Budget's arts flagship is, well, a flagship

This has certainly been kept under the radar. I had no idea and cannot believe such a waste by the Government in the face of so much injustice

Thank you Esther. When this announcement was made I was horrified. Last year marked the beginning of people acting upon the affrontery (?spelling) of the mass of monuments in celebration of invaders in this Land: the imposition of a one-sided portrayal of what was, as you make clear, from the very beginning, an aggressive invasion of a Land well lived in & cared for. To think that this government can conceive of this as an appropriate use of the public purse shows how out of touch they are with community sentiment. That this travesty will be billed to First Nations funding simply adds fuel to an already crackling fire. Buffoonery on show.

The proposed $48.7m monument in honour of Captain Cook seems to me a terrible waste of money, given all the cuts announced in Tuesday's Budget. Cook was a great navigator, honoured by statues and many place names - but he did not lead the founding of a British colony in NSW. Arthur Phillip did. With extra money to splash around this year, the Government should have increased the Newstart allowance for one thing. I agree that the Government's ignoring of the Uluru Statement from the Heart was bad, and will have regrettable consequences.

Like the ridiculous expenses to commemorate the history of World War 1 in France , once again we are seeing unjustified expense on an event that happened 250 years ago and has very little relevance to modern Australia. I do not support the reinterpretation of history, as seems to be the case these days .To accept the current concept of 'invasion', means all invasions over the history of human kind have to be re evaluated . That is plainly incorrect . I am of Irish ancestry. I have a very strong connection with my ancestral homeland, having being back twice to trace my family history. I am well aware of the history of English subjugation of my people and the fact that as a result, my great grandfather was transported without trial to the colony of New South Wales for daring to oppose English occupation. I do not hold that against today's English people ; nor do most Irish people. That was an unfortunate aspect of history. I agree with Esther that the expenditure of such scarce funds can not be justified.

I can't believe that our government would waste money on commemorating a ship, and take money away from the people on Newstart and other Centrelink payments (or rather, leave them stagnant), and ignore yet again the impact of the Indigenous people of our country. we need the Uluru statement to be put into practice, and no doubt the money from the ship project could go a small way to putting that in place.

When did the word 'colonisation' become incorrect? Why is the beginning of the British presence on this continent now called 'invasion'? I know that the meanings of words change over time. Is the changing interpretation of the facts the cause of the change in meaning, or is a changed meaning the cause of the reinterpretation? In any case, Cook was a great navigator and a decent, though very narrowly educated, human being. He knew more about celestial navigation than 'terra nullius' for example. Why has he become a symbol of murderous evil? He was a man of his time, acting on what he knew. Let's not use him as a symbol of anything. If we must celebrate with a permanent memorial, can't we do it with symbols of European and indigenous cultures? And why isn't it OK to use the lowercase 'i'in 'indigenous'? So many questions...

Surely, rather than seeing this commemoration in the totally negative terms of this article and in most of the comments, one should take a serious big-picture historic view of the reality and inevitability of what happened 250 years ago. There was the inevitable meeting between a stone age people, who themselves had come out of Africa perhaps 100 thousand years ago or less and arrived in waves (after a pretty long and I expect action-packed treck) in this continent somewhere round 40-50 thousand years ago, and a rapidly industrialising and culturally much more advanced people from Europe. Had it not been the British it would have been some other national group in the next 20-odd years. This really was inevitable, as was the social and personal trauma and indeed decimation of the highly vulnerable indigenous people(s). It was also pretty tough, though on a very different scale, for the European arrivals, given their still relatively low state of technological development and distance form "home". But from this literal first "confrontation" a new nation has been created in which all the protagonists are now potentially equal citizens. This is what needs celebrating, albeit with realism about the huge human costs and the journey still to be made. There is also the vital issue emphasised by Eddie Mabo: that this first meeting also inevitably led to the first peoples being introduced to the story of Jesus Christ, and His life, death and resurrection, which was also for them. As Mr Mabo pointed out, the coming of this single message was the greatest event ever to have occurred to our Aboriginal peoples.

Yes Cook was an extraordinarily capable navigator and commander. But material abounds that documents his achievements. He has whole towns and a university named for him. Spending $48.7 million on a rehash for the political benefit of Morrison and his colleagues is grossly wasteful when people on Newstart are living in penury. The gratuitous insult to the Gweagal descendants is also well brought out in Esther's piece.

Thank you. This information needs to be shouted from the rooftops of Australia. When will we learn?