Australia

Australia, in long form the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere whose area covers most of Oceania. In addition to the homonymous island, Australia also includes Tasmania as well as other islands in the Southern, Pacific and Indian Oceans. It also claims 6,000,000 km in Antarctica. Neighboring nations include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the French territory of New Caledonia to the northeast, New Zealand to the southeast and the French territory of the Kerguelen Islands (TAAF) west of Australia’s Heard and McDonald Islands.

Populated for more than 50,000 years by the Aborigines, the island continent of Australia (mainland) is visited sporadically, especially by fishermen from the north, then by Dutch sailors. From the seventeenth century, European explorers and merchants recognized the coasts, but it was not until 1770 that the eastern half of the island was officially claimed by Great Britain and on January 26, 1788 — Australian National Day — that the penal colony of New South Wales was founded. Five other largely autonomous colonies were established in the course of the nineteenth century, as the population increased and new territories were explored. On January 1, 1901, the six colonies federated and formed the Commonwealth of Australia.

Since independence, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democracy-type political system and remains a parliamentary monarchy that is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The national language is English and the currency is the Australian dollar. Its capital is Canberra, located in the Australian Capital Territory.

Its population, estimated at 25. 7 million in March 2020, is mainly concentrated in the major coastal cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.

With a nominal GDP of US$1. 379 trillion, the state ranks as the world’s thirteenth-largest economy in 2017. Since 2000, Australia has been ranked by UNDP as the second most developed country in the world after Norway. The country is the seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in 2015.

The emu is the national bird of Australia and the kangaroo is the national animal. The country has more than 500 national parks, a record in the world.

Etymology

The name Australia comes from the Latin word austrālis (“southern, southern”). In the third century, scientists had hypothesized an unknown continent in the south (the Terra Australis Incognita) that would allow the Earth not to tilt around its axis by acting as a counterweight to the continents of the northern hemisphere. The first use of the word Australia (and no longer Terra Australis) in English is attested in 1625 (“A note of Australia del Espiritu Santo“, written by Master Hakluyt, published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus).

The Dutch adjective Australische is used in official texts concerning the Dutch East Indies to describe the new lands discovered in 1638 in southern Indonesia. The word Australia is attested in 1676 in The Southern Land, a utopian novel describing the adventures of an imaginary character, Jacques Sadeur, in a distant country, a novel written by Gabriel de Foigny. Alexander Dalrymple then used it in An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean in 1771 to designate all the lands of this region of the South Pacific. In 1793, George Kearsley Shaw and Sir James Smith published the book Zoology and Botany of New Holland, in which they wrote: “the great island, or rather continent, of Australia, Australasia or New Holland. “

The British explorer Matthew Flinders, the first navigator to circumnavigate Australia by boat published in 1814 A Voyage to Terra Australis but the title reflected the point of view of the British Admiralty, the author using the word Australia in his book which is widely read and the term Australia became increasingly used. The governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, therefore used the word in his dispatches to the United Kingdom and on December 12, 1817 he asked the Colonial Office to make the name official. In 1824, the British Admiralty approved the proposal and the new continent officially became Australia.

Geography

Australia extends its 7,692,060 km of the area on the Australian plate. Bordered by the Indian, Pacific and, for Australians, Austral Oceans, Australia is separated from Asia by the Arafura and Timor Seas and from New Zealand by the Tasman Sea. It has 34,218 kilometers of coastline and claims 7,148,250 km of exclusive economic zone — this area does not include the Australian Antarctic Territory. According to a study by the OECD and the IMF, the geographical isolation of these two countries has a considerable effect on their economic performance. It would cause a reduction in growth potential.

The Great Barrier Reef — the world’s largest coral reef — stretches a short distance from the northeast coast, for more than 2,000 kilometers.

The main island of more than 7,600,000 km covers more than 99% of Australia’s territory, while the island of Tasmania forms its second largest island territory, with 68,332 km. The area of Australia is comparable to that of the contiguous United States.

The Great Dividing Range is the largest mountain range in Australia. It stretches from the northeastern tip of Queensland to the Grampians Mountains in eastern Victoria, passing the entire length of the eastern coast through New South Wales, then the state of Victoria before turning west at the southern end of the continent and dying in the immense central plain. In some places, such as the Blue Mountains, the Snowy Mountains, the Victorian Alps, and the escarpments of the eastern New England region, mountainous regions form an important barrier. With an altitude of 2,228 meters, Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain in the continental territory, while Mawson Peak, located on the Australian island of Heard, reaches 2,745 meters. Australia is the flattest of the continents with an average altitude of 300 meters.

Uluru/Ayers Rock, perhaps the most famous monolith in the world, is located in the Northern Territory.

Most of Australia’s territory is covered by desert or semi-arid areas: irrigation programs are struggling to overcome drought. Oceania is the driest of the inhabited continents, the flattest and has the oldest and least fertile soil. Only the parts located in the southeast (humid subtropical climate), in the south (oceanic climate) and in the southwest (Mediterranean climate) enjoy a temperate climate. The northern part of the country, with a tropical climate, has vegetation consisting of tropical rainforests, meadows, mangroves, marshes and deserts. The climate is heavily influenced by ocean currents, including El Niño, which brings periodic droughts and seasonal low pressures that produce tropical cyclones in northern Australia.

Environment of Australia

Since Britain’s colonization of Australia began, 10% of Australia’s 273 terrestrial endemic species have disappeared. Global warming is increasing the mortality of the most fragile groups, to the point that 21% of endemic mammals are now at risk.

Shortly after his election in 2013, Prime Minister Tony Abbott abolished the Department of Science, the Climate Change Authority and the Climate Commission. It also announces the abolition of the carbon tax, introduced in 2012, which aimed to reduce CO2 emissions, of which Australia is one of the largest emitters by forcing the 500 most polluting companies to buy emission permits.

In 2014, the government approved the discharge of dredged waste from the extension of a coal export port into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef. He also chose to encourage industrial activity in the oceans and undertook to dismantle the oceans management plan put in place by Labour in 2012. A new document comes into force in 2018, reducing by 400,000 km the surface of marine areas previously prohibited to fishing and oil and gas exploitation.

The Great Barrier Reef lost more than half of its corals between 1987 and 2014.

Australia is quite strongly impacted by global warming. January 2019 is the hottest month ever recorded in the country’s history and nine of the ten warmest years were recorded after 2005. Among the consequences, scientists noted an increase in drought in parts of Australia, as well as the frequency of large-scale floods and fires. The worst-case scenario predicts sea level rise of more than one meter by 2100, which would result in insurers losing A$226 billion from flooding and erosion.

According to research from the Australian National University, in 2050, “Winter as we know it will no longer exist. It will not survive, except in a few places in Tasmania. ” Winter temperatures will frequently approach 40°C.

Between 2000 and 2013, 22% of Australia’s intact forests (a “natural” landscape considered to be both non-artificially fragmented and undegraded) were destroyed. The pace of deforestation is tending to accelerate. One-third of insect species recorded in Australia are at risk of extinction

In 2017, Australia was the country with the “highest ecological footprint” per capita in the world. If every person in the world consumed like the average Australian, humanity would need 5.2 planets Earth to support themselves.

In 2019, Greenpeace cited Australia as one of the developed countries implementing no legislation to limit or reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. According to the NGO, Australia’s power plants in the Latrobe Valley and Lake Macquarie region are among the most polluting in the world.

Fossil fuel manufacturers and think tanks such as the Minerals Council of Australia and the Australian Coal Association denounce the “myth” of global warming. These positions are widely echoed in the Australian media, 70% of which are owned by climate-skeptic billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

Fauna and flora

Although most of the country is desert or semi-arid, Australia (including Tasmania) has no shortage of diverse natural habitats to host different animal and plant species. For some of the animals on this continent, scientists speak of Australian megafauna.

Because of the great age of this territory, its very variable climate over time and its very long geographical isolation, particular fauna and flora have been able to develop, generally of very ancient origin, such as apterous birds (emu), or monotreme mammals (oviparous) and marsupial mammals (marsupial pocket or marsupium), having preceded in evolution placental mammals. About 85% of flowering plants, 84% of mammals, more than 45% of birds and 89% of fish on the continental shelf are considered endemic species. The best-known animal species are the koala, kangaroo, wallaby, emu, platypus, wombat, echidna and dingo.

The arrival of the first men in Australia, European colonization and modernization successively brought their share of flora and fauna from the rest of the world. Some have thrived excessively and reached too large proportions, threatening, if not exterminating, other species. 24 rabbits were introduced to Australia in 1874 and reproduced very quickly.

In this country devoid of carnivores, rabbits flourished. Barely half a century later, the Garenne rabbit population stood at 30 million and endangered agriculture and the local ecological balance. After the introduction of myxomatosis, in 1995 a rabbit pest virus causing rabbit viral hemorrhagic disease was introduced to this continent: the Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease Virus (RHDV) in order to rebalance their population. The Australians also released foxes, hitherto absent from the island continent, which attacked the marsupials. Diseases such as myxomatosis are even maintained by the authorities to limit the number.

A well-known example of extermination is the disappearance of the Tasmanian tiger (or Tasmanian wolf) in the middle of the XX century by Europeans. Of the forty-two original kangaroo species, only fourteen have survived. There is also the extinction of about 20% of the many species of parakeets. Of all the continents, Australia has recorded the highest percentage of animal extinctions due to humans since the eighteenth century. Still in 2011, we can see that the Tasmanian forest, with its highly endemic ecosystems, is cut down by a private timber operator. Deforestation is of particular concern in eastern Australia, as well as in Tasmania.

The first settlers imported cattle but their excrement did not disappear because there were no insects or bacteria responsible for their degradation. Since then, after 4 centuries of European occupation, it is finally forbidden to import animal or plant species into Australia. This measure to control the introduction of exogenous species makes Australia, alongside New Zealand, the leading country in this area because it is a major threat to biodiversity alongside the destruction of biotopes (fires, urbanization).

In addition to the damage caused to fauna and flora by the introduction of exogenous species, mega-fires cause dramatic destruction. The fires that began in August 2019 killed more than a billion animals and wiped out a considerable number of natural habitats as more than 100,000 km burned.

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 is a legal framework for the protection of endangered species. Many protected areas are established under the National Biodiversity Action Plan to protect and preserve unique ecosystems, 64 wetlands are inscribed under the Ramsar Convention, and 16 sites have been inscribed on the World Heritage List. Australia is ranked 13th in the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index.

• Koala.
• Giant kangaroo.
• Moved.
• Golden mimosa.
• Tasmanian Devil.
• Wombat.
• Goanna.
• Marsupial cat with spotted tail.
• Dugong.
• Saltwater crocodile.
• Clownfish.
• Great white shark.

Impact of human activities

The country is the eighth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in 2015.

Australian climates

Climatic zones in Australia:

• Equatorial.
• Tropical.
• Subtropical.
• Desert and desert steppe.
• Meadow and Savannah.
• Temperate.

The northern and northeastern coasts have a tropical climate. From December to April, it is very hot (29 °C in Darwin, 26 °C in Cairns) and very humid with tropical summer rains. It rains 15 to 20 days a month. Thus, in December, it falls 225 mm of water in Cairns and Darwin, in January and February from 300 to 400 mm, in March 300 mm in Cairns and 450 mm in Darwin. From mid-April, rains become rarer and temperatures drop a little, while remaining high (26 °C from May to September in Darwin, 22 °C in Cairns). In addition, from May to September, which corresponds to winter, the most pleasant months are therefore scattered with dry weather and mild temperatures. From October, it starts to rain again and temperatures rise noticeably.

The eastern coast has a humid subtropical climate and rainfall is abundant all year round. In Sydney, it rains an average of 12 to 14 days each month of the year with 75 to 125 mm of water. Summer, from December to March, is the most pleasant (22°C in Sydney), with the hottest months being January and February. In October and November, as well as in April, it is 18 ° C, then from May to September, the weather cools between 12 and 15 ° C only, July being the coolest month.

