I am a co-convenor of the Defend Sacred Ground campaign, which I would like to frame in a wider context.

If you voted ‘No’ at the Voice referendum, you were possibly, in part at least, registering your objection to the increasing division of Australia into two nations.

We see it with the constant acknowledgements of and welcomes to country. We see it with the three flags. We see it with the Voices to Parliament. We see it with the slavish deference to Aboriginal myths and culture. We see it with grants of Native Title over land that was never intended to be covered by the Mabo decision – a form of title that confers greater rights than those enjoyed by white titleholders.

None of which represent decisions you were invited to vote on. You only got to vote on the Voice thanks to the Constitution.

That the majority of Australians oppose this division doesn’t matter to the unelected elites. They know what’s best for you. Which brings me to Kim Beazley and the Australian War Memorial Collective, sorry, Council, and their proposal to incorporate the so-called ‘frontier wars’ into the museum of the Australian War Memorial.

Here I make the point – one which I will repeat ad nauseam throughout this campaign. The Australian War Memorial is not a museum of war. It is a shrine to those who have died in the service of the nation. Not those who, supposedly, died opposing its creation.

Its museum and history functions are subordinate to its role as a shrine.

Beazley, in relying on a ‘broad interpretation’, is ignoring his statutory obligation to conform to the Australian War Memorial Act of 1980. And he is ignoring the views of the people whose Parliament enacted that legislation, on the basis that he knows better.

In other words, Chairman Kim (I’ll call him that from now on – it has a nice authoritarian ring to it) is relying on the vibe of the thing.

We should recognise the fact of frontier conflict and teach it as part of our history. To some, such acknowledgement in the War Memorial is a benign gesture. But this so-called history is by no means settled.

Chairman Kim, for all his good intentions, will not have the final say. If you hand your adversary a weapon, don’t be surprised if he uses it. Once Chairman Kim has delivered for the activists, he will be politely elbowed into irrelevance, and the so-called ‘frontier wars’ will then be weaponised in a wider struggle.

Because what is being proposed for the War Memorial is not history but propaganda – propaganda supporting an increasingly virulent insurgency campaign to divide Australia into two nations.

The activists who are driving this initiative, notably film-maker Rachel Perkins and historian Henry Reynolds, will use acceptance, by the War Memorial, of this contested history to give legitimacy to the idea that Australia was brutally invaded, the people were dispossessed, and that therefore this nation is illegitimate.

They have devised a fake and, frankly, unbelievable narrative that up to 100,000 Aborigines were killed in a series of ‘frontier wars’. If that narrative gains acceptance within the spaces of the War Memorial museum complex, it will very quickly invade the hallowed halls of the Shrine itself in the form of a Tomb of the Unknown Aboriginal Warrior emplaced next to the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier. That is a stated aim of these activists. And if that happens, how long before we see an Aboriginal contingent at the front of the Anzac Day March?

This would be a most divisive development, maybe even worse than the ill-fated Voice to Parliament. It would trivialise and demean the sacrifice of those 103,000 who are honoured at the War Memorial.

Aboriginal Australia was not invaded by the British. In accordance with international law of the time, it was settled.

It was invaded by the modern world. That was always going to happen. It was always going to be brutal – for a period at least. And it was ultimately going to benefit the descendants of those living at the time – if it were done properly.

Which it largely was, first under British settlement and then under successive Australian governments, until ‘Nugget’ Coombs abandoned the policy of assimilation and tried to turn back time, which has left remote Aboriginal communities stranded in a dysfunctional time warp. This is a crisis which makes the boutique concerns of these well-heeled Aboriginal elites, and their useful idiots, seem obscene.

Here let me quote Professor Frank Bongiorno, writing in the ANU Reporter:

‘The Australian War Memorial is a morally charged national space that promotes a powerful national origin story. National character finds its purest expression in Anzac, we are told.

‘The story of frontier warfare is another powerful – and arguably alternative – foundation story. It tells us Australia was built on invasion, dispossession, and violence, and that the nation can only ever approach authenticity and wholeness once it gives a proper recognition to this reality.’

No, no, no. The War Memorial has nothing to do with a national origin story. I will say it again. It is nothing more than a shrine to honour those who died in the service of this nation. But it doesn’t only honour the fallen. It also does honour to the nation. The nation that spawned those heroes. A nation to be proud of. A nation worth dying for.

Yes, let’s acknowledge our warts and all history. But let’s confine it to the halls of academia, to secular museums, to parliamentary apologies and even to annual ‘sorry days’ if we must.

The following analogy is not perfect, but bear with me. We expect the Catholic Church to acknowledge and atone for the crimes of predator priests. But we don’t expect it to dedicate a chapel to these events in St Mary’s Cathedral.

So why would we daub the walls of our national shrine with the graffiti of grievance? The graffiti of invasion, dispossession, and violence?

You didn’t get a chance to vote on welcomes to country, three flags, and all the other divisive encroachments. Here’s a chance to push back. Please sign our petition and promulgate it as widely as you can: http://www.defendsacredground.com