#Statute of Autonomy

[al-mayriti]

OH MY GOD ????

[star-trek-fandom-confessions]

#1145

Eugenics and genetic modification are not the same thing. The terms are not interchangeable. Eugenics is the practice of erasing perceived ‘undesirable’ traits in the gene pool. It is motivated by racism and ableism and is horrific. Genetic modification is one possible tool that eugenicist could use to achieve that end. Another tool which has actually been used by eugenicists to advance their awful goal is compulsory sterilization. This is also horrific and recognized as such - compulsory sterilization is a Crime Against Humanity in the Rome Statute. However, sterilization procedures such as tube tying and vasectomies are not practices that people generally call for to be banned, because people may want to prevent themselves from getting pregnant or from getting another person pregnant for all sorts of reasons and we recognized that people should have autonomy over their own bodies and be free to make their own reproductive choices. Consensual vasectomies and tube tying being legal in a country does not mean that country is endorsing eugenics. A country in which there is a government program of coercing or using incentives to get members groups perceived as undesirable to have their tubes tied or have vasectomies is practicing eugenics. The legality and use of tool in general does not necessarily mean that the tool is being used for eugenics. Now, let’s take that one step further with a hypothetical on genetic engineering. Imagine that we determine that if one gene was removed from the human genome, those without that gene would no longer get dementia and there were zero other impacts. Would a country that made that genetic modification procedure available for free to everyone who wanted it and the doctors performing that procedure be practicing eugenics? Now imagine that procedure didn’t work in adults or even children. It had to be administered during fetal development to be effective. Would a parent choosing to have that gene removed from their unborn child so they would never get dementia be practicing eugenics? I'm not going to weigh in on those my point is that it’s a complex issue, there are very flew easy answers available and you really have to consider motive. Eugenicists are motivated by the view that certain people are superior and other people are inferior and they want to get rid of the latter.

Applying it to Strange New Worlds, Una has specifically stated that the Illyrian motivation for genetic modification is so that they fit in with their environment, rather than terraform (this intersects another really interesting scientific ethical discussion happening around climate engineering and the potential consequences). There is no evidence in canon that Illyrians are motivated by the need to be superior or are getting rid of undesired traits. They took up modification to live on planets that would otherwise be unhospitable to them (beta canon is that their home world is no longer inhabitable even with modification due to environmental collapse outside of their control, they’re essentially environmental refugees). While Illyrians modify themselves genetically, there is no evidence that Illyrians are practicing eugenics. In the context of DS9, Bashir’s parents believed it was undesirable to have a son with intellectual disabilities. They modified him to get rid the trait they perceived as undesirable. They were practicing eugenics. In Star Trek canon, billions of people died during the Eugenics Wars. When it comes to the law, it is incredibly difficult determining motive and therefore it is understandable that they banned genetic engineering as a way of stopping eugenicists and preventing a repeat. But in doing so, they accidentally created a legal regime in which entire families could be arrested.   The point Star Trek has been making lately with the Illyrian storyline is sometimes shit is complicated, and that a law that is meant to protect, can also sometimes harm and we need to be able to listen, think and consider complex situations. And I also hate myself a bit for writing this. I should just be able to ignore all the terrible takes and ‘I haven’t watched but…’ people.

[lainalit]

Rhysand search history:

• statute of limitations for drugging and sa

• Do pregnant women have bodily autonomy

• How to become a feminist without doing anything

• What are the benefits of segregation

• How to get a conservatorship for my sister-in-law

• Can I be gay and homophobic

• Am I liable if I make someone k!ll themself

[mapsontheweb]

Non-Castilian dialects in Spain

Certain Autonomous Communities of Spain define “own language” in their statutes of autonomy Catalonia: Catalan (Aranese in Aran Valley) Balearic Islands: Catalan Valencia:Valencian Aragon: Aragonese and Catalan Basque Country : Basque Navarre: Spanish and Basque Galicia: Galician Asturias: Asturian . . .

by georgianmaps

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Joshua Wolfson, Madelyn Beck, and Maggie Mullen at WyoFile:

A Teton County judge on Monday struck down Wyoming’s two abortion bans, ruling they violate the state constitution. The decision by Judge Melissa Owens keeps most abortions legal in the state. She concluded a near-total ban on abortion and a prohibition against abortion medications — laws that were passed by state legislators in 2023 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — conflicted with a 2012 constitutional amendment that protects individuals’ rights to make their own health care decisions.  “The Defendants have not established a compelling governmental interest to exclude pregnant women from fully realizing the protections afforded by the Wyoming Constitution during the entire term of their pregnancies, nor have the Defendants established that the Abortion Statutes accomplish their interest,” Owens wrote. “The Court concludes that the Abortion Statutes suspend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions during the entire term of a pregnancy and are not reasonable or necessary to protect the health and general welfare of the people.”

Owens put the bans on hold last year while considering the arguments for and against their constitutionality. The bans were challenged by a group of women, health care providers and an aid group who asserted the laws violated a dozen provisions of the Wyoming Constitution. In Monday’s ruling, Owens honed in on the 2012 provision pertaining to health care autonomy. While the state of Wyoming, which defended the laws, asserted an abortion does not constitute a woman’s “health care decision” since it affects both the woman and the fetus. The judge disagreed. “The Health Care Amendment does not prohibit a person from making their own health care decision if their decision impacts any other person,” she wrote. “As the Plaintiffs argued, only a pregnant woman can make a decision to have an abortion. No other person can make that decision for a competent pregnant woman. To adopt Defendants’ argument the Court would have to rewrite the Health Care Amendment.”

The case is expected to be appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court. In the meantime, two medical providers in Wyoming — one in Jackson and one in Casper — continue to offer abortion services. An arsonist set fire to the Casper clinic in 2022, delaying its opening.

[...] Those included the near-total abortion ban, House Bill 152 – Life is a Human Right Act, and a ban on using medications to induce abortion called Senate File 109 – Prohibiting chemical abortions. Both of them passed the Legislature, though Gordon only signed the latter, simply letting the former go into effect without his signature.

Wyoming’s pair of abortion bans got struck down by Judge Melissa Owens, thanks to a 2012 referendum at the peak of anti-Obamacare backlash.

See Also:

AP, via HuffPost: Judge Strikes Down Wyoming Laws Banning Abortion, Abortion Pills

[useless-catalanfacts]

Any 1931. Signatures d'adhesió a l'Estatut de Catalunya instal·lada al Mercat de la Llibertat del barri de Gràcia, Barcelona.

Year 1931. Collecting signatures in favour of Catalonia’s autonomy statute in the Llibertat Marketplace of the Gràcia neighbourhood. Barcelona, Catalonia.

Foto: Josep Brangulí.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“Civic records reveal that beguines were rather sophisticated in their business and political dealings. The use of civil legal documents protected beguine autonomy against interference from families and ecclesiastical authority. Beguines paid civic taxes on their properties, annuities, and other income. Beguines did not claim tax exemption as monastics always did (even when well-meaning church authorities offered to assist beguines in gaining tax-exempt status).

When the local bishop attempted to convert a beguinage into church property-which seemed to have happened mostly in northern Europe and was feared by the beguines since it would put them under the direct authority of the bishop-the civil authorities refused to go along due to the potential loss of tax revenue. The municipalities needed these tax revenues coming from the beguines. When church authorities tried to suppress and disband beguinages on suspicion of heresy, or when they were simply trying to confiscate beguine property, the beguines found grateful supporters in the local magistrates who supported the women against legal action. Beguines were comfortable with such secular legal practices; they wisely established good relations with local civic authorities, registering beguinage statutes with town or city elders and including them in major decisions.”

- The Wisdom of the Beguines, Laura Swan

[dailyanarchistposts]

B.3.2 What kinds of property does the state protect?

Kropotkin argued that the state was “the instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling minorities.” [Anarchism, p. 286] In every system of class exploitation, a ruling class controls access to the means of production in order to extract tribute from labour. Capitalism is no exception. In this system the state maintains various kinds of “class monopolies” (to use Tucker’s phrase) to ensure that workers do not receive their “natural wage,” the full product of their labour. While some of these monopolies are obvious (such as tariffs, state granted market monopolies and so on), most are “behind the scenes” and work to ensure that capitalist domination does not need extensive force to maintain.

Under capitalism, there are four major kinds of property, or exploitative monopolies, that the state protects:

By enforcing these forms of property, the state ensures that the objective conditions within the economy favour the capitalist, with the worker free only to accept oppressive and exploitative contracts within which they forfeit their autonomy and promise obedience or face misery and poverty. Due to these “initiations of force” conducted previously to any specific contract being signed, capitalists enrich themselves at our expense because we “are compelled to pay a heavy tribute to property holders for the right of cultivating land or putting machinery into action.” [Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, p. 103] These conditions obviously also make a mockery of free agreement (see section B.4).

These various forms of state intervention are considered so normal many people do not even think of them as such. Thus we find defenders of “free market” capitalism thundering against forms of “state intervention” which are designed to aid the poor while seeing nothing wrong in defending intellectual property rights, corporations, absentee landlords and the other multitude of laws and taxes capitalists and their politicians have placed and kept upon the statute-books to skew the labour market in favour of themselves (see section F.8 on the state’s role in developing capitalism in the first place).

Needless to say, despite the supposedly subtle role of such “objective” pressures in controlling the working class, working class resistance has been such that capital has never been able to dispense with the powers of the state, both direct and indirect. When “objective” means of control fail, the capitalists will always turn to the use of state repression to restore the “natural” order. Then the “invisible” hand of the market is replaced by the visible fist of the state and the indirect means of securing ruling class profits and power are supplemented by more direct forms by the state. As we indicate in section D.1, state intervention beyond enforcing these forms of private property is the norm of capitalism, not the exception, and is done so to secure the power and profits of the capitalist class.

To indicate the importance of these state backed monopolies, we shall sketch their impact.

The credit monopoly, by which the state controls who can and cannot issue or loan money, reduces the ability of working class people to create their own alternatives to capitalism. By charging high amounts of interest on loans (which is only possible because competition is restricted) few people can afford to create co-operatives or one-person firms. In addition, having to repay loans at high interest to capitalist banks ensures that co-operatives often have to undermine their own principles by having to employ wage labour to make ends meet (see section J.5.11). It is unsurprising, therefore, that the very successful Mondragon co-operatives in the Basque Country created their own credit union which is largely responsible for the experiment’s success.

Just as increasing wages is an important struggle within capitalism, so is the question of credit. Proudhon and his followers supported the idea of a People’s Bank. If the working class could take over and control increasing amounts of money it could undercut capitalist power while building its own alternative social order (for money is ultimately the means of buying labour power, and so authority over the labourer — which is the key to surplus value production). Proudhon hoped that by credit being reduced to cost (namely administration charges) workers would be able to buy the means of production they needed. While most anarchists would argue that increased working class access to credit would no more bring down capitalism than increased wages, all anarchists recognise how more cheap credit, like more wages, can make life easier for working people and how the struggle for such credit, like the struggle for wages, might play a useful role in the development of the power of the working class within capitalism. Obvious cases that spring to mind are those where money has been used by workers to finance their struggles against capital, from strike funds and weapons to the periodical avoidance of work made possible by sufficiently high money income. Increased access to cheap credit would give working class people slightly more options than selling their liberty or facing misery (just as increased wages and unemployment benefit also gives us more options).

Therefore, the credit monopoly reduces competition to capitalism from co-operatives (which are generally more productive than capitalist firms) while at the same time forcing down wages for all workers as the demand for labour is lower than it would otherwise be. This, in turn, allows capitalists to use the fear of the sack to extract higher levels of surplus value from employees, so consolidating capitalist power (within and outwith the workplace) and expansion (increasing set-up costs and so creating oligarchic markets dominated by a few firms). In addition, high interest rates transfer income directly from producers to banks. Credit and money are both used as weapons in the class struggle. This is why, again and again, we see the ruling class call for centralised banking and use state action (from the direct regulation of money itself, to the attempted management of its flows by the manipulation of the interest) in the face of repeated threats to the nature (and role) of money within capitalism.