Tasmania, an island in the southeast of the mainland, has an oceanic climate, marked by its constant humidity, mild winters (4°C) and cool summers (17°C). It is the wettest state in Australia, one of the few that does not have problems with lack of water.

The south and southwest coasts enjoy a Mediterranean climate. From April to October, they receive winter rains (50 to 75 mm per month in Adelaide and Perth). It is a rainy and cool season (from 11 to 16 ° C). June and July are the rainiest and coolest months (16 to 19 rainy days in the month, with only 11°C in Adelaide and 13°C in Perth).

On the other hand, in the summer from December to March, it is very good, the weather is dry; no more than 5 rainy days per month and temperatures are very pleasant (from 20 to 23 °C), with January and February being the hottest and driest months. In October and November, as well as in April, the weather is dry but average temperatures are around 16 to 19 ° C. During the Austral summer, the region suffered fires during periods of drought and high wind: in 1983, bushfires killed 75 people in the south of the country and in the state of Victoria. Those of February 2009 caused at least 181 deaths and extensive destruction (365,000 hectares, 1,000 houses).

On the west coast, summer, from November to April, is humid and hot. Shade temperatures are then 30 °C in Broome, December being the hottest month, and it rains 6 to 10 days each month with 75 to 150 mm of water. On the other hand, winter, from May to October, is very dry with rare rains even non-existent in Broome from July to October and temperatures varying from 21 to 26 ° C, June being the least hot month (21 ° C in Broome). This is the most pleasant season.

The interior has a quasi-desert climate. Rains during the year are rare, no more than 1-4 days a month. Summer, from November to March, is hot (from 25 to 28 ° C in Alice Springs) with a heat difficult to bear because the hygrometric degree varies from 28 to 35% only. In September and October, as well as in April, temperatures are mild (from 18 to 22 ° C in Alice Springs) but always a low humidity level: 30 to 40%. From May to August, it is cool (from 12 to 15 ° C in Alice Springs) and the humidity level never exceeds 50%. There, it is rather September, October and April which are the most pleasant months.

Effects of global warming

Global warming has led to an increased risk of forest fires. Already below 1 degree of warming, the wildfire season is spreading “with great confidence. ” This effect can be observed in Australia. The climate report from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and research organization CSIRO shows a significant increase in fire risk in recent decades. The report summarizes this as follows: “Climate change, including rising temperatures, is contributing to these changes. “The bushfires in Australia in 2019 burned a record area of about one million hectares. This corresponds to a quarter of the area of Switzerland. Several hundred houses were victims of the flames.

The History of Australia

Prehistory

The exact date of the first human presence in Australia is still the subject of much research. There is serious scientific evidence of human presence about 50,000 years ago. It was a time of enormous ecological upheaval in Australia and is seen as a consequence of human colonization.

Mungo Man is an ancient inhabitant of Australia who is believed to have lived about 40,000 years ago in the Pleistocene and was discovered on the shores of Lake Mungo, south of New South Wales, 3,000 kilometers from the coast of northern Australia. He had been buried with a ceremonial. Stone tools, bones of wombats of extinct species and giant kangaroos have been found near him. These remains are the oldest human remains found in Australia but their age is still subject to controversy. Recent studies of mitochondrial DNA would cast doubt on the unique origin of mankind, which is also controversial.

However, there is some speculation about the more distant origins of the first Australian populations, up to 100,000 years ago. These early Australians are the distant ancestors of today’s Australian Aborigines. They would have arrived via land bridges that appeared with the Würm glaciation and the crossing of fairly large seas in Southeast Asia.

From mitochondrial DNA, a reconstruction of the great human migrations of prehistory dates the arrival of Homo sapiens in Australia to 70,000 years ago. There are many species of plants and animals common to Australia, Papua New Guinea and some Indonesian islands, suggesting that there must have been land bridges between these countries. They would have closed when the seas rose. The end of the Ice Age then isolated New Guinea and Tasmania from the mainland and the Australian Aborigines began a long period of isolation without outside influence.

The peoples of Australia and the Indonesian archipelago, whose inhabitants had long been enterprising sailors and traders, developed exchanges between them. Sailors from southern Celebes in Indonesia came to the northern coast of Australia, which they called Marage, to fish for sea cucumbers.

In 1788, Australia was populated by about 250 tribes, covering the entire continent, each of them having its own language, laws and tribal boundaries with an estimated total population of 350,000 people: they represent the oldest existing culture on Earth.

These populations had a common mythology called the time of the dream (Tjukurpa in the Anangu language) or the dream. The “Dreamtime” explains the origins of the world, Australia and its people. According to this tradition, giant creatures like the Rainbow Snake came out of the earth, sea and sky and created life and landscapes. Their giant bodies formed the soils, created the rivers and mountain ranges, and their spirits remained in the earth, making it sacred to indigenous peoples.

Indigenous Australian art is one of the oldest traditions in the world. The oldest indigenous art forms are paintings and engravings, some of which date back 30,000 years. Traditional music was mainly sung but aborigines could use musical instruments such as didjeridoos as accompaniment. The most famous pastime of the Aborigines of Australia is the sporting practice of the boomerang: a two-bladed, rigid and flat, elbow or angular object, with determined profiles that, launched by hand in a certain way, flies by spinning on itself. These indigenous creations of ancient origin, remain symbols of the Australian nation today.

Terra Australis Incognita

For centuries Europeans presumed the existence of a large southern land. The first European to visit Australia may have been the Portuguese explorer Cristóvão de Mendonça in 1522 and some historians have proposed the theory of the discovery of Australia by the Portuguese.

It seems that Cristóvão de Mendonça used, in 1522, one of the planispheres of the German cartographer Johann Schöner. Indeed he realizes in 1515 a terrestrial globe representing in the southern hemisphere, a land with imposing dimensions and taking up the contours of Australia. He resumed this work, which he deepened in a new world map in 1520. This Terra Australis is located on either side of the Strait of Magellan. This geographical location would correspond more to that of the Antarctic continent, but the contours are reminiscent of those of the Australian continent, as well as the vegetation drawn on this earth.

It remains to be understood how Johann Schöner and the other European geographers of this early sixteenth century became aware of the existence of this Terra Australis. According to the hypotheses of Gavin Menzies, a large Chinese fleet, commanded by Zheng He, would have approached the Australian coasts in the early fifteenth century. This hypothesis of Chinese circumnavigation would be the basis of geographical knowledge transmitted by the Chinese themselves and known to Arab and European travelers and traders, such as Marco Polo or Jean de Mandeville.

The sixteenth-century nautical charts and portulans of the Dieppe School of Cartography represent Australia under the name of La Grande Jave. Portuguese navigators collaborated with the cartographers of this famous school. Nicolas Vallard, Jean Rotz, Pierre Desceliers, Nicolas Desliens and other French cartographers thus represented the exact contours of Australia from the middle of the sixteenth century.

In 1570, Abraham Ortelius made a world map showing the northern contours of Australia under the name Terra Australis. At that time the hypothesis of a single southern continent linking Australia and Antarctica was in order.

Explorations by Europeans (1606-1788)

It was not until the seventeenth century that the island became the subject of European explorations. Some expeditions saw the famous Terra Australis: the Dutchman Willem Jansz became in 1606 the first European visitor to identify Australia. His boat, the Duyfken, dropped anchor in front of Cape York. In a later account, a Dutchman described the territory he saw “as uncultivated, and populated by savage black and cruel barbarians, who massacred some of our sailors.

“This was followed by the Spaniard Luis Váez de Torres, on a mission for his country in 1607, the Dutch Dirk Hartog in 1616, Jan Carstensz in 1623 and Abel Tasman in 1642. The latter gave his name to the island of Tasmania but he himself named it after the name of Admiral and Governor Anthony van Diemen: “Van Diemenslandt”.

About 150 years before the arrival of British settlers at Botany Bay, Dutch sailors became the first European inhabitants of Australia, when their ship the Batavia, was wrecked on June 4, 1629, on the Abrolhos archipelago of Houtman, coral islets in Western Australia. 300 survivors survive for 4 months, on these islands of a few hundred meters long.

But during this period and before help arrived, Jeronimus Cornelisz and his group murdered 125 of the castaways. This case is known as the “horror of Batavia”. The protagonists will finally be judged and for the most part executed (on the spot or in Java). However, two of them, Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom, were abandoned on their way back to the Australian coast, becoming the first two European inhabitants on the continent.

In 1644, the French cartographer Melchizedek Thévenot made a map representing, in detail, the west coast of Australia, which he named Nova Hollandia. In 1688, the Italian cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli made two monumental globes, one of which accurately depicts Australia, under the name of “New Holland”.

The first British explorers were William Dampier on the west coast in 1688 and 1699 and Lieutenant James Cook who, in 1770, perhaps 250 years after the Portuguese navigator Cristóvão de Mendonça, took possession of two-thirds of the island for the Kingdom of Great Britain, despite the orders of King George III stipulating that he must first conclude a treaty with the indigenous population. His report to London declaring that Australia was unoccupied (Terra nullius) allowed for the establishment of a penal colony, which was seen as practical after the loss of the American colonies to Britain.

Cook notes his impressions of the Aborigines of New Holland in his diary: “In reality, they are much happier than we Europeans. . . They live in tranquility that is not disturbed by the inequality of the condition. The land and the sea provide them with all the things they need to live. . . They live in a pleasant climate and look very healthy. . . they have no abundance. ” Cook is accompanied by the famous botanist Joseph Banks who is amazed by the unique flora and fauna of the east coast of Australia and is in favor of European colonization.

On March 16, 1772, the gabare Le Gros Ventre under the command of Louis Aleno de Saint-Aloüarn was in sight of Cape Leeuwin and went up the coast of New Holland to reach the 30th the Pass of the Naturalist and anchor in the Bay of Marine Dogs (Shark Bay) north of the island Dirk Hartog, about 700 km north of the current city of Perth. The Gros Ventre is the companionship of the expedition of Yves de Kerguelen who, on February 12, 1772, has just seen the islands that bear his name.

In accordance with the instructions, Saint-Aloüarn, sick, made his way east. During the anchorage at Shark Bay, Le Gros Ventre lost two of his anchors, buried a sailor who had died of scurvy, while Rosily’s ensign placed at the foot of a shrub a bottle containing a parchment and two shields bearing the effigy of King Louis XV. These objects were found on April 1, 1998, during an excavation campaign led by Myra Standbury and Philippe Godard.

Thirteen years after the anchorage of Saint-Aloüarn in Shark Bay, the French government of Louis XVI chose Jean-François de La Pérouse to lead an expedition around the world to complete James Cook’s discoveries in the Pacific Ocean but, after a long journey to Australia, he arrived at Botany Bay just after the First Fleet. ) of settlers. His expedition disappeared to Vanikoro, Solomon Islands, in 1788.

From colonization to independence (1788-1900)

The British colonization of New South Wales began with the foundation of a prison camp of 1,030 people (with 736 prisoners) at Port Jackson (Sydney) by Captain Arthur Phillip on 26 January 1788. The journey from England is the longest ever made by such a large group. The early days were marked by significant mortality among the arrivals. These early years are nicknamed “the years of famine” and caused mainly by the lack of agricultural skills, poor quality of tools and small quantities of food available.

Governor Arthur Phillip was tasked with building relationships with the Aborigines and living in “friendship and kindness” with them, but European diseases, alcohol and colonial expansion quickly had a destructive effect on the indigenous population. Bennelong (1764-1813), an Eora Aborigine from Sydney, abducted by the settlers and who served as the first intermediary between British settlers and Aborigines, became with one of his companions the first Australians to travel to Europe.

