QED

Why Australia Day Matters

An amazing, but little remarked, fact in the current concern about securing Australia’s borders – cue ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ – is that they are entirely maritime.  We have no land borders, and Australia is the largest country in the world not to have any.  According to Geoscience Australia, we have a coastline of almost 60,000 kilometres (mainland plus islands).  The perimeter of our territorial waters is probably longer, and the outer edge of our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) longer again.  Back on shore we have, of course, state borders, and we once built a rabbit-proof fence over thousands of kilometres of outback, but only at sea do we share international borders with other countries (PNG Indonesia and East Timor).

Australia is the only inhabited continent that is not criss-crossed with international boundaries and a patchwork of nation states.  Not for us razor-wire fences, concrete barriers, guard-posts, check-points, manned border-crossings, heavily armed border patrols, disputed terrain.  We are one country, one nation, spanning an entire continent and its offshore islands.  The shape is so iconic, so much the image of our country, that we take it for granted.

This essay was first published in January 2017. It is reprised because, in what is now the annual Australia Day festival of grievance, wrath and twisted history, a little truth doesn’t go astray

It is pertinent to ask how this happy situation came about.  It was not, it must be said, anything to do with the first inhabitants, the Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders.  Whilst they had spread across the entire continent and adjacent islands, and shared a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence, they were divided into around hundreds of separate tribal groups, each with its own traditions, customs, language and territory, with which there was a strong and deep affinity.  Whilst there was, of course, contact between adjacent groups, it is doubtful whether there was any knowledge of, or affinity with, groups beyond this range of contacts, with those living on the other side of the continent.  Nor is it likely that the first inhabitants had any concept of the country, of the continent, of Australia, in its entirety.  This awareness could only come in the modern era.

It was the British, at the end of the eighteenth century, who changed all that.  It was an Englishman, Arthur Phillip, who with a small ceremony on the shore of Botany Bay on 26 January, 1788, began the annexation of the continent for the British Crown.  It was another Englishman, Matthew Flinders, who first circumnavigated the continent and revealed in detail its size and shape, and it was he who bestowed upon it the name Australia.  In just a mere 113 years after Arthur Phillip established the first British settlement at Sydney Cove, Australia became a united sovereign nation, taking its own place in the world.  This it achieved freely, and with the encouragement and consent of Britain.  There was no ‘throwing off of the British yolk’, no need for an independence struggle.  The heroes of Australia’s nationhood were not resistance leaders or freedom fighters, but politicians and statesmen, most now forgotten or only half-remembered.

From the moment of Phillip’s annexation Australia became part of the British Empire, and through this the Anglosphere, that group of English-speaking countries that subscribe to the same values and share the same heritage of democratic institutions, parliamentary system of government, separation of church and state, equality before the law, respect for private property, strong civil society, protection of basic freedoms.  It has been upon this base that Australians, old and new, have built our remarkably prosperous, free, open, tolerant, outward-looking, progressive and enterprising way of life.  It is this bedrock, not the continent’s great wealth of natural resources, that makes Australia a ‘lucky country’.

It is, of course an article of faith amongst Aboriginal activists and the grievance industry generally to see things in a different, much darker, more doom-laden way, to view the running up of the Union Jack by Phillip on that day as the beginning of the end, the start of an invasion, one that would lead to the subjugation of the first inhabitants and the destruction of their culture and way of life.

What this view overlooks, of course, is that such an ‘invasion’, or even a succession of them, was inevitable.  On no other continent have the original inhabitants been successful in holding on to their lands and traditional ways of life.  Through waves of invasion, conquest, migration, settlement, by people ever more technologically and organisationally advanced, similarly nomadic hunter-gatherers either adapted, or were forced into ever more remote, inaccessible and inhospitable terrain, as in Asia, Africa and the Americas, or driven to extinction, as in Europe and the Middle-East,.  What is remarkable in the case of Australia is that it hadn’t happened earlier, and that the first inhabitants were able to enjoy their idyll for as long as they did.

So it if hadn’t been the British, it would have been someone else, or a bunch of others, contesting the terrain, carving it up, claiming it as their own.  Given the location of ‘the Great South Land’, there was, however, only a shortlist of likely contenders, with the requisite technological and organisational capacity, the global reach and the territorial ambitions, to accomplish the feat, either on a full-scale or piecemeal basis.

No-one else in the region, the Papuans, the Javanese, the Japanese or the Chinese, for example, felt so inclined or had the logistics to invade the place.  Otherwise, presumably, they would have done so ages before.  Arab traders, who for centuries had conducted business as far east as the spice islands to our north, and who brought their religion with them, apparently never reached these shores or contemplated coming here.  Even the Moluccans, who for a long time had fished and traded along the northern coast, failed to establish any permanent settlements on the Australian mainland.  By the modern era, therefore, it was most likely that it would be a European maritime power that would do it and, of those, there were only four other real contenders – the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch and the French.    As it happened, it was the British.  It was they who brought the country into the global community.

But we could pause, perhaps, to contemplate had it been otherwise.  The Portuguese and the Spanish, of course, had been around Australian waters for hundreds of years before 1788, but did not take the extra step of planting settlements in Australia.   Had they done so, then the country certainly would have been different, and perhaps more akin to Latin America today.  The Spanish and Portuguese had a record for being less enlightened and more despotic colonisers than the British ever were, and their legacy in the lands they did conquer has not been as stable, democratic or economically as successful.  The Dutch were in the East Indies, also, for centuries before, without seriously contemplating colonising the great land to the south.  Had they done so, then perhaps Australian settlement would have been much more like that of the Afrikaaners in South Africa, where they did put down roots, with all that would have entailed, particularly for the original inhabitants.  The French, like the British, were much later on the scene, and had La Perouse not been pipped at the post by Phillip’s First Fleet, then New South Wales, or whatever other name it would have had, could possibly have become French territory.

Many Anglophobes and Francophiles, of course, would perhaps think that would have been a better outcome, but one thing is certain, Australia today would be much more French than it is recognisably British.  The French, of course, have had a different attitude to de-colonization to that of the British.  They, the French, have been most reluctant to give up any of their colonies, and in those in which the locals have not been able to force them out, they remain to this day, as they do in nearby New Caledonia and French Polynesia.  Contemporary Australia is clearly no longer outwardly British, (despite some republican assertions to the contrary). Indeed, it hasn’t been so for some time, and it is difficult to say when it was the British actually left. That would not be the case, I venture, with the French, had the country started out as a colony of France.

The other possibility, already mentioned, is that the continent of Australia could easily have been not a single nation, but one divided into competing European colonies, with all the likelihood of frontier disputes and inter-colonial wars.  Australia was spared this because British claims to the whole continent were never successfully challenged by either the inhabitants or by other European or regional powers.  Not having to share a land border with another nation has bestowed upon us huge benefits, especially in the areas of defence, quarantine, customs, immigration and in terrorism prevention.  Australia is its own customs union, free-trade area and common currency block.  It has only one official language and a unified legal system.  If we think that protecting a sea border is a difficult enough exercise, and that the interstate rivalries and constitutional wrangles that bedevil the federation are often tedious and troublesome, we should spare a thought for what it may have been like had Australia been not one country but many.