The credit monopoly has other advantages for the elite. The 1980s were marked by a rising debt burden on households as well as the increased concentration of wealth in the US. The two are linked. Due to “the decline in real hourly wages, and the stagnation in household incomes, the middle and lower classes have borrowed more to stay in place” and they have “borrowed from the very rich who have [become] richer.” By 1997, US households spent $1 trillion (or 17% of the after-tax incomes) on debt service. “This represents a massive upward redistribution of income.” And why did they borrow? The bottom 40% of the income distribution “borrowed to compensate for stagnant or falling incomes” while the upper 20% borrowed “mainly to invest.” Thus “consumer credit can be thought of as a way to sustain mass consumption in the face of stagnant or falling wages. But there’s an additional social and political bonus, from the point of view of the creditor class: it reduces pressure for higher wages by allowing people to buy goods they couldn’t otherwise afford. It helps to nourish both the appearance and reality of a middle-class standard of living in a time of polarisation. And debt can be a great conservatising force; with a large monthly mortgage and/or MasterCard bill, strikes and other forms of troublemaking look less appealing than they would other wise.” [Doug Henwood, Wall Street, pp. 64–6]

Thus credit “is an important form of social coercion; mortgaged workers are more pliable.” [Henwood, Op. Cit., p. 232] Money is power and any means which lessens that power by increasing the options of workers is considered a threat by the capitalist class — whether it is tight labour markets, state provided unemployment benefit, or cheap, self-organised, credit — will be resisted. The credit monopoly can, therefore, only be fought as part of a broader attack on all forms of capitalist social power.

In summary, the credit monopoly, by artificially restricting the option to work for ourselves, ensures we work for a boss while also enriching the few at the expense of the many.

The land monopoly consists of enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon personal occupancy and use. It also includes making the squatting of abandoned housing and other forms of property illegal. This leads to ground-rent, by which landlords get payment for letting others use the land they own but do not actually cultivate or use. It also allows the ownership and control of natural resources like oil, gas, coal and timber. This monopoly is particularly exploitative as the owner cannot claim to have created the land or its resources. It was available to all until the landlord claimed it by fencing it off and barring others from using it.

Until the nineteenth century, the control of land was probably the single most important form of privilege by which working people were forced to accept less than its product as a wage. While this monopoly is less important in a modern capitalist society (as few people know how to farm), it still plays a role (particularly in terms of ownership of natural resources). At a minimum, every home and workplace needs land on which to be built. Thus while cultivation of land has become less important, the use of land remains crucial. The land monopoly, therefore, ensures that working people find no land to cultivate, no space to set up shop and no place to sleep without first having to pay a landlord a sum for the privilege of setting foot on the land they own but neither created nor use. At best, the worker has mortgaged their life for decades to get their wee bit of soil or, at worse, paid their rent and remained as property-less as before. Either way, the landlords are richer for the exchange.

Moreover, the land monopoly did play an important role in creating capitalism (also see section F.8.3). This took two main forms. Firstly, the state enforced the ownership of large estates in the hands of a single family. Taking the best land by force, these landlords turned vast tracks of land into parks and hunting grounds so forcing the peasants little option but to huddle together on what remained. Access to superior land was therefore only possible by paying a rent for the privilege, if at all. Thus an elite claimed ownership of vacant lands, and by controlling access to it (without themselves ever directly occupying or working it) they controlled the labouring classes of the time. Secondly, the ruling elite also simply stole land which had traditionally been owned by the community. This was called enclosure, the process by which common land was turned into private property. Economist William Lazonick summaries this process:

“The reorganisation of agricultural land [the enclosure movement] … inevitably undermined the viability of traditional peasant agriculture . .. [it] created a sizeable labour force of disinherited peasants with only tenuous attachments to the land. To earn a living, many of these peasants turned to ‘domestic industry’ — the production of goods in their cottages … It was the eighteenth century expansion of domestic industry … that laid the basis for the British Industrial Revolution. The emergence of labour-saving machine technology transformed … textile manufacture … and the factory replaced the family home as the predominant site of production.” [Business Organisation and the Myth of the Market Economy, pp. 3–4]

By being able to “legally” bar people from “their” property, the landlord class used the land monopoly to ensure the creation of a class of people with nothing to sell but their labour (i.e. liberty). Land was taken from those who traditionally used it, violating common rights, and it was used by the landlord to produce for their own profit (more recently, a similar process has been going on in the Third World as well). Personal occupancy was replaced by landlordism and agricultural wage slavery, and so “the Enclosure Acts … reduced the agricultural population to misery, placed them at the mercy of the landowners, and forced a great number of them to migrate to the towns where, as proletarians, they were delivered to the mercy of the middle-class manufacturers.” [Peter Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 117–8]

A variation of this process took place in countries like America, where the state took over ownership of vast tracks of land and then sold it to farmers. As Howard Zinn notes, the Homestead Act “gave 160 acres of western land, unoccupied and publicly owned, to anyone who would cultivate it for fives years. Anyone willing to pay $1.25 an acre could buy a homestead. Few ordinary people had the $200 necessary to do this; speculators moved in and bought up much of the land.” [A People’s History of the United States, p. 233] Those farmers who did pay the money often had to go into debt to do so, placing an extra burden on their labour. Vast tracks of land were also given to railroad and other companies either directly (by gift or by selling cheap) or by lease (in the form of privileged access to state owned land for the purpose of extracting raw materials like lumber and oil). Either way, access to land was restricted and those who actually did work it ended up paying a tribute to the landlord in one form or another (either directly in rent or indirectly by repaying a loan).

This was the land monopoly in action (also see sections F.8.3, F.8.4 and F.8.5 for more details) and from it sprang the tools and equipment monopoly as domestic industry could not survive in the face of industrial capitalism. Confronted with competition from industrial production growing rich on the profits produced from cheap labour, the ability of workers to own their own means of production decreased over time. From a situation where most workers owned their own tools and, consequently, worked for themselves, we now face an economic regime were the tools and equipment needed for work are owned by a capitalists and, consequently, workers now work for a boss.

The tools and equipment monopoly is similar to the land monopoly as it is based upon the capitalist denying workers access to their capital unless the worker pays tribute to the owner for using it. While capital is “simply stored-up labour which has already received its pay in full” and so “the lender of capital is entitled to its return intact, and nothing more” (to use Tucker’s words), due to legal privilege the capitalist is in a position to charge a “fee” for its use. This is because, with the working class legally barred from both the land and available capital (the means of life), members of that class have little option but to agree to wage contracts which let capitalists extract a “fee” for the use of their equipment (see section B.3.3).

Thus the capital-monopoly is, like the land monopoly, enforced by the state and its laws. This is most clearly seen if you look at the main form in which such capital is held today, the corporation. This is nothing more than a legal construct. “Over the last 150 years,” notes Joel Bakan, “the corporation has risen from relative obscurity to becomes the world’s dominant economic institution.” The law has been changed to give corporations “limited liability” and other perks in order “to attract valuable incorporation business … by jettisoning unpopular [to capitalists] restrictions from … corporate laws.” Finally, the courts “fully transformed the corporation onto a ‘person,’ with its own identity … and empowered, like a real person, to conduct business in its own name, acquire assets, employ workers, pay taxes, and go to court to assert its rights and defend its actions.” In America, this was achieved using the 14th Amendment (which was passed to protect freed slaves!). In summary, the corporation “is not an independent ‘person’ with its own rights, needs, and desires … It is a state-created tool for advancing social and economic policy.” [The Corporation, p. 5, p. 13, p. 16 and p. 158]

Nor can it be said that this monopoly is the product of hard work and saving. The capital-monopoly is a recent development and how this situation developed is usually ignored. If not glossed over as irrelevant, some fairy tale is spun in which a few bright people saved and worked hard to accumulate capital and the lazy majority flocked to be employed by these (almost superhuman) geniuses. In reality, the initial capital for investing in industry came from wealth plundered from overseas or from the proceeds of feudal and landlord exploitation. In addition, as we discuss in section F.8, extensive state intervention was required to create a class of wage workers and ensure that capital was in the best position to exploit them. This explicit state intervention was scaled down once the capital-monopoly found its own feet.

Once this was achieved, state action became less explicit and becomes focused around defending the capitalists’ property rights. This is because the “fee” charged to workers was partly reinvested into capital, which reduced the prices of goods, ruining domestic industry and so narrowing the options available to workers in the economy. In addition, investment also increased the set-up costs of potential competitors, which continued the dispossession of the working class from the means of production as these “natural” barriers to entry into markets ensured few members of that class had the necessary funds to create co-operative workplaces of appropriate size. So while the land monopoly was essential to create capitalism, the “tools and equipment” monopoly that sprang from it soon became the mainspring of the system.

In this way usury became self-perpetuating, with apparently “free exchanges” being the means by which capitalist domination survives. In other words, “past initiations of force” combined with the current state protection of property ensure that capitalist domination of society continues with only the use of “defensive” force (i.e. violence used to protect the power of property owners against unions, strikes, occupations, etc.). The “fees” extracted from previous generations of workers has ensured that the current one is in no position to re-unite itself with the means of life by “free competition” (in other words, the paying of usury ensures that usury continues). Needless to say, the surplus produced by this generation will be used to increase the capital stock and so ensure the dispossession of future generations and so usury becomes self-perpetuating. And, of course, state protection of “property” against “theft” by working people ensures that property remains theft and the real thieves keep their plunder.

As far as the “ideas” monopoly is concerned, this has been used to enrich capitalist corporations at the expense of the general public and the inventor. Patents make an astronomical price difference. Until the early 1970s, for example, Italy did not recognise drug patents. As a result, Roche Products charged the British National Health Service over 40 times more for patented components of Librium and Valium than charged by competitors in Italy. As Tucker argued, the patent monopoly “consists in protecting investors and authors against competition for a period long enough to enable them to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labour measure of their services, — in other words, in giving certain people a right of property for a term of years and facts of nature, and the power to extract tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth which should be open to all.” [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 86]

The net effect of this can be terrible. The Uruguay Round of global trade negotiations “strengthen intellectual property rights. American and other Western drug companies could now stop drug companies in India and Brazil from ‘stealing’ their intellectual property. But these drug companies in the developing world were making these life-saving drugs available to their citizens at a fraction of the price at which the drugs were sold by the Western drug companies … Profits of the Western drug companies would go up … but the increases profits from sales in the developing world were small, since few could afford the drugs … [and so] thousands were effectively condemned to death, becomes governments and individuals in developing countries could no longer pay the high prices demanded.” [Joseph Stiglitz, Globalisation and its discontents, pp. 7–8] While international outrage over AIDS drugs eventually forced the drug companies to sell the drugs at cost price in late 2001, the underlying intellectual property rights regime was still in place.

The irony that this regime was created in a process allegedly about trade liberalisation should not go unnoticed. “Intellectual property rights,” as Noam Chomsky correctly points out, “are a protectionist measure, they have nothing to do with free trade — in fact, they’re the exact opposite of free trade.” [Understanding Power, p. 282] The fundamental injustice of the “ideas monopoly” is exacerbated by the fact that many of these patented products are the result of government funding of research and development, with private industry simply reaping monopoly profits from technology it did not spend a penny to develop. In fact, extending government aid for research and development is considered an important and acceptable area of state intervention by governments and companies verbally committed to the neo-liberal agenda.

The “ideas monopoly” actually works against its own rationale. Patents suppress innovation as much as they encourage it. The research scientists who actually do the work of inventing are required to sign over patent rights as a condition of employment, while patents and industrial security programs used to bolster competitive advantage on the market actually prevent the sharing of information, so reducing innovation (this evil is being particularly felt in universities as the new “intellectual property rights” regime is spreading there). Further research stalls as the incremental innovation based on others’ patents is hindered while the patent holder can rest on their laurels as they have no fear of a competitor improving the invention. They also hamper technical progress because, by their very nature, preclude the possibility of independent discovery. Also, of course, some companies own a patent explicitly not to use it but simply to prevent someone else from so doing.