There were other mediators, such as Bungaree who accompanied Matthew Flinders on his first voyage around Australia in 1803. There were also militant resistance fighters such as Pemulwuy; in 1790, he killed a settler whom he accused of murdering Aborigines. From 1792 he carried out repeated attacks against settlers. He was finally captured in 1802. His head was cut off and sent to London, accompanied by a letter of bravery written by Governor Philip King.

The Rum Revolt of 1808 is the only case of the military overthrow of a government in Australian history. William Bligh, then governor of New South Wales, was at the origin of this rebellion when he tried to normalize trade by prohibiting the use of spirits as a currency of exchange for the payment of goods. The New South Wales Corps, an infantry corps based in the region, involved in this trade, did not accept his interference. The quarrel degenerated into a military rebellion. William Bligh was arrested by the New South Wales Corps, which took control of the colony. Bligh was detained for more than a year, until he agreed to return to England.

In 1809, the British government replaced Bligh with Lachlan Macquarie, governor from 1810 to 1821, who played a major role in transforming this penal colony into a new civilian settlement base. It decides that convicts who have completed their sentence must be reintegrated into society at the rank they had before their conviction. Highly profitable wool exports were organized with Europe and large public buildings were built by architect Francis Greenway.

In 1803, a settlement was established in Van Diemen Land (now Tasmania). The rest of the Australian continent (now Western Australia) was declared British in 1829. As British settlements expanded, New South Wales was divided into several separate colonies: South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. The Northern Territory was founded, as part of South Australia, in 1863. He separated in 1911. South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria were created as free colonies, i. e. colonies not receiving British prisoners, but soon enough the latter two agreed to find cheap labor to develop the country. The sending of prisoners to New South Wales ceased in 1848 after violent protests by its inhabitants.

The Aboriginal population, estimated at 350,000 at the time of the arrival of the first Europeans, declined in the 150 years following this arrival, mainly due to the introduction of new infectious diseases but also as a result of its movements and the change in its way of life. According to historian Geoffrey Blainey, during the colonization of Australia: “In a thousand isolated places, there were deaths caused by the pistol and the spear. Worse, smallpox, measles, influenza and other new diseases spread from one indigenous community to another and decimated them. . . The main conqueror of the Aborigines was disease and its ally, demoralization.

“The separation of children from their families to impose a Europeanized way of life is considered by some historians and Aborigines as genocide because it has contributed to the decline of the Aboriginal population. This view is not shared by some commentators who argue that the facts have been amplified and distorted for political and ideological reasons. These events are grouped under the name of History Wars in Australia. The compulsory placement of mixed Aboriginal children outside indigenous communities, to give them a European education, was permitted by law in Australia between 1909 and 1969. In 2008, after a period of national discussion, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd asked for forgiveness for the policy on behalf of the Australian Parliament.

The nineteenth century was a period of harrowing explorations for Europeans in Australia. The first circumnavigation of the continent was accomplished by Matthew Flinders in 1803. It was Flinders who suggested that the name Australia be applied to the continent. Around the same time, Napoleon Bonaparte sent Nicolas Baudin to survey the Australian coast for France. Hume and Hovell’s expedition crossed the country between Sydney and Geelong in 1824. Charles Sturt explored the Murray-Darling in 1830, using indigenous emissaries to announce his arrival at each tribal border. John McDouall Stuart reached the geographical center of the continent in 1860.

The first explorers suffered great deprivations. Edmund Kennedy, who led an exploration to Cape York in 1848, and most of his team were killed by Aborigines. Ludwig Leichhardt, a Prussian explorer and naturalist, led three expeditions into the interior of Australia and disappeared in the last one. Charles Sturt contracted scurvy while leading an expedition to the center of the continent to try to find an inland sea that did not exist.

The most famous of all the expeditions was, in 1861, Burke and Wills’ expedition that crossed the continent from south to north (a 2,800-kilometre route) where the two explorers died at Cooper Creek, a few hours’ walk from the rest of their group. The only survivor of the expedition was cared for by the local Aborigines. The relationship between European explorers and natives varied considerably: Sir Thomas Mitchell was careful to note indigenous place names – and it is for this reason that 70% of the names of Australian localities are of indigenous origin; but other explorers of the nineteenth century did not bother and the names were lost.

The establishment of herders in the interior of the country is often a cause of conflict with Aborigines, but the skills of indigenous herders are the source of significant savings. Religious missions often provide asylum during conflicts while facilitating colonization. During the nineteenth century, Europeans took control of most parts of the country.

The 1850s and 1860s, the time of the gold rush, saw a rapid expansion of the population, leading to an increase in wealth but also to some social tension – notably the rebellion of the Eureka Revolt in 1854, which accelerated the introduction of universal male suffrage in Victoria.

During the period from 1855 to 1890, the six colonies each became autonomous, one after the other, managing their own affairs. Men, including natives, were allowed to vote in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales in the 1850s and Tasmania in 1896. Queensland gained autonomy in 1859 and Western Australia in 1890, but these colonies denied their Aborigines the right to vote. British law was applied in each colony, when the United Kingdom allowed each of them to have a responsible government and granted them more and more autonomy over time. The British government retained control of certain areas such as foreign affairs, defense, and international trade.

The golden age of bushrangers was certainly the time of the gold rush. Bushrangers are outlaws who manage to survive in the bush by hiding from the authorities. It is believed that more than 2,000 bushrangers roamed the Australian expanses, from the first escaped convicts to the end of the bushrangers, the last fight was that of Ned Kelly at Glenrowan in 1880. The most violent bushranger attacks took place in Tasmania. Hundreds of convicts were at large, farms were abandoned and martial law was proclaimed. The Aboriginal bushranger Musquito defied the colonial authorities and directed attacks against the settlers.

Bushrangers often attracted public sympathy, embodying romanticism and rebellion against the colonial authorities, whose harshness and anti-Catholicism displeased. Some bushrangers, and especially Ned Kelly in his letter from Jerilderie, presented themselves as political rebels. Bushrangers regularly appear in Australian literature, music, film and television: Jack Donahue, Dan Morgan, known as “Mad Dog”, and Ned Kelly (was the subject of the first feature film in history (more than an hour), The Story of the Kelly Gang, made in 1906).

Despite its heavily rural economy, Australia’s population remains heavily urban, concentrated mainly in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney. Funded by the prosperity of the gold rush, the National Gallery of Victoria was founded in 1861 and began collecting the works of European masters as well as the new Australian schools of painting. In 1854-1856, using vapor compression, Australian inventor James Harrison produced the world’s first practical refrigerator in Victoria. His invention later allowed meats to be exported to Europe. This is in addition to the prosperity brought by the wool industry and gold mining during the nineteenth century. The rules of Australian rules football were codified in Melbourne in 1858. In the 1880s, Marvellous Melbourne was the second-largest city in the British Empire.

Australia also gained a reputation as a workers’ paradise and a laboratory for social reform. It was she who organized the first secret ballot election and experienced the first government of an elected Labour Party. The Labor Party has its origins in the Labor movements founded in the early 1890s in the colonies that would later form the Australian Federation.

The first organization to gain women’s suffrage was established in Victoria in 1884. In 1894, the women of South Australia obtained this right.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the art of painters such as those of the Heidelberg School and the prose of writers such as Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson gave rise to a growing sense of national identity and politicians such as Sir Henry Parkes and Sir Edmund Barton campaigned for an independent federation of the colonies, with Queen Victoria as Sovereign.

Federation and World Wars (1901-1945)

On 1 January 1901, the federation of the colonies was completed after 10 years of gestation and the Commonwealth of Australia was born as a dominion of the British Empire. Between 1901 and 1911, the capital was temporarily located in Melbourne but it was on a territory ceded to the federal government by New South Wales in 1911 that the new federal capital, Canberra, was built. In 1902, women in all states were granted the right to vote as well as the right to stand for election. In 1901, Australia passed a law prohibiting non-whites from settling.

From the beginning of the First World War, Australia, which then had a population of 5 million, joined the Allies; 416,000 Australians participated in this conflict, where 60,000 of them died. Australia is the only country that refrains from shooting its soldiers for example. The Australian Armed Forces fought, notably at Gallipoli (with ANZAC), Beersheba, the Battle of the Somme and Ypres.

On April 25, 1915, the ANZAC landing began in Gallipoli, on a narrow promontory crowned by fortifications, facing almost impassable escarpments. The Turks started a hellfire, but the Australians managed to occupy the top of the first hill around 6 a. m. The young Turkish general Kemal Pasha (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) launched a counterattack. 8,141 Australians died towards the end of the battle. In Australia, the defeat of Gallipoli is remembered as a “baptism of fire” for the army and the new Australian nation. A ceremony is held there every year on April 25 (ANZAC Day).

In July 1916, on the sidelines of the Battle of the Somme, Fromelles was the scene of fighting between soldiers from the Commonwealth (especially Australia) and Germany that left some 7,000 dead and wounded in the Allied ranks. On July 19, 2010, a new cemetery where about 200 bodies are buried is inaugurated in the presence of Prince Charles and Quentin Bryce, as well as many families of soldiers.

On 31 October 1917, the Australians of the 4th Light Horse Brigade, also known as the 4th Light Horse Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General William Grant, led the charge on the Ottoman trenches and took possession of the Beersheba wells. This event is often described as the last victorious cavalry charge in history.

The Australians played a decisive role at the end of the war. On 8 August 1918, the Battle of Amiens, fought by Australian troops, saw the first major victory of the war for the British Army. German General Ludendorff will speak of the battle as “the black day of the German army”. On 12 August, General John Monash, commander of the Australian forces, was ennobled on the battlefield by King George V (it was the first time a British monarch had honored an officer in 200 years). Monash then organized the attack on the German defenses for the Battle of the Hindenburg Line. The Allies managed to open a breach, and on 5 October the Germans asked for an armistice.

In 1919, Prime Minister Billy Hughes signed the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of Australia, making it the first international treaty signed by that country. At Versailles, Hughes demanded heavy compensation from Germany and often clashed with U. S. President Woodrow Wilson, who described Hughes as a “scoundrel. . . ». “I speak for 60,000 Australian deaths. . . how much are you talking about? Hughes asked Wilson. Hughes succeeded in securing Australian control of the former German colony of New Guinea and a place in the newly formed League of Nations.

Historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote of the “tyranny of distance” as a constant challenge in the development of the Australian nation. Qantas, the world’s second oldest airline still in operation, was founded in 1920 in the Outback. The Reverend John Flynn established the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the world’s first air ambulance service in 1928 and in the same year, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith made the first air crossing of the Pacific Ocean between the United States and Australia (he also made the first non-stop crossing of Australia and the first flight between Australia and New Zealand).

In the 1930s, the Great Depression caused a severe economic crisis in Australia. In 1931, Jack Lang (Premier of New South Wales) published his own plan to combat depression, which was in opposition to other governments and the federal government. Lang vehemently opposed Labor James Scullin’s federal plan, which called for even greater cuts in government spending to balance the budget. Lang withdrew all state funds held in federal bank accounts and kept them in cash at the Chamber of Commerce, so that the federal government could no longer access the money.

Governor Sir Philip Game informed Lang that he believed the action was illegal. Lang remained firm, and in May 1932 the governor withdrew his office from Lang and appointed the leader of the opposition as prime minister. This was the only time an Australian state government was deposed by a governor until Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the government of Gough Whitlam in 1975.

During the Depression, Australians found consolation in sports. In particular, the exploits of horse Phar Lap and cricketer Don Bradman inspired the nation.

Although Australia became independent, the British government retained some powers over the dominion until the Statute of Westminster of 1931, ratified by the Parliament of Australia in 1942.

The Nazi invasion of Poland led to declaration of war by Britain and Australia in 1939. The Australian Army would become the first to stop the advance of the German and Japanese armies: stopping Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps at Tobruk in 1941, and the Japanese advance towards Milne Bay in 1942.

