Australia

1. Australia

2. Part One The Land and the People of the Dreaming • The Land 1. The natural environment of Australia

3. The continent of Australia lies between equatorial South East Asia and the Antarctic. It is the largest island in the world, and is also the smallest, flattest and driest continent in the world.

4. 2. The distinctive features of the land: the Great Dividing Range and the Great Barrier Reef.

5. 3. The distivctive animals of the land: the platypus(鸭嘴兽), the kangaroo, the koala, the wombat(毛鼻袋熊)

6. II. The Peoples 1. The Peoples of the Dreaming belong to over 500 different groups or nations with different languages and cultures but they were bound together by their belief in the Dreaming.

7. 2. The “Dreamtime” is most often used to refer to the “time before time”, or “the time of the creation of all things”, while “Dreaming” refers to an individual’s or group’s set of beliefs or spirituality.

8. 3. It is based on the central principle that people who live on the continent have special responsibilities to the land --- that the land owns them and that they hold it in trust as the home of their creator.

9. III. The Impact of Colonization 1. The concept of Terra Nullius: the term is from Latin, which means a land that is owned by no one. The British declared the Australian continent Terra Nullius to justify their invasion of the indigenous people’s land

10. 2.The impact of colonization on the indigenous people • the indigenous people were dispossessed of the land they had lived on for tens of thousands of years;

11. they were killed in violent skirmishes and massacres; • they contracted the diseases brought by the white settlers and as a result, their population fell drastically.

12. IV. The policies of segregation, exclusion and assimilation 1. By the mid-1800s the government of violence changed to policies of segregation and exclusion.

13. 2. By the beginning of the 20th century the policy of protection had been replaced by the policy of assimilation.

14. It was founded on the belief that the white culture was progressive and superior while the indigenous culture was inferior.

15. 3. The double loss of traditional culture and exclusion from mainstream Australian society and culture led to Aboriginal people being labelled as lazy, stupid and drunken and dirty.

16. Part Two Religion in Australia Today • The Dreaming: The Dreaming means that people do not own the land – the land owns the people who have responsibilities of guardianship towards it.

17. However, Australia still can be seen as a religious society, as over three quarters of the Australian population is associated with some form of religion.

18. Part Three From Penal Colony to “Free Migration” I. The beginning of the penal colony 1. The first period of the colonization of Australia, lasting from 1788 to the 1830s, was based largely on the “unfree” labor of the convicts.

19. New South Wales, Tasmania and Queensland were established as convict colonies; Victoria and South Australia, established in 1830s, were settled as “free”, or non-convict, colonies.

20. Western Australia, established in 1828 as a free colony, turned to convict labor in 1850 and become a convict colony for 19 years until 1869.

21. Convict partnerships were not the only form of family of this era. There were also “free” families of people who came over with the transported convicts, families of soldiers or administrators of the colony or people who arrived as “free settlers”.

22. II. From convict transportation to “free”migration 1. By the early 1820s there was pressure from the majority of the “free’ settlers in NSW to replace convict transportation with “free migration” and to establish a “free market” economy.

23. 2. The 1930s and 1840s formed the early years of the modern (non-convict) system of the Australian Political Economy.

24. 3. Wakefield Scheme: • It was devised by Edward Wakefield, a convict and theorist on colonization, to solve the problem of labor shortage in colonial Australia

25. His proposal on the development of colonial Australia was that land should not be freely and cheaply available.

26. It should be sold at suffient price to ensure that only men of capital could afford it. The money earned from selling land should be used to assist selected migrants to Australia.

27. Part Four Australia as a Liberal Democratic Society I. Difference as the central value of the Australian society

28. Ausrtalians understand and conduct life upon a basic commitment to difference. The emphasis is upon the principle that there are different ways if thinking and knowing about the world: there is neither absolute truth nor one single way to run the country.

29. The end

30. II. The formation of Australian political system 1. The “Washminster”form of polity:

31. It is a mixture of the U S. Washington system of government and the British Westminster system. This means that the political structure of the government is based on a Federation of State with a three tier system of government.

32. 2. The three-tier system of the Australian government • The Australian federation has three tiers in its government system: at the federal level, there are the Australian Parliamant and the government.

33. In the second tier are the state governments and their legislatures. In the third tier are the local government bodies at the city, town and shire levels.

34. 3. The advantages of the pluralist form of government 1) It enables the citizens to exercise their political right to choose their own government;

35. 2) It secures transparency and accountability of the government; 3) It provides for an alternative government which can competently take over the state affairs should any government collapase;

36. 4) The citizens can exert their power through major interest groups. 4. The Constitutional Crisis of 1975

37. It was caused by the dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor-General, which was elected by people.

38. When the Senate refused to pass the Supply Bill granting money for the operation of the government, Sir John Kerr, the Governor- General dismissed the Whitlam government.

39. This dismissal was generally interpreted as a flouting of the uncodified conventions of government and caused political and popular animosity.

40. 5.Whistle-blowers: they are often experts in both senior and lower levels of bureaucracies. They discover in their branch of the organization some problems of corruption and inefficiency and try to expose them.

41. 6.The relations between Ministers and Heads of Department: • Theoretically speaking, the public servants should be under the authority of the elected ministers

42. The Minister is responsible for making policies, and the Head of Department is responsible for implementing the policies.

43. As the Head of Department tends to be an expert specialist who has been working in the area for a long time, the minister is often in danger of being influenced by the adminstrative expertise of the Head of Department.

44. 7. Reasons for the increase of the government role in Australian political economy before 1980s: 1) the expansion of education, health and social welfare services;

45. 2) the introduction of social security programmes; 3) the increase in government regulations of business and finance and the supply of labor;

46. 4) the intriduction of a more complex system of justice and law and order. 8. Political economic changes in the shift to economic rationalism

47. 1) financial regulations; 2) the privatization and corporationization of public service; 3) the end of centralized wage fixing system; 4) cuts in the size of the public sector and the sale of public assets.

48. Part Five From Racism to Multiculturalism I. Ethnicity and inequality 1. In mid-19th century migrants were predominantly British, and those who benefited from assisted migration were almost all from Britain.

49. 2. By the 1870s, the Chinese constituted the third largest group in Australia, after the Britsh (including the Irish) and Germans. Chinese migrants were subjected to racism at many levels. (target of physical attacks)

50. 3. Pacific Islanders experienced a differnet history of racism in Australia. They were kidnapped by the “Blackbirders” and sold as indentured laborers to work in the sugar industry.