1.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
2.
Stolen Generations
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Documentary evidence, such as newspaper articles and reports to parliamentary committees, suggest a range of rationales. A minority of historians dispute that substantial numbers of mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from their families. They contend that some children were removed mainly to protect them from neglect, given their catastrophic population decline after white contact, whites assumed that the full-blood tribal Aboriginal population would be unable to sustain itself, and was doomed to extinction. The idea expressed by A. O. Euro-Australians believed that their civilisation was superior to that of Aborigines, the Northern Territory Chief Protector of Aborigines, Dr. Cecil Cook, argued that everything necessary to convert the half-caste into a white citizen. The Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 included the earliest legislation to authorise child removal from Aboriginal parents, the Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines had been advocating such powers since 1860. Passage of the Act gave the colony of Victoria a wide suite of powers over Aboriginal and half-caste persons, including the removal of children. As a result of legislation, states arranged widespread removal of mixed-race children from their Aboriginal mothers. In addition, appointed Aboriginal protectors in each state exercised wide-ranging guardianship powers over Aborigines up to the age of 16 or 21, often determining where they could live or work. Policemen or other agents of the state were given the power to locate and transfer babies and children of mixed descent from their mothers, families, the exact number of children removed is unknown. Estimates of numbers have been widely disputed, the Bringing Them Home report says that at least 100,000 children were removed from their parents. This figure was estimated by multiplying the Aboriginal population in 1994, the report stated that between one in three and one in ten children were separated from their families, not one in three persons in the total population. Given differing populations over a period of time, different policies at different times in different states. Australian historian Robert Manne suggests approximately 20,000 to 25,000 were removed between 1910 and 1970, based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics report of 1994, keith Windschuttle and other historians have argued for a much lower figure. In certain regions and in periods the figure was undoubtedly much greater than one in ten. In that time not one family has escaped the effects of forcible removal, most families have been affected, in one or more generations, by the forcible removal of one or more children. The report closely examined the distinctions between forcible removal, removal under threat or duress, official deception, uninformed voluntary release, Aboriginal Protection Officers often made the judgement to remove certain children. In some cases, families were required to sign documents to relinquish care to the state. In Western Australia, the Aborigines Act 1905 removed the legal guardianship of Aboriginal parents and it made all their children legal wards of the state, so the government did not require parental permission to relocate the mixed-race children to institutions
3.
Aboriginal Australians
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Aboriginal Australians are legally defined as people who are members of the Aboriginal race of Australia. Until the 1980s, the legal and administrative criterion for inclusion in this category was race. In the era of colonial and post-colonial government, access to human rights depended upon your race. If you were a full blooded Aboriginal native, the Constitution of Australia, in its original form as of 1901, referred to Aboriginals twice, but without definition. Section 51 gave the Commonwealth parliament power to legislate with respect to the people of any throughout the Commonwealth. The purpose of this provision was to give the Commonwealth power to regulate non-white immigrant workers, the only other reference, Section 127, provided simply that aboriginal natives shall not be counted in reckoning the size of the population of the Commonwealth or any part of it. The purpose of section 127 was to prevent the inclusion of Aboriginal people in section 24 determinations of the distribution of House of Representatives seats amongst the states and territories, after both of these references were removed by the 1967 referendum, the Australian Constitution had no references to Aboriginals. Since that time, there have been a number of proposals to amend the constitution to specifically mention Indigenous Australians, the change to Section 51 gave the Commonwealth parliament the power to make laws specifically with respect to Aboriginal peoples as a race. The case concerned an application of legislation that would preserve cultural heritage of Aboriginal Tasmanians and it was held that Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, together or separately, and any part of either, could be regarded as a race for this purpose. As to the criteria for identifying a person as a member of such a race, Deane said, It is unnecessary, for the purposes of the present case, to consider the meaning to be given to the phrase people of any race in s.51. Plainly, the words have a wide and non-technical meaning, the phrase is, in my view, apposite to refer to all Australian Aboriginals collectively. Any doubt, which might otherwise exist in regard, is removed by reference to the wording of par. The phrase is also apposite to refer to any identifiable racial sub-group among Australian Aboriginals, while Deanes three-part definition reaches beyond the biological criterion to individuals self-identification, it has been criticised as continuing to accept the biological criterion as primary. It has been difficult to apply, both in each of its parts and as to the relations among the parts, biological descent has been a fall-back criterion. If it is to be used to refer to us as a group of people. This has just really crept up on us and we are very happy with our involvement with indigenous people around the world, on the international forum because theyre our brothers and sisters. But we do object to it being used here in Australia and her lecture offered a new perspective on the terms urban, traditional and of Indigenous descent as used to define and categorise Aboriginal Australians. She said, Not only are these categories inappropriate, they serve to divide us, governments insistence on categorising us with modern words like urban, traditional and of Aboriginal descent are really only replacing old terms half-caste and full-blood – based on our colouring
4.
