tahiti, not New Holland.

On Warren Mundine and Indigenous conservatives

Brad Powe writes: No doubt some progressives are guilty of hypocrisy, but this old leftie remains ever ready to hold conservatives to the higher standards of behaviour that they both proclaim and demand of everyone else.

Lee Tinson writes: I’ve watched Mundine over the last few years get more conservative in his views, then just lose all pretence of anything but naked self-interest. This may well be the best way for LNP to lose Gilmore at the next election. I can’t see Mundine as a viable candidate.

On the the disappearance of mainstream science journalists

Peter Evans writes: Specialist journalists at “one-stop-shop” publications like newspapers are a threatened species, sure, but there are lots and lots of specialist journalists with deep knowledge of their field at specialist publications (and also blogging). The fragmenting of the media landscape away from one-stop-shops is the story, as you know, and has been for 20 years.

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