So, all in all, the country could have done worse than have Arthur Phillip plant the Union Jack on its soil 226 years ago.  Although they didn’t appreciate it at the time, Phillip probably gave the first inhabitants as good a chance of surviving in, and adapting to, the global world as any ‘invader’ could have given them, and the waves of immigrants that subsequently came, and are still coming, to these shores, a much freer, safer, fairer, equitable, open, tolerant and prosperous place in which to start a new life than might otherwise have been the case.

January 26, 1788, is well worth commemorating, and celebrating, as Australia’s Day.

78 thoughts on “Why Australia Day Matters

  • rcadmore says:

    Very enjoyable read.

    • rcadmore says:

      Readers may care to read Professor Alan Alan Frost who wrote two very informative books about the First Fleet and the decision to settle Australia, Botany Bay: The Real Story and The First Fleet: The Real Story. They are published by Black Inc. They don’t do anything to dispel the Australia Day event one way or another but do provide a clear understanding of the reasons for settlement.

      Interestingly it seems that much of the Australian ethos owes its origin to Arthur Phillip and the decisions he made based on his life observations of many parts of the world. For example, Phillip was at pains to ensure slavery was never established here as he was to ensure the First Fleet was well provisioned and catered for. Frost compares the First Fleet to a moon shot in terms of technical audacity and human determination. Australia is half way around the world and months of sailing time from Britain, whereas the Americas were just a couple of weeks sailing away.

      Convicts once here rapidly achieved property rights and levels of responsibility that they would never have aspired to at home.

      Anyway I hope you read and enjoy these books as Frost is writing after many years of research and of battling against the other fake news, history, as he sees it. Perhaps the biggest problem in defining an Australian Day is the fact the we have had too much fake news and too much fake history. Could it be that we have an immense debt to Arthur Phillip and a cause for celebration of our first real decent bloke.

      Regards,
      Ray Cadmore

      • mrsfarley2001 says:

        Yes – books are still good. Used to be that we collected info from many sources, then thought & reasoned & applied common sense in reaching a conclusion. Your final point struck a very apt note: too much fake news & too much fake history, actually, a case of far too much “voice”.
        Some of our troubles stem from ignoring that wise old parental saying that “you watch too much TV”.

    • Advertise@AustralianByte.com says:

      As I understand Phillip landed on the shores of botany Bay more like the 24th or perhaps earlier. He found it unsuitable and explored up the coast finally settling on Sydney Cove. The entire fleet was then moved to there and the final landing made on the 26th. Am I wrong are really just want to get a handle on what is correct Wikipedia agrees with me is it wrong?

      • saorsa660 says:

        Phillip landed at Botany Bay and had considerable interaction with Aborigines on the 18th, when according to Watkin Tench in reference to the North Shore of Botany Bay “…the Governor immediately proceeded to land on that side in order to take possession of his new territory…”. Phillip then explored further and according to Phillip (on the foundation plaque he prepared in May 1788) saw the 24th as the important date of his arrival at Sydney Cove, though the fleet didn’t move there until the 26th. The Flag raising ceremony and proclamation didn’t take place until the 7th February. Though he did have drinks with his officers on the beach under the flag (probably placed on the beach because the French were also present) to raise his Officer’s moral while Convicts dragged stores ashore. The vesting of all land in the reigning monarch King George III also dates from 7 February 1788. As far as I can see the 26th of January 1788 has no significance for Aborigines at all, or anyone else for that matter. The easiest solution would be to simply rename the 26th January, Australian Citizenship day and celebrate the most important date in Australian History after the creation of the nation itself, the creation of the citizen with the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 .

        • Occidental says:

          I don’t understand this constant need to placate the intractably offended. What if some were upset equally by the Union or the Southern Cross depicted on the nations flag, what if they were offended by the presence of the common law or absence of customary native law. Where does it end when you jump to the screeching of pampered children.

        • David Isaac says:

          Certainly at one time the 18th or 24th January might have been chosen as most aptly signifying the joining of Australia to the rest of the world. However the argument was long ago settled in favour of the date when the fleet proper arrived in the waters which would nurture the colony and eventually a great city.
          .
          If Margaret Cameron’s excellent argument in ‘Lying for the Admiralty’ is to be believed, Phillip may have had more information about Port Jackson than he let on and the move from Botany Bay may have been a pre-planned ruse to bamboozle the French. If so all the more reason to celebrate the successful British establishment at Sydney Cove.
          .
          Long live Australia and Australia Day.

  • brian.doak@bigpond.com says:

    This Australia Day message by Leo Maglen is much appreciated. Governor Phillip was an excellent leader with good Christian standards and it is pleasing to see him commemorated in his Anglican church in Bathampton nearby the canal to Bath. His British ‘yoke’ was non galling.

    Recently I reread with pleasure the Ion Idriess book ‘Our Living Stone Age’ published in 1963 and it is a sympathetic portrayal of aborigines as he had noted in his diary and as he had photographed. He writes of ‘aboriginals’, ‘white man’s civilization’, and the brand of ‘nigger twist tobacco’, any of which term, regrettably, would cause affront to the postmodern censorious eye of the PC guardian of public decency.

    The aboriginal flag seen flying beside the Australian flag today hides the fact that a big change was unavoidable in 1788 when a British civilization already into the steam age met a hunter-gatherer people who could not boil water.

    • padraic says:

      Well said, Bran Dee. I grew up on a diet of Ion Idriess and have most of his books. He gave us a great insight into the interaction of Aboriginal, Torres Strait and European Australian cultures and showed respect for all three. Another influence was the book by Bishop Gsell which I acquired at a school prize giving night. In those days people saw things as they were and were prepared to work towards solutions to any identified problems – none of this modern confected PC garbage which consigns such authors to the tip. We see today so many people who think the past is the present.

      • Druemac says:

        Idriess’s books are a PC eye opener..

        • padraic says:

          They sure are. But Idriess covers the good, the bad, and the ugly and the reader can make up their own minds. He tells it as it was. Just because I read about “racist” language and actions in his books that did not cause me to behave likewise or believe he was a racist. The modern PC mob cannot accept truth and deal with it and live with it, and get on with their lives. I read a description of them somewhere recently as “Generation Snowflake”.

  • bemartin39@bigpond.com says:

    An excellent, most enjoyable and timely essay. One wonders if educated Aborigines have any appreciation of what is so well covered by these lines. Surely, they must have a fair knowledge of all these details or do they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge anything that is likely to interfere with the grievance meme? Given the extreme primitivity that characterised the Indigenous tribes at the time, less enlightened colonisers could very well have chosen to completely eradicate the native population.

    • whitelaughter says:

      Educated Aborigines have either been part of general Australian civilization for decades/generations, and so have opinions as diverse as everyone else, or are brainwashed snowflakes, no different to the other idiots our worthless universities are turning out.

