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Terra Australis, as the continent was first known to Europeans, is thought to have been inhabited by man for at least 40,000 years. The aboriginal
population, whose modern remnants describe themselves as Kooris, are thought to have migrated from southern India or Sri Lanka.
The first European settlements were initiated by the Dutch East India Company in 1606. The company charted and claimed for
their mother country the 320km (200 miles) of northwest coast, which they named New Holland.
The explorations of Captain James Cook, 150 years later, opened up the east coast. The British Empire, having just lost her
American colonies, was in need of a new prison colony. By 1868, when transportation ended, Britain had sent more than 160,000
convicts to Australia. They were settled around the coast – several of modern Australia’s biggest cities grew from the penal
settlements and those set up by freed convicts and other European immigrants – and eventually enabled the British crown to
claim the entire continent. The colonisers treated the Kooris with appalling brutality but as long as European settlement
was confined to the coast, the majority of tribes were able to live as before.
This ended in 1851, when, following an exodus to the gold fields of California, the administrators sought to stem the tide
by offering rewards for the discovery of gold in Australia. The subsequent gold rush prompted the first wave of voluntary
migration to the continent in modern times; the population doubled within months of the discovery of gold in Victoria. Around
the same time, the interior was charted for the first time, while towns sprang up both there and on the littoral. The Kooris,
meanwhile, were massacred, driven into barren areas or into lives of virtual slavery. Most of Australia was granted the right
to self-government in the 1850s.
The Commonwealth of Australia, a Federation of States, was set up in 1901, establishing Australia as an independent democracy.
Nonetheless, close links with the UK were maintained; Australian troops fought alongside the British during both World Wars.
The politics of the country remained under firm British supervision until years after World War II. In the aftermath, Australia
assumed some of the trappings of a regional power, taking control of some of Germany’s former territories in the area and
developing links with Japan, India and South East Asia. It also joined in a secretive strategic alliance with Britain, the
USA, Canada and New Zealand, which remains the country’s principal defence commitment. Until its abandonment in the mid 1960s,
a ‘White Australia’ policy was officially adopted with regard to immigration.
Between 1949 and 1972, Australian governments were composed of the Liberal Party in a centre-right coalition with the smaller
National Country Party. Sir Robert Menzies was the dominant political figure, serving 16 years as Prime Minister. In 1972,
the coalition was finally defeated at the polls as the Labour Party under Gough Whitlam took office with a comparatively radical
agenda. There followed one of the most controversial periods of recent Australian history, culminating in the Whitlam government
being dismissed by the Governor General, Sir John Kerr, in circumstances still hotly disputed. The immediate beneficiary was
the Liberal Party leader, Malcolm Fraser, who won the next elections, which followed in December 1975, within weeks of Whitlam’s
dismissal. Fraser remained in office until 1983, when Labour was returned to power under the leadership of the ex-trade-union
leader, Bob Hawke. Under Hawke and his acerbic Treasury Minister and eventual successor, Paul Keating, the Labour party won
five elections in a row.
Finally, in March 1996, tiring of Labour, the Australian public turned to the Liberal Party led by John Howard. Howard’s centre-right
coalition was returned to office for a third term at the 2004 general election. Aboriginal issues continue to affect successive
Australian governments who have found considerable difficulty in reconciling Koori peoples’ traditional claims and conceptions
of land ownership with, to take but one example, the requirements of mining companies. Since Howard's re-appointment, race
riots have already occurred - one of which, in a district of Sydney, was catalysed by the death of an Aboriginal teenager
in police custody.
The other dominant political issue of the last few years was Australia’s constitutional future. There were two options: to
maintain the existing link with Britain; or to establish Australia as a fully fledged republic. A split in the republican
camp produced a surprise victory for the traditionalists in the national referendum on the subject, held in October 1999.
Despite that, most Australians now look to links with America and Asia as more important and relevant to their future than
those with the ‘Old Country’. The country’s foreign policy (irrespective of the party in power) is now geared to the strengthening
of economic and political links with the countries of the Asian Pacific Rim and the affirmation of the existing links with
the USA (exemplified by Australia’s participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq).
Under the Howard governments, migration has come to dominate the Australian political agenda. The hard line which Howard set
down has been rigorously pursued – ‘boat people’ from the troubled states of Asia have been prevented from landing in Australia
and instead directed to small Pacific islands; those who do reach Australia are detained in remote outback encampments. The
government’s hard line was reinforced by the October 2002 bomb in Bali, which killed 200 mostly Australian tourists. This
brought Australia to the centre of the US-inspired global ‘war against terrorism’.
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