A Concise History of

Third Edition

STUART MACINTYRE

'. ..., '. ..' CAMBRIDGE . ::: UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, , Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi

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© Stuart Macintyre 2.009

First published 1999 Second edition 2.004 Reprinted 2.005, 2006, 2008 Third edition 2009

Cover design by David Thomas Design Typeset by Aptara Printed in China by Printplus

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

National Library of Australia Cataloguing in Publication data Macintyre, Stuart, 1947- A concise I Stuart Macintyre 3'd ed. 9780FI5I6082 (hbk.) 9780521735933 (pbk.). Includes index. Bibliography Aboriginal Australians - History. Republicanism - Australia. Australia - History. Australia - Politics and government. Australia - Environmental conditions IL) 994 "1 t 1.'1'/I (3) 978-0-';-'21-51608-2. hardback 30:. C])f 11 /3 O/ IIBN ISBN 978-0-521-73593-3 paperback

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What next?

'Historical events, like mountain ranges, can best be surveyed as a whole by an observer who is placed at a good distance from them.' So wrote an early professor of history (the chair I occupy is named after him) in the closing pages of his concise history of Australia. wrote those words more than ninety years ago and the idea of the historian as an observer of events has since fallen into disrepute. The historian is now inside the history, inex­ tricably caught up in a continuous making and remaking of the past. History once served as an authoritative guide to decision­ making. The great nineteenth-century literary historians produced compelling accounts of the forces that had shaped their civilisa­ tion; through these lessons in statecraft and morality, they provided contemporaries with the capacity and the confidence to anticipate their destiny. That idea of the historian as guide or prophet has also lapsed. Futurology is the province of the economist, the environ­ mental or information scientist; whatever the future holds, it will be utterly different from what has gone before. Scott applied his caveat to the final fifteen years of his narrative. For him, the first years of the Commonwealth period constituted a 'closer range' of ephemeral change, but then his history of Australia spanned only five centuries. Completed in the year that his com­ patriots returned on imperial service to scramble up the slopes of Gallipoli, it began 'with a blank space on the map' at the dawn of European discovery and ended 'with a new name on the map, that What next?

of Anzac'. Australian history now stretches over many millennia. In this dramatically extended past the last two hundred or so years of European habitation might well be regarded as too close to discern its essential features. The colonisation that began in I788 could be seen, at greater distance, as no more than a temporary interruption in the longer history of Australia. Two thousand years ago Britain was itself colonised. After voy­ ages of discovery, reconnaissance and trade, a Roman army took possession. Initially the invasion met with little resistance, but as the newcomers extended their presence they put down revolts by the local tribes and sent back the trophies of those they conquered. They built towns, settled ex-soldiers on the land, imposed their law, language and customs, built walls to keep out alien incursions, exploited the natural resources to create export industries, provided troops for imperial service. As new powers arose in the region, the emperor Constantine came to shore up the island's defences, but eventually the imperial capac­ ity declined and the province was left to defend itself. The indigenous people had blended many of the ways of colonisers with their own traditions, and waves of new arrivals also assimilated aspects of the Roman legacy. The Roman colony itself lasted for more than four hundred years. Its traces are still apparent in historic sites and place­ names, but are just one slice of the island's multi-layered past. Rome bequeathed a framework of government and law, but that too has repeatedly been remade. Will the British colonisation of Australia be sustained so long? Will it too be overlaid by the languages and practices of other peoples? The relationship between the settlers and the indigenous peo­ ples remains uncertain. From the beginning it caused unease. The proclamation of sovereignty, the seizure of land and the violent con­ frontations this caused always troubled some colonists. All attempts to ease their conscience, whether by protection, reservation, conver­ sion or assimilation of the Aboriginals, failed. The relationship is more important than ever because its terms have changed. It used to be said that whenever the English thought they had found an answer to the Irish question, the Irish would alter the question. Eventually it became apparent that the problem had to be turned around: for the Irish, it was the English question. A Concise History of Australia