  • mfclancy@bigpond.com says:

    I, too, enjoyed this article. Just right at the end of an enjoyable family barbecue with the Australian flag stuck in a vase as centre-piece. I agree with all the preceding comments So won’t repeat.
    There was some discussion today about changing the date in response to Ian MacFarlane’s article in the Oz. The best suggestion was for “May the eighth” (dgya get it, maite?) But it will never happen, so the grievance mob had better get used to it and look for the positives such as recommended here by Leo.
    However, I’d like to pick up on the point about the perimeter of our territorial waters and the EEZ. They are each considerably LESS than the Geoscience Australia’s measure of our coastline at 60,000 km. Our coastline length can be almost anything you choose depending on the scale of the map you are looking at, or how diligently you venture in and out of the bays, gulfs, inlets and sounds. Geoscience obviously used quite a large scale map. A larger scale again may even indicate a longer coastline. Another estimate you can Google up is 36,000 km which might be the distance Flinders logged on his trip. Adventurers chasing a record time for circumnavigation talk about 24,000 km — they probably scoot straight across the Gulf, for instance. The point is that the smoother one makes the line the shorter it becomes and indeed the line defining our territorial waters is much smoother than the coastline itself. And just 12 km off-shore which might add just another 40 km to a very smoothed-out coastline. From my armchair perspective with the last drop of red still in my glass, let’s say 36,040 km.

    • leorm@fastmail.fm says:

      Point taken Michael. Measuring coastlines could get as detailed as running a tape around every rocky outcrop and ledge, depending upon what scale you are working to. The greater the detail required the longer the (measured) coastline between points A and B. This is not so much of an issue with perimeters of territorial waters and EEZ.

      I’m glad you enjoyed my article, and trust you savoured that last drop of red.

      • ianl says:

        > ” … running a tape around every rocky outcrop and ledge …”

        Beaches too, of course – and whether the tide is in or out at that point. The entire continental land mass is moving northwards at about 3mm per year so verticality of the land is constantly changing somewhat. The GeoScience result is a reasonable guessestimate.

  • Jody says:

    I wonder if this has anything to do with Australia Day; my aunt from Griffith emailed me yesterday (she was born there 86 years ago) saying that there are now 72 different nationalities living in that small, regional centre. She lived through the mafia strangehold after WW2 but now says she doesn’t recognize her home town any longer. It begs the question; what is now the prevailing, identifiable culture of Griffith or any other Australian city?

    • David Isaac says:

      The only hope for towns like Griffith would be a vigorous reassertion of Anglo-Celtic people and culture as predominant and the default. This would mean an end to all of the endless fawning over recent migrants, to the point where they might feel downright unwelcome. It’s possible. In fact this is the usual position of migrants in normal societies. All that is needed is for enough clear-headed people to speak plainly about the consequences of not doing this. The ghosts of the Aussies of a hundred or even sixty years ago (Tolkien’s army of the dead?) will be with us. Frank Salter and Harry Richardson’s ‘book Anglophobia’ is a good place to start to understand the necessity.

  • brian.doak@bigpond.com says:

    Good point Jody because in some quantities and in some countries, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Lebanon, Turkey, Britain, France, US, etc., multiculturalism becomes the scourge of communalism. We saw in Sri Lanka the viscious communal civil war, also in Lebanon, and somewhat in Burma. Turkey has a multi-ethnic population and fiercely suppresses multiculturalism for national stability.

    Malcolm Turnbull who talks up multiculturalism like a Labor or Green Party voter should visit Japan to experience the pleasure of a proudly monocultural advanced society.

    Ps. What faulty system gave credits to the failed politicians Julia Gillard and Anna Bligh on our Australia Day.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Only one dominated by elites.

  • ian.macdougall says:


    January 26 1788 is well worth commemorating, and celebrating, as Australia’s Day.

    I would go along with that, except to say that Arthur Phillip did not exactly come here with the goal of starting a liberal democracy. The 18th C Britain he left behind was more like “oligarchy tempered by riot”. In the class conflict of the 1700s, the yeomanry Shakespeare knew were being kicked off their lands by aspirant aristocrats and cashed-up gentlemen farmers, backed up by His Majesty’s army. Some of those evicted duly finished up in the prison hulks that stretched along the Thames.
    That land was duly switched over to less intensive use, largely as sheep runs. The surplus population had the choice of either joining the burgeoning proletariat which was forming the Britain of Charles Dickens, or emigrating somewhere else, where they could play landowners and aristocrats, and the local natives could be displaced; like in say Australia. These genuine elites regarded democratic reforms as concessions to be reluctantly made, bit by minimalist bit.
    The whole Australian continent quickly became Britain’s back paddock, as described here so well by Leo Maglen. But the train of causation that would lead to modern, democratic Australia had to wait on a siding until the discovery of gold in 1851. Then began what Geoffrey Blainey later called ‘the rush that never ended’. Eager diggers from every other part of the world lost no time getting themselves across the oceans to join the stampede into the latest bonanza.
    The oligarchic colonial political systems as set up by Phillip and his successors were fatally cracked in 1854, on the Ballaarat field in Victoria (as it was in the original spelling). Australian democracy arguably began the day the original Eureka flag was hoisted up “a very splendid pole, eighty feet in length, and straight as an arrow” by rebellious diggers, as described by the eyewitness Rafaello Carboni.
    Today, Australia has a very prosperous economy, but with enormous, growing and problematic wealth and income differentials. If the history of the rest of the world is anything to go by, these are on the cards to lead to severe social problems and disturbances down the track.


    In just a mere 113 years after Arthur Phillip established the first British settlement at Sydney Cove, Australia became a united sovereign nation, taking its own place in the world. This it achieved freely, and with the encouragement and consent of Britain. There was no ‘throwing off of the British yolk’, (sic) no need for an independence struggle. The heroes of Australia’s nationhood were not resistance leaders or freedom fighters, but politicians and statesmen, most now forgotten or only half-remembered.

    It was a different British elite in power in 1776, and the lessons learned then were incorporated into the Australian Constitution, which is actually an Act of the British Parliament. It is arguably the best in the modern world.
    Otherwise, not a bad article.

    https://noahsarc.wordpress.com/november-29-and-the-birth-of-australian-democracy/
    http://homepage.westmont.edu/hoeckley/readings/Symposium/PDF/201_300/233.pdf
    http://vcp.e2bn.org/justice/page11382-sentencing-to-departure-prison-hulks-convict-gaols.html

    • David Isaac says:

      You make some really excellent points. Self-government was ceded to the individual colonies with greater enfranchisement than in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century. However the plutocracy could remain very certain of herding the nominally independent dominions in the desired direction in times of war or famine through their influence on all avenues of propaganda here. Similar conditions obtain at present throughout the Western world as in the 18th C.. Most people are employed in jobs not strictly necessary to the maintenance of the state and are thus to some extent ‘useless eaters’. The solution nowadays is not to transport or kill these people but to demoralise and atomise them and interfere with their reproduction through aggravated feminism and promotion of non-generative sexuality. Promotion of racial diversity is also an important plank in averting organised revolt in formerly White countries. The 2020 psy-op was a proof of concept for more direct measures should they be needed.

