ABSTRACT
The decision to fl oat the dollar, 20 years ago today, did not send Australians dancing into the streets, but it should have.
(Editorial, The Australian, December 9, 2003)
When Britain declared sovereignty over Australia at Sydney Cove in 1788, the invaders viewed the land as terra nullius, an empty space (Dyster and Meredith, 1997: 17). Australia was brought into the orbit of the British Empire, its extensive land was used to supply British industry, and its economic structure and development were framed by the needs of the imperial center. Capitalism took root, land was appropriated, and a laboring class was formed within this wider structure of imperial dependency. Australia, like other colonies, became a staple economy, that is, one based on the export of raw materials. In the 1820s, it became profi table to ship wool to Britain (Maddock and McLean, 1987: 6), and wool became the fi rst staple and the largest export earner for most of the nineteenth century (ibid.: 26). Other staples, such as wheat, were soon to follow, as were minerals. The repeal of the Corn Laws was instrumental in forging “economic complementarity” between Britain and Australia (Leaver, 2001: 4). Coal, “the fundamental source of energy for the industrial revolution” (Dyster and Meredith, 1997: 18), was discovered at the end of the eighteenth century. Copper and gold were also discovered, the latter leading to the gold rush of the 1850s, which tripled the non-aboriginal population in a decade (ibid.: 27) By the 1870s, Broomhill (2007: 4) argues, the Australian colonies “had achieved a higher level of capitalist development and political independence than many other colonial societies.” Production and export of gold peaked in 1903 (Dyster and Meredith, 1997: 19). By then, Australia had also entered the silver, lead, and zinc markets.
