Geoffrey Blainey - Career

Career

His first major project in the 1950s was, as an author and researcher working on the history of the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company, at Queenstown, Tasmania when a significant number of the older residents could remember the beginnings of the community. The resultant book is one of the few company and local histories in Australia to achieve six editions. He has since published 32 books, including his highly acclaimed A Short History Of The World. His works have ranged from sports and local histories to interpreting the motives behind the British settlement of Australia in The Tyranny of Distance, covering over two centuries of human conflict in The Causes of War, examining the optimism and pessimism in Western society since 1750 in The Great See-Saw, and exploring the history of Christianity in A Short History of Christianity.

Blainey was a Professor of Economic History and later the Ernest Scott Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. He was visiting professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University. He is listed as one of the Australian Living Treasures. Geoffrey Blainey was Chairman of the Australia Council for four years and Chairman of the Australia-China Council from its inception in 1979 until June 1984. In 2001, he was the Chairman of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation. From 1994 to 1998, he was the Foundation Chancellor of the University of Ballarat.

Blainey has, at times, been a controversial figure too. In the 1980s, he criticised the level of Asian immigration to Australia and the policy of multiculturalism in speeches, articles and a book All for Australia. He has been closely aligned with the former Liberal-National coalition government of John Howard in Australia, with Howard shadowing Blainey's conservative views on some issues, especially the view that Australian history has been hijacked by social liberals. As a result of these stances, Blainey is sometimes associated with right-wing politics.

In his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture, Blainey coined the phrases "Black armband view of history" versus the contrasting "three cheers" view (see History wars). The phrase "Black armband view of history" began to be used, pejoratively or otherwise, by some conservative Australian social scientists, politicians, commentators and intellectuals about historians whom they viewed as having presented an overly critical portrayal of Australian history since European settlement.

In 2001, Blainey presented the Boyer Lectures on the theme This Land is all Horizons: Australian Fears and Visions.

A lot of other national posts were occupied by Blainey in a part-time capacity . He was invited by Prime Minister Harold Holt in 1967 to sit on the advisory board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund, and served until its abolition in 1973 (chairman 1971-73). He then became inaugural chairman of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts (Later called Australia Council), set up by the Whitlam government. Following Whitlam’s election promise to introduce a Public Lending Right Scheme for authors, Blainey was appointed chairman of the committee representing authors, publishers and librarians which in 1973 recommended the scheme adopted by the government a year later. Australia’s scheme differed from the pioneering scheme adopted in Denmark in 1946. Blainey represented writers on the small group instructed to find the new national anthem which Whitlam had promised. From this initiative finally came a public poll supporting the long-standing Sydney song, “Advance Australia Fair”.

In December 1973 Blainey was an Australian delegate to the first UNESCO conference held in Asia. It met at Yogyakarta in Java to recommend cultural policies for Asia.

Blainey was deputy chairman in 1974 and 1975 of the Whitlam government’s Inquiry into Museums and National Collections, whose report ultimately led to the completion in Canberra in 2001 of the National Museum of Australia with its emphasis on indigenous history. Most of the Inquiry’s report had been drafted by Blainey and his colleague, Professor JD Mulvaney.

In 1976 he became an inaugural commissioner on the Australian Heritage Commission, set up by the Fraser government to decide on conservation and environmental matters. On the first council of the National Museum set up by the Hawke Government in 1984 he was a short-term member. Under the Howard government he served as a member of the council of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra from 1997 to 2004, an appointment initially criticised in parliament by the Labor opposition.

At the Constitutional Convention held in Canberra for 10 days in February 1998 to debate and vote on whether Australia should become a republic (and if so, want kind of a republic? ), he was a non-elected delegate. He argued was that Australia was already a “de facto republic” and that any further change should be made only if the case was very powerful. With his ally George Mye (Torres Strait Islands) he was the leading critic of the adopted proposal that any citizen whose name was on the general electoral roll, even a migrant of only two years’ standing, should automatically be eligible to be president of the proposed republic of Australia. After the decisive failure in 1999 of the referendum to make Australia a republic, Blainey and the constitutional lawyer, Professor Colin Howard, were singled out by the Australian republicans’ leader, Malcolm Turnbull, as deserving a special share of the blame. He alleged that the pair had unduly shaped the official information posted to all electors. In their defence it was contended that their influence was fair, for they operated in an official committee chaired by the neutral Sir Ninian Stephen, lawyer and former governor general.

Professor Blainey served on the National Council for the Centenary of Federation from 1997 to 2002 (chairman from May 2001, succeeding Archbishop Peter Hollingworth), and chairman of the Council of the Centenary Medal from 2001-03. Later appointments included membership of the History Summit in Canberra in 2006 and the federal committee set up in 2007 to recommend a national curriculum for teaching Australian history.

In the academic field he was on the board of the Melbourne University Press in the early 1960s, deputy dean of the Economics Faculty in the early 1970s, president of the council of Queen’s College in the University of Melbourne from 1971 to 1989, and on the national selection committee for the Harkness Fellowships from 1977 to 1989 (chairman 1983-89). He sat, from 1997 to 2004, on the Council of the Royal Humane Society of Australasia which recommended awards for acts of civilian bravery. He currently serves on the boards of philanthropic bodies, including the Ian Potter Foundation since 1991 and the Deafness Foundation Trust since 1993, and is patron of others.

In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he was a weekly or fortnightly columnist for The Australian, the Melbourne Herald, or the Melbourne Age, and also wrote often for the Sydney Bulletin, Australian Business Monthly and other national journals. Booklets listing these articles and other works have been published by the library of Monash University. The latest booklet was last updated in about 2001. As a book reviewer he has written for many Australian. UK and US publication. His ten-part series on Australian history, “The Blainey View”, appeared on ABC television in 1982-83 - the ABC’s most ambitious venture so far on Australian history. Graham Kennedy the television star narrated the continuity script.

Blainey is well known for speeches—often without notes—on historical and contemporary topics. In most anthologies of notable Australian speeches, present and past, one of his addresses is reprinted. On television and stage in later years, Max Gillies the comedian cleverly mimicked some speeches.