The Australians fought at the Battle of Greece, the Battle of Crete and the Siege of Tobruk, but in December 1941 Japan decided to bomb Pearl Harbor by surprise and, simultaneously, the Japanese army occupied British, Dutch and American possessions in Southeast Asia, threatening even Australia. Most of the Australian Army is brought back to the Asia-Pacific region. The Japanese captured the stronghold of British Commonwealth forces in Singapore in 1942.

14,972 Australian soldiers were taken prisoner, of whom about 2,650 died while building the Burma-Thailand Death Railway line (among Australia’s most famous prisoners of war were doctor Edward Dunlop and nurse. Vivian Bullwinkel). The Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and the Navy Air Service conducted a bombing campaign against civilian and military objectives in northern Australia, particularly against the city of Darwin. Submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy carried out a series of attacks against the cities of Sydney and Newcastle. The Australian population feels the threat of Japanese invasion hanging over the country. The ensuing mobilization campaign will be referred to as the Battle for Australia.

New Prime Minister John Curtin then made a deal with the United States, which was a fundamental change in Australia’s foreign policy. In March 1942, U. S. General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia and declared, “I came out of Bataan and I shall return. ” In May 1942, during the Battle of the Coral Sea in northeastern Australia, a Japanese invasion fleet heading for Port Moresby was repulsed by a group of American ships.

Australia’s successes in the Battle of Milne Bay and the Kokoda Track campaign came in late 1942 and marked the first victories of Allied ground forces against the Japanese. A few hundred Australians held the Kokoda Track against 6,000 Japanese and their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Honner, described the battle as Australia’s Thermopylae. From Melbourne, where he had set up the headquarters of his staff, General MacArthur began the reconquest of the territories of the Pacific Ocean, island by island. On October 21, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, HMAS Australia became the first Allied warship to be hit by a kamikaze aircraft attack.

General Thomas Blamey signed the acts of the surrender of Japan on behalf of Australia during the ceremony aboard the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945. Australian forces accepted the surrender of their Japanese adversaries in ceremonies held at Morotai and several locations in Borneo, Timor, Wewak, Rabaul, Bougainville and Nauru.

After 1945

After the war, Australia became a founding member of the United Nations. Herbert Vere Evatt was elected President of the General Assembly during its third session from 1948 to 1949 and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His delegation drafted a number of key articles of the declaration, such as the protection of economic rights, social protection, trade union membership and the protection of minorities.

Under the government of Liberal Robert Menzies (1949-1966), the post-war period was a period of prosperity for Australia. Immigration policy was expanded by successive governments and a large number of Mediterranean immigrants began to arrive. Menzies resumed trade with Japan, allowing that nation to later replace the United Kingdom as Australia’s main trading partner. In 1951, Menzies brought Australia into the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty); a military pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Australia sent troops to fight communist forces during the state of emergency in Malaysia from 1950 to 1960 and during the Korean War and the Vietnam War from 1962 to 1972.

Australia was a pioneer in the space race during the Cold War. Australia’s space program is based in Woomera. Australia became the 4th nation to launch a satellite into space in 1967. NASA employed Australian observation stations near Canberra and Parkes for the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

The Snowy Mountains development plan was carried out between 1949 and 1974. It includes the diversion of rivers to produce electricity for the cities of the southeast and to allow irrigation of the dry interior of the country. Its realization requires 100,000 workers, from 30 countries. The multicultural nature of the workforce employed contributes to the diversification of Australian society in the twentieth century.

In constitutional terms, an important reform was achieved by Prime Minister Harold Holt with the referendums of 1967, in which a large majority of Australians (90%) voted to be able to give the federal government the right to legislate on The Aborigines and their integration into the population. In 1971, Neville Bonner became the first Indigenous Senator in the Federal Parliament and Douglas Nicholls the first Indigenous Governor of an Australian state, in 1976.

Holt switched the Australian currency to the decimal system on 14 February 1966. On December 17, 1967, Holt plunged into a flood at Cheviot Beach, near Melbourne, and tragically disappeared.

The 1960s and 1970s were a period of artistic growth for Australians with the nascent success of performers and intellectuals like Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes; the international success of television series like Skippy the Kangaroo in 1966 and singers like the Bee Gees and AC/DC; the beginning of a period of great success for Australian cinema and the inauguration of the Sydney Opera House in 1973. From the 1970s, Aborigines approached acrylic painting on canvas. This Western Desert Art Movement became one of the most significant art movements of the twentieth century.

Cyclone Tracy devastated the city of Darwin (Northern Territory) from 24 December 1974 to 25 December 1974, killing 71 people and causing $837 million in damage in 1974. It destroyed more than 70% of the buildings in the city of Darwin, including 80% of the houses. More than 20,000 people are left homeless out of a population of 49,000, a disaster unprecedented in Australia’s history.

The Labour Party returned to government in 1972, under the leadership of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who submitted a program of legislative reform but was removed from office in 1975 by Governor General John Kerr, after a prolonged constitutional crisis caused by a refusal by the Senate opposition to pass a finance bill; Whitlam lost the ensuing election.

The 1975 election saw the Liberal Party return to government with Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister. Fraser encouraged immigration and multiculturalism from Asia. Fraser was defeated by Bob Hawke’s Labour Party in 1983. The theoretical authority of the British Parliament over the states, which was not completely abolished at the time, was abolished with the Australia Act in 1986. The 1980s were a period of modernization of the Australian economy.

In 1988, the bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet was celebrated with great pomp on Sydney Harbour and Queen Elizabeth II was invited to inaugurate the new National Parliament in Canberra. However, Hawke’s successor, Paul Keating, raised the project of Seeing Australia become a Republic. In 1992, the High Court, in Mabo v Queensland, annulled the legal concept of terra nullius (“land to person”) created at the time of the European occupation.

In the early 1990s, Australia experienced a period of deep economic recession, and in 1996, Liberal John Howard was elected Prime Minister. He remained in power until 2007, making him the prime minister with the second-longest term in history. He says he wants “an Australian society that would see this country as a unique crossroads between Europe, North America and Asia. Australia is incredibly fortunate to have a European heritage, close relations with North America but also to be geographically located in the Asia-Pacific region, and if we can see ourselves as that strategic crossroads, then I think we have a unique opportunity to carve out a special place for ourselves in the history of the next century. “

In 1999, the government held a referendum on a constitutional amendment making the country a Republic. The Liberal Party allows its members to freely decide their own position on the matter, while the Labour Party campaigns for a Republic.

Monarchists argue that the status quo offers Australia incomparable constitutional protections. The project meets other oppositions, since some Republicans call to vote against the project because of the disagreement with the proposed method of appointing the head of state, who would have been appointed by Parliament by a two-thirds majority, this system has the advantage of placing the president above the quarrels of the parties but the disadvantage of excluding the citizen from the choice of his representativeness. In the face of these criticisms, a majority of the population (55%) express themselves in a negative way. The Republican debate is still not settled: the Labor government plans to hold another referendum in the not too distant future, to propose the establishment of a Republic in Australia.

XXI century

During the 2000s, trade with China increased significantly and Australia played an active role in international affairs, including: providing finance to Asian economies to recover from the Asian financial crisis and inciting the establishment of the G20; organizing the International Force for East Timor in 1999; deploying troops to Afghanistan. and Iraq, by participating in the tsunami relief response to the earthquake of 26 December 2004.

Labor’s Kevin Rudd defeated Howard in the November 24, 2007, election. A former diplomat, his first official act as prime minister was, on the very day of his appointment, to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and cancel some of the labor law reforms put in place by the Liberal Party. On 13 February 2008, keeping a campaign promise, he delivered a solemn speech, apologizing to the Aboriginal people, an indigenous people, for the abuse they had suffered.

In 2009, Australia was ravaged by the deadliest fires in its history. The 2009 Victoria wildfires, also known as “Black Saturday”, caused more than 231 deaths and significant destruction (365,000 hectares, 1,000 houses).

In 2008 and 2009, after 25 years of economic reform, and a period of strong trade growth with China, Australia outperformed virtually every comparable economy in terms of growth, while the economic crisis gripped the world.

Moreover, in 2010, Rudd resigned before an internal party vote, requested by Julia Gillard, becoming the first woman to head the Australian government. In the 2010 election, Australia found itself, for the first time in 70 years, with a House of Representatives in a minority parliament. After winning the support of the only representative of the Australian Greens, Gillard gradually won the support of three independent representatives and thus had an absolute majority in the House.

Australia continues to grow, thanks in part to mining growth and China’s growing appetite for energy. Julia Gillard served as prime minister until 2013, the year of Australia’s new election, when polls predicted a Labor defeat to the Liberal Party, led by Tony Abbott. Gillard became increasingly unpopular within her party, and on June 26, 2013, a few weeks before the federal election scheduled for September, she was finally disavowed in a vote of confidence by the representatives of her party.

She received only 45 votes in her favor, compared to 57 for her rival, Kevin Rudd, who thus became Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister again. She announced that she was leaving politics after the next elections. The election was held on 7 September 2013, Tony Abbott defeated Kevin Rudd, and became the 28th Prime Minister of Australia on 18 September 2013. However, he himself was overthrown by his minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2015. The latter is in turn put in a minority and must give way to Scott Morrison who was able to keep his place as head of government after the early federal election of 2019.

Politics

Australia is one of the few nations that have remained democratic throughout the twentieth century. To this day, the Commonwealth of Australia is a constitutional monarchy: Elizabeth II is Queen of Australia, a role distinct and separate from her position as Queen of the United Kingdom. She is the head of state, although this term does not appear in either the Constitution or the law.

The Queen is represented by name by the Governor General. In practice, Queen Elizabeth II has only come to Australia a few times and has never used her powers. Almost all of the monarch’s constitutional role is therefore assumed by the Governor General. According to the Constitution, the role of the monarch is almost purely ceremonial. Although the Constitution theoretically gives great executive powers to the Governor General, these are never used politically, very rarely used independently, and are delegated to the cabinet whose members are chosen by the ruling party or the Prime Minister alone, from members of the federal government, itself made up of persons elected to the House of Representatives or the Senate.

The government is provided by three independent powers:

• Legislative power is vested in Parliament (monarch, House of Representatives and Senate);
• Executive power is vested in the Executive Council (Governor-General, Prime Minister and all other ministers).
• Judicial power is provided by the High Court and the Federal Courts.

The legal basis of the nation changed with the Australia Act 1986 and the passing of laws related to this act in the British Parliament. Until then, a small number of constitutional cases could be litigated as a last resort before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the highest court of appeal in the United Kingdom. By this act of Parliament, Australian law becomes, unequivocally possible, the only valid law in the country. The High Court of Australia then became the highest court of appeal. The theoretical possibility that the British Parliament could pass laws amending sections of the Australian Constitution was removed.

There are two major political groups that govern the country, the Labour Party (ALP, center-left social-democratic and progressive), and the Coalition, a grouping of two main center-right parties: the Liberal Party (LP, Liberals or Libs, liberal-conservative) and its minor partner, the National Party (NP, Nationals or Nats, Conservative and Agrarian), to which are added regional movements (the National Liberal Party of Queensland or LNP, born in 2008 from the merger of the sections of the two major parties of the Coalition in the state of Queensland, and the Rural Liberal Party or CNP, founded in 1974 in the Northern Territory).

A number of representatives belong to other small parties, such as the Greens (The Greens, environmentalism) or the Democratic Party or are independent of any party. The Labour Party governed from 1908 to 1909 (minority), from 1910 to 1913, from 1914 to 1917, from 1929 to 1931, from 1941 to 1949 (minority from 1941 to 1943), from 1972 to 1975, from 1983 to 1996 and from 2007 to 2013 (minority from 2010 to 2013). The Coalition, established in 1923 (only the names of the two parties composing it having evolved), was in power for its part from 1923 to 1929, from 1931 to 1941 (minority from 1940 to 1941), from 1949 to 1972 (the longest period without alternation known by Australia), from 1975 to 1983, from 1996 to 2007 and since 2013.

