Lucky for Some: Howard Wades in as Australia’s Voice to Parliament Referendum Nears

“I do hold the view that the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British”. So says John Howard, the 25^th Prime Minister of Australia (1996-2007) and the office’s second longest servant in history. It comes in the build-up to the Voice to Parliament referendum, which will determine whether Australia’s constitution will be changed for the first time in 46 years. If yes, it will purportedly give indigenous Australians greater say over the laws and policies that affect them.

Howard’s government intervened in many Aboriginal territories in 2007, forcibly imposing government control. Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Howard remains a prominent conservative figure and his views are likely to be shared by many in the ‘No’ camp, whose proponents have run a controversial campaign accused of stereotyping and racism. Lucky the British arrival in, and settlement of, Australia might have been for the future European incumbents of the nation. But Howard’s comments typify a dominant attitude by white Australians that has resulted in the subjugation of its indigenous population for centuries.

Australian Aborigines constitute approximately 4% of the country’s population. Descended from upwards of 500 distinct groups that arrived in Australia and Tasmania between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago, they were prodigious hunter-gatherers, with a complex mythology related to the Dreaming, or Dream-Time. This belief system broadly holds that the environment was shaped and humanised by other-worldly beings (Ancestors) that took human and animal form, beings capable of long journeys both real and metaphysical that travelled beyond the lands of the people that revered them. Some were believed to have metamorphosed into natural forms, such as waterholes or rock formations, places still revered by Aborigines today.

Aboriginal rock art testifies to an ancient mythology. Source: Hub Pages

After landings by the Dutch in the early 17^th century and the British at the end of the 1600s, James Cook led the first large-scale expedition to what would become known as Australia in 1770. In 1788, the first British settlement was established at Port Jackson, mainly comprising convicts and mariners. The Aboriginal population at the time is estimated to have been between 300,000 and 1 million people. As with many ‘first contact’ peoples, they were devastated by European disease and mistreatment, their ancestral territories forcibly ‘pacified’ in the 19^th century. Reserves were established by the colonial authorities, in an approach reminiscent of the Native American experience. Children were taken from Aboriginal parents as efforts were made to eradicate indigenous culture.

An Aboriginal reserve, or ‘mission’. Source: Deadlystory.com

It is no secret that Aboriginal Australians suffer disproportionately from health and social issues, not to mention impoverishment. Whilst some efforts have been made in recent years to recognise their distinctive history and culture, the legacy of British colonisation and European settlement has been anything but lucky for those that first roamed the vast expanse of land that is Australia.

Whilst there has long been debate over how many, if any, ‘pure-blooded’ Aborigines remain, this simply denies the agency of those identifying as Aboriginal Australians, perpetuating racial stereotyping and linking governmental support (such as access to welfare payments) to an ill-defined notion of what an indigenous Australian is.

Many Aboriginal Australians live a vastly different life to their white countrypeople. Source: The Australian

Unfortunately, the referendum is not going to serve as a silver bullet to cure the maladies of Australia’s Aboriginal policy. Even if the ‘Yes’ vote wins, which is becoming increasingly unlikely based on recent polls, some argue that it is merely a symbolic gesture that will fall short of enacting true reform. Mr Howard’s “good old-fashioned dose of proper governance” – as he termed his 2007 ‘Intervention’ in Aboriginal communities – may be a distasteful memory to many, but how many ordinary Australians are going to favour a relinquishment of the power structures that have resulted in their long-term ascendancy?

Lucky or not, Australians remain wedded to the system imposed by the British colonists more than 200 years ago.

The Retrenchment of the Immigrant Nation: nationalism in Australia and the USA

One of the most striking comparisons between Australia and the USA is that both states are founded on mass immigration from Europe. Whilst immigration in the US has historically been more diverse than in Australia (where most early settlers arrived from Great Britain), in both nations the indigenous population has been reduced to an outcast minority in the face of overwhelming European settlement.

Early Sydney: European immigrants quickly moulded Australia into a dispersed version of Europe

In recent years, America has seen a massive increase in immigrants from Latin America, particularly Mexico, whilst Australia has seen an influx of East Asian immigrants, particularly Chinese and Indian. Yet it is these divergent immigration patterns, different to the European immigration on which these two countries were established, that has called into question the openness of each country’s borders.

In the US, anti-immigrant sentiment has increased significantly in recent years as large non-English speaking populations willing to work menial jobs for minimum wages have arrived in the country. This development has fostered a nationalistic, exclusivist trend amongst many Americans which defies the country’s image as an open, welcoming land where freedom abounds. The decision of Mitt Romney to run on a fiercely anti-immigration ticket during his bid for election last year was a response, albeit overboiled, to the perception that America is keen to halt its historic flows of immigrants.

Anger is primarily directed at ‘illegal’ immigrants in America

In Australia, the arrival of Asian immigrants in many ways parallels the influx of Latin Americans in America. Unlike the original British colonists that formed the basis of modern Australia, these immigrants have become an alien and, in many ways, unwelcome presence in the Oceanian state. Furthermore, the desperate attempts of asylum seekers to enter Australia from Southeast Asia has brought the matter of immigration to a public and political head in recent months. Many of these asylum seekers travel from as far afield as the Middle East, where there war-torn lands are no longer a safe place to live. Arriving on precarious and overloaded vessels, many of them are detained on arrival and held in detention centres whilst a long and often unsuccessful bid for residency ensues. Sympathy for their plight has been restricted to a few civil rights campaigners and Julia Gillard’s government is apparently clueless as to how to resolve the situation effectively and fairly.

It is ironic that for two peoples whose ancestors immigrated to a foreign land and virtually destroyed the native populations and their livelihoods before settling into an unprecedented era of demographic and economic expansion, an incursion of immigrants from “new” and “unnatural” destinations has been seen as an unacceptable challenge to societal survival.

Whilst immigration levels have undoubtedly got to be brought under control, the treatment of migrants who have been given official residency in America and Australia makes a mockery of the founding characteristics of each state. Whilst they may have turned their backs on Europe long ago, the trumpeting of European ancestry as superior to other parts of the world, coupled with an inability to accept the contemporary realities of population movements, renders many American and Australian people arrogant and hypocritical.

Whilst anti-immigrant sentiment is by no means exclusive to these two countries, their particular historical composition makes their nationalist arguments, and their racist undertones, particularly difficult to accept.