As Noam Chomsky notes, today trade agreements like GATT and NAFTA “impose a mixture of liberalisation and protection, going far beyond trade, designed to keep wealth and power firmly in the hands of the masters.” Thus “investor rights are to be protected and enhanced” and a key demand “is increased protection for ‘intellectual property,’ including software and patents, with patent rights extending to process as well as product” in order to “ensure that US-based corporations control the technology of the future” and so “locking the poor majority into dependence on high-priced products of Western agribusiness, biotechnology, the pharmaceutical industry and so on.” [World Orders, Old and New, p. 183, p. 181 and pp. 182–3] This means that if a company discovers a new, more efficient, way of producing a drug then the “ideas monopoly” will stop them and so “these are not only highly protectionist measures … they’re a blow against economic efficiency and technological process — that just shows you how much ‘free trade’ really is involved in all of this.” [Chomsky, Understanding Power, p. 282]

All of which means that the corporations (and their governments) in the developed world are trying to prevent emergence of competition by controlling the flow of technology to others. The “free trade” agreements are being used to create monopolies for their products and this will either block or slow down the rise of competition. While corporate propagandists piously denounce “anti-globalisation” activists as enemies of the developing world, seeking to use trade barriers to maintain their (Western) lifestyles at the expense of the poor nations, the reality is different. The “ideas monopoly” is being aggressively used to either suppress or control the developing world’s economic activity in order to keep the South as, effectively, one big sweatshop. As well as reaping monopoly profits directly, the threat of “low-wage” competition from the developing world can be used to keep the wage slaves of the developed world in check and so maintain profit levels at home.

This is not all. Like other forms of private property, the usury produced by it helps ensure it becomes self-perpetuating. By creating “legal” absolute monopolies and reaping the excess profits these create, capitalists not only enrich themselves at the expense of others, they also ensure their dominance in the market. Some of the excess profits reaped due to patents and copyrights are invested back into the company, securing advantages by creating various “natural” barriers to entry for potential competitors. Thus patents impact on business structure, encouraging the formation and dominance of big business.

Looking at the end of the nineteenth century, the ideas monopoly played a key role in promoting cartels and, as a result, laid the foundation for what was to become corporate capitalism in the twentieth century. Patents were used on a massive scale to promote concentration of capital, erect barriers to entry, and maintain a monopoly of advanced technology in the hands of western corporations. The exchange or pooling of patents between competitors, historically, has been a key method for the creation of cartels in industry. This was true especially of the electrical appliance, communications, and chemical industries. For example, by the 1890s, two large companies, General Electric and Westinghouse, “monopolised a substantial part of the American electrical manufacturing industry, and their success had been in large measure the result of patent control.” The two competitors simply pooled their patents and “yet another means of patent and market control had developed: corporate patent-pooling agreements. Designed to minimise the expense and uncertainties of conflict between the giants, they greatly reinforced the position of each vis-à-vis lesser competitors and new entrants into the field.” [David Noble, American By Design, p. 10]

While the patent system is, in theory, promoted to defend the small scale inventor, in reality it is corporate interests that benefit. As David Noble points out, the “inventor, the original focus of the patent system, tended to increasingly to ‘abandon’ his patent in exchange for corporate security; he either sold or licensed his patent rights to industrial corporations or assigned them to the company of which he became an employee, bartering his genius for a salary. In addition, by means of patent control gained through purchase, consolidation, patent pools, and cross-licensing agreements, as well as by regulated patent production through systematic industrial research, the corporations steadily expanded their ‘monopoly of monopolies.’” As well as this, corporations used “patents to circumvent anti-trust laws.” This reaping of monopoly profits at the expense of the customer made such “tremendous strides” between 1900 and 1929 and “were of such proportions as to render subsequent judicial and legislative effects to check corporate monopoly through patent control too little too late.” [Op. Cit., p. 87, p. 84 and p. 88]

Things have changed little since Edwin Prindle, a corporate patent lawyer, wrote in 1906 that:

“Patents are the best and most effective means of controlling competition. They occasionally give absolute command of the market, enabling their owner to name the price without regard to the cost of production… Patents are the only legal form of absolute monopoly .. . The power which a patentee has to dictate the conditions under which his monopoly may be exercised had been used to form trade agreements throughout practically entire industries.” [quoted by Noble, Op. Cit., p. 89]

Thus, the ruling class, by means of the state, is continually trying to develop new forms of private property by creating artificial scarcities and monopolies, e.g. by requiring expensive licenses to engage in particular types of activities, such as broadcasting or producing certain kinds of medicines or products. In the “Information Age,” usury (use fees) from intellectual property are becoming a much more important source of income for elites, as reflected in the attention paid to strengthening mechanisms for enforcing copyright and patents in the recent GATT agreements, or in US pressure on foreign countries (like China) to respect such laws.

This allows corporations to destroy potential competitors and ensure that their prices can be set as high as possible (and monopoly profits maintained indefinitely). It also allows them to enclose ever more of the common inheritance of humanity, place it under private ownership and charge the previous users money to gain access to it. As Chomsky notes, “U.S. corporations must control seeds, plant varieties, drugs, and the means of life generally.” [World Orders, Old and New, p. 183] This has been termed “bio-piracy” (a better term may be the new enclosures) and it is a process by which “international companies [are] patenting traditional medicines or foods.” They “seek to make money from ‘resources’ and knowledge that rightfully belongs to the developing countries” and “in so doing, they squelch domestic firms that have long provided the products. While it is not clear whether these patents would hold up in court if they were effectively challenged, it is clear that the less developed countries many not have the legal and financial resources required to challenge the patent.” [Joseph Stiglitz, Op. Cit., p. 246] They may also not withstand the economic pressures they may experience if the international markets conclude that such acts indicate a regime that is less that business friendly. That the people who were dependent on the generic drugs or plants can no longer afford them is as irrelevant as the impediments to scientific and technological advance they create.

In other words, capitalists desire to skew the “free market” in their favour by ensuring that the law reflects and protects their interests, namely their “property rights.” By this process they ensure that co-operative tendencies within society are crushed by state-supported “market forces.” As Noam Chomsky puts it, modern capitalism is “state protection and public subsidy for the rich, market discipline for the poor.” [“Rollback, Part I”, Z Magazine] Self-proclaimed defenders of “free market” capitalism are usually nothing of the kind, while the few who actually support it only object to the “public subsidy” aspect of modern capitalism and happily support state protection for property rights.

All these monopolies seek to enrich the capitalist (and increase their capital stock) at the expense of working people, to restrict their ability to undermine the ruling elites power and wealth. All aim to ensure that any option we have to work for ourselves (either individually or collectively) is restricted by tilting the playing field against us, making sure that we have little option but to sell our labour on the “free market” and be exploited. In other words, the various monopolies make sure that “natural” barriers to entry (see section C.4) are created, leaving the heights of the economy in the control of big business while alternatives to capitalism are marginalised at its fringes.

So it is these kinds of property and the authoritarian social relationships that they create which the state exists to protect. It should be noted that converting private to state ownership (i.e. nationalisation) does not fundamentally change the nature of property relationships; it just removes private capitalists and replaces them with bureaucrats (as we discuss in section B.3.5).

[rabbitcruiser]

Statute of Westminster (11 December 1931) gave complete legislative independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland (Free State), and Newfoundland (not then part of Canada).

Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster

The Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster is observed on December 11 every year. Although it is a holiday, Canadians still go to work, and it is pretty much an ordinary day for them. It is a nod to Canadian independence. The “Union Jack,” where logistics allow, is flown along with the Maple Leaf on federal buildings, airports, military bases from dawn to dusk to mark this day. It commemorates a British law that was passed on 11 December 1931. It was Canada’s final achievement of independence from Britain. The Statute of Westminster gave Canada and the other Commonwealth Dominions legal equality with Britain. These countries now had full legal freedom — except in areas which they chose. The Statute also defined the powers of Canada’s Parliament and those of the other Dominions. The day is mostly celebrated in Canada.

History of Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster

Before 1931, the British government had much influence over legislation passed by the Commonwealth Dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State, and Newfoundland). Things began to change after the First World War — after the sacrifices of Canada and other Dominions on the battlefield stirred feelings of nationhood and desires for complete autonomy.

Canada began to assert its independence in foreign policy in the early 1920s. In 1922, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King denied help to British occupation forces in Turkey without first getting the approval of his Parliament. Later on, in 1923, Canada signed a fisheries’ treaty with the United States without seeking permission from Britain. In 1926, Canada established an embassy in Washington, DC, and Vincent Massey was named its first Canadian minister. This made him Canada’s first-ever diplomatic envoy posted to a foreign capital.

The Imperial Conference of 1926 was a more formal step. It gave legal backbone to the Balfour Report from earlier that year. The report had announced that Britain and its Dominions were constitutionally “equal in status.” The work of changing the Commonwealth’s complex legal system continued at the 1929 Conference on the Operation of Dominion Legislation. The Imperial Conference of 1930 further confirmed the need for the Dominions to have greater autonomy of their legislature. On 11 December 1931, the Statute of Westminster was passed by the British Parliament. This was done at the request and with the consent of the Dominions. This statute ratified the Dominions’ legislative independence. Although it had been granted the right to self-government in 1867, Canada did not enjoy full legal autonomy until the Statute was passed on December 11, 1931.

Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster timeline

15th and 16th Centuries Age of Discovery

Portugal and Spain pioneer European exploration of the globe, leading to the discovery of continents such as the Americas.

1757 Britain in India

Britain becomes the dominant power in the Indian subcontinent after defeating the Mughal in the Battle of Plassey.

1783 The American War of Independence

The war results in Britain losing some of its oldest and most populous colonies in North America.

1956 The Suez Crisis

The Suez Crisis confirms Britain's decline as a global power, because the Egyptian president nationalizes the Canal, owned by the Suez Canal Company, and formerly controlled by French and British interests.

Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster FAQs

Who is the current sovereign under the Statute of Westminster?

Today, the Statute of Westminster’s restrictive clause is still valid, so the current sovereign is Queen Elizabeth II. Her acting advisors are known as federal ministers of the Crown.

Which is more important: the Statute of Westminster or confederation?

The Statute of Westminster is arguably a more momentous occasion in Canada’s journey to sovereignty than to a confederation.

When did New Zealand adopt the Statute of Westminster?

The Parliament of New Zealand adopted the Statute of Westminster in November 1947.

How To Observe Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster

Explore from your armchair

Study your country’s history

Play a game such as balderdash

We have only given you brief information on the statute. Observe the anniversary by reading in detail about the statute — and things relating to it.

Britain had successfully colonized some of the biggest nations in the world. On this day, read about your country’s past — colonial or not — and try to understand how colonialism continues to affect the world today.

There are games that have categories including really strange laws from around the world, which would be fun with friends and family.  While you are all laughing, remember that most laws had reasons, and have fun discussing that.

5 Facts About Canada That Will Blow Your Mind

Canadians eat the most donuts in the world

Bigfoot is legally protected in Canada

Smelling bad is illegal in Canada

The money is vision-impaired friendly

Canada has two national sports

There are only 30 million people in Canada, but over 1 billion donuts are eaten annually.

It is illegal to kill a Sasquatch in British Columbia.

Anyone smelling offensive in a public place could face two years in jail.

Canadian banknotes have braille writing on them for the blind.

Ice hockey and lacrosse are the national sports of Canada.

Why We Love the Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster

It’s a part of history

This day encourages us to explore our history

A day to learn and chat about laws

The Statute of Westminster played an important role in the history of Canada and other former dominions. The anniversary acknowledges this crucial day in history.

[kistels]

signes d'un langage corporel soumis pour les maris obéissants

Bonjour, lecteurs audacieux !

Dans notre danse sociale fascinante, le langage corporel est le langage tacite que nous comprenons tous. Le langage corporel peut être un outil puissant pour communiquer la servilité, le respect et la révérence. Un mari peut utiliser son langage corporel pour démontrer physiquement à sa femme le respect qu’il lui porte.

Voici quelques exemples de langage corporel servile et soumis qu’il peut pratiquer :

1. Posture ouverte : Une posture ouverte – avec les bras et les jambes non croisés – signale une attention et une volonté d’écouter et de comprendre. Cela transmet un sentiment d’humilité et une ouverture à recevoir des conseils et une vulnérabilité.

