Name: Coronavirus Australia: Calls for Sutton's deputy to resign over Captain Cook virus tweet
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Coronavirus Australia: Calls for Sutton's deputy to resign over Captain Cook virus tweet

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Calls for deputy CHO to resign over Captain Cook virus tweetWe’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.DismisscloseAdvertisementBy Log in, or to save articles for later.Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeAdvertisementA controversial tweet from one of Victoria's most senior health advisers comparing Captain Cook’s arrival in Australia with the deadly coronavirus pandemic has been disputed by historians after it prompted calls for her resignation.Victoria's deputy Chief Health Officer Annaliese van Diemen published a post to her personal twitter account on Wednesday: “Sudden arrival of an invader from another land, decimating populations, creating terror. Forces the population to make enormous sacrifices &amp; completely change how they live in order to survive. COVID19 or Cook 1770?”.Liberal health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier called on Thursday for Dr van Diemen, who advises the government on communicable diseases, to resign. Former opposition leader Matthew Guy called it an example of how Victoria is governed by "hard left nutters".Opposition MP Tim Smith, who has been a persistent critic of Dr van Diemen’s boss, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, described it as "culture wars crap".“Comparing the extraordinary first voyage of Captain Cook where he charted the East Coast of [Australia] for the first time to a deadly virus is disgraceful," he said.But Health Minister Jenny Mikakos came to the defence of her health officer on Thursday, saying Dr van Diemen was doing an outstanding job and dismissing her critics as "angry" and "irrelevant"."The Deputy Chief Health Officer is doing an outstanding job protecting Victorians from this deadly pandemic," the minister said.Wednesday marked the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook's arrival. It was to be celebrated with a replica of his ship sailing around Australia, and various ceremonies, but those activities were cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.AdvertisementANU historian Professor Angela Woollacott disagreed with the tweet.“It's a very misleading comparison,” Professor Woollacott said. “While the Indigenous people who did observe Cook and his party in 1770 found their presence sudden and disconcerting, the ravages of British settler colonialism here unfolded quite gradually from 1788 over more than a hundred years.“There were no sudden terror, enormous sacrifices or complete changes on a large scale. In 1789 there was an epidemic of smallpox around the Sydney area that then spread more widely with devastating effects for Aboriginal people. But the large-scale dispossession of land, widespread frontier conflict, loss of livelihood and culture and stolen children occurred slowly over the 19th and 20th centuries.”Professor Sarah Maddison, co-founder of the Indigenous Settler Relations Collaboration at the University of Melbourne, said comparing COVID-19 to the plight of Indigenous Australians post-colonisation undersold what they’d suffered.However, she said Captain Cook was “not so much” the only one to blame.“It [the tweet] underestimated the impact of the arrival of the British, not so much Captain Cook but certainly the subsequent waves that touched every single first nation’s person on this continent,” Professor Maddison said.“COVID-19 is in some ways touching all of our lives but I don’t really think COVID-19 compares to the utter devastation for many First Nations people.“At one stage the Wurundjeri people were down to 18 people left … there’s ongoing language reclamation, cultural heritage connections being re-made, families re-finding each other after being apart for centuries.”“You can definitely draw parallels. There’s no question about the profound and violent impact," she saidAustralian Historical Association president and Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences director, Professor Joy Damousi, said COVID-19, unlike colonialiam, was not deliberately unleashed on the world.“The foreignness of it is right. The British coming in this part of the world creating such havoc and dispossession and violence is a hallmark of our history,” Professor Damousi said.“COVID-19 is a medical phenomenon which is sort of accidental; there is no intention to it.“British imperialism set off with great intent to impress on First People’s and First Nations a whole set of different practices and values that were foreign to them as superior. Cook was a central part of it.”Dr van Diemen shares her surname with Dutch colonial governor Anthony van Diemen who ordered the country's exploration of Australia - as it later became known - in the 1640s.She is a public health physician and general practitioner with a Master of Public Health (Medicine, Emergency Management and Disaster Preparedness) from James Cook University.The Department of Health and Human Services, Dr van Diemen's employer, has been contacted for comment.Get our Coronavirus Update newsletter for the day's crucial developments at a glance, the numbers you need to know and what our readers are saying. Sign up to The Sydney Morning Herald's newsletter and The Age's .Log in, or to save articles for later. is Economics Editor for The Age is a sports reporter at The Age.Advertisement

Calls for deputy CHO to resign over Captain Cook virus tweetWe’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.DismisscloseAdvertisementBy Log in, or to save articles for later.Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeAdvertisementA controversial tweet from one of Victoria's most senior health advisers comparing Captain Cook’s arrival in Australia with the deadly coronavirus pandemic has been disputed by historians after it prompted calls for her resignation.Victoria's deputy Chief Health Officer Annaliese van Diemen published...

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Coronavirus Australia: Calls for Sutton's deputy to resign over Captain Cook virus tweet

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