Right fire for right future: how cultural burning can protect Australia from catastrophic blazes

The Guardian, Lorena Allam, Sat 18 Jan 2020

Traditional knowledge has already reduced bushfires and emissions in the top end, so why isn’t it used more widely?

Kija Rangers conduct prescribed burning in the East Kimberley in 2019.
Photograph: Supplied/Kimberley Land Council

Indigenous fire practitioners have warned that Australia’s bush will regenerate as a “time bomb” prone to catastrophic blazes, and issued a plea to put to use traditional knowledge which is already working across the top end to reduce bushfires and greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is a time bomb ticking now because all that canopy has been wiped out,” says Oliver Costello of the national Indigenous Firesticks Alliance.

“A lot of areas will end up regenerating really strongly, but they’ll return in the wrong way. We’ll end up with the wrong species compositions and balance.

 “That’s why we need to get Indigenous fire practices out into the landscape in the coming months, to start to read the country and look at areas that need restoration burning in the short term.”

As Australia comes to terms with this season’s catastrophic fires, Indigenous practitioners like Costello are advocating a return to “cultural burning”.

What is cultural burning?

Small-scale burns at the right times of year and in the right places can minimise the risk of big wildfires in drier times, and are important for the health and regeneration of particular plants and animals.

Different species relate to fire in different ways, Costello explains. Wombats, for example, dig burrows to escape, while koalas climb into the canopy.

“When you understand the fire relationships they have, their own fire culture, then you are really applying the right fire for that culture so that you’re supporting the identity of that place.

“When you do that, you get more productive landscapes, you get healthier plants and animals, you get regeneration, you discourage invasive elements, which are sometimes native species that might belong in the system next door.

“It’s so important to apply that right fire for right country, so you can maintain the right balance.”

Aboriginal rangers and traditional owners conduct burns in the Katiti-Petermann
 Indigenous Protected Area, in the remote desert country near the Western
Australia and Northern Territory border. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

Dr David Bowman is a professor of pyrogeography and fire science at the University of Tasmania. Bowman describes Indigenous fire management as “little fires tending the earth affectionately”.

“The affectional is the opposite of mechanical. It’s with emotion. So it can be reverence, affection, fear, a whole range of emotions, but it’s an emotional relationship you have with land using fire to create mosaics and flammable habitat mosaics, which are really good for biodiversity and a really good way of managing fuel load.”

Where is it used in Australia?

In northern Australia, Indigenous land ownership is widespread. Caring for country and ranger programs in protected areas has delivered a degree of autonomy to traditional owners to walk the country, burning according to seasonal need and cultural knowledge.

Indigenous fire management involves “cool” fires in targeted areas during the early dry season, between March and July. The fires burn slowly and in patches.

In the Kimberley, the Land council holds community fire planning meetings throughout the early dry season to ensure the correct people are burning their country.

“Traditional owners are consulted and native title holders design burn lines and fire walk routes,” the KLC acting CEO Tyronne Garstone says.

“These burn lines are approved by the group and Indigenous rangers perform the on-ground work, backed up by modern technology with rangers taking constant weather readings and recording the conditions of the day.

“They work very well at combining the old people’s fire practices with modern techniques.”

Even so, climate change is affecting their ability to do “right way” fire management, Garstone says.

“These ‘right way’ fire days are getting fewer and fire behaviour is changing along the same lines as over east. Late season conditions are also driving more fires in unusual ways due to the climatic conditions we are currently facing.”

Kija Rangers conduct prescribed or ‘cool’ burning in the East Kimberley
in the dry season, 2019. Photograph: Supplied/Kimberley Land Council

How effective is it?

The Darwin centre for bushfire research at Charles Darwin University maps bushfires weekly. Since traditional burning was reintroduced on a large scale, the centre has collected enough data to show that the area of land destroyed by wildfires has more than halved, from 26.5m hectares in 2000, to just 11.5m hectares in 2019.

