Australia’s Problems in the Twentieth Century Report (Assessment)

Australia is a great place where too many peculiar things happen to exist. The fauna and flora of this continent is not fully studied so far. The people of the country differ in their historical, cultural, social, and religious background. The history of the continent is versatile notwithstanding relatively young age of state formation. “Green Continent” is known to be the driest one in the world, so are the attitudes and relations within the popularity of the country. The diversity of people living in the country defined some controversies in the rights and opportunities for some of the population categories.

This paper is directed to figure out such social problems of Australia which happened to it in the twentieth century, namely consideration of class, race, and gender ethnicity. With the help of various readings the aim is to describe and analyze the peculiarities about concerning processes in order to facilitate the situation looking back at the previous steps of the development of Australia.

First, it is necessary to point out that the continent, like in case with the United States of America, was inhabited by previously settled people known as Aborigines when The British Empire discovered Australia. Since that time the question of immigration is particularly pointed there. ‘The level and source of Australian immigration is primarily a political decision. Settlement policy has played a great part during certain eras in conditioning Australians to accept more or less immigrants.’¹ That is why the primordial desire of every human being who wanted to reach Australia and settle down on the continent. Still there stands the phenomenon of multiculturalism in the society and the effects that are supposed to happen sooner or later. The most useful arbitrator in this case can and should be the authority of state

1 Politics, Journal of Australian Political Studies Association, Volume 24, No. 2, 1989, p. 154.

administration. ‘The State is a very powerful arbitrator in these struggles, but there is always conflict over the power to “make groups”, to represent social divisions. In the Australian case we must ask questions about representation – for example, whose cultures are/were being represented in multiculturalism and by whom? And who, for the matter, represents the “non-ethnics”, the supposedly homogeneous “Anglos” of common critical parlance?’ ² The guidelines of current status quo in the country stimulate the purity of aborigines’ traditions and their culture as well as the differences in this field of interests as for the other nationalities living in Australia.

One of the disputable issues which appeared in the country in the twentieth century and still has many points to work out is the globalization of the Australian economy. According to this approach the situation with some changes of “White Australia” may be resolved, but only, as some observers suggest, by means of clearly suspended way of state policy. Globalisation is more than an empirically measurable, exogenous variable to which domestic politics must react; it is also an increasingly dominant construction – an ideology — that provides support for policy change. ³ The constant urge of Australian people to maintain home problems of country on the basis of legal ways to solute all the disagreements appearing from time to time and causing dissonance of social order often meets some technical obstacles on the democratic way of Australia’s well-being. The external factors are significant in this case. Mentioning this one cannot but remember the influence of Great Britain during the period of establishment of the country until the time of decolonization; and also the impact of the United States of America after World War

²Bottomley, Gillian Cultures, multiculturalism and the politics of representation, Journal of International Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1987., p. 4.

³Conley, Tom, The Domestic Politics of Globalization, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2000 p., 224.

The historical approach helps here to figure out the reasons and possible variants for appropriate solutions. The so-called civilized world full of pathos and feigned nobility in manners and traditions of Christianity did not mind the social position of the people living on the continent before it was explored. Indigenous aborigines struggled for many years with aim to reach the equity in social rights with the dominant white part of population. The paradox about the situation is that many of non-indigenous social figures provided the policy of native Australians’ protection.

One of them was Herbert Basedow (1881 – 1933), ‘a geologist, doctor, anthropologist, and member of the South Australian Parliament whose works were written with a sense of urgency to preserve every kind of knowledge about this ‘useful, inoffensive and scientifically important people’ before it was too late and they would die out.⁴ This man was right when actualizing the problem of the country within masses, namely those being in power.

The promotion of the idea to begin making concrete steps towards adoption of the similar rights for the aborigines with those proclaimed for above mentioned ‘White Australia’ was not supported when Basedow insisted on it. ‘Vigorous public debate on the removal of ‘half caste’ children from their parents only began after the 1997 publication of the Bringing Them Home Report and then quickly led to controversy, not least because of the related question of genocide. Although the impact of the removal of these children has been explored by Peter Read, and Anna Haebich in Broken Circles, an account of the nationwide development of policies and legislation is still outstanding.

⁴ Herbert Basedow, The Australian Aboriginal (Adelaide: Preece, 1925), viii.

But the investigation of the influence of individuals, providing scientific backing in the form of eugenicist or racialist theories, has begun in earnest.’ ⁵ Moreover, at that time the maintained policy sincerely ignored the native population of aborigines, so that to allegedly perform the civilized face of the people of Australia. John Chesterman shows in his article how the publicity along with the ruling Government provided the specific guidelines for those being reject from current political and social procedures in the society.