2. Hochements de tête : Un homme qui hoche la tête lorsque sa femme parle peut être un puissant indicateur d'accord et d'affirmation. Cela signifie qu'il reconnaît et respecte ses opinions.

3. Contact visuel : Un contact visuel constant et respectueux signifie attention et respect. Cela indique qu'il apprécie ce qu'elle dit et fait, plaçant ses opinions et ses désirs au premier plan.

4. Éviter le contact visuel direct : Garder un contact visuel réduit, surtout lorsqu'on lui parle, peut signifier de la déférence. Cependant, il est important de trouver un équilibre afin que cela ne donne pas l'impression d'être évasif ou sournois.

5. Distanciation respectueuse : Même en couple, le respect de l'espace personnel est crucial. Cela envoie un message clair de respect de son autonomie et de ses limites personnelles.

6. Se tenir derrière ou sur le côté : Plutôt que de se tenir directement à côté d'elle ou devant elle, un homme peut se tenir légèrement derrière ou à ses côtés, lui permettant de diriger ou de prendre la priorité. C'est la technique des majordomes : 12 choses que les hommes soumis peuvent apprendre des majordomes. 

7. Marcher un pas en arrière : Lorsque vous marchez ensemble, prendre position un pas derrière elle peut être un geste symbolique de sa montrer la voie.

8. Gestes paumes vers le haut : les gestes de la main avec les paumes vers le haut suggèrent l'ouverture et la soumission, indiquant une volonté de suivre son exemple et de servir.

9. Miroir : refléter subtilement son langage corporel peut signaler un sentiment de compréhension et d'empathie. Cela montre qu'il est à l'écoute de ses sentiments et de ses besoins.

10. S'agenouiller : Il s'agit d'un geste fort de soumission, souvent utilisé dans des rituels FLR plus formels ou des moments de profonde révérence.

11. Abaissement physique : qu'il s'agisse d'abaisser le corps lorsqu'elle est assise ou de s'assurer qu'il est sur un plan inférieur (comme s'asseoir par terre alors qu'elle est sur un canapé), cela peut être un signe non verbal de son statut élevé.

12. Embrasser sa main ou ses pieds : Selon le niveau de confort et la dynamique de la relation, ce geste peut être un signe de profond respect et d'adoration.

13. Attendre la permission : Avant de s'asseoir, de manger ou d'effectuer certaines actions, faire une pause et attendre un signe de tête ou un signal verbal de sa part peut montrer le respect de son autorité.

langage corporel soumis

Il est essentiel de comprendre que ces actions doivent être consensuelles et confortables pour les deux parties impliquées. Ils doivent améliorer la dynamique relationnelle et ne pas être forcés ou se sentir contre nature. Il est également bénéfique pour les couples de discuter de la signification et des implications de ces gestes, en s'assurant qu'ils correspondent à leur vision commune de la relation.

Voir aussi : Langage soumis pour maris obéissants 

Jusqu'à la prochaine fois, restez audacieux, restez autonome et rappelez-vous : lorsque les hommes expriment leur soumission par le langage corporel, ils ne se contentent pas d'exprimer du respect ; ils défendent un monde où les femmes dirigent et que les hommes soutiennent fièrement.

[meret118]

Romanick cited how North Dakota Constitution’s guarantees “inalienable rights,” including “life and liberty.”

“The abortions statutes at issue in this case infringes on a woman’s fundamental right to procreative autonomy, and are not narrowly tailored to promote women’s health or to protect unborn human life,” Romanick wrote in his 24-page order. “The law as currently drafted takes away a woman’s liberty and her right to pursue and obtain safety and happiness.”

[haggishlyhagging]

The anarchist-feminists and their ideology possess a significance that extends beyond anarchism. The purpose of this study is not so much to examine anarchism through the lives of the women who espoused it as it is to understand the ways in which a group of women responded to the social, sexual, and economic upheavals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The anarchist women are important in this sense because we have come to realize that the antistatist, antiauthoritarian, decentralist visions of the anarchists, as well as their emphasis on discovering the "natural" constraints on human behavior, are an integral part of our intellectual heritage. While I do not go so far as David de Leon, who asserts that anarchism is the American radical tradition, I believe that its impact on American thought has been misunderstood and underrated. Anarchist excesses in thought and action signify more than eccentricity; the anarchists carried to their logical and extreme ends tendencies that already existed in American society. Anarchism provides us with a useful yardstick for measuring the boundaries of acceptable deviation from conventional patterns of behavior.

Although the anarchist women considered themselves exempt from the notions of womanhood that restricted their less liberated sisters, we realize that their connections to the larger society were closer and more complex than they themselves recognized. It is in this context that the role of these women as feminists becomes important not only in terms of our understanding of their relationship to the women's rights movement of a century ago but also in terms of contemporary feminism. Although late-twentieth-century feminists may recognize that political and legal rights wrested from the state have not resulted in fundamental equality, they still emphasize the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment or other antidiscriminatory statutes, partly because legal equality with men is a gain that the existing institutional structure can accommodate without fundamental changes in the structure of society. It would be much harder for feminists to retain the support of political moderates if they asserted that political, legal, and economic parity, while essential for an egalitarian society, does not assure true equality. For the most part, contemporary feminists have not confronted the question of whether inequality may be inherent in our more intimate institutional arrangements, such as the family. Some radical feminists, perhaps most notably Shulamith Firestone, have argued that we must eradicate existing notions of family life and alter our patterns of sexual behavior if we expect to eliminate inequality of the sexes. But, on the whole, feminists have confined their scrutiny of familial and sexual relationships to such issues as an enhanced role for fathers in childrearing, the necessity for readily available and affordable child care, housework-sharing, and the right to abortion. All of these are important concerns, yet they do not come to grips with the question of the extent to which the family relationship itself may be inegalitarian. Among the anarchist women of a century ago we find the kind of serious probing of sexual and familial relationships that could serve as a preface to a new feminist analysis.

The anarchist-feminists insisted that female subordination was rooted in an obsolete system of sexual and familial relationships. Attacking marriage, often urging sexual varietism, insisting on both economic and psychological independence, and sometimes denying maternal responsibility, they argued that personal autonomy was an essential component of sexual equality, and that political and legal rights could not of themselves engender such equality. Although in seeking liberation they often went to extremes—even from a twentieth-century point of view—their recognition of the significance of sexual and domestic relationships in developing a feminist theory commends them to our attention.

-Margaret S. Marsh, Anarchist Women, 1870-1920

[titou-nz]

Johannesbourg - South Africa

Organisation administrative

Ancien statut

Avant 1994, la ville de Johannesbourg se divisait administrativement entre onze autorités locales (sept blanches et quatre noires ou métis). Les sept administrations blanches s'autogéraient financièrement à 90 % et dépensaient 93 USD par personne, alors que les quatre administrations noires s'autofinançaient à seulement 10 % et ne dépensaient que 15 USD par personne.

Jusqu'en 2001, la fonction de maire était surtout représentative et honorifique. Le mandat était d'une année et le titulaire était un conseiller municipal élu par ses pairs. Il était souvent le candidat présenté par le caucus du groupe municipal majoritaire surtout quand celui-ci détenait la majorité absolue des sièges (cas du parti uni de 1952 à 1977) sinon en alternance avec le parti le plus représentatif. Pour exercer la fonction de maire, le principe était souvent de choisir le conseiller municipal par ordre d'ancienneté même si cela n'était pas toujours systématique. Le pouvoir exécutif et l'autorité municipale étaient pour leur part entre les mains du management comittee, incarné et dirigé durant une décade (fin des années 1970 à fin des années 1980) par son président, Jean Francois (Obie) Oberholzer (part uni puis indépendant à partir de 1977).

La démarcation municipale de la ville de Johannesbourg est redéfinie en 1995 pour englober des quartiers noirs et un conseil municipal post-apartheid est créé. Durant cette période, la devise de la municipalité est « une ville, un contribuable » pour marquer l'objectif de traiter la distribution inégale des revenus et des impôts. Les revenus des quartiers traditionnellement blancs et prospères doivent subvenir aux services des quartiers les plus pauvres. La ville est divisée en quatre arrondissements, chacun avec une autonomie territoriale et une autorité locale sous le contrôle d'un conseil central métropolitain. De plus, les circonscriptions sont modifiées pour inclure les quartiers riches comme Sandton et Randburg, et les townships voisins pauvres comme Soweto.

En outre, dans le cadre de la réforme transitoire des gouvernements locaux, le maire élu à la suite des élections municipales de 1995, et réélu chaque année, reste en fonction durant l'intégralité de la mandature.

Nouveau statut

La ville de Johannesbourg se confond aujourd'hui avec la municipalité créée en 2000 et comprend onze régions administratives.

Depuis 2000 et la réorganisation des pouvoirs locaux ayant amené notamment à la création de la nouvelle métropole de Johannesburg, la fonction de maire est devenue une fonction pleinement exécutive et son titulaire est élu par la majorité des membres du conseil municipal après avoir été désigné comme candidat de l'un des partis représentés au conseil.

Lors des élections municipales du 1er mars 2006, l'ANC remporte de nouveau la mairie avec 62 % des suffrages (136 sièges) contre plus d'un tiers des suffrages à l'Alliance démocratique (59 sièges). Lors des élections municipales de 2011, l'ANC est de nouveau vainqueur et choisit le conseiller municipal Mpho Parks Tau (ANC) pour succéder à Masondo. En août 2016, un candidat non issu de l'ANC, Herman Mashaba (Alliance démocratique), devient maire de la municipalité de Johannesbourg, soutenu par six partis d’opposition (totalisant 144 sièges sur 270) pour faire barrage au candidat de l’ANC, pourtant arrivé en tête lors des élections municipales sans toutefois obtenir la majorité absolue des sièges (45 % des voix contre 38 % à la DA). C'est la première fois depuis 1995 et la première fois depuis la création de l'actuelle métropole unifiée en 2000 que l'ANC ne contrôle pas Johannesbourg. En novembre 2019, Mashaba démissionne. L'ANC reprend le contrôle du conseil municipal et élit Geoff Makhubo le 4 décembre suivant.

[al-mayriti]

my great grandfather was born in 1903 and died in 1989 which means he lived through:

the rule of alfonso xiii (1901-1923)

the melilla war and the tragic week (1909)

the creation of the spanish protectorate in morocco (1912)

wwi (1914-1918)

the institution of the first national parks (picos de europa and oropesa) (1918)

the inauguration of the madrid metro (1919)

the dictatorship of primo de rivera (1923-1929)

the 'dictablanda' (soft dictatorship) of berenguer (1930)

the second spanish republic (1931-1936)

the spanish civil war (1936-1939)

the dictatorship of francisco franco (1939-1975)

wwii (1939-1945)

spain enters the un (1955)

the independence of morocco (1956)

the palomares incident (1966)

eta starts doing terrorist attacks (1968)

the carrero blanco assasination <333 (1973)

franco dies (1975)

the transition to democracy under king juan carlos i (1975-1981)

the failed coup of tejero (1981)

the statute of autonomy of castilla-la mancha (where he's from) (1982)

decriminalization of abortion (1985)

spain enters nato and what would be the eu (1986)

he died during felipe gonzález's presidency (there were elections in 1989 and he won, starting his third term that year)

[mapsontheweb]

The Habsburg monarchy from 1849 to 1868

“Atlas of European history”, Times Books, 1994

via cartesdhistoire

Having defeated the revolution of 1848 in Hungary, Vienna made substantial changes to Hungarian territory: Transylvania was detached, Croatia was enlarged and the voivodship of Serbia and the Banat of Tamiš was created (November 1849).

This situation continued until the Austrian defeats in Italy in 1859 and against Prussia in 1866. After the abolition of the voivodship of Serbia and the Banat in 1860, Emperor Franz Joseph restored the autonomy of Hungary through the Compromise of 1867 (“Österreichisch-Ungarischer Ausgleich”). Hungary obtained what it demanded in 1848: a government responsible to Parliament and the management of its internal affairs, to the great dismay of the non-Magyar populations who were therefore subject to the centralizing model of Budapest.

