The First Fleet's Arrival WAS The Defining Moment In Australia's History

The defining moment in Australia’s history was the arrival of the British colonial fleet in 1788 because the structure of Australian society today derives overwhelmingly from its colonisation by the British. Probably the second most defining moment is the formal creation of the nation of Australia through federation in 1901.

Despite some influence by the Aboriginal inhabitants and migrants from almost every country on Earth, modern Australia’s legal and political institutions, our financial and economic system, our language, our social and sporting culture, even our more informal social systems and values are all overwhelmingly British in origin. It is absurd to suggest that there is an event which altered the history of Australia and led directly to our current society more than the arrival of the first fleet of over 1,000 British settlers.

It was also the defining moment for Aboriginals, even more so than their ancestors’ arrival 40,000 years ago. The reason why is that the First Fleet was a colonial mission. They came to stay and succeeded, radically and irrevocably changing the Aboriginals’ world. Even though some Aboriginal tribes in the north of Australia had regular contact with Indonesian fisherman and traders for one to three hundred years before meeting the British and even though there were clearly multiple waves of ancient migrations to Australia, no event changed the Aboriginals’ world like the arrival of the British fleet in 1788.

So for Warren Mundine and other Aboriginal “leaders” to be blowing smoke because Tony Abbott decided to publicly articulate this fact is ridiculous. Their behaviour appears motivated by the usual combination of a) disliking being told (understandably) that the rest of Australian society has more important concerns than Aboriginal dispossession and b) manufacturing insults and grievances for political advantage.