When Charles Bean founded the Australian War Memorial, his vision was a place for Australians to commemorate, mourn and memorialise those brave men and women who died for Australia, a place for those whose loved ones never came home, whose bodies lie in a foreign land, broken and bloodied so that we may be free. There are 103,140 names. To every one of them: you have my undying gratitude and respect. For the unknown soldiers, those lost in the chaos of war who will never have their names on the wall, we have the tomb of the unknown Australian soldier, known unto God, as the inscription says, and never forgotten.

The Australian War Memorial is sacred ground. It is where we remember the most noble amongst us, the bravest that we as a nation can be. My grandfather fought in the jungles of New Guinea under the Australian flag. To spare my young mind from the horrors that he saw, he used to tell me that he only threw custard pies. He was a great influence in my life and instilled a deep respect for those who risk it all for us back home. So, when I hear that the woke bureaucrats at the Australian War Memorial are planning to install a shrine to grievance politics in the form of a Frontier Wars exhibit, I see red.

This is not an attempt to educate Australians. This is an attempt to denigrate Australia as a country using our war dead as a vehicle to delegitimise the country they died for. How dare you? These men and women went willingly to die for this country, for the country they loved. Everything that memorial should be to inspire the reverence we should all feel towards our fallen soldiers to help us to understand the horrors that they faced with courage and conviction. Anything that would detract from that and anything that would seek to tarnish their memories does not belong in that sacred place.

I would like to thank Peter O'Brien, who first brought this planned exhibit to my attention. Peter has written several articles on this proposed abomination in Quadrant, and I would encourage anyone who is suitably incensed by the proposal to read those articles. It is important to note that I am not a historian, and I have no interest in denying or minimising Australia's history. The settling of Australia was not without violence or injustice. Settlers and Indigenous clashed over land and resources. Blood was spilled on both sides. Without doubt, atrocities took place, but the Australian War Memorial is not the place to educate people on the settling of Australia. Put that in the National Museum of Australia, if you must. The War Memorial is for remembering the forces raised in and who fought for Australia, no matter the colour of your skin or your origin.

This is not just my opinion. This is the law. The Australian War Memorial Act 1980 sets out what is and isn't allowed to be displayed in the memorial. Under the act, the functions of the memorial include to disseminate information relating to Australian military history. An expansive reading of this has been used to justify the new exhibit. However, as Peter O'Brien rightly points out, the act defines Australian military history to mean the history of 'wars and warlike operations in which Australians have been on active service, including the events leading up to and the aftermath of such wars and warlike operations, and the defence force'. The act defines the defence force as such. It includes any naval and military force of the Crown raised in Australia before the establishment of the Commonwealth. In this lies the issue that the so-called Frontier Wars were never with forces raised in Australia. These conflicts involved the British regiments who were deployed to the colonies to assist in maintaining order and local militia or police, not forces raised in Australia as is required by the act. This proposed display does not belong in the Australian War Memorial either on principle or on legal grounds. Not only this, but the taxpayer will pay millions for the board of the memorial to denigrate the heroes, but this should not come as a surprise, given that the same board layers and artwork to hang in the Afghanistan Gallery of the Australian War Memorial called Reckoning.

It is a piece to memorialise the Brereton report. The report that has resulted in the hounding of our war heroes, like Ben Roberts-Smith, the same hunt that has cost taxpayers $300 million. I've spoken to veterans who were questioned in relation to that report, and I can tell you it is not worthy of a place in the memorial. When the Australian public come to the Australian War Memorial, they are there to pay their respects and reflect. For the sake of our veterans past, present and future, keep this place sacred. Lest we forget.