Moves to strip a Scottish explorer of an Australian honour seem to have stalled.
Skye-born Angus McMillan was also a ruthless murderer who should not be honoured, an Australian MP has claimed.
But a petition calling for a district of western Gippsland, Victoria, to no longer be named after McMillan has so far only attracted 188 signatories.
McMillan, from Glen Brittle on Skye, explored areas of Australia in the 1830s.
But he was also a murderer of Australia’s indigenous people, and has been linked to a series of massacres in the region.
It has been reported that there were probably more than 2000 of the Kurnai people in Gippsland when McMillan arrived in 1840.
By 1853 there were 131, and by 1857 only 96 – and although no one suggests all died violently, many did.
Now, 150 years after McMillan’s death, there are new move for the electoral seat named in his honour to be renamed because of his “well documented” links to the massacres.
McMillan, who arrived in Australia in 1838, and his men are said to be responsible for a number of mass killings including up to 35 at Butcher’s Creek and “hundreds” at Bruthen Creek.
Russell Broadbent, the current Liberal MP incumbent of McMillan district – which covers western Gippsland, Victoria – has written to the Electoral Commission, claiming that the change would send a message of practical reconciliation.
Mr Broadbent said the seat should be named after Sir John Monash, a former head of the area’s electricity commission.
Campaigners want the name changed during a boundary redistribution after this year’s federal election. The proposal will be considered by the Australian Electoral Commission during its scheduled 2017 review of Victorian federal electorate boundaries.
But the public petition has so far attracted less than 200 signatures.