“We have annual fires up here,” the centre’s research fellow Andrew Edwards says. “Forty per cent of the top end could burn every year. So we had to do something about that.”

“We were originally much more interested in biodiversity, Aboriginal employment and getting people back on country to manage it properly, but when the carbon economy came along we saw a way to manage fire to abate greenhouse gas emissions.

“It was pretty bad before that happened,” Edwards says. “It was just fires running wild across huge tracts of north Australia that nobody was doing anything about.”

Edwards says the top end cooperative model can be adapted to southern conditions.

“That’s what needs to be looked at. Obviously there’s a lot more infrastructure to set up, but it’s collaboration and education.

“If we want to manage our natural environment properly, we need to be doing prescribed burning. There’s so much cultural knowledge out there still, and it’s being totally ignored. There’s hundreds of Indigenous rangers out there now doing this work.”

The Oriners and Sefton Savannah Burning Project creates carbon credits, using
strict scientific methodologies, approved through a rigorous accreditation process
with the Department of Environment, to store carbon in the natural landscape.
Photograph: Richard Wainwright/Caritas Australia

Will these practices be widely adopted?

In southern Australia, Oliver Costello says, Aboriginal knowledge systems are far less valued but hold important solutions.

The Coag national bushfire management policy includes a commitment to “promote Indigenous Australians’ use of fire”, but Indigenous fire groups like Firesticks Alliance say they need more resources to build capacity.

“There are a lot of policy settings at a high level that support us, but there’s nothing in between. There’re no resources,” Costello says.

“There’s no investment really outside of northern Australia Indigenous fire management of any significance, and they had to build a whole new economy to support it through carbon.

“There’s always investment going into future firefighting capacity, more trucks, more helicopters, more this, more that. What we need is people getting out into the landscape now, with the knowledge to start to heal it.

A small cool burn managed by Indigenous firesticks alliance.
Photograph: Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation/PA

Professor Bowman says it is possible to “blend Aboriginal with European and modern scientific approaches to create an opportunity for all land users and land owners”.

He suggests small-scale local “Green fire” groups modelled on the Landcare program.

“I would like to see a crossover between Indigenous and mainstream fire management groups, where there can be exchange and recognition.

“Because in the end there’s two things which are important to [remember]: all humans have come from a fire management background in their cultures, it’s just that some cultures ended up obliterating that knowledge because of industrialisation.

“We should really prioritise employment of Aboriginal people. But when there’s a gap we could be filling that gap with community groups. And there’s a really good opportunity for Aboriginal people to be involved in training.

“We need to encourage and promote the philosophy of Aboriginal fire practice because that’s going to be a really important pathway for sustainable fire management and also for healing because so many communities have been traumatised and shocked by the scale of the burning.”

Costello says the areas that haven’t burned this time around are now even more vulnerable.

“They are critical parts of the landscape [that need] to be able to support the animals and plants that have survived. And so those areas are going to be under increasing pressure and they’re also at risk of a future fire.

“There was an economy before settlement that supported this, a resource economy based on people looking after the land and having all that they needed.

“Now in the modern society it revolves around money. So we need to build economies that support cultural practice and acknowledge traditional custodianship.

“There’s all this canopy that’s been burnt away. We’ve got knowledge and techniques that can help heal that country in the future. It’s going to take some time. We’ve got probably two or three years before we can really be effective in some of that country because it needs to recover. But if we don’t get in there after that, then we miss our chance.”

The much welcomed rain in Australia might be too much of a good thing, as flash floods were reported in some area https://t.co/rNjVYeiU9T pic.twitter.com/Bgml3Yz50f

— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 18, 2020

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In Asia, Trump finds more than ever he's among friends

MSN – AFP, 25 May 2019 

US President Donald Trump arrives for lunch with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe at the Kasumigaseki Country Club golf course outside Tokyo in November 2017

In Europe, Donald Trump's relationships with leaders range from lukewarm to hostile. But in Asia, more than ever, the US president is finding that he's among friends.

At a time that Trump is ramping up pressure on China, he has built warm relationships elsewhere in Asia and has recently seen surprise electoral triumphs by key partners.