He follows by reporting: ‘A confidential report from the Inter-Departmental Committee on Racial Discrimination reported that in addition to discriminatory ordinances applying in the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, Indigenous people throughout Australia were treated unequally by Commonwealth law in areas including alcohol provision, employment by the Commonwealth, emigration, representation, child endowment, and defense and national service.

Further, the Australian constitution continued to embody racial discrimination by preventing the federal government from making laws specifically for Aborigines, and by preventing Aborigines from being counted in official population statistics.’⁶

It is hard to realize with which level of vanity and indifference were such guidelines assigned. The fact of the racial discrimination like this was similar to the familiar problem in the United States. Unissued the problem was contained in the law frameworks without any appointing to it until the discrimination crisis reached the critical point in the world and in Australia, in particular. Many of the Aborigine activists stood for conducting the referendum which should be aimed to point out real rights of indigenous people of Australia.

⁵ Zogbaum Heidi, Herbert Basedow and the Removal of Aboriginal Children of Mixed Descent from their Families, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 34, No. 121, 2003, p. 123.

⁶ Chesterman John, Defending Australia’s Reputation: HowIndigenous Australians Won Civil Rights, Part Two, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 32, No. 116, 2001, p. 203.

The hopes of them were forced with a final strive to stop ignoring Aborigines as for their right to vote and be elected. The effects were sad. As Bain Attwood accompanied with Andrew Markus report, that generally many Australians seem to know about the referendum, yet are quite unfamiliar with its terms. Most believe that it resulted in Aborigines getting citizenship rights, including the vote; indeed, a few are so sure of this that they correct professional historians on the matter. More importantly, perhaps, Aborigines speak of the referendum in a similar way; for example, it seems that most have ‘come to believe that their right to vote dates from 1967’ and are ‘surprised to learn that they ever had a right to vote before’.⁷

Another problem of Australia in the twentieth century was connected with a case of national and racial belonging. Being too close to Asia Australians tried to save their European identity by virtues of several attempts to discard the influence of many Asian nationalities on the cultural background in order to preserve the genofond from the outer attempts to intrude into the so-called purity of the Australian nation. With this statement emerged the notion of ‘White Australia’.

Perhaps most contemporary scholars feel so antipathetic to ‘White Australia’ that the abolition of racial discrimination and Asia-phobia is seen as natural, inevitable and long overdue.⁸ The thing is that the population of the politics providing the reforms suchlike in Great Britain tried to reduce the number of immigrants by several tricks concerning the diplomatic restrictions and controlling the way of migration in the country. It was not so in times when American troops were located in Australia

⁷ Attwood Bain, Markus Andrew, (The) 1967 (Referendum) and All That: Narrative and Myth, Aborigines and Australia,Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 29, No. 111, 1998, p. 268.

⁸ Meaney Neville, The End of ‘White Australia’ and Australia’s Changing Perceptions of Asia, 1945-1990, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 49, No. 2, 1995, p. 171.

Generally is known the love of women to men clothed in khaki uniform played a great role in interactions and relationships of American soldiers with Australian girls. 15,000 married US soldiers.⁹ Many of the women recalling that time say that the pleasure about dealing with American soldiers was immeasurable, especially when this flow of mutual responses resulted in the fact that many Australian women did respond favorably to American troops as evidenced by the fact that some 12,000 of them looked at their newly sewn uniform and badges with American symbols on them. A general delight was facilitated by the fact that just the American troops saved Australians from the Japanese capture. The courage and brevity of the soldiers, as at that time women thought, had no boundaries in width and parameters.

Moreover, plenty of the women were panicking as of the probable and even logical situation when the Americans would leave the continent after the end of the war and post-war rehabilitation. It was an effect which cannot but grow male Australians hot over the cases of such spontaneous marriages and Americans’ feeling to be like at home without any respect to the national proud of people inhabiting the territory of the country.

This case was emphasized also by the reason that at the same time being involved into the warfare American soldiers were on-the-scene in close relationships with Australian women. ‘Following the most dramatic brawl between Australian and American troops, the so-called ‘Battle of Brisbane’ in the appearance of American servicemen with Australian women, especially the wives of absent soldiers. Censors were instructed to ‘be as restrictive as possible’.

⁹ Sturma Michael, Loving the Alien: The Underside of Relations Between American Servicemen and Australian Women in Quinsland, 1942-1945, Journal of Australian Studies, No. 24, 1989, p. 3.

In November 1942 an Australian intelligence report blamed the riot at least in part on and ‘ruthless in cutting’ on what was termed the ‘very delicate woman question’.¹⁰

As it is considered, the emergence of everything originated in the United States leaves the “deep traces” after the work or the presence of this country somewhere behind the borders. It was similar with postwar Germany, many of Western European countries, with post-war Japan and South Korea.