The Compromise consists of the Constitutional Statute concerning Austria and its dependencies and the Constitutional Pact concluded between Franz Joseph and the Hungarian Nation. Indeed, the Hungarians have always seen their integration into the Habsburg monarchy as a voluntary act and not as a subjection.

The “Ausgleich” was completed in November 1868 by a Hungarian-Croatian compromise (“Nagoda”) negotiated between Budapest and the Zagreb Diet. Croatia-Slavonia now forms an autonomous kingdom within Hungary with its own administration and its Diet (“Sabor”).

Hungary recovered Transylvania in 1867 and the military borders were placed under civil administration between 1851 and 1881.

Hungary (Transleithania) brings together 20,886,000 inhabitants in a territory which is generally that of the Crown of Saint-Etienne. This is also its official name: “Country of the Crown of Saint-Étienne”. Austria (Cisleithania) is the rest of the Habsburg territory, officially named "Kingdoms and countries represented in the Imperial Diet", a more disparate group of 28,275,000 inhabitants - including the Countries of the Crown of Saint Wenceslas: Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia.

[wikipedia-the-non-official]

What's Austrailia (i want to bring up the wikipedia article for it)

Australia. , officially the Commonwealth of Australia,[19] is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands.[20] Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest,[21] flattest,[22] and driest inhabited continent,[23][24] with the least fertile soils.[25][26] It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, tropical savannas in the north, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the last glacial period.[27][28][29] They settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world.[30] Australia's written history commenced with European maritime exploration. The Dutch were the first known Europeans to reach Australia, in 1606. British colonisation began in 1788 with the establishment of the penal colony of New South Wales. By the mid-19th century, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and five additional self-governing British colonies were established, each gaining responsible government by 1890. The colonies federated in 1901, forming the Commonwealth of Australia.[31] This continued a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942, and culminating in the Australia Acts of 1986.[31]

Australia is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states and ten territories: the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia; the major mainland Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory; and other minor or external territories. Its population of nearly 27 million[13] is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard.[32] Canberra is the nation's capital, while its most populous cities are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, which each possess a population of at least one million inhabitants.[33] Australian governments have promoted multiculturalism since the 1970s.[34] Australia is culturally diverse and has one of the highest foreign-born populations in the world.[35][36] Its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade relations are crucial to the country's economy, which generates its income from various sources: predominantly services (including banking, real estate and international education) as well as mining, manufacturing and agriculture.[37][38] It ranks highly for quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights.[39]

Australia has a highly developed market economy and one of the highest per capita incomes globally.[40][41][42] It is a middle power, and has the world's thirteenth-highest military expenditure.[43][44] It is a member of international groups including the United Nations; the G20; the OECD; the World Trade Organization; Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation; the Pacific Islands Forum; the Pacific Community; the Commonwealth of Nations; and the defence and security organisations ANZUS, AUKUS, and the Five Eyes. It is also a major non-NATO ally of the United States.[45]

The name Australia (pronounced /əˈstreɪliə/ in Australian English[46]) is derived from the Latin Terra Australis ("southern land"), a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times.[47] Several 16th-century cartographers used the word Australia on maps, but not to identify modern Australia.[48] When Europeans began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.[N 5]

Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as New Holland, a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland) and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts.[N 6] The name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the Earth".[54] The first time that Australia appears to have been officially used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst.[55] In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted.[56] In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially by that name.[57] The first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office.[58]

Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz", "Straya" and "Down Under".[59] Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", and "the Wide Brown Land". The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country".[60]

Indigenous Australians comprise two broad groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland (and surrounding islands including Tasmania), and the Torres Strait Islanders, who are a distinct Melanesian people. Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun 50,000 to 65,000 years ago,[27][61][62][28] with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast Asia.[63] It is uncertain how many waves of immigration may have contributed to these ancestors of modern Aboriginal Australians.[64][65] The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land is possibly the oldest site showing the presence of humans in Australia.[66][67] The oldest human remains found are the Lake Mungo remains, which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago.[68][69]

Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continuous cultures on Earth.[30][70][71][72] At the time of first European contact, Aboriginal Australians were complex hunter-gatherers with diverse economies and societies, and spread across at least 250 different language groups.[73][74] Estimates of the Aboriginal population before British settlement range from 300,000 to one million.[75][76] Aboriginal Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime.[77] Certain groups engaged in fire-stick farming,[78][79] fish farming,[80][81] and built semi-permanent shelters.[82][83] The extent to which some groups engaged in agriculture is controversial.[84][85][86]

The Torres Strait Islander people first settled their islands around 4,000 years ago.[87] Culturally and linguistically distinct from mainland Aboriginal peoples, they were seafarers and obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas.[88] Agriculture also developed on some islands and villages appeared by the 1300s.[89]

By the mid-18th century in northern Australia, contact, trade and cross-cultural engagement had been established between local Aboriginal groups and Makassan trepangers, visiting from present-day Indonesia.[90][91][92]

European exploration and colonisation

The Dutch are the first Europeans that recorded sighting and making landfall on the Australian mainland.[93] The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken, captained by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon.[94] He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February 1606 at the Pennefather River near the modern town of Weipa on Cape York.[95] Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through and navigated the Torres Strait Islands.[96] The Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent "New Holland" during the 17th century, and although no attempt at settlement was made,[95] a number of shipwrecks left men either stranded or, as in the case of the Batavia in 1629, marooned for mutiny and murder, thus becoming the first Europeans to permanently inhabit the continent.[97] In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named "New South Wales" and claimed for Great Britain.[98]

Following the loss of its American colonies in 1783, the British Government sent a fleet of ships, the First Fleet, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to establish a new penal colony in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the Union Flag raised at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788,[99][100] a date which later became Australia's national day.

Most early settlers were convicts, transported for petty crimes and assigned as labourers or servants to "free settlers" (willing immigrants). Once emancipated, convicts tended to integrate into colonial society. Martial law was declared to suppress convict rebellions and uprisings,[101] and lasted for two years following the 1808 Rum Rebellion, the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia.[102] Over the next two decades, social and economic reforms, together with the establishment of a Legislative Council and Supreme Court, saw New South Wales transition from a penal colony to a civil society.[103][104][105][page needed]

The indigenous population declined for 150 years following European settlement, mainly due to infectious disease.[106][107] British colonial authorities did not sign any treaties with Aboriginal groups.[107][108] As settlement expanded, thousands of Indigenous people died in frontier conflicts while others were dispossessed of their traditional lands.[109]

In 1803, a settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania),[110] and in 1813, Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, opening the interior to European settlement.[111] The British claim extended to the whole Australian continent in 1827 when Major Edmund Lockyer established a settlement on King George Sound (modern-day Albany).[112] The Swan River Colony (present-day Perth) was established in 1829, evolving into the largest Australian colony by area, Western Australia.[113] In accordance with population growth, separate colonies were carved from New South Wales: Tasmania in 1825, South Australia in 1836, New Zealand in 1841, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859.[114] South Australia was founded as a free colony—it never accepted transported convicts.[115] Growing opposition to the convict system culminated in its abolition in the eastern colonies by the 1850s. Initially a free colony, Western Australia practised penal transportation from 1850 to 1868.[116]

The six colonies individually gained responsible government between 1855 and 1890, thus becoming elective democracies managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire.[117] The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs.[118]

In the mid-19th century, explorers such as Burke and Wills charted Australia's interior.[119] A series of gold rushes beginning in the early 1850s led to an influx of new migrants from China, North America and continental Europe,[120] as well as outbreaks of bushranging and civil unrest; the latter peaked in 1854 when Ballarat miners launched the Eureka Rebellion against gold license fees.[121] The 1860s saw a surge in blackbirding, where Pacific Islanders were forced into indentured labour, mainly in Queensland.[122][123]

From 1886, Australian colonial governments began introducing policies resulting in the removal of many Aboriginal children from their families and communities.[124] The Second Boer War (1899–1902) marked the largest overseas deployment of Australia's colonial

Federation to the World Wars

On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved after a decade of planning, constitutional conventions and referendums, resulting in the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia as a nation under the new Australian Constitution.[127]

After the 1907 Imperial Conference, Australia and several other self-governing British settler colonies were given the status of self-governing dominions within the British Empire.[128] Australia was one of the founding members of the League of Nations in 1920,[129] and subsequently of the United Nations in 1945.[130] The Statute of Westminster 1931 formally ended the ability of the UK to pass laws with effect at the Commonwealth level in Australia without the country's consent. Australia adopted it in 1942, but it was backdated to 1939 to confirm the validity of legislation passed by the Australian Parliament during World War II.[131][132][133]

The Australian Capital Territory was formed in 1911 as the location for the future federal capital of Canberra.[134] While it was being constructed, Melbourne served as the temporary capital from 1901 to 1927.[135] The Northern Territory was transferred from the control of the South Australian government to the federal parliament in 1911.[136] Australia became the colonial ruler of the Territory of Papua (which had initially been annexed by Queensland in 1883) in 1902 and of the Territory of New Guinea (formerly German New Guinea) in 1920.[137][138] The two were unified as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in 1949 and gained independence from Australia in 1975.[137][139]

In 1914, Australia joined the Allies in fighting the First World War, and took part in many of the major battles fought on the Western Front.[140] Of about 416,000 who served, about 60,000 were killed and another 152,000 were wounded.[141] Many Australians regard the defeat of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) at Gallipoli in 1915 as the "baptism of fire" that forged the new nation's identity.[142][143][144] The beginning of the campaign is commemorated annually on Anzac Day, a date which rivals Australia Day as the nation's most important.[145][146]

From 1939 to 1945, Australia joined the Allies in fighting the Second World War. Australia's armed forces fought in the Pacific, European and Mediterranean and Middle East theatres.[147][148] The shock of Britain's defeat in Singapore in 1942, followed soon after by the bombing of Darwin and other Japanese attacks on Australian soil, led to a widespread belief in Australia that a Japanese invasion was imminent, and a shift from the United Kingdom to the United States as Australia's principal ally and security partner.[149] Since 1951, Australia has been allied with the United States under the ANZUS treaty.[150]

Post-war and contemporary eras

In the decades following World War II, Australia enjoyed significant increases in living standards, leisure time and suburban development.[151][152] Using the slogan "populate or perish", the nation encouraged a large wave of immigration from across Europe, with such immigrants referred to as "New Australians".[153]

A member of the Western Bloc during the Cold War, Australia participated in the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency during the 1950s and the Vietnam War from 1962 to 1972.[154] During this time, tensions over communist influence in society led to unsuccessful attempts by the Menzies Government to ban the Communist Party of Australia,[155] and a bitter split in the Labor Party in 1955.[156]

As a result of a 1967 referendum, the federal government gained the power to legislate with regard to Indigenous Australians, and Indigenous Australians were fully included in the census.[157] Pre-colonial land interests (referred to as native title in Australia) was recognised in law for the first time when the High Court of Australia held in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) that Australia was neither terra nullius ("land belonging to no one") or "desert and uncultivated land" at the time of European settlement.[158][159]

Following the abolition of the last vestiges of the White Australia policy in 1973,[160] Australia's demography and culture transformed as a result of a large and ongoing wave of non-European immigration, mostly from Asia.[161][162] The late 20th century also saw an increasing focus on foreign policy ties with other Pacific Rim nations.[163] The Australia Acts severed the remaining constitutional ties between Australia and the United Kingdom while maintaining the monarch in her independent capacity as Queen of Australia.[164][165] In a 1999 constitutional referendum, 55% of voters rejected abolishing the monarchy and becoming a republic.[166]

Following the September 11 attacks on the United States, Australia joined the United States in fighting the Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2021 and the Iraq War from 2003 to 2009.[167] The nation's trade relations also became increasingly oriented towards East Asia in the 21st century, with China becoming the nation's largest trading partner by a large margin.[168]

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, several of Australia's largest cities were locked down for extended periods and free movement across the national and state borders was restricted in an attempt to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.[169]

