If you didn’t know better you might think the staff at the Australian Electoral Commission had suddenly developed a sense of a humour.
Why else would they choose to confirm Bean as the name for Canberra’s newest Federal electorate the day before the Australian War Memorial, the Australian Army and the French Government, to name just a few, chose to honor Sir John Monash for the Australian victory at the battle of Hamel on July 4, 1918?
Monash, as the historian Mark Dapin has pointed out, was the only Jewish commander-in-chief of any national army in either of the two world wars. He did more to advance the standing of Jews in the Australian community than anybody else in our history.
While anti-Semitism was an endemic part of the culture of the day, it was almost impossible to be publicly critical of Jews in the 1920s and 1930s when the greatest living Australian was one of their number.
Bean, as Michelle Grattan pointed out this week, later conceded he had been wrong in opposing the Monash appointment and changed his views on race to such an extent he supported the idea of a national Jewish refuge in Australia in the 1930s.
“Claims by a number of objectors that Bean was a lifelong anti-Semite and should not have an electorate named after him due to his `racist and anti-Semitic views’… ignore much of the man’s life, contribution and character,” AWM director Brendan Nelson said,
Read the article by David Ellery in The Canberra Times.