Bringing Them Home
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Bringing Them Home is the Australian Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. The report marked a moment in the controversy that has come to be known as the Stolen Generations. The 680-page report was tabled in Federal Parliament on 26 May 1997, Aboriginal organisations pushed for a national inquiry as early as 1990. The Secretariat of the National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care resolved at its conference in 1992 to demand a national inquiry. Other state Aboriginal organisations were active during this period. The service interviewed over 600 people during time and produced a report titled Telling our Story. Indigenous women, appointed as co-commissioners, provided support to the people who gave evidence in each region the inquiry visited, the co-commissioners also assisted in the development of the report and its recommendations. The inquiry also appointed an Indigenous Advisory Council made up of members all the major regions of Australia. The inquiry undertook a programme of hearings in every capital city and in many regional. The first hearings took place on 4 December 1995 on Flinders Island with the last round of hearings ending on 3 October 1996 in Sydney. During the course of the inquiry 777 submissions were received, which included 535 Indigenous individual,500 of the submissions were made confidentially. The report concluded that indigenous families and communities have endured gross violations of their human rights and these violations continue to affect indigenous peoples daily lives. They were an act of genocide, aimed at wiping out indigenous families, communities and it may be that all states have done this because Senator Aden Ridgeway was quoted in 1999 as saying that every State Parliament has passed an apology. Former Prime Minister John Howard issued a statement of regret but resolutely refused to issue a formal apology and he has been quoted many times as refusing to take a black armband view of history. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who succeeded Mr. Howard, tabled a formal apology on 13 February 2008, the opposition leader Kim Beazley moved to replace Howards motion of regret with an unreserved apology, but was unsuccessful. On 11 December 2007, the elected government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that an official apology would be made to Indigenous Australians. The wording of the apology would be decided in consultation with Indigenous leaders. m, members stood for one minute silence. It was anticipated that given the trauma witnesses had experienced that they would be at risk of further trauma if they were to be examined on their testimony
5.
Parliament of Australia
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It consists of three elements, the Queen of Australia, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Queen is represented by the Governor-General, through both Houses, however, there is a fused executive, drawn from the Westminster System. The upper house, the Senate, consists of 76 members, twelve for each state, Senators are elected using the single transferable vote proportional representation system and as a result, the chamber features a multitude of parties vying for power. The governing party or coalition rarely has a majority in the Senate and usually needs to negotiate with other parties and this tends to lead to the chamber being dominated by two major parties, the Liberal/National Coalition and the Labor Party. The government of the day must achieve the confidence of this House in order to gain and remain in power, although elections can be called early, each 3 years the full House of Representatives and half of the Senate is dissolved and goes up for reelection. The two Houses meet in separate chambers of Parliament House on Capital Hill in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, the Commonwealth of Australia came into being on 1 January 1901 with the federation of the six Australian colonies. The inaugural election took place on 29 and 30 March and the first Australian Parliament was opened on 9 May 1901 in Melbourne by Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V. The only building in Melbourne that was enough to accommodate the 14,000 guests was the western annexe of the Royal Exhibition Building. After the official opening, from 1901 to 1927, the Parliament met in Parliament House, Melbourne and it had always been intended that the national Parliament would sit in a new national capital. This was a compromise at Federation due to the rivalry between the two largest Australian cities, Sydney and Melbourne, which wished to become the new capital. The site of Canberra was selected for the location of the capital city in 1908. A competition was announced on 30 June 1914 to design Parliament House, however, due to the start of World War I the next month, the competition was cancelled. It was re-announced in August 1916, but again postponed indefinitely on 24 November 1916, in the meantime, John Smith Murdoch, the Commonwealths Chief Architect, worked on the design as part of his official duties. He had little enthusiasm for the project, as he felt it was a waste of money. Nevertheless, he designed the building by default, the construction of Old Parliament House, as it is called today, was commenced on 28 August 1923 and completed in early 1927. It was built by the Commonwealth Department of Works, using tradesmen, the final cost was about £600,000, which was more than three times the original estimate. It was designed to house the parliament for a maximum of 50 years until a permanent facility could be built, the building was opened on 9 May 1927 by the Duke and Duchess of York. The opening ceremonies were both splendid and incongruous, given the sparsely built nature of Canberra of the time and its small population, the building was extensively decorated with British Empire and Australian flags and bunting
6.