Surrounded by the Indian and Pacific oceans,[N 7] Australia is separated from Asia by the Arafura and Timor seas, with the Coral Sea lying off the Queensland coast, and the Tasman Sea lying between Australia and New Zealand. The world's smallest continent[171] and sixth-largest country by total area,[172] Australia—owing to its size and isolation—is often dubbed the "island continent"[173] and is sometimes considered the world's largest island.[174] Australia has 34,218 km (21,262 mi) of coastline (excluding all offshore islands),[175] and claims an extensive exclusive economic zone of 8,148,250 square kilometres (3,146,060 sq mi). This exclusive economic zone does not include the Australian Antarctic Territory.[176]

Mainland Australia lies between latitudes 9° and 44° South, and longitudes 112° and 154° East.[177] Australia's size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with tropical rainforests in the north-east, mountain ranges in the south-east, south-west and east, and desert in the centre.[178] The desert or semi-arid land commonly known as the outback makes up by far the largest portion of land.[179] Australia is the driest inhabited continent; its annual rainfall averaged over continental area is less than 500 mm.[180] The population density is 3.4 inhabitants per square kilometre, although the large majority of the population lives along the temperate south-eastern coastline. The population density exceeds 19,500 inhabitants per square kilometre in central Melbourne.[181] In 2021 Australia had 10% of the global permanent meadows and pastureland.[182]

The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef,[183] lies a short distance off the north-east coast and extends for over 2,000 km (1,200 mi). Mount Augustus, claimed to be the world's largest monolith,[184] is located in Western Australia. At 2,228 m (7,310 ft), Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain on the Australian mainland. Even taller are Mawson Peak (at 2,745 m (9,006 ft)), on the remote Australian external territory of Heard Island, and, in the Australian Antarctic Territory, Mount McClintock and Mount Menzies, at 3,492 m (11,457 ft) and 3,355 m (11,007 ft) respectively.[185]

Eastern Australia is marked by the Great Dividing Range, which runs parallel to the coast of Queensland, New South Wales and much of Victoria. The name is not strictly accurate, because parts of the range consist of low hills, and the highlands are typically no more than 1,600 m (5,200 ft) in height.[186] The coastal uplands and a belt of Brigalow grasslands lie between the coast and the mountains, while inland of the dividing range are large areas of grassland and shrubland.[186][187] These include the western plains of New South Wales, and the Mitchell Grass Downs and Mulga Lands of inland Queensland.[188][189][190][191] The northernmost point of the mainland is the tropical Cape York Peninsula.[177]

The landscapes of the Top End and the Gulf Country—with their tropical climate—include forest, woodland, wetland, grassland, rainforest and desert.[192][193][194] At the north-west corner of the continent are the sandstone cliffs and gorges of The Kimberley, and below that the Pilbara. The Victoria Plains tropical savanna lies south of the Kimberley and Arnhem Land savannas, forming a transition between the coastal savannas and the interior deserts.[195][196][197] At the heart of the country are the uplands of central Australia. Prominent features of the centre and south include Uluru (also known as Ayers Rock), the famous sandstone monolith, and the inland Simpson, Tirari and Sturt Stony, Gibson, Great Sandy, Tanami, and Great Victoria deserts, with the famous Nullarbor Plain on the southern coast.[198][199][200][201] The Western Australian mulga shrublands lie between the interior deserts and Mediterranean-climate Southwest Australia.[200][202]

Lying on the Indo-Australian Plate, the mainland of Australia is the lowest and most primordial landmass on Earth with a relatively stable geological history.[203][204] The landmass includes virtually all known rock types and from all geological time periods spanning over 3.8 billion years of the Earth's history. The Pilbara Craton is one of only two pristine Archaean 3.6–2.7 Ga (billion years ago) crusts identified on the Earth.[205]

Having been part of all major supercontinents, the Australian continent began to form after the breakup of Gondwana in the Permian, with the separation of the continental landmass from the African continent and Indian subcontinent. It separated from Antarctica over a prolonged period beginning in the Permian and continuing through to the Cretaceous.[206] When the last glacial period ended in about 10,000 BC, rising sea levels formed Bass Strait, separating Tasmania from the mainland. Then between about 8,000 and 6,500 BC, the lowlands in the north were flooded by the sea, separating New Guinea, the Aru Islands, and the mainland of Australia.[207] The Australian continent is moving toward Eurasia at the rate of 6 to 7 centimetres a year.[208]

The Australian mainland's continental crust, excluding the thinned margins, has an average thickness of 38 km, with a range in thickness from 24 km to 59 km.[209] Australia's geology can be divided into several main sections, showcasing that the continent grew from west to east: the Archaean cratonic shields found mostly in the west, Proterozoic fold belts in the centre and Phanerozoic sedimentary basins, metamorphic and igneous rocks in the east.[210]

The Australian mainland and Tasmania are situated in the middle of the tectonic plate and have no active volcanoes,[211] but due to passing over the East Australia hotspot, recent volcanism has occurred during the Holocene, in the Newer Volcanics Province of western Victoria and south-eastern South Australia. Volcanism also occurs in the island of New Guinea (considered geologically as part of the Australian continent), and in the Australian external territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands.[212] Seismic activity in the Australian mainland and Tasmania is also low, with the greatest number of fatalities having occurred in the 1989 Newcastle earthquake.

The climate of Australia is significantly influenced by ocean currents, including the Indian Ocean Dipole and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, which is correlated with periodic drought, and the seasonal tropical low-pressure system that produces cyclones in northern Australia.[215][216] These factors cause rainfall to vary markedly from year to year. Much of the northern part of the country has a tropical, predominantly summer-rainfall (monsoon).[180] The south-west corner of the country has a Mediterranean climate.[217] The south-east ranges from oceanic (Tasmania and coastal Victoria) to humid subtropical (upper half of New South Wales), with the highlands featuring alpine and subpolar oceanic climates. The interior is arid to semi-arid.[180]

Driven by climate change, average temperatures have risen more than 1°C since 1960. Associated changes in rainfall patterns and climate extremes exacerbate existing issues such as drought and bushfires. 2019 was Australia's warmest recorded year,[218] and the 2019–2020 bushfire season was the country's worst on record.[219] Australia's greenhouse gas emissions per capita are among the highest in the world.[220]

Water restrictions are frequently in place in many regions and cities of Australia in response to chronic shortages due to urban population increases and localised drought.[221][222] Throughout much of the continent, major flooding regularly follows extended periods of drought, flushing out inland river systems, overflowing dams and inundating large inland flood plains, as occurred throughout Eastern Australia in the early 2010s after the 2000s Australian drought.[223]

Biodiversity

Although most of Australia is semi-arid or desert, the continent includes a diverse range of habitats from alpine heaths to tropical rainforests. Fungi typify that diversity—an estimated 250,000 species—of which only 5% have been described—occur in Australia.[224] Because of the continent's great age, extremely variable weather patterns, and long-term geographic isolation, much of Australia's biota is unique. About 85% of flowering plants, 84% of mammals, more than 45% of birds, and 89% of in-shore, temperate-zone fish are endemic.[225] Australia has at least 755 species of reptile, more than any other country in the world.[226] Besides Antarctica, Australia is the only continent that developed without feline species. Feral cats may have been introduced in the 17th century by Dutch shipwrecks, and later in the 18th century by European settlers. They are now considered a major factor in the decline and extinction of many vulnerable and endangered native species.[227] Seafaring immigrants from Asia are believed to have brought the dingo to Australia sometime after the end of the last ice age—perhaps 4000 years ago—and Aboriginal people helped disperse them across the continent as pets, contributing to the demise of thylacines on the mainland.[228][page needed] Australia is also one of 17 megadiverse countries.[229]

Australian forests are mostly made up of evergreen species, particularly eucalyptus trees in the less arid regions; wattles replace them as the dominant species in drier regions and deserts.[230] Among well-known Australian animals are the monotremes (the platypus and echidna); a host of marsupials, including the kangaroo, koala, and wombat, and birds such as the emu and the kookaburra.[230] Australia is home to many dangerous animals including some of the most venomous snakes in the world.[231] The dingo was introduced by Austronesian people who traded with Indigenous Australians around 3000 BCE.[232] Many animal and plant species became extinct soon after first human settlement,[233] including the Australian megafauna; others have disappeared since European settlement, among them the thylacine.[234][235]

Many of Australia's ecoregions, and the species within those regions, are threatened by human activities and introduced animal, chromistan, fungal and plant species.[236] All these factors have led to Australia's having the highest mammal extinction rate of any country in the world.[237] The federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 is the legal framework for the protection of threatened species.[238] Numerous protected areas have been created under the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity to protect and preserve unique ecosystems;[239][240] 65 wetlands are listed under the Ramsar Convention,[241] and 16 natural World Heritage Sites have been established.[242] Australia was ranked 21st out of 178 countries in the world on the 2018 Environmental Performance Index.[243] There are more than 1,800 animals and plants on Australia's threatened species list, including more than 500 animals.[244]

Paleontologists discovered a fossil site of a prehistoric rainforest in McGraths Flat, in South Australia, that presents evidence that this now arid desert and dry shrubland/grassland was once home to an abundance of life.[245][246]

Australia is a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary democracy and a federation.[247] The country has maintained its mostly unchanged constitution alongside a stable liberal democratic political system since Federation in 1901. It is one of the world's oldest federations, in which power is divided between the federal and state and territory governments. The Australian system of government combines elements derived from the political systems of the United Kingdom (a fused executive, constitutional monarchy and strong party discipline) and the United States (federalism, a written constitution and strong bicameralism with an elected upper house), resulting in a distinct hybrid.[248][249]

Government power is partially separated between three branches:[250]

Legislature: the bicameral Parliament, comprising the monarch, the Senate, and the House of Representatives

Executive: the Cabinet, led by the prime minister (the leader of the party or Coalition with a majority in the House of Representatives) and other ministers they have chosen; formally appointed by the governor-general[251]

Judiciary: the High Court and other federal courts

Charles III reigns as King of Australia and is represented in Australia by the governor-general at the federal level and by the governors at the state level, who by section 63 of the Constitution and convention act on the advice of their ministers.[252][253] Thus, in practice the governor-general acts as a legal figurehead for the actions of the prime minister and the Cabinet. The governor-general may in some situations exercise powers in the absence or contrary to ministerial advice using reserve powers. When these powers may be exercised is governed by convention and their precise scope is unclear. The most notable exercise of these powers was the dismissal of the Whitlam government in the constitutional crisis of 1975.[254]

In the Senate (the upper house), there are 76 senators: twelve each from the states and two each from the mainland territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory).[255] The House of Representatives (the lower house) has 151 members elected from single-member electoral divisions, commonly known as "electorates" or "seats", allocated to states on the basis of population, with each of the current states guaranteed a minimum of five seats.[256] The lower house has a maximum term of three years, but this is not fixed and governments usually dissolve the house early for an election at some point in the 6 months before the maximum.[257] Elections for both chambers are generally held simultaneously with senators having overlapping six-year terms except for those from the territories, whose terms are not fixed but are tied to the electoral cycle for the lower house. Thus only 40 of the 76 places in the Senate are put to each election unless the cycle is interrupted by a double dissolution.[255]

Australia's electoral system uses preferential voting for the House of Representatives and all state and territory lower house elections (with the exception of Tasmania and the ACT which use the Hare-Clark system). The Senate and most state upper houses use the "proportional system" which combines preferential voting with proportional representation for each state. Voting and enrolment is compulsory for all enrolled citizens 18 years and over in every jurisdiction.[258][259][260] The party with majority support in the House of Representatives forms the government and its leader becomes Prime Minister. In cases where no party has majority support, the governor-general has the constitutional power to appoint the prime minister and, if necessary, dismiss one that has lost the confidence of Parliament.[261] Due to the relatively unique position of Australia operating as a Westminster parliamentary democracy with a powerful and elected upper house, the system has sometimes been referred to as having a "Washminster mutation",[262] or as a semi-parliamentary system.[263]

