Tony Armstrong told ABC viewers the First Fleet committed genocide by intentionally introducing smallpox to Aboriginal people.
The foremost historian on the subject disagrees. So does the virus itself.
A thread on what happens when ideology replaces evidence 🧵
Armstrong's case rests on one primary source: Captain Watkin Tench, 1791.
Tench didn't accuse the British of intentional introduction. He listed it as a speculative origin — then called the idea "unworthy of consideration."
That's the foundation of the ABC's genocide claim.
The science alone dismantles it.
Smallpox cannot survive three weeks at 35°C and 65% humidity.
The First Fleet took eight months to reach Sydney Cove.
Summer temperatures before the 1789 outbreak regularly exceeded 40°C.
The virus would have been dead long before landfall.
Not one member of the First Fleet developed smallpox during the voyage or after arrival.
Smallpox leaves permanent facial scarring. It's one of the most visually documented diseases in history.
If it was on the fleet, someone would have shown it.
Then there's Tasmania.
If biological warfare was British policy, Tasmania — the site of the most violent colonial conflict — should have seen it deployed.
It didn't. Early Tasmanian settlers had zero smallpox cases.
Armstrong's theory has no answer for this.
Judy Campbell wrote the definitive history on this topic: Invisible Invaders (1998).
Her conclusion: "In the absence of any reliable evidence that smallpox was introduced into the Aboriginal population by the British in 1789... other sources must be explored."
Those other sources point to Indonesian fishermen.
Around 2,000 Macassan sailors traded with Aboriginal communities in the north every year.
They had sustained, documented contact with Aboriginal communities across the coastline.
The timeline fits.
Skilled Indonesian navigators could reach northern Australia from South Sulawesi in 10–15 days — within smallpox's incubation period.
The First Fleet took eight months to cover the same distance.
The virus cannot survive eight months.
This actually happened.
Smallpox did reach Aboriginal communities through Indonesian contact — in 1830 and again in 1860.
Campbell documented both outbreaks. The transmission route from the north was established and repeatable.
The 1789 outbreak followed the same pattern.
An Aboriginal man named Jack Davis from Port Essington recorded in 1870 that his people called smallpox "Meeha-meeha" — and that the disease had been on the Cobourg Peninsula "a long time ago."
That's the northern coastline. Closest to Indonesia. Furthest from Sydney Cove.
British doctors treated Aboriginal smallpox patients after the 1789 outbreak.
If the goal was extermination, this requires explanation.
Stuart Macintyre and Manning Clark — two of Australia's most eminent historians — both reject the intentional introduction thesis.
Armstrong's final claim: Australians won't confront their colonial history.
Colonisation is in the national curriculum. The ABC covers it extensively. Tens of thousands march on Australia Day every year.
The silence Armstrong describes does not exist.
What does exist is a public broadcaster presenting contested ideological claims as settled historical fact — without engaging the most authoritative scholarship on the subject.
That's a different problem. And it deserves a direct answer.
The problem isn't how much we talk about colonial history.
It's how rarely rigorous historical evidence is used by the people loudest in that conversation.
Read Luke Powell's excellent coverage of this topic here:
dailydeclaration.org.au/2026/03/03/fir…
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