ABSTRACT
Faced with the dilemma of supporting a people who hadn’t played the growth game, Aboriginal supporters were forced to argue that Aborigines hadn’t pushed the progress button because they were conservationists. In conscious or unconscious recognition that Australia was a fragile continent, the Aboriginal religious system had developed in order to conserve the environment. In a world increasingly governed by economic rationalists and their disciples among the conservative politicians, the idea that the economy is not just the main thing but the only important thing in human affairs has taken over political debate. Australia is the only place in the world in which the people of a whole continent practised sustainable maintenance. They did so because, intellectually or instinctively, they recognised that, like Antarctica and the tropical rainforests, the environment of Australia was such that it needed tender loving care to survive.