  • gardner.peter.d says:

    I should first declare that am a British immigrant, arriving in 1989. I haven’t killed any Aborigines or stolen anything from them as far as I know. I am surprised at the hostility emanating from many Australians. Even if 1788 was a black day for Australia by some measure, I do wonder what Australia would be like had nobody come in 1788 or at any time since. Oh, say my persecutors, Aboriginal culture would have been preserved and they would be a free people (well, 250 free peoples). Well, says, I how about we divide Australia up into an Aboriginal part and an everyone-else part so the Aboriginal culture would be preserved and they would be free in their part – after all it is big enough and there are hardly any white people in most of it. Oh no, that’s no good, why shouldn’t they have all the good things in the every-one-else part?

    I guess you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

    I find it hard to understand another thing in this debate: terra nullius is decried as meaning the British thought the Aborigines were sub-human and treated them as animals. It doesn’t take much effort to discover that it is: ” .. a Latin expression deriving from Roman law meaning “nobody’s land”, which is used in international law to describe territory which has never been subject to the sovereignty of any state.” It is a perfectly accurate description of Australia at the time and proper basis for Britain’s conduct at the time. Do these campaigners, even the intelligent and well read among them ever read anything or do any research to establish the facts of the issue?

    Then there’s the demand to amend the constitution to recognise the Aboriginal people and remove its discrimination against them. I was puzzled that a constitution would do such a thing, despite the White Australia policy. I read it, every single word. It does not recognise Aborigines but neither does it recognise any particular ethnicity because it does not need to. And it does not discriminate against any people, although it does not explicitly prevent discrimination. Again why should it? It is a matter for the law appropriate from time to time. Again, why don’t people do their homework before sounding off?

    • Occidental says:

      “and proper basis for Britain’s conduct at the time.” From what I have read it never was the base to Britains conduct, as it was an obscure esoteric principle of Civil Law. It was a long time ago when I studied Land Law, but from recollection the distinction under the common law was between territory or land that was conquered or ceded vis a vis settled.. The term “settled” encompassed land where there were primitive inhabitants who did not have organised laws. The distinction was important because if a territory was settled all the common law of Britain, in fact all the law of Britain became immediately in force to the settled territory, where as if it were conquered or ceded the existing law remained until formally altered. The term terra nullius was never mentioned in any decision of either the Privy Council, or a colonial court until Mabo.

    • David Isaac says:

      Mr Gardner, on the matter of killing aborigines I’m afraid you don’t get a free pass. Everyone who has come after 1788 is either complicit in the British conquest of this continent or is a witting or unwitting fifth columnist for the destruction of Australia. What’s more, as a Pom, there’s every chance you had a seventh cousin, possibly even a three greats uncle who was actually here when the inter-racial conflicts inevitably arose; maybe he even fired a shot. Fortunately there is a solution; accept that the continent was wrested from the myriad aboriginal tribes, usually but not always only with as much deadly force as was really necessary, that this conquest was inevitable, and to the extent that it benefited your own Anglo-Saxon people was a good thing. As Robert Frost might have recommended: learn to be not so broad-minded that you cannot take your own side in a quarrel. Or as the bard’s Henry V exhorted outside Harfleur: ‘Dishonour not your mothers. Attest that those whom you called fathers did beget you.’

  • ian.macdougall says:

    POSTED 28 DECEMBER: STILL “AWAITING MODERATION”!!!

    Ian MacDougall
    Your comment is awaiting moderation.
    January 28, 2017 at 12:25 pm

    January 26 1788 is well worth commemorating, and celebrating, as Australia’s Day.

    I would go along with that, except to say that Arthur Phillip did not exactly come here with the goal of starting a liberal democracy. The 18th C Britain he left behind was more like “oligarchy tempered by riot”. In the class conflict of the 1700s, the yeomanry Shakespeare knew were being kicked off their lands by aspirant aristocrats and cashed-up gentlemen farmers, backed up by His Majesty’s army. Some of those evicted duly finished up in the prison hulks that stretched along the Thames.
    That land was duly switched over to less intensive use, largely as sheep runs. The surplus population had the choice of either joining the burgeoning proletariat which was forming the Britain of Charles Dickens, or emigrating somewhere else, where they could play landowners and aristocrats, and the local natives could be displaced; like in say Australia. These genuine elites regarded democratic reforms as concessions to be reluctantly made, bit by minimalist bit.
    The whole Australian continent quickly became Britain’s back paddock, as described here so well by Leo Maglen. But the train of causation that would lead to modern, democratic Australia had to wait on a siding until the discovery of gold in 1851. Then began what Geoffrey Blainey later called ‘the rush that never ended’. Eager diggers from every other part of the world lost no time getting themselves across the oceans to join the stampede into the latest bonanza.
    The oligarchic colonial political systems as set up by Phillip and his successors were fatally cracked in 1854, on the Ballaarat field in Victoria (as it was in the original spelling). Australian democracy arguably began the day the original Eureka flag was hoisted up “a very splendid pole, eighty feet in length, and straight as an arrow” by rebellious diggers, as described by the eyewitness Rafaello Carboni.
    Today, Australia has a very prosperous economy, but with enormous, growing and problematic wealth and income differentials. If the history of the rest of the world is anything to go by, these are on the cards to lead to severe social problems and disturbances down the track.

    In just a mere 113 years after Arthur Phillip established the first British settlement at Sydney Cove, Australia became a united sovereign nation, taking its own place in the world. This it achieved freely, and with the encouragement and consent of Britain. There was no ‘throwing off of the British yolk’, (sic) no need for an independence struggle. The heroes of Australia’s nationhood were not resistance leaders or freedom fighters, but politicians and statesmen, most now forgotten or only half-remembered.

    It was a different British elite in power in 1776, and the lessons learned then were incorporated into the Australian Constitution, which is actually an Act of the British Parliament. It is arguably the best in the modern world.
    Otherwise, not a bad article.

    https://noahsarc.wordpress.com/november-29-and-the-birth-of-australian-democracy/
    http://homepage.westmont.edu/hoeckley/readings/Symposium/PDF/201_300/233.pdf
    http://vcp.e2bn.org/justice/page11382-sentencing-to-departure-prison-hulks-convict-gaols.html

    • Occidental says:

      What this article identifies as the great treasure of our foundation were the concepts philosophy and connections which accompanied it. It is no use citing the limitations (by our standards) of Britain in 1788. What Phillip brought with him were the ideas of modernity, the seeds of liberalism, the concepts of the common law, and a connection with the most dynamic power the world had ever known. Juxtapose our story with say colonies established by the Spanish and French. It was not just about what Britain was at the time, but what it was to become.

  • a.crooks@internode.on.net says:

    “Australia” began on the 26th January 1788. “Australia” was settled by a group of people with a “history” of recognition of heroic figures with monuments dating back to the Roman Forum. “Australia” was settled by a group of people who valued and respected the concept of “history” back to Herodotus, Pliny the Elder (or was it younger), the Venerable Bede…. All this is European cultural baggage which have nothing to do with Aboriginal culture but which Aborigines are attempting to appropriate for themselves. We should not allow them to so without the appropriate recognition of where those cultural traditions came from.
    If Aborigines want to celebrate their continent, they should settle on a name for it amongst themselves. They should settle on a date for celebrating their arrival. They should work out their own cultural achievements and build their own “monuments” appropriate to their own culture to celebrate those. They should recognise that the whole concept of “history” is an anathema to Aboriginal culture – which was all about the cyclic re-enactment of the Dreamtime creative period over and over via “increase ceremonies” in order to maintain the continuance of the Land. There was no concept of “history”. This is obvious when one considers that in THEIR culture, the speaking of the name of the dead was taboo, specifically to exclude the whole concept of genetic continuity and devalue their genetic lineage. What was valued was the immediate personal continuity with the totemic ancestors.