Japan is rolling out the red carpet for Trump, who will become the first foreign leader to meet newly enthroned Emperor Naruhito. Trump will bond with conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over sumo wrestling and, weather permitting, their latest rounds of golf.

Trump's trip comes on the heels of India's election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist who has enthusiastically built ties with Washington, won an unexpectedly strong new mandate, as well as Australia's polls, where Prime Minister Scott Morrison stunned pundits by beating back a challenge from the Labor Party, whose promises included a "more considered" approach to China.

Trump will return to Japan in June for the Group of 20 summit in Osaka and also visit South Korea, where President Moon Jae-in, despite coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum, laid the groundwork for one of Trump's signature foreign policy initiatives -- direct negotiations with North Korea.

US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump greet Prime Minister 

Shinzo Abe at the White House in April 2019 on one of the Japanese leader's many visits

The diplomacy comes amid an intense trade war between the United States and China that has no end in sight, with Trump blacklisting Chinese tech titan Huawei and demanding an end to allegedly rampant theft of US technology.

"Why would Kim Jong Un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?' Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!"

On Nov. 11, 2017, Trump tweeted a reply to North Korea's insults that described him as a "destroyer."

Envisioning a long-term US struggle against China, the Trump administration has said it is working on a comprehensive policy to counter the rising Asian power, akin to the Cold War doctrine of containing the Soviet Union.

Asian model for managing Trump

Toshihiro Nakayama, a professor at Keio University in Tokyo, said the Japanese were fully aware of the controversial nature of Trump, who is facing rising calls for impeachment from Democrats.

But the United States, which stations some 50,000 troops in Japan under a defense alliance, is by far the most important ally for Tokyo -- as well as an often difficult partner on trade.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison won a surprise re-election victory after campaign 

promises that mirrored US President Donald Trump on immigration and climate

"There's a consensus that if the American people chose Mr Trump, it's not our job to criticize it; it's our job to manage the relationship," said Nakayama, also a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International scholars in Washington.

French President Emmanuel Macron "initially tried to embrace him with style and nuance and it didn't succeed. So the Japanese government and people say that if you're going to embrace Mr Trump, you have to totally embrace him," Nakayama said.

Trump came of political age talking tough on trade in the 1980s, when Japan loomed large in the US imagination as a competitor. But Abe has courted Trump assiduously since the mogul's stunning election in 2016, gifting him gold-plated golf clubs and flying halfway around the world to celebrate his wife Melania's birthday.

Patrick Buchan, a longtime Australian official who directs the US Alliances Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Abe served as a global model on how to woo Trump -- making the relationship personal and resolving concerns through private channels.

"The Europeans, in my opinion, completely mishandled the Trump phenomenon. By responding to his public rhetoric or his Twitter tirades, you only created a vicious circle," Buchan said.

"I think it is partly, if you want, the Asian way of not engaging in megaphone diplomacy," he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers a victory speech after leading

his Bharatiya Janata Party to an unexpectedly sweeping re-election

Common cause on China

To be sure, Trump's ties with allies in the region have also hit rocky patches. Shortly after Trump's election, he reportedly exploded and hung up the phone on Australia's then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, when he heard of a deal on moving refugees from Australia to America.

And in India, accounts that Trump likes to mimic Modi's accent have sparked outrage.

But on strategy in Asia, leaders have found common ground. China has longstanding claims on territory administered by both Japan and India, while Australia has also voiced worries about Beijing's trading practices.

Modi -- who will meet Trump alongside Abe in Osaka -- has sided unabashedly with the United States despite India's historic resistance to alliances, building a defense relationship but stopping short of accepting any joint military operations.

Modi "has been willing to take the relationship with the US further than any of his predecessors," said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center.

But Kugelman warned that trade disputes could cloud the relationship. Trump is ending key trading preferences for India and forced the energy-hungry economy to stop buying from Iran and Venezuela.

