During early settlement of Australia, Indigenous children were removed from their families to be conditioned to European values and work ethic to eventually take up positions in the service of “colonial settlers” (HREOC, 1997, pp.22). Despite being an acknowledged and engrained practice in Australia for a number of years before formal government acts legalising the removal of children, the Stolen Generations is a term coined to encompass those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families and communities as mandated by government policy between 1911 and 1969 (HREOC, 1997, pp.22). In an attempt to ‘merge’ the Indigenous population with the non-Iindigenous community, it was mandated that children should be removed from their families so as to lose their ‘Aboriginal identity’ (HREOC, 1997, pp.25). This policy was soon aimed towards ‘assimilation’ as opposed to ‘merging’; the major difference existing in the idea that all Indigenous people should live, work and be educated alongside ‘Whites’ (HREOC, 1997, pp.26). However, by the 1960s it was clear that the policy had failed to achieve its goal of forced integration; Indigenous people refused to “surrender their lifestyle and
[Accessed 10 May 2015]. Source C Evaluation (Picture of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam with Vincent Lingiari): Source C is a photograph taken during the time when Prime Minister Gough Whitlam handed a leasehold title to Vincent Lingiari, a representative of the Gurindji people. It represents a moment when Aboriginals who were mistreated and abused for the past decades reclaiming their rights to the land. During the time period, the Gurindji people were mistreated, had poor working conditions and were alienated over their land rights. The Whitlam government purchased the land on behalf of the Gurindji people.
Historically Institutional racism plays a major role in hindering the progress of Indigenous people. Institutional racism is addressed in the paper as a key factor in the social disadvantage and consecutive high unemployment rate amongst Indigenous Australians. Australia is privy to a history of wrongdoing against its Indigenous community. Andrew Armitage writes of the British invasion in 1788; ‘the land needed for the colony was obtained by an act of dispossession, assisted in British law by the convenient assumption that Australia was terra nullius (vacant, unoccupied land)’. The invasion was the cause of the ‘land wars’ that ensued and resulted in the massacre and decimation of the Aboriginal people (Armitage, 1995, p. 17).
Kanakas: Indentured labour or slavery? One of the most controversial aspects of the labour trade in South Sea Islanders concerns the way Kanakas were treated by their employers in Queensland. Australian legislators and social commentators in the 1860s had followed Great Britain in condemning the concept of slavery. Early sea traders physically forcing South Sea Islanders to come to Queensland. Whether or not Islanders were deceived, forced or came voluntarily to Queensland, Australian legislation required Islanders to become indentured labourers once on Australian soil.
| The Australia Flag Debate: | Should Australian Change Their Flag Now? | | Jinxing ZHOU (Chow) | 2014/5/22 | | The Australian Flag Debate: Should Australian Change Their Flag Now? Australia, which official name is the Commonwealth of Australia, is one of the British Commonwealth Nations. And it is a young country which is like the USA. In the 18th century, when the first British settled down here, Australia became a colony of Britain.
Rather than view Australian history as a closed system, they attempt to explore how experiences in other democracies shaped the decision to have compulsory voting in Australia. The writers’ views are that compulsory voting was adopted to protect an apathetic majority from outspoken minorities. The article would be a useful source in the writing of a paper on compulsory voting because it examines how experiences in other nations affected Australians’ decisions to make voting compulsory. The article also further explores the debates in the nineteenth century Australian colonies, which led to the adoption of mandatory voting, in the context of other democracies. TWOMEY, A.
In 1837, this practice was made official with the appointment by the British Select Committee of “Protectors of Aboriginies” in Australia. In 1869 Indigenous child removal legislation was put in place in all states and territories, giving the “Protectors” the power to remove children, and in 1937 assimilation was adopted as the official national Indigenous affairs policy. It was not until 1969 that Indigenous child removal legislation was removed. Even if past governments had good, albeit ethnocentric intentions, the effects of these policies have been devastating, and this dark and disturbing history of racism and assimilation still haunts many Aboriginal communities
Australia is one of these progressive countries that abolished capital punishment in 1973 and more recently amended the law which blocks any state or territory attempting to reinstate it (Lennan &Williams 2012). Since 1973 Australia has taken several steps to reinforce its opposition to the death penalty both domestically and internationally. Keirn & Henderson (2011) state that Australia has an international
Changes to Asylum Seeker Policies and Capacity to Change During the early 1990s, asylum seekers from Cambodia began to arrive in Australia in large numbers. In response, the government of Paul Keating instituted a policy known as mandatory detention aimed at deterring refugees. Under mandatory detention, anyone who enters the Australian migration zone without a visa is placed in a holding facility while security and health checks are performed. Additionally, the validity of the person's claim to asylum is assessed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Following the Tampa Affair, the Commonwealth Migration Act (1958) was amended by Howard's government in September 2001.
Australia is the nation built on the principles of freedom and equality for everybody, but this is not true for Aboriginal people – the first owners of this land. From 1909 to 1969, the Australian government implemented the policy that forced Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to leave their parents’ arms in order to assimilate these children and declared that they were adequately protected and given a better life (Reconciliaction, 2007). The statistics of the Bringing Them Home report suggests that there were about one-tenth and one-third of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken away from their families (Bringing Them Home, 1997, p. 31). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children separated from their families were called the “stolen generations” (Australia Human Rights Commission, 2012). These children had to live in poor conditions, poor quality and received a strange