To date, the Liberal-National coalition led by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (who replaces Tony Abbott as leader of the Liberal Party on 14 September 2015and the government the following day) is in power in Canberra as well as in three of the six states and one of the country’s two territories; the Coalition leads five of the six states and one of the two territories of the country. March to December 2014. In the 2004 election, the Coalition government team led by John Howard won a majority in both assemblies, which had not happened in more than 20 years.

Voting is mandatory for all registered citizens 18 years of age and older, both at the state, territory and federal levels. Voter registration is mandatory in all states except South Australia.

Parliament in Australia

Parliament is composed of the monarch, the Senate (upper house) which has 76 senators and the House of Representatives (the lower house) with its 150 members. Elections for both chambers (general election) are held every three years; senators serve six-year terms and only half of the seats are renewed at each election, unless the cycle is interrupted by a double dissolution. The party with the support of the majority in the House of Representatives forms the government and its leader becomes Prime Minister.

The Senate consists of 76 senators and the House of Representatives consists of 150 representatives. Representatives are elected in constituencies (officially divisions, but better known as electorates or seats) according to a system of one representative per constituency. The more populous a state is, the more representatives it has in the House with a minimum of five per state. In the Senate, each state is represented by twelve senators, and each territory by two. Deputies are elected for three years and senators six. Elections are held every three years, renewing the Senate by half at each election.

Political parties

The Westminster system, in force in Australia since the creation of the Commonwealth in 1901, as well as the electoral system used, namely the alternative vote, have favored the development of a two-party system that has opposed since 1923:

• The Coalition (center-right alliance between the Liberal Party of Australia, the National Party of Australia, the Queensland National Liberal Party and the Rural Liberal Party)
• Labour Party (center-left)

Other Australian political parties at the federal level are:

• Australian Greens
• Centre Alliance
• Katter’s Australian Party
• Pauline Hanson’s One Nation

Prime minister

The Prime Minister is the head of the Australian government and the country’s main official on the international stage. By convention, he is a member of the House of Representatives. He is chosen by a vote of the members of the government and there is no official limit on the duration of his mandate. Two official residences are at the disposal of the Australian Prime Minister: The Lodge in Canberra and Kirribilli House in Sydney.

Only once has a senator become Prime Minister of Australia, and for a very short period of time, after the death of the Prime Minister, the time for his successor to be elected to the House of Representatives in a by-election.

From 24 June 2010 to 27 June 2013, the Prime Minister was Julia Gillard, who replaced Kevin Rudd, former leader of the Labour Party. She is the first woman to hold this position since the creation of liberal democracy a century ago. It is also the first time in the history of a state that the head of state (Elizabeth II), the head of government (Julia Gillard) and the governor-general (Quentin Bryce) are women. On 27th June 2013 Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister again following a vote of confidence within the party. Since 2018, Scott Morrison has been the Prime Minister of Australia.

Governor-general

The Governor-General is the Queen’s representative in Australia. According to the law, he exercises within the limits of the Australian Constitution, the powers and functions granted to him by the Queen. He holds executive power in Australia and as Her Majesty’s representative, he theoretically has the right to terminate the Prime Minister’s office. Out of respect for the latter, however, he does so only at his request. An exception to this constitutional convention occurred on 11 November 1975 when Governor-General Sir John Kerr resigned Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. This event remains the most controversial in Australian political history.

Since July 1, 2019, the position has been held by David Hurley.

High Court of Australia

The High Court of Australia is the highest court in the Australian judicial system. Its functions are to interpret and apply the laws of Australia. The High Court Building consists of three courtrooms, the judge’s chambers and the main registry, library and other services related to the Court.

Decentralized territorial organization

Main article: List of rulers of Australian states and territories

Australia is divided into six states and three continental territories, not to mention other small external territories.

The States are:

• South Australia
• Western Australia
• New South Wales
• Queensland
• Tasmania (Tasmania)
• The Victoria

The Territories are:

• Northern Territory
• Australian Capital Territory (ACT)
• Jervis Bay Territory

For the most part, the functioning of the territories is comparable to that of the states, but the Federal Parliament may, if it deems it useful, veto almost all laws passed by the territorial parliaments. On the other hand, the federal parliament cannot oppose state laws in certain areas that are set out in Article 51 of the Constitution; state parliaments retain all their legislative powers in the areas of health, education, police, justice, road system, public transport, local government.

Each state and territory have its own legislative organization: a unicameral system, in the Northern Territory, the ACT and Queensland, a bicameral system in the other states. The lower house is known as the Legislative Assembly (House of Assembly, in South Australia and Tasmania) and the upper house is known as the Legislative Council. The head of government of each state is the Prime Minister (Prime in English while the federal Prime Minister is called Prime Minister), and in each territory, the Chief Minister. The Queen is represented in each state by a Governor, an Administrator in the Northern Territory and in the ACT by the Governor-General of Australia; in any case, they have similar roles.

The Australian Local Government Association is also the umbrella organization for the associations of the various states and territories that make up Australia. It brings together 560 councils in the form of a federation of local and territorial government associations. Its main activities revolve around the representation of local governments.

The Council of Capital City Lords Mayors is a group of mayors of the various capitals of the States and Territories of Australia. Its purpose is to provide nationwide representation for the coordination and effective representation of the special interests of Australia’s capitals.

In addition, Australia manages inhabited Outer Territories: Norfolk Island, Christmas Island, the Cocos Islands and others uninhabited: the Ashmore and Cartier Islands, the Coral Sea Islands, the Heard and MacDonald Islands and the Australian Antarctic Territory.

Foreign Affairs and Defense

In recent decades, Australia’s external relations have been characterized by a close association with the United States through the ANZUS Pact, and a willingness to develop relations with Asia and the Pacific countries, particularly through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Pacific Islands Forum.

In 2005, Australia secured a place at the East Asia Summit for the first time following its accession to the Summit’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. Australia is a member of the Commonwealth, in which meetings between Commonwealth Heads of Government are the main means of cooperation. Australia has been a strong advocate for the liberalization of international trade. It led to the formation of the Cairns Group and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). In addition, it is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

It has pursued a policy of free trade with several countries, most recently with the free trade agreement between Australia and the United States and the rapprochement of economic relations with New Zealand. Australia is a founding member of the United Nations, it also has an international assistance program under which some sixty countries receive assistance from it. The 2005-2006 budget provided $2. 5 billion for development assistance, which was less than the United Nations Millennium Development Goals as a percentage of GDP.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) consists of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), the Australian Army (AA), and the Royal Australian Air Force (Royal Australian Air Force, RAAF) or about 51,000 men. All sectors of the military are engaged in peacekeeping operations (recently in East Timor, the Solomon Islands and Sudan), in relief operations in the event of a major disaster and in certain armed conflicts, such as the invasion of Iraq. in 2003.

The government appoints as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces one of the three chiefs of its armed forces, currently the Chief of the Air Defense Force, Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston. The Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Armed Forces is the Governor-General. In the 2006-2007 budget, the share of the budget allocated to the army was A$22 billion.

A national memorial was erected in Villers-Bretonneux in memory of the Australian soldiers, the Diggers, who died in action in France and Belgium. It was inaugurated in 1938 by King George VI and French President Albert Lebrun. A ceremony is held there every year on April 25 (ANZAC Day). In addition, as a sign of gratitude to the Australian soldiers, the French government had a Franco-Australian memorial erected in Canberra, inaugurated in 1961.

Australia is a member of the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police.

Royalism

In 1999, Australia confirmed in a referendum its commitment to a monarchical political system.

Economy

Australia’s economic development was initially slow and based on the export of wool. This changed with the discovery of gold in 1851 and the mining sector became the most important sector of the Australian economy. At the beginning of the XXI century, the tertiary sector of the economy, including tourism, education and financial services, constituted 69 percent of GDP, agriculture and natural resources (especially minerals, mining) constituted 3 percent and 5 percent of GDP respectively, but they contributed significantly to the country’s export performance, with a tendency towards exhaustion for some of them. Australia’s main customers are Japan, China, the United States, South Korea and New Zealand.

Australia has a prosperous and diversified economy. In recent years, the Australian economy has coped with the global economic slowdown while maintaining stable growth. Output growth has continued thanks to good domestic consumption, and business and consumer confidence in their economies remains strong. The focus on reforms is another key factor in the strength of the economy. In the 1980s, the Labor Party, led by Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Finance Minister Paul Keating, played a crucial role in modernizing the Australian economy by floating the Australian dollar and partially deregulating the financial system.

From 1996, the government coalition, led by Prime Minister John Howard, continued to implement micro-economic reforms. Some say that the deregulation of the labor market during this period was the result of the necessary flexibility of the labor market. Others criticized these deregulations for their negative impact on wages, safety, and health.

The legislation introduced during this period sought to reduce the participation and power of trade unions by preferring to promote intra-company bargaining. In addition, during this period, the government coalition deregulated many other industries, including the telecommunications sector, and privatized many national companies. Taxation was reformed in July 2000 with the introduction of a 10% VAT, which led to a some reduction in corporate and income taxes. But in the 2007 federal election, this government was put in a minority and its prime minister was personally defeated.

The Australian economy has not suffered a recession since the 1990s. Even the slowdown in the early 2000s did not affect its GNP growth. By March 2007, unemployment had fallen to 4. 5%, its lowest level since the late 1970s. In 2018, it remains below 6%, but 35% of employees work part-time.

The Australian economy relies primarily on its hydrocarbon-rich subsoil, thanks to strong demand from the Chinese economy. Australia’s extractive industry accounts for A$248 billion in exported products and employs more than 247,000 people.

A 2017 study by The Australia Institute shows that foreign companies own 86% of the country’s mining industry and have spent more than half a billion Australian dollars to influence Australian governments over a decade. Australia is the country that has pushed the privatization and coinage of water the furthest. Water is expensive and its trade has caused the ruin of farmers who can no longer afford to buy it. For some financial groups, drought means good business, with fast and high returns.

The country’s GDP is USD 1,561 billion in 2013. Australia is a prosperous country, with a Western-style economy, its GDP per capita is 67,468. 07 USD in 2013. In 2005, the country was ranked sixth in the world for the Quality of Life Index by The Economist and, in 2010, second in the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index. The lack of an export-oriented processing industry has been seen as a key element of the weakness of the Australian economy but the recent rise in the prices of products exported by Australia and the increase in tourism make this criticism less relevant.

Nevertheless, Australia remains with the fourth largest current account deficit in the world (more than 7% of GDP). This problem is considered unimportant by some economists because it coincided with a period of high trade and low-interest rates, making the cost of debt relatively low. The country’s main economic partners are China, the United States, Japan and Singapore. Australia is part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Among the strengths of its agriculture, the country was also ninth in the list of world cereal producers in the mid-2010s, dominated by the United States.

From 1997 to 2017, real estate prices rose by 250%.

Wealth gaps are widening. Between 2003 and 2015, the average wealth of the richest 20% of households increased by 53%, while for the bottom 20% of households, the fall was 9%. In 2018, the richest 1% of Australian employees earn as much in a fortnight as the poorest 5% in a year.

The household debt ratio, at 216% in 2019, is one of the highest in the world.

Energy

Annually, the country consumes 17,321 petajoules.

Charcoal

Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal. Annual coal production in Australia reaches 12,288 petajoules. In October 2021, the Australian government authorized the extension of three coal mines, The Whitehaven Group is authorized to double its extraction capacity.

Natural gas

The country has significant gas resources, especially in the Carnarvon regions and the Bonaparte archipelago off the northwest coast.

Crude oil

Annual production is 15. 5 Mt.

Electricity

Per year, the territory produces 257 terawatt-hours (927 petajoules).

Nuclear

Australia has one of the world’s largest uranium reserves. At the level of nuclear reactors, there are mainly a few research reactors.

Solar

In 2018, solar energy accounted for 5. 2% of national energy production. In 2014, the government set a goal of producing 1,000 megawatts of solar energy.