Still, "I think Modi recognizes that India's national interests are tightly aligned with the US on issues like China's increasing presence in Asia and the terrorism threat in South Asia," Kugelman said.

Pope meets with US church leaders over clergy sex abuse

Yahoo – AFP, Catherine MARCIANO and Charles ONIANS, September 13, 2018

Pope Francis meets with leaders from the US church at the Vatican on Thursday
to discuss claims of sexual abuse by clergy (AFP Photo/Handout)

Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis met with US bishops and cardinals on Thursday to discuss the Vatican's response to a new wave of devastating claims of sexual abuse by clergy.

The pope met Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, who leads the US Conference of Bishops, and Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, who advises the pope on sex abuse issues.

DiNardo's deputy Jose Horacio Gomez and general secretary Brian Bransfield also attended the closed-door meeting.

The US Catholic Church has been shaken by the publication of a report on sexual abuse by clergy in Pennsylvania and by the resignation in July of US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

McCarrick was accused of sexually abusing a teenager while working as a priest in New York in the early 1970s.

The US Bishops' Conference issued a statement after the talks "regarding the recent moral crisis in the American Catholic Church".

The men told the pope how the US Church "is lacerated by the evil of sexual abuse... It was a lengthy, fruitful, and good exchange," the statement said.

"We look forward to actively continuing our discernment together identifying the most effective next steps."

US Cardinal Daniel DiNardo is presenting a new "action plan" to the pope for 

tackling sex abuse by clergy (AFP Photo/GABRIEL BOUYS, GABRIEL BOUYS)

Falling popularity

According to a new poll published by the US news channel CNN on Wednesday, Pope Francis's popularity has nosedived in the United States recently.

The poll showed that only 48 percent of Americans in general supported the Argentinian pontiff, and his popularity has also plummeted among US Catholics to 63 percent from 83 percent 18 months ago.

A former ambassador to the Holy See, Monsignor Carlo Vigano, has even demanded the pope's resignation, accusing him of covering up for McCarrick.

On Thursday, the pope accepted the resignation of US Bishop Michael Bransfield -- a cousin of the Bransfield attending Thursday's Vatican meeting -- and ordered an investigation into allegations he sexually harassed adults, his Baltimore diocese said in a statement.

'Church's own 9/11'

Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, private secretary to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, on Tuesday described sexual abuse against minors by clergy as the Church's "own 9/11".

Cardinal DiNardo said he wanted to present an "action plan" to the pope to facilitate reporting of abuse and misconduct by bishops.

Pope Francis has called a meeting of the heads of bishops' conferences worldwide 

next February to discuss the issue of sexual abuse (AFP Photo/Tiziana FABI)

Referring to the McCarrick case, DiNardo called for a "prompt and thorough examination... into how the grave moral failings of a brother bishop could have been tolerated for so long and proven no impediment to his advancement."

Police on Tuesday arrested a priest in DiNardo's Texas diocese following allegations he abused a male high school student between 1998 and 2001.

A diocesan statement also referred to allegations the priest, Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, abused a 16-year-old girl in 2001.

Her parents "decided not to pursue the matter" and left the country, and the priest was allowed to resume his duties in 2004 after an internal investigation, the statement said.

In the United States, a group of 5,000 Catholic chief executives have frozen $820,000 (700,000 euros) in funds paid annually to the Holy See pending clarification of the sex abuse cases.

While Pope Francis has refused to respond to Vigano's allegations so far, the Vatican said Monday that he was "formulating the eventual and necessary clarifications".

Archbishop of Washington Donald Wuerl has said he plans to travel 

to Rome in the near future to discuss his resignation with Pope

Francis (AFP Photo/MANDEL NGAN)

Cover-up allegations

Among the clergymen targeted by Vigano, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington and formerly a bishop in Pennsylvania, is accused of covering up the sexual abuse in that state.

Wuerl has said he plans to travel to Rome in the near future to meet with Pope Francis to discuss his resignation.

On Wednesday, the pontiff called for a meeting of all the heads of Catholic bishops' conferences worldwide at the Vatican next February to discuss the issue of the "protection of minors".