Torres Strait Islander
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Torres Strait Islanders /ˈtɔːrᵻs/ are the indigenous people of the Torres Strait Islands, part of Queensland, Australia. They are culturally and genetically Melanesian people, as are the people of Papua New Guinea and they are distinct from the Aboriginal people of the rest of Australia, and are generally referred to separately. There are also two Torres Strait Islander communities on the nearby coast of the mainland at Bamaga and Seisia, the indigenous people of the Torres Strait have a distinct culture which has slight variants on the different islands where they live. They are a people, and they trade with people of Papua New Guinea. The culture is complex, with some Australian elements, some Papuan elements, the Islanders seem to have been the dominant culture for many centuries, and neighbouring Aboriginal and Papuan cultures show some Island influence in religious ceremonies and the like. Stories told through this website come from the Margaret Lawrie Collection of Torres Strait Islanders material, archaeological, linguistic and folk history evidence suggests that the core of Island culture is Papuo-Austronesian. Dugong, turtle, crayfish, crabs, shellfish, reef fish and wild fruits and vegetables were all traditionally hunted and collected, traditional foods play an important role in ceremonies and celebrations even when they dont live on the islands. Dugong and turtle hunting as well as fishing are seen as a way of continuing the Islander tradition of being associated with the sea. The inhabitants of Torres Strait have a history of developing stories, crafts. Prominent among these is wame, many different string figures, some extremely elaborate and beautiful, the Western-central Torres Strait Language, or Kala Lagaw Ya, is spoken on the southwestern, western, northern and central islands. It is an Australian Aboriginal language, meriam Mir is spoken on the eastern islands. It is one of the Eastern Trans-Fly languages, otherwise spoken in Papua New Guinea, the Torres Strait Islanders have been administered by a system of elected councils. This is a system based partly on traditional pre-Christian local government, eddie Mabo – Mabo Day is an official holiday in the Torres Shire, celebrated on 3 June. Christine Anu - pop singer and actress Jimi Bani – actor Michael Bani – Former NRL player for North Queensland Cowboys 8 Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, patty Mills – Point guard for the San Antonio Spurs and the Australia national team
7.