There are two major political groups that usually form government, federally and in the states: the Australian Labor Party and the Coalition, which is a formal grouping of the Liberal Party and its minor partner, the National Party.[264][265] The Liberal National Party and the Country Liberal Party are merged state branches in Queensland and the Northern Territory that function as separate parties at a federal level.[266] Within Australian political culture, the Coalition is considered centre-right and the Labor Party is considered centre-left.[267] Independent members and several minor parties have achieved representation in Australian parliaments, mostly in upper houses. The Australian Greens are often considered the "third force" in politics, being the third largest party by both vote and membership.[268][269]

The most recent federal election was held on 21 May 2022 and resulted in the Australian Labor Party, led by Anthony Albanese, being elected to government.[270]

Australia has six states—New South Wales (NSW), Victoria (Vic), Queensland (Qld), Western Australia (WA), South Australia (SA) and Tasmania (Tas)—and two mainland self-governing territories—the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territory (NT).[271]

The states have the general power to make laws except in the few areas where the constitution grants the Commonwealth exclusive powers.[272][273] The Commonwealth can only make laws on topics listed in the constitution but its laws prevail over those of the states to the extent of any inconsistency.[274][275] Since Federation, the Commonwealth's power relative to the states has significantly increased due to the increasingly wide interpretation given to listed Commonwealth powers and because of the states' heavy financial reliance on Commonwealth grants.[276][277]

Each state and major mainland territory has its own parliament—unicameral in the Northern Territory, the ACT and Queensland, and bicameral in the other states. The lower houses are known as the Legislative Assembly (the House of Assembly in South Australia and Tasmania); the upper houses are known as the Legislative Council. The head of the government in each state is the Premier and in each territory the Chief Minister. The King is represented in each state by a governor. At the Commonwealth level, the King's representative is the governor-general.[278]

The Commonwealth government directly administers the internal Jervis Bay Territory and the other external territories: the Ashmore and Cartier Islands, the Coral Sea Islands, the Heard Island and McDonald Islands, the Indian Ocean territories (Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands), Norfolk Island,[281] and the Australian Antarctic Territory.[282][283][251] The remote Macquarie Island and Lord Howe Island are part of Tasmania and New South Wales respectively.[284][285]

Foreign relations

Australia is a middle power,[43] whose foreign relations has three core bi-partisan pillars: commitment to the US alliance, engagement with the Indo-Pacific and support for international institutions, rules and co-operation.[286][287][288] Through the ANZUS pact and its status as a major non-NATO ally, Australia maintains a close relationship with the US, which encompasses strong defence, security and trade ties.[289][290] In the Indo-Pacific, the country seeks to increase its trade ties through the open flow of trade and capital, whilst managing the rise of Chinese power by supporting the existing rules based order.[287] Regionally, the country is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Pacific Community, the ASEAN+6 mechanism and the East Asia Summit. Internationally, the country is a member of the United Nations (of which it was a founding member), the Commonwealth of Nations, the OECD and the G20. This reflects the country's generally strong commitment to multilateralism.[291][292]

Australia is a member of several defence, intelligence and security groupings including the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand; the ANZUS alliance with the United States and New Zealand; the AUKUS security treaty with the United States and United Kingdom; the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with the United States, India and Japan; the Five Power Defence Arrangements with New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Singapore; and the Reciprocal Access defence and security agreement with Japan.

Australia has pursued the cause of international trade liberalisation.[293] It led the formation of the Cairns Group and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation,[294][295] and is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).[296][297] Beginning in the 2000s, Australia has entered into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership multilateral free trade agreements as well as bilateral free trade agreements with the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, with the most recent deal with UK signed in 2023.[298]

Australia maintains a deeply integrated relationship with neighbouring New Zealand, with free mobility of citizens between the two countries under the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement and free trade under the Closer Economic Relations agreement.[299] The most favourably viewed countries by the Australian people in 2021 include New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and South Korea.[300] It also maintains an international aid program under which some 75 countries receive assistance.[301] Australia ranked fourth in the Center for Global Development's 2021 Commitment to Development Index.[302]

The power over foreign policy is highly concentrated in the prime minister and the national security committee, with major decision such as joining the 2003 invasion of Iraq made with without prior Cabinet approval.[303][304] Similarly, the Parliament does not play a formal role in foreign policy and the power to declare war lies solely with the executive government.[305] The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade supports the executive in its policy decisions.

Military

The two main institutions involved in the management of Australia's armed forces are the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the Department of Defence, together known as "Defence".[306] The Australian Defence Force is the military wing, headed by the chief of the defence force, and contains three branches: the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force. In 2021, it had 84,865 currently serving personnel (including 60,286 regulars and 24,581 reservists).[307] The Department of Defence is the civilian wing and is headed by the secretary of defence. These two leaders collective manage Defence as a diarchy, with shared and joint responsibilities.[308] The titular role of commander-in-chief is held by the governor-general, however actual command is vested in the chief of the Defence Force.[309] The executive branch of the Commonwealth government has overall control of the military through the minister of defence, who is subject to the decisions of Cabinet and its National Security Committee.[310]

In 2022, defence spending was 1.9% of GDP, representing the world's 13th largest defence budget.[311] In 2024, the ADF had active operations in the Middle-East and the Indo-Pacific (including security and aid provisions), was contributing to UN forces in relation to South Sudan, Syria-Israel and North Korea, and domestically was assisting to prevent asylum-seekers enter the country and with natural disaster relief.[312]

Major Australian intelligence agencies include the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (foreign intelligence), the Australian Signals Directorate (signals intelligence) and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (domestic security).

Human rights

Legal and social rights in Australia are regarded as among the most developed in the world.[39] Attitudes towards LGBT people are generally positive within Australia, and same-sex marriage has been legal in the nation since 2017 (LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO!!) .[313][314] Australia has had anti-discrimination laws regarding disability since 1992.[315] However, international organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have expressed concerns in areas including asylum-seeker policy, indigenous deaths in custody, the lack of entrenched rights protection and laws restricting protesting.[316][317]

Economy

Australia's high-income mixed-market economy is rich in natural resources.[318] It is the world's fourteenth-largest by nominal terms, and the 18th-largest by PPP. As of 2021, it has the second-highest amount of wealth per adult, after Luxembourg,[319] and has the thirteenth-highest financial assets per capita.[320] Australia has a labour force of some 13.5 million, with an unemployment rate of 3.5% as of June 2022.[321] According to the Australian Council of Social Service, the poverty rate of Australia exceeds 13.6% of the population, encompassing 3.2 million. It also estimated that there were 774,000 (17.7%) children under the age of 15 living in relative poverty.[322][323] The Australian dollar is the national currency, which is also used by three island states in the Pacific: Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu.[324]

Australian government debt, about $963 billion in June 2022, exceeds 45.1% of the country's total GDP, and is the world's eighth-highest.[325] Australia had the second-highest level of household debt in the world in 2020, after Switzerland.[326] Its house prices are among the highest in the world, especially in the large urban areas.[327] The large service sector accounts for about 71.2% of total GDP, followed by the industrial sector (25.3%), while its agriculture sector is by far the smallest, making up only 3.6% of total GDP.[328] Australia is the world's 21st-largest exporter and 24th-largest importer.[329][330] China is Australia's largest trading partner by a wide margin, accounting for roughly 40% of the country's exports and 17.6% of its imports.[331] Other major export markets include Japan, the United States, and South Korea.[332]

Australia has high levels of competitiveness and economic freedom, and was ranked fifth in the Human Development Index in 2021.[333] As of 2022, it is ranked twelfth in the Index of Economic Freedom and nineteenth in the Global Competitiveness Report.[334][335] It attracted 9.5 million international tourists in 2019,[336] and was ranked thirteenth among the countries of Asia-Pacific in 2019 for inbound tourism.[337] The 2021 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report ranked Australia seventh-highest in the world out of 117 countries.[338] Its international tourism receipts in 2019 amounted to $45.7 billion.[337]

Energy

In 2021–22, Australia's generation of electricity was sourced from black coal (37.2%), brown coal (12%), natural gas (18.8%), hydro (6.5%), wind (11.1%), solar (13.3%), bio-energy (1.2%) and others (1.7%).[339][340] Total consumption of energy in this period was sourced from coal (28.4%), oil (37.3%), gas (27.4%) and renewables (7%).[341] From 2012 to 2022, the energy sourced from renewables has increased 5.7%, whilst energy sourced from coal has decreased 2.6%. The use of gas also increased by 1.5% and the use of oil stayed relatively stable with a reduction of only 0.2%.[342]

In 2020, Australia produced 27.7% of its electricity from renewable sources, exceeding the target set by the Commonwealth government in 2009 of 20% renewable energy by 2020.[343][344] A new target of 82% percent renewable energy by 2030 was set in 2022[345] and a target for net zero emissions by 2050 was set in 2021.[346]

Science and technology

In 2019, Australia spent $35.6 billion on research and development, allocating about 1.79% of GDP.[347] A recent study by Accenture for the Tech Council shows that the Australian tech sector combined contributes $167 billion a year to the economy and employs 861,000 people.[348] In addition, recent startup ecosystems in Sydney and Melbourne are already valued at $34 billion combined.[349] Australia ranked 24th in the Global Innovation Index 2023.[350]

With only 0.3% of the world's population, Australia contributed 4.1% of the world's published research in 2020, making it one of the top 10 research contributors in the world.[351][352] CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, contributes 10% of all research in the country, while the rest is carried out by universities.[352] Its most notable contributions include the invention of atomic absorption spectroscopy,[353] the essential components of Wi-Fi technology,[354] and the development of the first commercially successful polymer banknote.[355]

Australia is a key player in supporting space exploration. Facilities such as the Square Kilometre Array and Australia Telescope Compact Array radio telescopes, telescopes such as the Siding Spring Observatory, and ground stations such as the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex are of great assistance in deep space exploration missions, primarily by NASA.[356]

Demographics

Australia has an average population density of 3.4 persons per square kilometre of total land area, which makes it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. The population is heavily concentrated on the east coast, and in particular in the south-eastern region between South East Queensland to the north-east and Adelaide to the south-west.[357]

Australia is also highly urbanised, with 67% of the population living in the Greater Capital City Statistical Areas (metropolitan areas of the state and mainland territorial capital cities) in 2018.[358] Metropolitan areas with more than one million inhabitants are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.[359]

In common with many other developed countries, Australia is experiencing a demographic shift towards an older population, with more retirees and fewer people of working age. In 2021 the average age of the population was 39 years.[360] In 2015, 2.15% of the Australian population lived overseas, one of the lowest proportions worldwide.[361]

Ancestry and immigration

Between 1788 and the Second World War, the vast majority of settlers and immigrants came from the British Isles (principally England, Ireland and Scotland), although there was significant immigration from China and Germany during the 19th century. Following Federation in 1901, a strengthening of the white Australia policy restricted further migration from these areas. However, in the decades immediately following the Second World War, Australia received a large wave of immigration from across Europe, with many more immigrants arriving from Southern and Eastern Europe than in previous decades. All overt racial discrimination ended in 1973, with multiculturalism becoming official policy.[363] Subsequently, there has been a large and continuing wave of immigration from across the world, with Asia being the largest source of immigrants in the 21st century.[364]

Today, Australia has the world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30% of the population, the highest proportion among major Western nations.[365][366] In 2022–23, 212,789 permanent migrants were admitted to Australia, with a net migration population gain of 518,000 people inclusive of non-permanent residents.[367][368] Most entered on skilled visas,[364] however the immigration program also offers visas for family members and refugees.[369]

The Australian Bureau of Statistics asks each Australian resident to nominate up to two ancestries each census and the responses are classified into broad ancestry groups.[370][371] At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated ancestry groups as a proportion of the total population were:[372] 57.2% European (including 46% North-West European and 11.2% Southern and Eastern European), 33.8% Oceanian,[N 8] 17.4% Asian (including 6.5% Southern and Central Asian, 6.4% North-East Asian, and 4.5% South-East Asian), 3.2% North African and Middle Eastern, 1.4% Peoples of the Americas, and 1.3% Sub-Saharan African. At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated individual ancestries as a proportion of the total population were:[N 9][4]

