Knightley and facts.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: If I had been a "principal researcher" for Philip Knightley's Australia: Biography of a Nation, as Neil McDonald claims to have been (Letters, October 2003), I would not be in any particular hurry to advertise the fact (I note Mr Knightley does not give Mr McDonald any mention in the book, so he could easily have kept quiet about it).

My letter, which Mr McDonald calls a "diatribe", is actually largely a list (not exhaustive) of errors of fact which that book contains, generally supporting the package deal of left-wing mythology. Mr McDonald does not attempt to refute even one of my claims of error, which include howlers about basic facts of Australian history. To reiterate very briefly: there was no slavery in Australia, B.A. Santamaria was not expelled from the ALP, of which he was never a member, a dingo fence cannot be seen from outer space, Australia was not close to civil war in 1931-32, there is no such thing as a Nungar tribe, there is no evidence Australian troops tried to surrender en masse at Gallipoli, Whitlam did not end the Burchett affair by restoring Burchett's passport.

These are matters of fact, not of opinion or interpretation. Nor does Mr McDonald attempt to refute my statement that the account of the 1919 Fremantle wharf riot in Knightley's book seems to have been taken without attribution--or checking--from the account by the ludicrous and thoroughly discredited Manning Clark, Lenin Jubilee Medallist. I can, if he wishes, quote the respective ...