Day of Mourning (Australia)
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The Day of Mourning was a protest held by Aboriginal Australians on 26 January 1938, the sesquicentenary of British colonisation of Australia. The protest became a tradition, and annual Days of Mourning have been held to this day, the Day of Mourning protest was organised by the Aborigines Progressive Association, based in New South Wales and led by its founders Jack Patten and William Ferguson. The protest leaders also had support from the Australian Aborigines League, based in Victoria, in 1888, the centenary of British colonisation, Aboriginal leaders had simply boycotted the Australia Day celebrations. However, this had been ignored by the media, as a result, a more proactive event was planned for the sesquicentenary, which the media and governments could not ignore. This was despite recent experience of the New South Wales Police engaging in general intimidation of public meetings of political organisations. Despite having rejected the APAs petition, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons did agree to meet with the Day of Mourning leaders on 25 January, the day began with a march through the streets of Sydney, which was attended by both Aboriginal people and non-Indigenous supporters. The march began at the Sydney Town Hall, and concluded at the event on the day, the Day of Mourning Congress. It attracted many major Aboriginal leaders, including Pearl Gibbs and Margaret Tucker, the protesters had originally intended to hold the Congress in the Sydney Town Hall, but they were refused access, and instead held it at the nearby Australian Hall in Elizabeth Street. They were not allowed in through the front door and were told they could enter through the rear door. The Congress was open to all Aboriginal people, and about 1,000 people attended, the APA and AAL distributed a manifesto at the meeting, Aborigines Claim Citizens Rights, produced by Patten and APA secretary William Ferguson. In order to celebrate Australia Day the Government of New South Wales had planned to reenact the arrival of the First Fleet in Port Jackson, however, all the Aboriginal political organisations in Sydney refused to participate. In response, the Government removed a group of Aboriginal men from a reserve in the west of the state, the men were kept overnight in the stables at the police barracks in Redfern. On Australia Day, they were taken to a beach at Farm Cove, the reenactments attracted heavy criticism from the Day of Mourning protesters, who were not allowed to visit the men from the reserve when they were staying at Redfern. However, the Sydney media focused more on the fact that convicts had been excised from the reenactment, Day of Mourning protests have been held on Australia Day ever since 1938. However, in recent years, other counter-protests held on 26 January, such as Invasion Day, in 1998, a reenactment of the original Day of Mourning was held to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the protest. About four hundred protesters marched in silence along the route of the march. Descendants of the original protesters read their speeches, and the ten main grievances in the Congress manifesto were re-affirmed, the reenactment was accompanied by a campaign to protect the Australian Hall, the location of the 1938 Congress. The Government of New South Wales had placed an order on it
8.
John Howard
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John Winston Howard, OM, AC was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. Only Sir Robert Menzies has served in the position longer, born in Sydney, Howard was a solicitor at Clayton Utz before entering politics, having studied law at the University of Sydney. A member of the Liberal Party and former president of the Young Liberals, he first stood for office at the 1968 New South Wales state election, but lost narrowly. At the 1974 federal election, Howard was elected to the Division of Bennelong and he was promoted to cabinet in 1977, and later in the year replaced Phillip Lynch as Treasurer of Australia, remaining in that position until the defeat of Malcolm Frasers government in 1983. In 1985, Howard was elected leader of the Liberal Party for the first time and he led the Liberal–National coalition to the 1987 federal election, but lost to Bob Hawkes Labor government, and was removed from the leadership in 1989. Remaining a key figure in the party, Howard was re-elected leader in 1995, after defeating Paul Keatings Labor government in 1996, the Howard Government was re-elected at the 1998,2001 and 2004 elections. Howards actions as prime minister included new gun laws, the introduction of a nationwide value-added tax, immigration reform, Australia also contributed troops to the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War under his government, and led the International Force for East Timor. The Howard government was defeated at the 2007 federal election, with the Labor Partys Kevin Rudd succeeding him as prime minister, Howard also lost his own seat at the election, becoming only the second prime minister to do so. John Howard is the son of Mona and Lyall Howard. His parents were married in 1925 and his eldest brother Stanley was born in 1926, followed by Walter in 1929, and Robert in 1936. Lyall Howard was an admirer of Winston Churchill, and sympathetic to the New Guard during its early years, Howards ancestors were English, Scottish and Irish. Howard was born and raised in the Sydney suburb of Earlwood and his mother had been an office worker until her marriage. His father and his grandfather, Walter Howard, were both veterans of the First AIF in World War I. They also ran two Dulwich Hill petrol stations where Howard worked as a boy, Lyall Howard died in 1955 when John was sixteen, leaving his mother to take care of John. Howard suffered an impairment in his youth, leaving him with a slight speech impediment. It also influenced him in ways, limiting his early academic performance, encouraging a reliance on an excellent memory. Howard attended the state schools Earlwood Primary School and Canterbury Boys High School, Howard won a citizenship prize in his final year at Earlwood, and subsequently represented his secondary school at debating as well as cricket and rugby. In his final year at school he took part in a show hosted by Jack Davey, Give It a Go broadcast on the commercial radio station, 2GB
Australia