  • Don A. Veitch says:

    Yeah OK, I accept much of the above.
    I have a vested/ethnic interest in Australia. My family arrived here, guests of His Majesty into Hobart in 1804 and the Veitch’s arrived from Scotland into Melbourne as free settlers, in 1852.

    However, England was half-arsed over ‘Australia’. The British Empire did not wish to upset Portugese/Spanish feelings.

    The Treaty of Tordesillas a baby of Pope Alexander VI, , 1494, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Portuguese Empire and the Crown of Castile, along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa.

    Continue that line around up into Australia and you get what England ‘claimed’; this line defined the boundaries of New South Wales as extending from the Northern Cape of Cape York to the southern coast of Van Diemen’s Land and west to 135° east longitude,

    Selection of 135° east longitude meant that New South Wales extended from the eastern coastline across almost half of the continent. The western half of the continent remained unclaimed by any foreign power, and continued to be referred to as New Holland. Western Australia (Confederates?) does not recognize Australia Day

    England started it, but great ‘Australians’ finished it, and we got what we have today!

    • PT says:

      Western 1/3rd surely. And claiming east of 135deg would have “upset” the Spanish!

      In any case Britain later claimed and colonised western New Holland.

      Nor is it true that Australia Day is not recognised here. Who told you that?

  • Patrick McCauley says:

    I have it on good authority that when Vasco De Gama was returning from his trip to Australia – he came across three boatloads of Indonesian Muslims on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He boarded the boats and cut the tongues out of every person on board, set the boats on fire and pushed them back toward Java.

    So … I suppose it was just as well the Portuguese did not invade Australia as the fate of the Aboriginal people might have been much worse than it was under the English rule of law.

  • rosross says:

    Excellent piece. Many thanks.

  • pgang says:

    This is an argument from the negative and therefore not particularly strong (ie- ‘it could have been worse’). Surely it’s better to argue from the positive. More than 200 tribes were raised out of darkness and the nation flourished.

    The aborigines were living an idyll? Hardly. The wonder of it is that we/they maintain the myth that anybody in their right mind would want to go back to that so-called idyll, or consider it worth preserving.

  • aertdriessen@gmail.com says:

    An excellent piece Leo, thank you. I wish that this was taught in schools. What gelled most for me is “The heroes of Australia’s nationhood were not resistance leaders or freedom fighters, but politicians and statesmen, … “. I wasn’t born here, nor were my parents who never lived here either. My Australian citizenship is right up there with what I treasure most and what has provided me with all the opportunities for shaping my fortunate life. I think that the Aborigines should also consider themselves very fortunate, firstly for having been introduced to western civilisation and, secondly, to have had the English to do that rather than the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, or French, all of whom would have imposed a less tolerant culture. The only other name for January 26 that I would be comfortable with is Thanksgiving Day.

  • Bushranger71 says:

    I offer a disparate view, believing that British colonization and the Federation of Australia have ultimately become grossly mismanaged and it is utterly incorrect to presume that Australia is a sound, united and economically prosperous country.

    My forebear emigrated to Young, NSW from France mid-1980s and married into Irish stock. As with many early settlers, there were multiple early deaths among the progeny and 2 later perished in The Great War. My maternal grandparents emigrated from England in the early 1900s and that grandfather was recalled to enlist in the British Army, surviving 3 years of combat before dying of wounds. My Australian-born paternal grandfather was Shipping Master at Sydney Harbour and one of his sons was captured at the fall of Singapore, spending 3.5 years as a POW on the Thai-Burma railway. A brother, myself and 2 nephews also saw operational service in various conflicts and my wife was an Air Force Nursing Sister.

    Virtually all of our military endeavours have been responses to hegemonic influences of Britain or America. Australian has never been threatened by invasion, as comprehensively outlined by Historian Peter Stanley, and it is fair to say that Australian Governments have generally been too inclined to involve in conflicts in faraway places that arguably have little if any relationship to our immediate regional security.

    Without question, ultimate sacrifices and many noble deeds have been performed by those involved in Australia’s military forays; but it is my belief that we have focused far too much on our military performances and far too little on developing a sound nation.

    So what is wrong?

    The Federation model in my view is a failure. It creates sovereign States within the same land mass, which has led to diverse systems of government with all sorts of anomalies in standards and inefficiencies. Would it not have made more sense to create a Federal Government with Provinces in lieu of sovereign States?

    The efficiencies would be enormous, not least being budgetary considerations. And all of the once vital infrastructure (ports, airports, power, communications, resources, defence facilities) that have since been privatized and/or sold off by Federal and State Governments might have been properly retained in national ownership.

    A greater tragedy has been wrought upon the nation regarding deskilling. In the 1950s, there were but a few high standard universities although multiple very high standard technical training colleges. Before long, these latter outstanding institutions were converted to low calibre universities and a TAFE system substituted for lower grade technical training. In the 1990s, the Federal and State Governments ceased supporting comprehensive apprentice training schemes that had been the bedrock of national technical expertise so Industry, Airlines, the Military all closed down their wonderful longstanding institutions, perhaps substituting much weaker systems. Now, the TAFE system has been diminished and replaced by a dubious credibility outsourcing system.

    No nation is worth a spit if it does not have a sound industrial base and Canberra seems to have been working assiduously for some years now to greatly weaken Australia in that regard.

    Financially, Australia is in a quagmire with national debt nearing half a trillion dollars so claims that the nation is prosperous are clearly fraudulent. And Federal Governments of both persuasions seem so bent on laissez faire capitalism that they are unwilling to curb bank lending practices for virtually unfettered development and investment. Sucking enormous numbers of people into the country annually, a large proportion of whom require taxpayer support, only compounds this situation that is weakening national integrity.

    That is just a thumbnail sketch of how I now see this country in my 80th birthday month. I have returned to live in Rockhampton, Queensland for my final years so I can be back in touch with real Australians and near the pioneering spirit that built the nation. My guess is that 90 percent of those in Australia these days would have no idea of the hardships endured by the tough people who forged the nation.

    We have a bad trait in this land of trying to create heroes; but they ought not be considered the politicians and/or military leaders of past years in my view. It has been people of that ilk that have got us into our parlous situation.

    If we are going to maintain an Australia Day, it should be totally reconfigured to honour the pioneers. Go visit the Stockman’s Hall of Fame at Longreach, Queensland and you will better understand what I mean.

    • PT says:

      Why would a Queenslander think that a unitary state is better than a federation? And the States are “sovereign” only to the point that their powers are not subject to the whims of the Feds (although Canberra often thinks otherwise, seizing state ownership of minerals a case in point). A Unitary State would be wholly centred on the interests of Sydney and Melbourne, as this is where Federal elections are decided.