Population and society in Australia

Demography

Australia has a population of 25. 7 million at the beginning of 2021, with an estimated annual population growth of 0. 1% (highly influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic).

The majority of historians estimate that the Aborigines of Australia were 350,000 when Europeans arrived in 1788. In 2006, 455,031 people in Australia identified as Aboriginal. Although it is a more rural population than the general population, two-thirds of Aboriginal people live in cities. New South Wales and Queensland account for half of Australia’s Aborigines. In Tasmania, the indigenous population declined sharply in the nineteenth century.

The majority of the Australian population is descended from nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigrants from the British Isles and of all origins: English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh. Although the Australian colonies were founded as penal colonies (except South Australia and Western Australia), the arrival of British convicts in Australia gradually stopped between 1840 and 1868. During the Gold Rush of the late nineteenth century, convicts and their descendants became a small minority against the hundreds of thousands of settlers in the British Isles. An example of the mass of arrivals: in the 1850s, the total number of immigrants arriving in New South Wales and Victoria was the equivalent of 2% of the total population of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Australia’s population has more than doubled since the end of the Second World War, encouraged by an ambitious immigration program; it increased from 9. 4 million in 1956 to 20. 7 million in 2006. In the nineteenth century, however, Australia put in place strong measures to prevent the immigration of non-whites (white Australia policy). After 1945, immigrants from Greece, Turkey, Italy and others increased the country’s cultural diversity. In 1973, Australia officially put an end to discriminatory immigration policies, and large Asian immigration appeared. In 1988, about 40 percent of immigrants came from Asia, and in 1997, Asians made up 5 percent of the population. The indigenous population – the Aborigines of Australia and the inhabitants of the Torres Strait – make up 2. 2% of the population (2006 census).

In 2001, the election campaign was dominated by immigration and national security issues. Successive governments continue to maintain high levels of immigration in the twenty-first century. Although the government of John Howard (1996-2007) significantly increased the national immigration program, although it favored citizenship over multiculturalism. ) From the end of 2007, new applicants for immigration, if they want to obtain Australian citizenship, will have to pass and pass two parts of questionnaires, including questions on Australian history, Aboriginal history, the country’s culture, national sports and knowledge of the English language. The Australian government hopes that these questionnaires will lead to better social integration of immigrants.

A large number of Australian citizens (950,000 in 2004) live overseas. This number (almost 5%) is much higher than in other countries. It was only recently that the subject interested the government and the media, but the term “Australian diaspora” is now part of the Australian vocabulary.

Rank	Name	State or territory	Population 2011
1	Sydney	NSW	4575532
2	Melbourne	VIC	4077036
3	Brisbane	QLD	2043185
4	Perth	WA	1696065
5	Adelaide	HIS	1219547
6	Gold Coast-Tweed	QLD / NSW	591473
7	Newcastle	NSW	546788
8	Canberra-Queanbeyan	ACT / NSW	410419
9	Wollongong	NSW	292190
10	Sunshine Coast	QLD	251081
11	Hobart	HEAP	214705
12	Geelong	VIC	178650
13	Townsville	QLD	172316
14	Cairns	QLD	150920
15	Toowoomba	QLD	131258
16	Darwin	NT	127532
17	Launceston	HEAP	106153
18	Albury-Wodonga	NSW / VIC	106052
19	Ballarat	VIC	96097
20	Bendigo	VIC	91713

Like many other developed countries, Australia is now experiencing an ageing population.

English is the de facto official language of Australia, although some Aboriginal communities continue to speak their native languages. A considerable number of first- and second-generation immigrants are bilingual. Italian, Cantonese and Greek are still widely spoken.

Since the early 2000s, Australia has been deporting refugees arriving on its soil to Nauru and Papua New Guinea in exchange for financial compensation (in the form of development aid) for these two poor states. Several thousand people are being held in camps built by the Australian government and run by private companies pending their case review. According to human rights groups, this policy violates international law, including the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. On the other hand, the government notes a sharp decrease in illegal arrivals, from more than 3,000 per year between 1999 and 2001 to less than 150 per year between 2002 and 2008. The cost of the program (interception of boats, camp management fees) amounts to more than ONE billion Australian dollars for the period 2002-2007, and more than 5 billion for the period 2012-2017.

Despite the restrictions on access imposed by the authorities, several successive investigations have denounced the living conditions of the detainees. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refers to a “systematic and arbitrary detention” contrary to international law, and criticizes the lack of a long-term solution for people kept in uncertainty. The NGO Médecins Sans Frontières describes a population “beyond despair” and lists “an alarming number of suicides attempts and cases of self-harm”.

Languages

Although Australia does not have an official language, English has always been considered the de facto national language. Australian English differs from British English in its accent and vocabulary and differs slightly from other types of English in its grammar and spelling. Australian English is used in daily exchanges. According to the 2011 census, English is the only language spoken in nearly 81% of Australian households.

The other most commonly spoken languages are Mandarin (1.7%), Italian (1.5%), Arabic (1.4%), Cantonese (1.3%), Greek (1.3%), and Vietnamese (1.2%). A considerable proportion of first- and second-generation migrants are bilingual. A study by the Australia Early Development Index in 2010–2011 found that the languages most commonly spoken by children after English were Arabic followed by Vietnamese, Greek, Chinese and Hindi. Afrikaans is spoken by about 44,000 people, descended from recent migrants who have arrived from South Africa since the end of apartheid.

It is believed that there were between 250 and 750 Aboriginal languages when the British arrived, of which less than 20 are still spoken on a significant daily basis today. About 110 are spoken exclusively by the elderly. During the 2006 census, 52,000 Australian Aborigines, representing 12% of the indigenous population, reported that they mainly spoke an Aboriginal language in their household. Australia has a sign language called Auslan, which is the main language of about 5,500 deaf people.

Religion

Australia has no state religion. The Australian Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state, prohibiting the Australian government from proclaiming a law that favors one religion over another. According to the 2016 census, about 52% of Australians identify as Christians, of which 22. 6% are Catholics and 13. 3% Anglicans, 30. 1% of the population say they have no religion, 8. 2% are identified as not belonging to Christianity, the largest of these groups being Islam (2. 6%), followed by Buddhism (2. 5%), Hinduism (1. 9%) and Sikhism. (0. 5%). The remaining 9. 6% of the population did not provide a response.

In Australia, Anglicans are represented by the Anglican Church in Australia and Catholics by the Catholic Church in Australia. The Catholic Church in Australia is served by the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, which is the permanent collegiate assembly of the Bishops of Australia.

The Australian Baptist Ministries were founded in 1926. In 2016, it would have 994 churches and 70,997 members.

Significant religious figures

• Saint Mary MacKillop (1842-1909): teacher of the poor in the nineteenth century, the first saint of the Catholic Church born in Australia.
• David Unaipon (1872-1967): Aboriginal pastor, inventor, writer, philosopher. His effigy appears on the Australian $50 bill.
• Reverend John Flynn (1880-1951): Founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. His effigy appears on the Australian $20 bill.
• Pastor Sir Douglas Nicholls (1906-1988): Aboriginal who advocated reconciliation between Aboriginals and Europeans, Governor of South Australia.
• Cardinal George Pell (born 1941): Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney from 2001 to 2014.
• Patron Saints (for the Catholic Church):
  • Our Lady;
  • St. Francis Xavier.

Education

Education is not the responsibility of the federal state but of the individual states. However, government assistance has helped open many universities.

Australia has 37 public universities and two private universities. These include the group of eight: the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales, the University of Western Australia, the Australian National University, Monash University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland, and the University of Adelaide. Others include Macquarie University, the University of Canberra, Bond University, the University of Wollongong and the Australian Catholic University.

About 10% of Australian university students are foreigners.

The higher institutes of technical education, the TAFE College, specialize in technical training. They are public and recognized by the industry and train for secondary or higher education diplomas.

The school year runs from January to December. Government schools are free, while most students enrolled in private schools pay fees. The Catholic Church is the greatest non-governmental educator. Two-thirds of students attend public schools, while the remaining third attend private schools (denominational or secular). The terms High School and Secondary College refer to secondary education in Australia.

Schooling is compulsory until:

• 17 years old in Tasmania;
• 16 years in the states of Victoria, South Australia and Queensland;
• 15 years in all other states and territories.

Due to the very low population density of the Outback (Australian bush), many students are schooled by correspondence.

Science and technology

Ancient Australian inventions include the boomerang and the woomera. But among Australia’s most important contributions to science and technology are also the development of penicillin (Howard Walter Florey), refrigeration (James Harrison), physiotherapy (Elizabeth Kenny), feature film (The Story of the Kelly Gang, by Charles Tait, first fiction feature film), the pacemaker (Mark C. Lidwell), etc.

Australia has long been a source of fascination for botanists, naturalists and geologists. The botanist Sir Joseph Banks took part in James Cook’s first voyage around the world (1768-1771). He brought back abundant materials and campaigned ardently for colonization. In 1800, French explorer Nicolas Baudin was selected for an expedition to Australia for nine zoologists and botanists, including Jean Baptiste Leschenault de La Tour, one of the greatest scientific voyages of all time. Charles Darwin, the famous English naturalist whose work on the evolution of living species revolutionized biology, was influenced by what he saw in Australia in 1836 during The Journey of the Beagle.

The Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney was established by Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1816 and is therefore the oldest scientific institution in Australia. The Australian Museum in Sydney, which focuses on natural history and anthropology, is Australia’s oldest museum. In 1826, entomologist Alexander Macleay began working to open a museum. The building opened its doors to the public in 1857.

One of Australia’s most substantial technology projects was the Snowy Mountains Development Plan (1949-1974). Including 16 large dams, 7 electricity generators and 145 kilometers of tunnel for hydroelectric power generation; in order to redirect the waters to the interior of the country for irrigation.

Australia was a pioneer in the conquest of space during the Cold War. Australia’s Space Program has been based in Woomera since the 1950s. Australia became the 4th nation to launch a satellite into the space of its own territory in 1967 after the USSR, the United States and France. Australian observatories near Canberra and Parkes were employed by NASA for the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Pine Gap is the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap located southwest of the town of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The base has been jointly managed by Australia and the United States since 1966. It is one of the largest regional operations and signals intelligence centers (SIGINT) in the world.

An important educational organization is the Federal Organization for Scientific and Industrial Research, the CSIRO. The Australian Institute of Sport is a national sports program of athletics scientific research.

Among the Australian winners of the Nobel Scientific Prize:

• 1915: Sir Lawrence Bragg: in physics, X-ray diffraction by crystals.
• 1945: Lord Howard Florey: manufacture of penicillin.
• 1960: Frank Macfarlane Burnet: research in immunology.
• 1963: John Eccles: structure of nerve cells.
• 1970: Bernard Katz: physiology of nerve cells and neurotransmitters.
• 1975: John Cornforth: Chemistry of enzymatic processes.
• 1994: John Harsanyi: application of game theory to economics and economics in political philosophy.
• 1996: Peter C. Doherty: immunology research.
• 2005:
  • Barry Marshall: Discovered in 1982 that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori causes stomach ulcers.
  • J. Robin Warren: co-winner with the previous one.
• 2009: Elizabeth Blackburn: molecular structure of chromosomes.

Media

In 2014, 70% of Australian media was owned by businessman Rupert Murdoch.

Print

Newspapers are dominated by two companies: News Corporation and John Fairfax Holdings.

• News Corporation publishes the only national daily: The Australian, as well as a daily newspaper in every capital except Perth. These include: The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), Herald Sun (Melbourne), The Courier-Mail (Brisbane) and The Advertiser (Adelaide). The News Corporation was established in Adelaide and its first newspaper was The News which later merged with The Advertiser.

The Rural Press Limited group, which published The Canberra Times and The Land among others, as well as a number of agricultural magazines (Queensland Country Life, Stock & Land, Stock Journal and Farm Weekly) merged on 8 May 2007 with the News Corporation group.