The effects of American impacts cannot but omit Australia with its hostility to American troops at the beginning and usage of all the resources, services, and products reminding about constant impacts of the US on the Australian economy and its population on the whole. The person who lively criticized the implementing Americanization throughout Australia was Robin Boyd, an architect and the author of the book The Australian Ugliness which symbolizes the loss of Australian identity in striving to be alike Americans.

In 1957, shortly after his return from Boston, Boyd coined the word “Austerica” to describe the cut-price imitative style of Americanization that had become such a feature of the post-war Australian Landscape.¹¹ Such blending of words is both offensively and instructively for the nation of people calling themselves with some sort of pride Australians. The antithesis which Boyd outlined in his work raises the issue of figuring out one more time the belonging to the country with all features of one’s existence. It is necessary in this context not to make country indifferent of all citizens who possess specific peculiarities of their origin. ‘Specific cultural forms are, therefore, always under construction. But there is also room for simple.’¹²

¹⁰ Sturma Michael, Loving the Alien, p. 4.

¹¹ Davison Graeme, Driving to Austerica: The Americanization of the Postwar Australian City, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 1999, p. 163.

So the well-being of the Australian nation also props up against the recognition of their place in the world of humanism and tolerance. The wrong way of the country determined several inner troubles which caused conflicts which seem to be debated until present days. Justification of the reasons being the center of controversies is a standpoint to be paid publicity’s attention on.

The situation over the social mismatches happened from time to time turned out to provoke the movement known in the world history as the ”Sixties Radicalism”. The movement was derived on the liberal coloring of actions involving mainly people of middle class with Christian-like intentions. The most ideologically active people, major part of them were students, seemed to try every opportunity for attracting public opinion to the problem.

Even the issues with inequality of Aborigines’ rights were claimed for the support of the actions. Other disapprovals of the society were connected with Land Rights and other social as well as societal problems including participation of Australian troops in the Vietnam War. The tendencies for radical and reform movements to arise in relatively good economic times and for a moderate, innocent reform phase were both apparent during the 1960s.¹³

Such intentions created negative moods within masse which were not easy to prevent for the Government and the social figures attempting to slow down the sequence of potential social disturbances. Calling the world’s attention on the situation about the rights issues for Aborigines and some other striking questions Australia still supposes to resolve the circumstantial and non-spontaneous problems about home issues first notwithstanding great data of the economic elaboration during previous fifty years.

¹²Bottomley, Gillian Cultures, p. 5

¹³ Alomes Stephen, Cultural Radicalism in the Sixties, Arena, No. 62, 1983, p. 30.

Thus, while depicting and analyzing the peculiarities of the social, political along with cultural, traditional and ethnic life of Australia it is useful to mention that the creation of the state underwent several obstacles of different character. Among them are the territorial issues during the time of decolonization, the racial struggle of White Australians with indigenous ones, the Americanization and transformation of the country due to the United States influence after the World War II, legally wrong fundamentals constituted in the basic law regarding to the facts of inequality. The reasons can tell about the mistakes done for several times. The answer to achieve the way out embodied into a sort of straightforward consensus is still a cornerstone for the Australian publicity.

Bibliography

Alomes Stephen, Cultural Radicalism in the Sixties, Arena, No. 62, 1983.

Attwood Bain, Markus Andrew, (The) 1967 (Referendum) and All That: Narrative and Myth, Aborigines and Australia,Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 29, No. 111, 1998.

Bottomley, Gillian Cultures, multiculturalism and the politics of representation, Journal of International Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1987.

Chesterman John, Defending Australia’s Reputation: HowIndigenous Australians Won Civil Rights, Part Two, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 32, No. 116, 2001.

Conley, Tom, The Domestic Politics of Globalization, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2000.

Davison Graeme, Driving to Austerica: The Americanization of the Postwar Australian City, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 1999, p. 163.

Graham Willet, The Darkest Decade: Homophobia in 1950s Australia, The Forgotten Fifties, Aspects of Australian Society and Culture in the 1950s, Melbourne University Press, Australian Historical Studies, 1996.

Herbert Basedow, The Australian Aboriginal (Adelaide: Preece, 1925), viii.

Meaney Neville, The End of ‘White Australia’ and Australia’s Changing Perceptions of Asia, 1945-1990, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 49, No. 2, 1995.

Politics, Journal of Australian Political Studies Association, Volume 24, No. 2, 1989.

Sturma Michael, Loving the Alien: The Underside of Relations Between American Servicemen and Australian Women in Quinsland, 1942-1945, Journal of Australian Studies, No. 24, 1989.

Zogbaum Heidi, Herbert Basedow and the Removal of Aboriginal Children of Mixed Descent from their Families, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 34, No. 121, 2003.