Barry, I have now finished reading ‘A Vision for Australia’s Health’ and am writing to compliment you on your achievement. The book provides a fine overview of Dr Cook’s endeavours to improve governmental strategies in relation to preventive medicine, especially with respect to tropical diseases.
I have to admit that I knew little about this field of public policy and thus to engage with your thoroughly researched narrative was a rewarding experience. Of equal importance, certainly to me, was the way in which the overarching narrative provided a context within which to assess Cook’s involvement in Aboriginal affairs in the 1930s and later. Ideology and a consequent biased mindset in recent years has led to certain commentators, often academics with limited experience of conditions in the outback, attempting to portray Cook as a paternalistic figure with a blinkered view of Aboriginal needs and aspirations.
One of the great strengths of your book in providing a picture of Cook’s career in the course of a lifetime’s work is to establish, beyond any reasonable doubt, that here was a professional fully committed to improving the lives and opportunities of those he encountered. In the complex field of welfare in remote places there may be room for argument about the best way forward from time to time (as you indicate along the way), but in the context and against the background you have so skilfully described, the criticisms advanced by Cook’s detractors cannot be sustained. To readers of goodwill any accusations of indifference or malign intent on Dr Cook’s part would simply seem absurd.
So your book is a valuable corrective to some of the skewed accounts put forward in recent years by commentators with their own insidious agendas. I trust that the book will be well-reviewed in various quarters including Quadrant. It will certainly have a secure place on my shelves.
Nicholas Hasluck, a former Judge Supreme Court of Western Australia, and son of the former Minister for the Interior, the Hon Paul M.C. Hasluck