• John Fairfax Holdings owns: The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age (Melbourne) and the largest financial newspaper: The Australian Financial Review.

Television

Australia has two public broadcasters: Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Special Broadcasting Service (SBS); it has three private television channels: Nine Network, Seven Network and Network Ten.

The Logie Awards have been Australia’s leading national television award since 1959.

According to Reporters Without Borders, in 2005, Australia was in 31 positions in the world for press freedom in the country. It is far behind New Zealand 12. In 2019, searches of journalists investigating war crimes committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan raised concerns about press freedom in the country.

Some famous Australian television exports include Dame Edna Everage, Skippy the Kangaroo (1966-1969), Clive James, Geoffrey Robertson, The Neighbours (Since 1985), Summer Bay (Home and Away, since 1988) and Steve Irwin (The Crocodile Hunter, 1996-2006).

To this must be added BBC Australia, a branch of the BBC World.

Australian culture

Since 1788, much of Australian culture has derived from Anglo-Celtic roots. Over the past fifty years, Australian culture has been heavily influenced by American popular culture (especially film and television) and by the arrival of seven million immigrants from all continents of the world. Large cities such as Sydney or Melbourne are now very cosmopolitan, Australian specificities have emerged as a result of the environment, Aboriginal culture and the influence of neighboring countries. The vigor and originality of Australian arts (literature, cinema, opera, music, painting, theatre, dance, craftsmanship) have earned it international recognition today.

Freedom, equality and mateship

The Australian Parliament shows an original copy of the Magna Carta of 1297, symbolizing the deep roots of democracy in Australian political culture. The European class system was not successfully transferred by the British colonists and the Australians professed an egalitarian culture.

Mateship — translated into French as “fraternal fidelity” — is also considered a central principle (there was an unsuccessful effort to insert the word mateship in the preamble to the Constitution in 1999).

In 2004, Germaine Greer wrote that Aboriginal culture has significantly affected the development of Australian culture. Greer can see indigenous origins in many aspect’s characteristics of Australian culture: egalitarianism and the intrinsic reluctance of Australians; the emphasis placed on the ability to tell a good story; the intonation and vocabulary of Australian English.

Australian English has added a series of expressions to English, including: g’day(hi), Outback (far inside) and fair dinkum (the truth).

Arts

The visual arts have a long history in Australia with Aboriginal wall paintings and wood paintings. Examples of rock art can be found in public parks even in major cities: such as at The Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in Sydney. Uluru and Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory are listed by UNESCO as cultural heritage and feature a history of techniques and behavior illustrated by paintings. Beginning in the 1970s, Aborigines approached acrylic painting on canvas. This Western Desert Art Movement has become one of the most significant art movements of the twentieth century.

From 1788, Australian painting is often described as the gradual transition from a European sense of light to an Australian sense. The origins of Australian painting are often associated with the Heidelberg school of the 1880s-1890s. Artists like Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts strove to give a truer picture of light in Australia. They painted outdoors in the Impressionist tradition. These artists were inspired by the beautiful landscapes and unique light that characterizes the Australian bush.

The first Australian painter to make a name for himself overseas was John Peter Russell during the 1880s. Impressionist, friend of Vincent van Gogh and Auguste Rodin, he became the first Australian to experiment with Cubism. Another expatriate artist ahead of his time was Rupert Bunny, a painter of landscapes, allegory and sensual and intimate images.

Among the leading artists of the twentieth century are: the surrealists Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Russell Drysdale; the avant-garde Brett Whiteley; the painters/sculptors William Dobell and Norman Lindsay; the landscape painters Albert Namatjira and Lloyd Rees and the modern photographer Max Dupain. Each helped define the special character of Australia’s visual arts.

Modernism arrived in Australia at the beginning of the XX century. It was headed by Grace Cossington Smith and Margaret Preston. Artists Pro Hart and Ken Done contributed to the development of a popular modern Australian model and ubiquitous Australian artist Rolf Harris painted the official portrait of Elizabeth II on the occasion of her 80th birthday. Comedian Barry Humphries has also been a provocative exponent of Dadaism in Australia. Michael Leunig (born 1945 in Melbourne) is an Australian artist who has developed a very particular and recognizable style of caricature.

The country has many museums and art galleries (including in small towns), including the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney) and the National Museum of Australia (Canberra).

There is a very rich tradition of dance, invigorated by the legacy of Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann and Australia was the birthplace of dancer Wade Robson.

The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney is known worldwide as a theatre school with alumni such as: Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Judy Davis, Mel Gibson, Baz Luhrmann and Hugo Weaving.

Architecture

The Aborigines built semi-hard housing so the history of architecture in Australia begins with the arrival of the English in 1788. It is strongly influenced by the British and American models.

There are various examples of architecture, such as Georgian architecture, Victorian architecture, Gothic architecture, Federation architecture, contemporary architecture and the Queenslander residential style in the tropics. Sydney is known for its gigantic towers, Victoria for its elegant colonial architecture and Adelaide is called “the city of churches”.

Three sites of Australian architecture are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List: the Sydney Opera House (designed by Jørn Utzon and commissioned in 1973), the Royal Exhibition Centre in Melbourne and the Australian prison sites, a selection of eleven penal colonies including Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney, Port Arthur in Tasmania and Fremantle Prison in Western Australia.

All capitals are home to a number of remarkable cathedrals. Close to the city of Wollongong, on the rocky escarpment overlooking the city is the Benedictine abbey of Jamberoo, built with materials from the region that harmonize with the environment, and not far away, there is the largest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere: the temple of Nan Tien.

Several famous architects or firms work in Australia: Francis Greenway (colonial period), Harry Seidler, Jørn Utzon (Sydney Opera House), Walter Burley Griffin (city of Canberra), Romaldo Giurgola (new Australian Parliament) and PTW Architects (former Australian firm that designs the Beijing National Swimming Center) are among the best known.

The National Trust of Australia is a non-governmental organization responsible for the conservation of Australia’s historical heritage. It owns or controls more than 300 places classified as: the Old Government House in Parramatta, the oldest public building in Australia (1799) and the Old Melbourne Gaol.

• Gold Coast (Queensland).
• St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.
• Royal Exhibition Centre (Melbourne).
• The Shamrock Hotel (Bendigo).
• A cave house in Coober Pedy (South Australia).
• Port Arthur Penitentiary, Tasmania.
• Fitzroy Town Hall (Victoria).
• The Alpine village of Charlotte Pass (New South Wales).
• Grace Building, Sydney
• Australia 108, Melbourne.
• A. C. Goode (Melbourne).
• State Supreme Court (Melbourne).
• Sydney Harbour Bridge

Literature

Thomas Keneally, Colleen McCullough, Leslie Murray, Shirley Hazzard, Nevil Shute, Morris West, Bryce Courtenay, Germaine Greer and Jill Ker Conway are world-famous Australian writers. DBC Pierre and Peter Carey both won the Booker Prize and Patrick White the Nobel Prize in Literature. Paul Wenz, an Australian novelist of the French language, is considered in Australia as a classic author.

In “classical literature”, we can mention:

• Notable poets include Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Dorothea Mackellar, and C. J. Dennis;
• as novelists: Marcus Clarke (For the Term of His Natural Life), Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career), Ruth Park (The Harp in the South) and Nevil Shute (A Town Like Alice);
• As authors of children’s literature: Norman Lindsay (The Magic Pudding) and May Gibbs (Snugglepot and Cuddlepie);
• Playwrights: David Williamson, Ray Lawler and Alma De Groen.

To learn about the modern indigenous experience, we can read My Place by Sally Morgan and for that of second-generation migrants: Looking For Alibrandi, by Melina Marchetta.

Some of the most important film adaptations of Australian stories include: The Great Escape written by Paul Brickhill, Mary Poppins by Pamela L. Travers and Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally.

Watkin Tench (Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay and Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson), C. E. W. Bean (The Story of Anzac: From the Outbreak of War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign May 4, 1915, 1921), Geoffrey Blainey (The Tyranny of Distance, 1966), Robert Hughes (The Fatal Shore, 1987), Manning Clark (A History of Australia, 1962-87) and Marcia Langton (First Australians, 2008) are the authors of important historical works on Australia. For a history of indigenous mythology, we can quote David Unaipon. The Native Tribes of Central Australia by Frank Gillen and anthropologist Walter Baldwin Spencer about the Arrerntes provided the first extensive study of an indigenous Australian society for global publication in 1899.

Music

The didjeridoo is an originally ancient Australian musical instrument. A wind instrument of the aerophone family, it was used by the Aborigines of northern Australia since the Stone Age (about 20,000 years ago). The Aborigines have preserved many ancestral songs and developed very special instruments. The yidaki or didgeridoo is considered the most representative instrument of the Aborigines and some argue that it is the oldest of the wind instruments. However, only the Aborigines of Arnhem Land played it like the Yolngu. Moreover, only men could play it.

The Anglo-Celtic immigrants of the 1700s and 1800s introduced a tradition of folk music ballads that were adapted to Australian specificities, such as the traditional songs Bound for Botany Bay, The Wild Colonial Boy or Click Go the Shears. The lyrics of Waltzing Matilda, Australia’s best-known folk song, were written by poet Banjo Paterson in 1895. Adopted by Australian soldiers during the First World War, this song is still popular and was sung at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics by Slim Dusty.

The national anthem is Advance Australia Fair. Songs that compete with him unofficially include Waltzing Matilda, I Still Call Australia Home by Peter Allen or perhaps Down Under by Men at Work.

In pop music, Australian bands and musicians are not left out. In the 1960s, The Easybeats, The Seekers and The Bee Gees made their names known in the pop scene. Since the 1970s and especially since the 1980s, AC/DC has been one of the largest hard rock bands on the planet, having sold more than 180 million albums worldwide and having the second best-selling album of all time, Back in Black, selling 63 million copies while Midnight Oil and INXS won a major pop success in the 1980s, as well as Nick Cave and Crowded House.

During the 1990s, Silverchair and Savage Garden made headlines. Today, the bands Airbourne, Jet, The Vines, The John Butler Trio, Xavier Rudd, Kylie Minogue and Dannii Minogue (pop singers), as well as Sia and the twins of The Veronicas are famous in all countries and are making themselves known in the United States, the United Kingdom and throughout Europe. Pop singer Tina Arena has seen her career propelled from Australia to the United States and then to Europe and in particular to France.

Johnny O’Keefe is the first and greatest star of the classic rock ‘n roll era in Australia. Another rock pioneer is John Farnham, always popular. In the folk-rock genre, there is Paul Kelly, nicknamed the pop poet laureate of Australia. Singers like Christine Anu, a resident of the Torres Strait Islands, and Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, a Yolngu from Arnhem Land, have recently made truly indigenous folk-rock music known internationally.

Australia has a long tradition of country music, which develops according to a model distinct from its American counterparts. It is influenced by Celtic folk ballads and the Bush ballad tradition of Australian poets. The great man of Australian country music is Slim Dusty (1927-2003) whose career lasts fifty years and who produces more than 100 albums. In Australia, singers John Williamson, Delta Goodrem and Lee Kernaghan are very popular, and in the United States, there are well-known Australian country artists such as Olivia Newton-John and Keith Urban.

Opera singers Nellie Melba and Joan Sutherland –La Stupenda– were among the most famous women in their repertoire. Opera Australia, a national opera company, is very famous thanks to the diva Joan Sutherland. All Australian capitals, especially Melbourne and Sydney have symphony orchestras. We will also mention the conductor Charles Mackerras. Australian composers include Peter Sculthorpe and Bruce Rowland.

