Australia has decided to include history with English, mathematics and science as a core subject in a new national curriculum. Straight comparisons between Australia and New Zealand are not helpful because of differences in curriculum structure, national and federal organisation and in the histories of respective Indigenous peoples. Australia has experienced a particularly virulent strain of what has come to be known as a 'history war,' with opposing historical-interpretive paradigms known as 'whitewash' and 'black armband.' It could be argued that in New Zealand there has been for a longer period a greater commitment to inclusion, especially through bi-culturalism, related to the Treaty of Waitangi and the Waitangi Tribunal. However Australia seems now to be moving towards a stronger recognition of the need for mutual understanding and is using its new history curriculum to support this. New Zealand continues to embed the principle of significance in its Social Sciences curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) but has no detailed supporting structure to define or contextualise it. This article argues the case for stronger curriculum contextualisation for the development of conceptual understandings and historical literacy along lines recommended in Peter Seixas's benchmarks for historical thinking (2006a, 2006b).