More cases are coming to light.

The conclusions of a study commissioned by the Church in Germany were leaked to the press on Wednesday.

They included the finding that priests sexually assaulted more than 3,600 children in Germany over nearly seven decades.

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Germany's Catholic Church 'ashamed' by child sex abuse 

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UN votes to send war crimes probe to Gaza

Yahoo – AFP, Nina LARSON, 18 May 2018

Delegates gather for a special session of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights
Council which voted to send a team of war crimes investigators to probe the
deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces

The UN Human Rights Council voted Friday to send a team of international war crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces.

The UN's top human rights body voted through a resolution calling on the council to "urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry" -- the UN rights council's highest-level of investigation.

Only two of the council's 47 members, the United States and Australia, voted against the resolution, while 29 voted in favour and 14 abstained, including Britain, Switzerland and Germany.

The text said the team should investigate all alleged violations and abuses... in the context of the military assaults on large scale civilian protests that began on 30 March 2018, ... including those that may amount to war crimes."

The special UN session comes after six weeks of mass protests and clashes along the Gaza border with Palestinian refugees demanding the right to return to their former homes inside what is now Israel.

The violence has claimed more than 100 Gazan lives, with 60 Palestinians killed and thousands injured in a single day of protests that coincided with Monday's move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein at 

a special session of the UN Human Rights Council which voted to send a team of war 

crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces

'Horrific events'

Opening the special session earlier Friday, UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein slammed the "wholly disproportionate" use of force by Israeli troops and backed the call for an international probe.

"Nobody has been made safer by the horrific events of the past week," he said.

But Zeid insisted that many of those injured and killed on Monday "were completely unarmed, (and) were shot in the back, in the chest, in the head and limbs with live ammunition", he said, saying there was "little evidence of any (Israeli) attempt to minimise casualties".

He said, "some of the demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails, used slingshots to throw stones, flew burning kites into Israel and attempted to use wire-cutters against the two fences between Gaza and Israel."

But he added: "these actions alone do not appear to constitute the imminent threat to life or deadly injury which could justify the use of lethal force."

Israel has justified its actions, arguing it was necessary to stop mass infiltrations from the blockaded Palestinian enclave which is run by the Islamist Hamas movement.

Israeli ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Aviva Raz Shechter, meanwhile slammed what she called a "shameful" and "biased" resolution.

"Hamas is the aggressor. Hamas is the one committing war crimes," she said, insisting that with Friday's resolution, the Human Rights Council "has reached a new height of hypocrisy".

"This resolution is void of any sense, and deserves nothing less than being torn apart."

Israel's Ambassador Aviva Raz Shechter gestures during a special session of the 

United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council which voted to send a team of war 

crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces

US representative Theodore Allegra also lamented the council's "biased focus on Israel", charging that the resolution had a "one-sided focus, without any call for investigation of Hamas".

Delegates gather for a special session of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council which voted to send a team of war crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein at a special session of the UN Human Rights Council which voted to send a team of war crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces

Israel's Ambassador Aviva Raz Shechter gestures during a special session of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council which voted to send a team of war crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces

US representative Theodore Allegra gestures during a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council which voted to send a team of war crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces.

Gay marriage around the world

Yahoo – AFP, December 7, 2017

Gay marriages are now recognised in more than 25 countries (AFP
Photo/SEAN DAVEY)

Paris (AFP) - Gay marriage, legalised on Thursday in Australia in a parliamentary vote, is now recognised in more than 25 countries, of which 16 are in Europe.

Here is a breakdown.

European pioneers

In April 2001 the Netherlands became the first country in the world to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry in a civil ceremony.

Fifteen European countries have followed: Austria, Belgium, Britain (but not Northern Ireland, which only accepts civil partnerships), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Some European countries only allow same-sex couples to enter into civil partnerships including Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland.

In October 2014, Estonia became the first former Soviet republic to authorise this type of civil union.