Australia is also known worldwide thanks to its participation since 2015 in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Cinema

Australian cinema is one of the oldest in the world: the first film production studio was built by the Salvation Army in 1898 in Melbourne. The Story of the Kelly Gang, released in 1906, is the first feature film in the history of cinema. The name Errol Flynn, born in Hobart, Tasmania, is associated with the biggest stars of Hollywood’s golden age, but his first film, In the Wake of the Bounty, is an Australian film directed by Charles Chauvel in 1933. In 1943, Kokoda Front Line, directed by Ken G. Hall, was the first Australian film to win an Oscar (Best Documentary Film category). The AFI Awards (Australian Film Institute Awards) have been the main national film and television award since 1958.

With the help of Prime Ministers John Gorton and Gough Whitlam, the 1960s and 1970s saw a renaissance of Australian cinema with Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and the beginning of a golden age with the great success of films like Mad Max (1979) with the young Mel Gibson, Gallipoli (1981), The Man from the Silver River (1982) and Crocodile Dundee (1986) with Paul Hogan. This film remains the Australian film that has had, in terms of number of spectators, the most success at the global box office. Films like The Hike or Shine regularly come to a surprise, and the country itself becomes a source of inspiration for directors like Werner Herzog (The Land Where Green Ants Dream).

In the 1990s and 2000s, Australian actors and actresses (Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Eric Bana, Heath Ledger, Hugo Weaving, Simon Baker, Alex O’Loughlin, Rose Byrne, brothers Chris and Liam Hemsworth) and directors (Baz Luhrmann, George Miller, Bruce Beresford) have enjoyed great international success.

10 Canoes, 150 Spears and 3 Wives (Ten Canoes), a 2006 film directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr, was the first Feature Film in the Aboriginal language and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.

The film industry continues to produce a reasonable number of films each year; several American producers moved their production to Australia following the decision of Fox director Rupert Murdoch (a former Australian naturalized American) to move the new studio to Sydney, where films can be completed at a lower cost than in the United States. Notable productions include The Matrix and Star Wars Episodes II and III.

Gastronomy in Australia

For 50,000 years, Aborigines have eaten a cuisine based on animals and plants native to their region: grilled kangaroos, seafood, honey, berries, etc.

From 1788, English cuisine brought to the country by early settlers became the basis of Australian cuisine. It consists of pies, meat, mainly beef and lamb, but also sometimes kangaroo: steaks, grilled chops and others usually accompanied by vegetables (a combination known colloquially as “one meat and three vegetables”).

Australian beef, like New Zealand, Canadian and American, and unlike European, can be treated with growth hormones, this is also the case for pork and lamb. However, some distribution specialists, such as Coles, have decided to refuse to sell meat with growth hormones, which represents 80% of locally produced meat.

This cuisine has seen the arrival, because of the multicultural origin of the new Australian immigrants over the last 40 or 50 years, a cuisine with a variety of Mediterranean and Asian dishes. These multicultural culinary influences are frequently labeled with the generic term Modern Australian. British traditions still persist on several levels, for example with fish and chips remaining popular in the takeaway sector.

A movement of indigenous Australian cuisine reappeared in Australian restaurants in the 1980s. The discovery of several Australian plants with taste qualities similar to spices formed the basis of gourmet cuisine. This contrasts with bush food unfamiliar to gourmets.

• Damper is a bread that allows you to survive a few days in the bush.
• Fish and chips remain popular in Australia.
• Pavlova desserts.
• Kangaroo meat.
• Beef was introduced in the eighteenth century in Australia.

Consumption

Australia produces quality wines. Some of the most famous wineries include: Penfolds, Rosemount Estate, Wynns Coonawarra Estate and Lindemans. The regions of the Hunter and Barossa valleys are known for their vineyards. Many hectares of vineyards occupy these regions where, in odd-numbered years, wine festivals are held that attract many visitors who come to enjoy parades, concerts and meals.

The Hunter Valley has been producing wine for 150 years. Renowned vineyards include Rothbury, Tyrrells and McGuigans. They are known for their Semillon, but they produce shiraz, chardonnay and Verdelho. The Barossa Valley is known for its shiraz among the oldest in the world, its Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache. White wines include Eden Valley Rieslings, Semillons and Chardonnays.

Beers from famous local brands are still popular in Australia. The oldest brewery is the Cascade Brewery in Hobart, Tasmania (opened in 1824). However, beer had already been produced in Sydney in 1806 by James Squire. Since the 1970s, a number of Australian beers, such as Fosters Lager, have gained international fame.

The rum trade was an important component of the early colonial economy in New South Wales. The rum trade even led to the only coup in Australia’s history: the rum rebellion that toppled Governor William Bligh in 1808.

Billy Tea is a tradition celebrated in Australia. Billy’s tea is brewed over a campfire and scented with eucalyptus leaves. The folk song Waltzing Matilda tells the story of a wandering wanderer who sits, his billy boiling with him next to a billabong (river pond).

Many hectares of vineyards occupy the Hunter Valley.

Sport

Sport in Australia is a popular and widespread activity. With a population of just 20 million, Australia finished fourth among nations at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics (overshadowed only by the superpowers: the United States, Russia and China).

The number of participants and spectators is higher than in other countries in relation to the number of inhabitants. This has been demonstrated at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, but also at other international sporting events, particularly water and team sports. The Australian climate and economy allow Australians to have ideal conditions to participate in many sports, but also to go see them.

By tradition, cricket, Australian Rules Football and rugby league are the most popular team sports. We can also mention football, netball and hockey, which are also appreciated. Rugby union remains a minority despite televised matches and the support of the New Zealand and South African unions. The Australian rugby league team, the Australian cricket team and national netball and hockey teams are regular world champions.

Major sporting events include: The Ashes, a series of test cricket matches against England; the Bledisloe Cup, a series of rugby union matches against New Zealand; The State of Origin, rugby league matches between New South Wales and Queensland, the Rugby League Grand Final and the Australian Football League (AFL) Grand Final in Melbourne.

The Australian national football team qualified for the 1974, 2006 and subsequent World Cups. Great players include: Mark Bosnich, Tim Cahill, Harry Kewell, Mark Schwarzer and Mark Viduka.

Across the country, there is a wide variety of other sports such as cycling, basketball, golf, hockey and tennis. The Australian Open, one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, takes place in Melbourne in January. Also worth mentioning is the Tour Down Under, which is part of the UCI World Tour.

Water sports and beaches are really popular – especially swimming, surfing and lifesaving – (Australia, the home country of this sport, hosts a national championship as important as those of football in Europe). In 1983, the Americans lost the America’s Cup regatta for the first time, to the Australian boat Australia II helmed by John Bertrand. Sydney-Hobart is a sailing race starting from Sydney every 26 December and ending in Hobart, for a distance of 1,167. 39 kilometers.

Snow sports are possible in Australia in the Australian Alps and part of Tasmania. Australians began to practice alpine skiing in the nineteenth century, the starting point probably being Kiandra, in the Snowy Mountains in 1861.

Some of the best-known skiers include Malcolm Milne, Zali Steggall, Alisa Camplin and Dale Begg-Smith. The most popular ski resorts are Thredbo, Perisher and Charlotte Pass in New South Wales and Mount Hotham, Falls Creek and Mount Buller in Victoria. The vast plateaus and peaks allow cross-country skiing in the Kosciuszko Backcountry, Jagungal Wilderness and Bogong Plateau regions in winter, as well as in the Tasmanian National Parks and the Brindabella Mountains of the Australian Capital Territory.

Horse racing is popular and public interest in horse racing has seen a major increase in recent years with over 100,000 people attending Melbourne Cup races.

Australia has hosted two editions of the Olympic Games: the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne and the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Australia is one of only three countries to have sent athletes to all the Summer Olympiads. The best Australian athlete in terms of the number of Olympic medals won is Ian Thorpe with 9 medals including five gold. The athletes who won 4 Olympic gold medals are: Betty Cuthbert, Murray Rose, Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould.

The Commonwealth Games are a multi-sport competition where the best athletes from Commonwealth member nations meet. The program of events is comparable to that of the Summer Olympics, but also includes some more Commonwealth-specific sports such as rugby sevens, lawn bowling or netball. Since 1930, Australia has been the highest-scoring team at all ten editions of the Games, and has hosted four editions of the Games.

Other great Australians in the sport include: Sir Donald Bradman (cricket), Darren Lockyer (rugby league), Cathy Freeman (400m), Greg Norman (golf), David Campese (rugby league and then rugby union, with 101 caps in the national team and 64 tries in international matches) and Rod Laver (the only player to have achieved the grand slam twice. tennis).

Since 1985, Australia has hosted one round of the Formula 1 World Championship, the Australian Grand Prix, held from 1985 to 1995 on the Adelaide Street Circuit and since 1996 on the Semi-Urban Albert Park Circuit, in Melbourne. This race has always been important because when the race was held in Adelaide, the Australian Grand Prix was the last round of the season (therefore decisive for the award of the drivers’ and constructors’ world titles), and, when the race takes place in Melbourne, it is the first event of the season (so it allows drivers and teams to compare their level with their opponents).

Yet only two Australian drivers have been Formula 1 World Champions: Jack Brabham (in 1959, 1960 and 1966; 14 victories during his career from 1955 to 1970) and Alan Jones (in 1980; 12 victories during his career from 1975 to 1986). ). Two other Australian drivers have made their appearance in Formula 1: Mark Webber (9 victories between 2002 and 2013) and Daniel Ricciardo (8 victories since 2011, series in progress).

Cultural calendar

• January: Big Day Out, music festival.
• January: Sydney Festival, more than 50 events including classical and contemporary music, dance, circus, drama, visual arts and public lectures.
• January: Tamworth Country Music Festival.
• Last 2 weeks of January: Australian Open tennis Grand Slam tournament.
• January 26: Australian National Day.
• February: Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival.
• March to May: The Archibald Prize by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
• April: Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
• Easter, with in each city, the Royal Exhibitions.
• April 25: ANZAC Day.
• May to August: Sydney Biennale, visual arts festival.
• June: State of Origin rugby league.
• July to September: The Rugby Championship rugby union.
• September: Australian rules football grand finale.
• September 1: National Acacia Day.
• October to March: cricket season.
• November: Melbourne Cup.
• December 25: Christmas in Australia.
• December 26: Sydney-Hobart, sailing race.

Statistics

• Land borders: 0 km
• Coastline: 25,760 km
• Elevations: −1,555 m to +2,229 m
• Population growth rate: 0. 1% per year (2021)
• Roads: 913,000 km of which 353,331 km paved (in 1996)
• Railways: 33,819 km (in 1999)
• Waterways: 8,368 km
• Number of airports: 411 of which 271 with paved runways (in 2000)
• Number of time zones: 3, shared between:
  • Western Australia,
  • The Northern Territory; South Australia,
  • Queensland; New South Wales; Australian Capital Territory; Victoria; Tasmania.

World rankings

• Human Development Index: 2 out of 187 with an index of 0. 938 (in 2012)
• GDP/capita: 6 out of 183 with $65,477 (in 2011)
• Quality of life (Legatum Prosperity Index): 3 out of 110 (in 2011)
• Democracy Index: 6 out of 167 (in 2011).

Codes

Australia has the following codes:

• AS, according to the list of country codes used by NATO, alpha-2 code
• AU, according to ISO 3166-1 (list of country codes), alpha-2 code
• . au, the country code top-level domain (ccTLD)
• AUS, according to ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 (list of country codes)
• AUS, according to the IOC list of country codes
• AUS, according to the list of international number plate codes
• AUS, according to the list of country codes used by NATO, alpha-3 code
• YB, YC, YD, YE, YF, YG, YH, YI, YJ, YK, YL, YM, YN, YO, YP, YQ, YR, YS, YT, YW and YY, according to the list of ICAO airport code prefixes

References (sources)

Australian Bureau of Statistics, “National, state and territory population“, 2021; “Gini index“, World Bank; Australie, Wikipedia; « Australia’s Size Compared », Geoscience Australia; En Australie, une saison en enfer, Maxime Lancien, Monde diplomatique, 2020.