The Australian War Memorial must be delighted with a recent Age article (Shane Wright 8/2) which gives a breathless account of a ‘new vision’ for the Australian War Memorial.

He mentions the display of helicopters, a bit of HMAS Brisbane, armoured vehicles and lots of other stuff to excite the young about weapons.

There was, sadly, no mention, of a significant absence from the AWM displays – our very first war, The Frontier Wars – which are not only our longest war, but also one of the most deadly.

It lasted more than a century from 1788 to 1934 and some evidence indicates the Wars continued until at least the 1940s – longer than Europe’s One Hundred Year War in the 14th and 15th centuries; and, longer than Europe’s deadly Thirty Years War in the 17th Century.

About 60,000 Australian soldiers were killed in World War I and 30,000 in World War II. No-one will ever know just how many Indigenous and White people were killed in the Frontier Wars. The most conservative estimate of the deaths of Indigenous people, settlers and soldiers is 23,000. Other estimates of White and Black deaths are as high as 122,000.

There is no Roll of Honour for these fallen at the Australian War Memorial and scant recognition that our first and most deadly wars even existed.

It’s time there was.

Some of the military hardware could make way for such recognition.

Unfortunately, some AWM Council members are bitterly opposed to such recognition. The RSL representative on the AWM Council, for instance, keeps claiming that RSL members would be outraged at the decision without mentioning that RSL membership is probably less than half of all veterans and serving military staff.

However, the AWM Chair, Kim Beazley, has recognised the need for this injustice to be rectified and has recognised that action was now necessary. It is not clear yet what this will involve.

So far, all the AWM has suggested is that it is prepared to devote some attention to the Frontier Wars – but the plan envisages a mere one percent of the new pre-1914 galleries – for wars which account for at least as many deaths as all our other wars combined.

The AWM also appears to be planning to employ a fund-raising company to raise philanthropic donations to fund this Frontier conflict gallery.

It’s not known what is proposed but, given that whatever the AWM seems to want to do about Frontier Wars will be on the cheap, they could perhaps arrange chook raffles at RSL Clubs.

…and perhaps RSL clubs, in a mea culpa for past refusals of Indigenous veterans’ entry to clubs, could re-direct some poker machine revenue to the project.

So far there is no information about how the fund-raising would  relate to the pre-1914 1% plan. But given that the AWM has been provided with $600million of public money for the AWM expansion it is bizarre for it to claim that it doesn’t have enough to do something meaningful.

The blog is Secretary of the Defending Country Memorial Project which campaigns for Frontier Wars  representation at the AWM.