Seven members of the Monash family wrote to ask them to stop using the title. It was not just impolite, they wrote, but inappropriate and incorrect for a forward-thinking intellectual and scientific general and engineer such as Sir John to be associated with the group’s plans. Such a man, they explained, would not have favoured propping up old technologies that science would not support, and which could require substantial subsidisation to profit.

“At the very least,” they said, “it was discourteous to use it without informing us. More than that, we disassociate ourselves specifically from the forum’s use of the Monash name to give their anti-science and anti-intellectual argument an air of authority and we ask that they withdraw the name.”

“We are sure that, today, he would be a proponent of the new technologies, eg: wind and solar generation, rather than revert to the horse-and-buggy era

via Bloody week in history wars as Alan Jones takes aim at opening ceremony and Abbott group seizes on Australian hero