• John Gardiner-Garden, Margaret Seares
• Australia Council for the Arts

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19 September 2011As with any country, Australian cultural policy needs to be viewed in the context of the nation’s history, its people, and its constitutional structure.

Australia has an extremely ancient history in terms of its Indigenous inhabitants, who are thought to have inhabited the continent and the island now known as Tasmania for more than 40,000 years. Despite exploratory forays by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French, it was the British who, in 1770, laid claim to the eastern part of the continent. The first settlement occurred on January 26, 1788, when Captain Arthur Phillip led a British fleet, known as the ‘First Fleet’, into what later became Sydney in order to establish a British penal colony.

The British established a group of colonies, the first being New South Wales in 1788, then Tasmania (initially known as Van Diemen’s Land) in 1825, Western Australia in 1829, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851 and Queensland in 1859. South Australia was unique among the colonies in never having accepted convicts as all the other colonies had done or were to do at some stage in their history.

In 1901 the colonies, most of which had prospered through agricultural, fishing and, later, mining enterprises, were federated into a nation, the Commonwealth of Australia. The Federation comprises six states – New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and Tasmania – and two territories – the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory.

The Federal or national Parliament elected through this universal suffrage comprises two houses, the House of Representatives where members are elected by designated electorates established on the basis of population, and the Senate where each state is represented by twelve senators and each of the territories by two. Most states tend to have replicated this bi-cameral model, although Queensland and the two territories have only a single house of parliament.