      And States are not sovereign in the real sense of the word. No State can sign a treaty with an external power or independently have outside military forces based on its territory. Something Andrews discovered when Canberra tore up his Belt and Road agreement with the Chinese.

    • wardcj2018 says:

      “Australian has never been threatened by invasion, as comprehensively outlined by Historian Peter Stanley, and it is fair to say that Australian Governments have generally been too inclined to involve in conflicts in faraway places that arguably have little if any relationship to our immediate regional security.” Really? I suppose the Japanese advance in 1942 didn’t really occurs and Curtin’s call to America was a product of reimagining and reimagine history.

      • Sindri says:

        Or that Australia’s security would not have been compromised if the British Empire had been defeated by Germany in WW1. The idea that the outcome of the Great War had “little if any relationship to [Australia’s] immediate regional security”, if that is what is being suggested, is highly debatable.
        BTW, Mervyn Bendle wrote a characteristically dispiriting piece (not a criticism) debunking Peter Stanley’s view about the threat posed by Japan:
        https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2009/06/gallipoli-second-front-in-the-history-wars/
        The article goes wider than that issue, and is worth a read.

  • Bushranger71 says:

    Errata – a Senior’s typo! My forebear emigrated to Young, NSW from France mid-1800s…

    • David Isaac says:

      Thanks Mr Bushranger. The context made clear your intention and I agree wholeheartedly with what you wrote except to say that I don’t believe Australia has ever really been independent. It has always contributed to imperial wars as a poorly defended if remote arm of Anglo-America. We identified ourselves to be part of a racial whole spanning three continents until well after 1945 and fought alongside our cousins. What has become clearer over time is that the ultimate goals of those who have corralled us into these wars are not in any way aligned with the well-being of any of our peoples. Witness the unresisted and legal invasion which is taking place before our very eyes, both here and everywhere in the West.

  • 8457 says:

    No border posts etc to impede us well have you tried even driving across Australia at will? Go off highway one and very quickly you will need to seek permission to travel on large sections of roads crossing native title lands. Some approvals can take weeks. And this to use roads maintained by yours and mine taxes.

    • lloveday says:

      It was like that even long before Native Title reared its ugly head – I had to get a permit in 1979 to go from Laverton to Warburton and beyond, and report to the Laverton Police Station before heading off. Same now, from Wikipedia:
      “The route also passes directly into Aboriginal reserves and it is a legal requirement for travellers to hold a valid transit permit at the time of travel, **even when staying on the Great Central Road**.

  • ianl says:

    This comment is posted at 9:45am on January 27, 2018. The reason for this seeming pedantry is that the timestamps on the preceding comments have apparently experienced a complete disruption of the time/space continuum. Some tranches of comments are timed in January 2017, others in January 2018 (of which some are actually timed 2 days into the future), while still others are gathered around dates recorded as August and September 2017.

    All I wish to know is: have we lost control of the Tardis ?

  • Ed King says:

    “What is remarkable in the case of Australia is that it [colonisation] hadn’t happened earlier, and that the first inhabitants were able to enjoy their idyll for as long as they did.”

    Yes, at some point explorers, traders and settlers from the outside world were bound to land on the continent and disrupt the Aborigines’ isolation.

    To quote Geoffrey Blainey: “The shrinking world was becoming too small to permit a whole people to be set aside in a vast protected anthropological museum where they would try to perpetuate the merits and defects of a way of life that had vanished elsewhere, a way of life that – so long as it continued – would deprive millions of foreign people of the food and fibres that could have been grown on the land.”

  • NarelleG says:

    Wow – how things have plunged into darkness for Australia in 2023.

    I am one of those Angliphobes.
    Too bad that Bonaparte had to call back the invasion flotilla in 1804.

    HAPPY AUSTRALIA WEEK 2023

    • PT says:

      Why is that Narelle? You like the idea of being ruled by a French Emperor? Actually ruled, not him being the symbol of the state but actually the state itself? And may I remind you that you would not be here if Napoleon had done that.

      • Occidental says:

        “ Why is that Narelle…?” The answer lies in the self description of “anglophobe”.
        Ignorance of the nature of our laws, ignorance of the alternatives, a wistful longing to be different from the mainstream. I suspect as Narelle ages, or alternatively learns more, not by reading but actually living in and learning about other countries and their systems, Narelle might become a little more grateful of her good fortune.

  • Phillip says:

    So the Fitzroy River valley flooded recently. Should we leave all the aboriginal communities from Halls Creek to Derby to perish, or, should we as Australian citizens go and rescue our own fellow Australian citizens? I hope we go with the latter. Why? Because aboriginal people are my fellow Australian citizens and they need to be respected just as equally as all Australian citizens. And the same philosophy or approach should embrace Australia Day. I do not need to promote ‘truth-telling’ or ‘healing and reconciliation’…. I celebrate Australia Day for what Australia is today, a peaceful and considerate nation of all people. I do not celebrate some small minority identity group of continual whingers who push this slogan that the day represents a day of sadness, mourning and reminder of colonisation. For those whingers need to get off their polished backsides and do something to help the country instead of proving their ignorance of history in detriment to the benefits that western civilisation and education and hardwork can do. I am confident that most of the greater aboriginal population, are damn fine people, And those damn fine people strive to learn and benefit from the positives that Australian life and our Constitution provide.
    Australia Day should be celebrated for today and the future. I was not here 200 years ago and neither were any of my fellow citizens, but most of us will be here for the future, hence we should enjoy the future and stop moaning about the past…..

  • Andrew Campbell says:

    ‘Why do we choose to celebrate turning a black continent white?’ David Berthold asks in the Sydney Morning Herald today. I haven’t read the article because I’m not going to give that lefty rag any more of my hard earned moolah.

    But I can answer the question anyway … electricity, mobile phones, cars, democracy, the ABC (?), heating, books, peace, the rule of law, clothes, gender equality, the Internet, wine, air conditioning, easily obtained high protein food, music, television, a common language …

    And yes, even Fairfax and the festivals and theatres David manages. Would he really like to go back before 26th January 1788? Piggies flying …

    • Katzenjammer says:

      “Why do we choose to celebrate turning a black continent white?’ David Berthold, who asked this, could easily answer -“Because it gave me a platform to determine aspects of our civilisation like I never could have enjoyed under the previous regime.” Simple.

    • PT says:

      Whenever I hear pompous garbage like that, my first question is when are these people going to a) buy one way tickets and leave, and b) going to demand all black people leave Britain and Europe – and stop turning a “white continent black”.

      As with Garret, Berthold doesn’t really mean a word of it, and obviously so. Far from getting kudos, they should be condemned for their total lack of genuine principle. In fact they simply use Aboriginal issues to claim a totally unearned moral superiority. This is exploiting Aboriginal issues surely.

  • rosross says:

    Excellent article. Well worth repeating again and again.