In Australia the altered relationship between coloniser and colonised became apparent in Aboriginal demands for self­ determination. The Commonwealth's land rights legislation in 1976 appeared to answer that call, but in fact the transfer of land to Aboriginal ownership during the later 1970S and 1980s was ham­ pered by State governments and largely confined to the desert and savannah regions of the centre and the north. Land rights in theory and rhetoric broke with the old assumptions by transferring title as a matter of indigenous entitlement. Land rights in practice were similar to the setting aside of reserves during the nineteenth cen­ tury - a benevolent act by a sovereign colonist. In much the same way the pursuit of reconciliation, made possible by the generosity of Aboriginal participants, depended in the end on the willingness of non-Aboriginal Australians to acknowledge past wrongs that could never be undone. One commentator described the efforts of those involved in the reconciliation process as providing 'therapy for whites'. The Mabo judgement of 1992 shattered this humanitarian frame­ work. By their decision the judges of the High Court shifted the basis of Aboriginal policy from the operation of statutory law, where parliament authorised the restitution of Aboriginal land, to the very foundations of the Australian legal system. The court did not over­ turn the sovereignty of the government that had been established in 1788 but recognised the existence in common law of Aboriginal property rights that preceded the European settlement and con­ tinued past it. The subsequent Wik judgement confirmed thatthese rights could coexist with other property rights. The Commonwealth has since legislated to confine the effect of the judicial decisions but their implications have yet to be fully worked out and their import is irrevocable. The colonisers are confronted with the fact that they share the land with the colonised. The disappointing outcomes of Aboriginal self-determination have only compounded this unfinished business. Aboriginal claimants established land rights over large portions of northern Australia, but the land had little commercial value to those who yielded it up and did not create wealth for its new owners. Abo­ riginals living in remote regions found it hard to establish eco­ nomic independence, and the consequences of dependence on state What next? welfare proved debilitating. Nor were the outcomes for those living in the south markedly better: they too were less likely to complete school and obtain a qualification, more likely to suffer hardship, poor health and early death. There is no longer agreement among Indigenous leaders of the way forward, no longer the same moral certainty. A lasting reconciliation remains elusive. Australia, in name and substance, is a product of the European supremacy that began five hundred years ago and ended in the second half of the last century. In Asia and Africa the process of decolonisation saw the expulsion or withdrawal of the imperial powers and the creation of new states. The Europeans departed. In the colonies of settlement where independent nation-states had already emerged there was no departure but it became necessary to rework the relationship between the settlers and the indigenous people. and Canada provide some guidance as to how this can be done peacefully. Zimbabwe suggests the consequences of refusal, and in South Africa the outcome is still unclear. While the different paths to a postcolonial settlement are influenced by the weight of the indigenous populations, it is clear that the claims of First Nation peoples carry a much greater authority than before. That influence is unlikely to diminish. Visiting Australia for the first time in I987, the English writer Angela Carter was struck by the signs of a society 'inexhaustibly curious about itself'. Her hosts were constantly pondering the national identity, repeatedly asking and telling themselves what it meant to be Australian. She thought this an effect of the end of empire. The writers with whom she travelled from one literary festival to another were all 'addressing themselves to questions of which the sub-text is post-colonialism', but these discussions took place 'in the context of a society in which the points of reference were no longer British' and the participants were 'still in the act of defining themselves'. Carter's observation of the national preoccu­ pation was keen, her explanation of it perhaps rather too British. The Empire had not simply ended: it was in danger of being forgot­ ten. The points of reference had ceased to be British long before she came here; the difficultywas in finding new ones. Colonies of settlement find it easier to throw off their tute­ lage than to reconstitute themselves as fully autonomous entities. A Concise History of Australia

Australian nationalism emerged in the nineteenth century by assert­ ing its difference from the place of origin. This nationalism empha­ sised the freedom and opportunity of the new world against the constriction and debility of the old. It was the product of people set loose in a new place where they could discard their fetters. It constructed the Commonwealth as a young nation starting afresh in a land of unlimited promise. This Australia remained tied to its origins, however, by the silken bonds of trade and investment, the continuing reliance on a pow­ erful protector and, above all, the emphasis on consanguinity. No matter how the settlers sought to attach themselves to the new homeland, they could not share it with those who were here first and they would not share it with others of the region. The insistence on exclusive possession operated on almost every aspect of foreign and domestic policy during the first half of the twentieth century, only to perpetuate the condition of insecurity, the feeling of being out of place, alone and exposed. Its legacy is apparent in the recent characterisation by an Indonesian journalist of Australians as the 'white tribe of Asia', its continuing potency apparent in the refugee crisis and alarm over border protection as well as the ambiguities that still attend Australia's participation in regional forums. Such is the power of the past that the appellation White Aus­ tralia retains its force long after it has ceased to be accurate. The attempt to maintain the purity of a transplanted people has given way to the ethnic diversity of contemporary Australia. Twenty-five per cent of Australians were born overseas, a higher proportion than Canada, the United States or any of the settler societies. Nearly 20 per cent speak a language other than English in their home, and the fastest-growing community languages are Cantonese, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Filipino and Vietnamese. Ethnic diver­ sity is greater, more harmonious and better appreciated than in the countries of the region. Australians, moreover, are at ease in the world. They travel widely and often, take up residence abroad and mix freely, comfortable in their identity. True, this rearrangement has left the dominance of the ethnic majority intact - the descendants of those who claimed exclusive possession continue to define the comfortable limits of pluralism. The gradual, piecemeal manner in which they have done so has in What next?