English (33%)

Australian (29.9%)[N 10]

Irish (9.5%)

Scottish (8.6%)

Chinese (5.5%)

Italian (4.4%)

German (4%)

Indian (3.1%)

Aboriginal (2.9%)[N 11]

Greek (1.7%)

Filipino (1.6%)

Dutch (1.5%)

Vietnamese (1.3%)

Lebanese (1%)

At the 2021 census, 3.8% of the Australian population identified as being Indigenous—Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.[N 12][375]

Language

Although English is not the official language of Australia in law, it is the de facto official and national language.[376][377] Australian English is a major variety of the language with a distinctive accent and lexicon,[378] and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar and spelling.[379] General Australian serves as the standard dialect.[380]

At the 2021 census, English was the only language spoken in the home for 72% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home were Mandarin (2.7%), Arabic (1.4%), Vietnamese (1.3%), Cantonese (1.2%) and Punjabi (0.9%).[381]

Over 250 Australian Aboriginal languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact.[382] The National Indigenous Languages Survey (NILS) for 2018–19 found that more than 120 Indigenous language varieties were in use or being revived, although 70 of those in use were endangered.[383] The 2021 census found that 167 Indigenous languages were spoken at home by 76,978 Indigenous Australians — Yumplatok (Torres Strait Creole), Djambarrpuyngu (a Yolŋu language) and Pitjantjatjara (a Western Desert language) were among the most widely spoken.[384] NILS and the Australian Bureau of Statistics use different classifications for Indigenous Australian languages.[385]

The Australian sign language known as Auslan was used at home by 16,242 people at the time of the 2021 census.[386]

Religion

Australia has no state religion; section 116 of the Australian Constitution prohibits the Australian government from making any law to establish any religion, impose any religious observance, or prohibit the free exercise of any religion.[387] However, the states still retain the power to pass religiously discriminatory laws.[388]

At the 2021 census, 38.9% of the population identified as having "no religion",[4] up from 15.5% in 2001.[389] The largest religion is Christianity (43.9% of the population).[4] The largest Christian denominations are the Roman Catholic Church (20% of the population) and the Anglican Church of Australia (9.8%). Non-British immigration since the Second World War has led to the growth of non-Christian religions, the largest of which are Islam (3.2%), Hinduism (2.7%), Buddhism (2.4%), Sikhism (0.8%), and Judaism (0.4%).[390][4]

In 2021, just under 8,000 people declared an affiliation with traditional Aboriginal religions.[4] In Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The Creation. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land.[391]

Health

Australia's life expectancy of 83 years (81 years for males and 85 years for females),[392] is the fifth-highest in the world. It has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world,[393] while cigarette smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease, responsible for 7.8% of the total mortality and disease. Ranked second in preventable causes is hypertension at 7.6%, with obesity third at 7.5%.[394][395] Australia ranked 35th in the world in 2012 for its proportion of obese women[396] and near the top of developed nations for its proportion of obese adults;[397] 63% of its adult population is either overweight or obese.[398]

Australia spent around 9.91% of its total GDP to health care in 2021.[399] It introduced a national insurance scheme in 1975.[400] Following a period in which access to the scheme was restricted, the scheme became universal once more in 1981 under the name of Medicare.[401] The program is nominally funded by an income tax surcharge known as the Medicare levy, currently at 2%.[402] The states manage hospitals and attached outpatient services, while the Commonwealth funds the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (subsidising the costs of medicines) and general practice.[400]

Education

School attendance, or registration for home schooling,[403] is compulsory throughout Australia. Education is primarily the responsibility of the individual states and territories, however the Commonwealth has significant influence through funding agreements.[404] Since 2014, a national curriculum developed by the Commonwealth has been implemented by the states and territories.[405] Attendance rules vary between states, but in general children are required to attend school from the age of about 5 until about 16.[406][407] In some states (Western Australia, Northern Territory and New South Wales), children aged 16–17 are required to either attend school or participate in vocational training, such as an apprenticeship.[408][409][410][411]

Australia has an adult literacy rate that was estimated to be 99% in 2003.[412] However, a 2011–2012 report for the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 44% of the population does not have high literary and numeracy competence levels, interpreted by others as suggesting that they do not have the "skills needed for everyday life".[413][414][415]

Australia has 37 government-funded universities and three private universities, as well as a number of other specialist institutions that provide approved courses at the higher education level.[416] The OECD places Australia among the most expensive nations to attend university.[417] There is a state-based system of vocational training, known as TAFE, and many trades conduct apprenticeships for training new tradespeople.[418] About 58% of Australians aged from 25 to 64 have vocational or tertiary qualifications[419] and the tertiary graduation rate of 49% is the highest among OECD countries. 30.9% of Australia's population has attained a higher education qualification, which is among the highest percentages in the world.[420][421][422]

Australia has the highest ratio of international students per head of population in the world by a large margin, with 812,000 international students enrolled in the nation's universities and vocational institutions in 2019.[423][424] Accordingly, in 2019, international students represented on average 26.7% of the student bodies of Australian universities. International education therefore represents one of the country's largest exports and has a pronounced influence on the country's demographics, with a significant proportion of international students remaining in Australia after graduation on various skill and employment visas.[425] Education is Australia's third-largest export, after iron ore and coal, and contributed over $28 billion to the economy in 2016–17.[352]

Culture

Contemporary Australian culture reflects the country's Indigenous traditions, Anglo-Celtic heritage, and post 1970s history of multicultural immigration.[427][428][429] The culture of the United States has also been influential.[430] The evolution of Australian culture since British colonisation has given rise to distinctive cultural traits.[431][432]

Many Australians identify egalitarianism, mateship, irreverence and a lack of formality as part of their national identity.[433][434][435] These find expression in Australian slang, as well as Australian humour, which is often characterised as dry, irreverent and ironic.[436][437] New citizens and visa holders are required to commit to "Australian values", which are identified by the Department of Home Affairs as including: a respect for the freedom of the individual; recognition of the rule of law; opposition to racial, gender and religious discrimination; and an understanding of the "fair go", which is said to encompass the equality of opportunity for all and compassion for those in need.[438] What these values mean, and whether or not Australians uphold them, has been debated since before Federation.[439][440][441][442]

Arts

Australia has over 100,000 Aboriginal rock art sites,[444] and traditional designs, patterns and stories infuse contemporary Indigenous Australian art, "the last great art movement of the 20th century" according to critic Robert Hughes;[445] its exponents include Emily Kame Kngwarreye.[446] Early colonial artists showed a fascination with the unfamiliar land.[447] The impressionistic works of Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and other members of the 19th-century Heidelberg School—the first "distinctively Australian" movement in Western art—gave expression to nationalist sentiments in the lead-up to Federation.[447] While the school remained influential into the 1900s, modernists such as Margaret Preston and Clarice Beckett, and, later, Sidney Nolan, explored new artistic trends.[447] The landscape remained central to the work of Aboriginal watercolourist Albert Namatjira,[448] as well as Fred Williams, Brett Whiteley and other post-war artists whose works, eclectic in style yet uniquely Australian, moved between the figurative and the abstract.[447][449]

Australian literature grew slowly in the decades following European settlement though Indigenous oral traditions, many of which have since been recorded in writing, are much older.[450] In the 19th century, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson captured the experience of the bush using a distinctive Australian vocabulary.[451] Their works are still popular; Paterson's bush poem "Waltzing Matilda" (1895) is regarded as Australia's unofficial national anthem.[452] Miles Franklin is the namesake of Australia's most prestigious literary prize, awarded annually to the best novel about Australian life.[453] Its first recipient, Patrick White, went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973.[454] Australian Booker Prize winners include Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan.[455] Australian public intellectuals have also written seminal works in their respective fields, including feminist Germaine Greer and philosopher Peter Singer.[456]

In the performing arts, Aboriginal peoples have traditions of religious and secular song, dance and rhythmic music often performed in corroborees.[457] At the beginning of the 20th century, Nellie Melba was one of the world's leading opera singers,[458] and later popular music acts such as the Bee Gees, AC/DC, INXS and Kylie Minogue achieved international recognition.[459] Many of Australia's performing arts companies receive funding through the Australian government's Australia Council.[460] There is a symphony orchestra in each state,[461] and a national opera company, Opera Australia,[462] well known for its famous soprano Joan Sutherland.[463] Ballet and dance are represented by The Australian Ballet and various state companies. Each state has a publicly funded theatre company.[464]

Media

The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the world's first feature-length narrative film, spurred a boom in Australian cinema during the silent film era.[465] After World War I, Hollywood monopolised the industry,[466] and by the 1960s Australian film production had effectively ceased.[467] With the benefit of government support, the Australian New Wave of the 1970s brought provocative and successful films, many exploring themes of national identity, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wake in Fright and Gallipoli,[468] while Crocodile Dundee and the Ozploitation movement's Mad Max series became international blockbusters.[469] In a film market flooded with foreign content, Australian films delivered a 7.7% share of the local box office in 2015.[470] The AACTAs are Australia's premier film and television awards, and notable Academy Award winners from Australia include Geoffrey Rush, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger.[471]

Australia has two public broadcasters (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the multicultural Special Broadcasting Service), three commercial television networks, several pay-TV services,[472] and numerous public, non-profit television and radio stations. Each major city has at least one daily newspaper,[472] and there are two national daily newspapers, The Australian and The Australian Financial Review.[472] In 2020, Reporters Without Borders placed Australia 25th on a list of 180 countries ranked by press freedom, behind New Zealand (8th) but ahead of the United Kingdom (33rd) and United States (44th).[473] This relatively low ranking is primarily because of the limited diversity of commercial media ownership in Australia;[474] most print media are under the control of News Corporation (59%) and Nine Entertainment Co (23%).[475]

Cuisine

Most Indigenous Australian groups subsisted on a hunter-gatherer diet of native fauna and flora, otherwise called bush tucker.[476] It has increased in popularity among non-Indigenous Australians since the 1970s, with examples such as lemon myrtle, the macadamia nut and kangaroo meat now widely available.[477][478]

The first colonists introduced British and Irish cuisine to the continent.[479][480] This influence is seen in dishes such as fish and chips, and in the Australian meat pie, which is related to the British steak pie. Also during the colonial period, Chinese migrants paved the way for a distinctive Australian Chinese cuisine.[481]

Post-war migrants transformed Australian cuisine, bringing with them their culinary traditions and contributing to new fusion dishes.[482] Italians introduced espresso coffee and, along with Greeks, helped develop Australia's café culture, of which the flat white and "smashed avo" on toast are now considered Australian staples.[483][484] Pavlovas, lamingtons, Vegemite and Anzac biscuits are also often called iconic Australian foods.[485]

Australia is a leading exporter and consumer of wine.[486] Australian wine is produced mainly in the southern, cooler parts of the country.[487] The nation also ranks highly in beer consumption,[488] with each state and territory hosting numerous breweries.

Sport and recreation

The most popular sports in Australia by adult participation are: swimming, athletics, cycling, soccer, golf, tennis, basketball, surfing, netball and cricket.[490]

Australia is one of five nations to have participated in every Summer Olympics of the modern era,[491] and has hosted the Games twice: 1956 in Melbourne and 2000 in Sydney.[492] It is also set to host the 2032 Games in Brisbane.[493] Australia has also participated in every Commonwealth Games,[494] hosting the event in 1938, 1962, 1982, 2006 and 2018.[495]

Cricket is a major national sport.[496] The Australian national cricket team competed against England in the first Test match (1877) and the first One Day International (1971), and against New Zealand in the first Twenty20 International (2004), winning all three games.[497] It has also won the men's Cricket World Cup a record six times.[498]

Australia has professional leagues for four football codes, whose relative popularity is divided geographically.[499] Originating in Melbourne in the 1850s, Australian rules football attracts the most television viewers in all states except New South Wales and Queensland, where rugby league holds sway, followed by rugby union.[500] Soccer, while ranked fourth in television viewers and resources, has the highest overall participation rates.[501]

The surf lifesaving movement originated in Australia, and the volunteer lifesaver is one of the country's icons.[502]

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