  • Brian Boru says:

    Most (if not all but a whinging minority) of Australians believe that everyone should be judged on what they say and do, not on the colour of their skin, their religion, who their ancestors were, where they come from or what wealth they have. We are a nation of migrants from the first to the last of us and we want equity for all and unity as one people, not divisions into classes. Many of us or our forebears have come to Australia to escape just this kind of prejudice or persecution.
    .
    I have a conflict when it comes to Australia Day on the 26th if it means that a group of us have bad feelings on that date. I despise racist hate speech such as “white invasion”. I want unity and not division in Australia. If that means we choose another date, I am not fussed, so long as we preserve unity and celebrate our nation. That is also why I am strongly opposed to a racist “Voice” to parliament.
    .
    I agree with practically all the comments on this excellent article. I wonder what would be an accurate description today of a people numbering only about 300,000 that chose to monopolize a country with a now proven capacity of 25 million. Not to mention a proven capacity to export much food to the world. My guess is that such a people would not last even five minutes in today’s world.

    • PT says:

      It’s never ceased to amaze me that those raging the loudest how “evil” colonisation was are the same ones pushing mass immigration, saying we have a “responsibility” to take unlimited numbers of immigrants from East and South Asia (and now apparently Africa, although not Latin America apparently) and anyone who claims to be a “refugee” (who should be taken at their word alone), and multiculturalism, which for them means removing all traces of previous cultural values and norms.

      It’s actually not really about Aboriginal issues at all for these people. It’s about destroying the “old order”, presumably to be replaced by a new one that these people think will be more to their liking (presumably because they imagine they’ll be the ones on top).

  • BalancedObservation says:

    This is an outstanding article. Many of the comments are outstanding too. It’s all a very thought-provoking mix which adds opinions and facts to help us reach the truth about who we are that you’d be unlikely to read elsewhere.
    .
    You wouldn’t see these insightful points of view and this particular level of debate in any of our mainstream media.
    .
    I say this even though I disagree with the final conclusion.
    .
    Thanks Quadrant.

    • padraic says:

      Brian Boru, I can sympathise with your remark about changing the day, but have decided to stick with the 26th, because no date will ever satisfy the full of hate activists and their mildly friendly supporters. To my knowledge no one vigorously opposing the 26th has come up with a date that would suit them – a date that would help unify the nation. They are not interested in unifying the nation, only having a minority controlling the majority as in Syria or what was Apartheid South Africa. Every time the nation accedes to their activist wishes something else bobs up on their wish list. It never ends. Someone in a position of power has to draw the line somewhere. The people who came on the ships in 1788 were not too happy to arrive either but that’s history. We can’t change it and through hard work generation after generation Australia has become a non-racist and well run prosperous country where everyone is equal before the law and can achieve their human potential. Why all this whining?? How about living in the present in harmony. The level of debate on this issue by those opposing the date is generally pathetic. Some time back a Greens politician blasted Captain Cook for raising the flag in Sydney Cove in 1788 and I understand another Green this year in Canberra made the same mistake – the Attorney-General no less – so much for the education system these days and the calibre of some politicians.

      • Brian Boru says:

        Thanks for your reply padraic. I can completely understand your position, I acknowledge that these whingers can never be satisfied. But on the other hand my main principle of National unity compels me to continue to be “not fussed” about the matter of the date. I don’t propose date change, I merely say I could go along with it. As I inferred above, it is exactly that principle of National unity which compels me to oppose the Voice and all the other racist privilege which is peddled.
        .
        I believe that there are times in debate when it is appropriate to make a concession on principle to the other side because that actually bolsters your main position. I think the contrary is also true.
        .
        When it comes to reconciliation, certainly the past (in true, verifiable form) has to be acknowledged. After acknowledgement, the only way forward is forgiveness and acceptance not retribution or revenge. There should also be celebration of our achievement in turning the stone age into a prosperous industrialised country in a very short time.
        .
        I have been listening to talk back radio this morning and a great many callers (probably the majority) have been saying things like, “we apologised, what more do they want”. I have taken heart from this, not about the Australia Day date matter, but about the wider issues including the Voice. It seems to me that the whingers pushing the hate speech on Australia Day are actually kicking an own goal against the Voice.

  • BalancedObservation says:

    In reply to padraic .
    .
    Of course there will always be some who are unhappy with any date. But a minor compromise on the date will probably bring on board an increasing number of others who agree with celebrating Australia Day but are concerned about the date.
    .
    Compromise is something we don’t see enough of in the world these days. It’s what helps us all get along with each other. And it’s something we usually do pretty well in a generally easy-going Australia. Why not apply that principle to Australia Day?
    .
    While there may not be one date to make everyone happy why not make the date used as inclusive as we possibly can? The current one arguably isn’t as inclusive as it could be.
    .
    I think as this article shows we have a lot to celebrate as a nation. Let’s make the date we celebrate our wonderful nation as inclusive as we can so as many as possible are happy to celebrate the great nation we’ve become together on one day.
    .
    The concept of Australia as a nation did not exist on January 26 1788. There wasn’t one nation until federation. There had been separate self-governing colonies reporting individually to England.
    .
    So that date shouldn’t be considered as fixed in time. Why not look for a date that’s more inclusive? For example one option could be the date of federation when we became the nation of Australia.

    • Paul W says:

      It’s Australia Day because it is the start of the society that is now called Australia and which we live in. The problem with Federation Day as Australia Day is that the colonies did the federating: it was not a new society being created from nothing but was an undertaking of the society that existed since 1788, which was modifying itself.

      • BalancedObservation says:

        In reply to Paul W.
        .
        Thanks for your response.
        .
        I can understand what you’re saying. But in 1788 it was called the colony of NSW not the colony of Australia.
        .
        Australia Day is a national celebration. In fact Australia Day was not celebrated until after federation.
        .
        I do see your point though that 1788 was the start of what became Australia. However in the interests of compromise to make the day more inclusive as I mentioned above it’s worth considering a date which could be more inclusive.
        .
        And federation seems like it might be a reasonable compromise to me.

        • Occidental says:

          Compromise lies at the heart of all human interaction. Compromise outside the home or family is usually achieved by politics. I dont mean politics in its usual meaning ie a contest between political parties, but rather in the sense of the group arriving at a decision which most will accept. For me the future of this country lies in the public taking more of a role in the country’s decision making. Has any one noticed how Australians have accepted the referendum outcome. Despite the occasional whinger most of the pro voice camp have just moved on to the next issue. This country needs more referenda or its analogue, plebiscites. Now if we held a plebiscite today about changing the date of Australia Day, what do you think the result would be?

        • David Isaac says:

          What is needed is not a compromise but a clearer presentation of the story about why the 26th January is consequential for this continent Let the aggrieved indigines, freaks, misfits and ‘teals’ call it ‘Invasion Day’. They are free to leave, or at the very least move to NZ. They’re not technically wrong but they ought to be drowned out by a chorus of voices who are glad to celebrate living here under English common law, the southern cross and the Union Jack.
          .
          Look what happened after the Left redefined marriage. Do not yield ground.