turn allowed for their own reconstitution, so that they now partake of the very characteristics that were once alien and threatening. The transfer of Ayers Rock back to Aboriginal ownership and the restoration of its name, Uluru, has augmented its significance to all Australians. The incorporation of Asian peoples and cultures into the fabric of Australian life is least threatening to those who most directly experience it. The problem with this slow, often grudging, transition is that it provides no clear break that would settle the ghosts of White Australia. Perhaps the Australian republic, which must eventually come, will allow a final settlement. As a young woman recently arrived in Australia, Catherine Spence worried that new colonies were too easily disrupted by sudden change: hence her observation that the gold rush had unfixedevery­ thing. As the 'Grand Old Woman of Australia', she looked back in I9IO on a lifetime of service with the observation that 'Nothing is insignificant in the history of a young community, and - above all ­ nothing seems impossible.' The history related here is one of rapid initial change. Colonists applied a familiar repertoire of practices to novel circumstances. The false starts were quickly started anew. The first settlements in , Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland all shifted to alternative sites, but Sydney, Hobart, Melbourne and Brisbane, along with the more carefully planned beginnings at and Ade­ laide, soon established a durable presence. They remain the centres of their States to this day. After early difficulties, the settlers found how to work the land. They learned how to treat it as a green-field site on which they could employ the most advanced technologies and secure the greatest efficiency in the production of commodi­ ties for world markets. They applied their prosperity to schemes of improvement and adapted their institutions with similar ingenuity. This nineteenth-century Australia thrust aside obstacles, confident in its capacity to control destiny. A hundred years later that confidence dissipated. Australia had been caught and surpassed by later entrants, Australians were fol­ lowers rather than leaders, careless of their earlier achievements. In the closing decades of the twentieth century they cast aside much of that legacy and embarked on an arduous renewal. It is thus remarkable that the seventeen years of continuous growth achieved A Concise History of Australia after 1991 relied so heavily on the original arrangement, commod­ ity exports that attracted investment, stimulated service industries and supported high living standards among an urban population. Australia thus remains a magnet for the new settlers who continue to arrive, bringing with them an unprecedented diversity and an energy that sustains innovation. What might be learnt from such a history? For those who were here first, the modern history of Aus­ tralia is deeply traumatic and the healing has only begun. For those who came, it is a story of fresh beginnings. A place of exile became a land of choice and a sanctuary for successive waves of new arrivals who have continually reworked it. It has dazzled them with its light, intimidated them with its space, baffled them with its indifference. It makes no declaration of its virtues. No Statue of Liberty welcomes the newcomer, no proclamation of guiding principles is offered. They are to be found in the way that Australians live and the advantages that they usually take for granted. The majority enjoy a modest comfort; as one newcomer in the 1960s discovered, this is a place where 'you did not need to be wealthy to be warm'. It is a country of low population density, just two inhabitants for every square kilometre, and for all the abuse of a fragile environ­ ment, it allows for more. The high rate of immigration and a recent upturn in the birthrate create a demographic structure that is bet­ ter placed than other countries to avoid the imbalance of an aged and dependent cohort overhanging the working population. The life expectancy is high. It remains a country of opportunity. A largely undemonstrative people, Australians rally in misfor­ tune; fire and flood brings out the best in them. There is a wide measure of freedom; differences are resolved by established proce­ dures under the rule of law, and a healthy suspicion of extremes protects Australians from despotism. These and other achievements had to be won in the past, as they need to be defended today. The history of Australia works backwards and forwards to rework our understanding of how we came to be what we are. Its presence is inescapable. To enter into it provides a capacity to determine what still might be.