Many eastern European countries -- including Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia -- deny homosexuals the right to marry or enter into unions.

In December 2015, Slovenians rejected in a referendum a proposal by their parliament to legalise gay marriage.

About 15 western European countries allow same-sex couples to adopt children, whether within marriage or civil partnerships. They include Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

Finland and Slovenia allow gay people to adopt their partner's children.

Graphic showing places where gay marriage is legal, or an agreement has 

been made to make it legal. Australians have voted in favour of changing the 

law to legalize same-sex marriages. (AFP Photo/Laurence CHU)

Progress in the Americas

Canada led the way in North America, authorising same-sex marriage and adoptions in June 2005.

In the United States, a Supreme Court decision in June 2015 legalised gay marriage nationwide, at a time when it was illegal in 14 states.

Mexico's federal capital was the pioneer in Latin America, authorising civil unions in 2007 and marriages in 2009 as well as adoption.

Same-sex marriages and adoptions are also legal in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay.

Chile's socialist President Michelle Bachelet in August sent to congress a bill to authorise gay marriages and adoptions, after having legalised same-sex civil unions in 2015.

In Haiti, the Senate voted that same month to ban gay marriage.

Rare in Africa, Asia, Middle East

On the African continent, where around 30 countries ban homosexuality, gays can only legally marry and adopt children in South Africa.

In the Middle East, Israel leads in terms of respect for homosexual rights, recognising gay marriages performed elsewhere although such unions are not allowed in the country itself. Gay couples can adopt children.

In the Asia-Pacific region Taiwan is set to legalise same-sex unions after its highest court in May ordered parliament to amend relevant laws within two years.

New Zealand passed a law in April 2013 legalising gay marriage and adoptions.

And on Thursday Australia's lower house of parliament overwhelmingly voted in favour of gay marriage, which can take place early next year. Gay adoption is allowed.

Another town scraps Australia Day, drawing government ire

Yahoo – AFP, 14 Sep 2017

Another town scraps Australia Day, drawing government ire

   

Sydney (AFP) - Marking Australia Day is like celebrating the Holocaust, a Melbourne politician said as her council scrapped a holiday it deemed offensive to Aboriginal people, in a move the government on Thursday labelled "extreme and divisive".

The council in the Melbourne suburb of Moreland became the third in Victoria state to decide not to recognise Australia Day.

The annual holiday, on January 26, commemorates the arrival of the country's first British settlers in 1788 and is a time when citizenship ceremonies are held.

But it is termed "Invasion Day" by many indigenous Australians who say it marks the beginning of the decline of Aboriginal culture.

In debating the issue Wednesday, Moreland Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton said commemorating Australia Day "would be like celebrating the Nazi Holocaust", state broadcaster ABC reported.

Assistant Minister for Immigration Alex Hawke said in a statement the government rejected "the extreme and divisive nature of the discussion Greens and Socialist councillors are promoting".

He said the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull "strongly condemns comparisons of Australia Day with the Nazi Holocaust as deeply offensive to all Australians".

"Australia Day is a recognition of our shared history and the Turnbull government, along with the vast majority of Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, fully support Australia Day remaining on January 26."

Australia's colonial history credits Captain James Cook with discovering the country, but Aboriginal people inhabited the land for more than 60,000 years before the first European explorers arrived.

Last month a war of words erupted over colonial-era statues in Australia, with several in Sydney defaced, including one of Cook with the words "change the date" in reference to Australia Day.

The vandalism sparked a furious response from Turnbull, who brushed off calls for the statues to be torn down, adding that the defacement was "what Stalin did" in denying history.

Aborigines remain the most disadvantaged Australians. They were believed to have numbered around one million at the time of British settlement, but now make up only about three percent of the total population of 24 million.

Town scraps Australia Day, calling it offensive to Aboriginal people. Government says move is "extreme and divisive" https://t.co/GicfnvGVrU pic.twitter.com/xrT7JsgrtR

— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 14, 2017

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