  • padraic says:

    Like Brian Boru I am not fussed about a date, but agree with Balanced Observation that Federation Day would be an appropriate alternative and I would be happy with either day or go along with another if it was well supported. The point I was making is that no date will satisfy those who don’t accept modern Australia and paint themselves as victims of something that happened over 200 years ago, so I may as well stick with the one we have.

    • David Isaac says:

      Exactly. The day after the date changes to New Year’s Day we’ll be hearing non-stop about the White Australia Policy, the repatriation of Pacific islanders, paternalistic assimilationist policies towards aborigines etcetera, in we’ll have effectively acknowledged how unconscionable the original settlement supposedly was.
      .
      Their objective is to destroy the old Australian identity. Changing the date will only add fuel to the leftist bonfire. The only solution is to acknowledge that we took the country from the aborigines, treated them quite manganimously and that we see no need to apologise for the actions of our ancestors.

  • Rebekah Meredith says:

    All of this discussion is important, and I have just sent off a letter of disgust to the West Australian (knowing full well that it has about a 99.5% chance of not being printed), expressing my disgust at that propaganda sheet’s push of change-the-date. However, it is far too easy to get so caught up in all this that I’m as angry on this day as are those in the “Invasion Day” marches.
    Happy Australia Day, everyone. Thank God for His numberless blessings on our country.

    • BalancedObservation says:

      In reply to Rebekah Meredith.
      .
      That’s a very good point you make about all the things about Australia we should be thankful for and that we shouldn’t be deflected from that overwhelmingly crucial point by differences over the date on which we celebrate our wonderful country.
      .
      This article and many of the comments help show how fortunate we all are compared with other countries. I find the more I travel the more I realise that.
      .
      It should go without saying that we aren’t perfect but for me this is the best place in the world to live. And to me Australia’s the best place by a clear margin even though there are other countries I really like a lot.
      .
      Oh and incidentally did you get published in the West Australian? If not take heart – a 99.5% chance of not getting published in the mainstream media is far better than what my prospects are.

      • Rebekah Meredith says:

        Thank you, and, no; I didn’t get published in the West Australian. I had a few letters published in the West in the first half of 2020, on the issue of the panicdemic; since then, I’ve sent a number of letters, on a number of issues, and I think I’ve been published twice. What I don’t understand is why some others, with almost the same outlook, HAVE been published at the same time that I wasn’t. It almost seems necessary to belong to an exclusive club since certain people get published frequently, our family almost not at all.
        The two local papers (one is owned by the West Australian; the other is a channel 9 newspaper) in my own town of Mandurah usually do publish my letters. One of them published a letter by my sister objecting to its one-sided coverage of Australia Day last year. The readership, of course, is much smaller; but it’s still something.

        • BalancedObservation says:

          Rebekah Meredith
          .
          Thanks for your reply.
          .
          This is a very very belated reply to your response to my post. But I hope you get to read it. I have a lot of sympathy for your position on being published. I admire intellectually honest independent thinkers who care sufficiently to try to have their views published.
          .
          There’s incredible bias these days in what posts and letters get published in our mainstream media. Arguably the system now seems to be almost corrupt.
          .
          I haven’t had a letter published for years. I’ve now totally given up on letters. I used to get a lot published. But things have got a lot worse with censorship on the left and the right in recent years.
          .
          And for example it’s well over a year since I’ve had even a comment posted let alone a letter published in the Fairfax media. This is despite the fact that I’ve submitted very many comments ( I’ve given up on letters) and my rejected comments have been respectful and conformed with the guidelines.
          .
          Treatment by The Guardian has been very bad. Really bad.
          .
          I’m also tired of being censored by The Australian. I’ve decided I’m not going to support any paper with a subscription which unjustly censors my comments. Pity because I miss the balance the Australian brings to the left mainstream media’s influence. I occasionally buy the weekend Australian’s hard copy version. It’s sad because I had consistently read the Australian from its very first copy published all those years ago.
          .
          I could also tell you stories about being censored by The Conversation. They eventually relented after I argued my case with them. The editor there actually had a conscience. Censorship at Quadrant was explained to me as a technical hitch. I have not been censored here for a long time now. I’m hoping it’s because Quadrant, like The Conversation, has integrity. (Incidentally The Conversation now doesn’t have a facility for comment on many articles).
          .
          So why do we get censored? I have some ideas. I’m a veteran at this. I’ve been a letter writer from way back. And I used to get a lot published. And a huge number of comments published on media sites.
          .
          It’s pretty obvious that most media now don’t like letters or posts which challenge their political views on subjects. So if you do that you stand a good chance of being censored ( probably not here at Quadrant though).
          .
          On the other hand you can still get published if you put a different line to the political leanings of the media in a comment or a letter. They publish a number of comments and letters disagreeing with their line – because they have to! Otherwise it would be patently obvious how biased they were.
          .
          But … if your comment or letter completely, logically, respectfully and systematically rebuts the media outlet’s point of view you’re almost certain to get censored. However if you clumsily and unconvincingly disagree with the media’s view you’re far more likely to get published. It’s a very sad state of affairs.
          .
          And the rapid growth of social media is unfortunately no antidote. It’s probably made matters even worse.
          .
          Anyway there are far worse things in life than being censored by a second rate media outlet. . I’m far more relaxed about it all now realizing that.

  • wardcj2018 says:

    Leo, I knew your rather. I do not believe he would have countenanced “There was no ‘throwing off of the British yolk’, no need for an independence struggle.” Unless it was connected with egg throwing, about which he knew in some detail.

  • Marcus Harris says:

    I’m not sure if this has been mentioned before in comments but, I was taught that AUSTRALIA Day was nominated as 26 January in 1949 when an act of federal parliament changed every British citizens status from British to Australian. Following that promulgation we could apply for Australian passports and be recognised as such internationally.

  • lajos.halmos says:

    It is all interesting. Many people have many idea & opinion.
    Everybody obviously have a different idea. The more of the deference the less is the common agreement. That is why that song is false. ” We are One but We are many.”
    This country never been DIVIDED more in the past 200 Years.
    The through can not be sad !! Todays people blamed for the past !
    Unless people forget the past & GO for the future hear never be Peace .
    Also all able bodied person should Work !! Not on the ” Dole “

  • James McKenzie says:

    Been through the Australian Museum in Canberra: foul play on display and aboriginal empathy with Orcas at Eden: surely, the local indigenes were pulling strings! Am disenchanted by Aunty associations: a male dominated society would have bludgeoned, stepping out of line. Two Pascoe Aboriginal references: a museum surely has to be a monument of truth: sadly, a disgrace,

  • Paul from Sydney says:

    The Australian story is the true story of Western civilisation: the building of a society brick by brick, institution by institution, interaction by interaction, law by law. Boring but essential. We aren’t good at telling or listening to this story but we need to become good at it if our nation is to be respected by its citizens again, particularly those with ‘education’. One aspect I love is how the first governors subtely declared their ‘independence’ from Whitehall by running the new colony not as a prison, as directed, but as a society where opportunity was valued. They made sure that it was not first and foremost a punishment, but a blessing to its inhabitants. This was partly driven unwittingly by Whitehall’s insistence that the colony be self-sufficient of course. But the resistance was conscious and fundamental to Australia’s formation.

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