The Australian Commonwealth government, mindful of the need to settle the northern coast for defence purposes, and conscious of the possible criticism from other countries at the failure to develop what was regarded as a potential source of great wealth, assumed control of the Northern Territory in 1911. In this thesis I examine the impact of the government’s policies and their implementation on the development of Darwin. The thesis is essentially an urban history of Darwin during the years that the Commonwealth government administered the Northern Territory. It chronicles the social and economic developments in the city during this period and traces the changes to the physical landscape caused by government policies, and outside influences such as World War Two and Cyclone Tracy. The interaction between the various ethnic groups in the city and between the longterm residents and the transitory public servants is investigated. I also portray the way in which the perception of the Northern Territory as an untamed wilderness and Darwin as a backward colonial outpost gradually changed after the war as politicians and bureaucrats began to accept more fully that the development of the region was of vital importance to the well-being of the nation. Territory residents were disenfranchised when the Commonwealth took control of the region. The story of the following years includes the slow and difficult struggle of politically minded residents to win some sort of representation in the federal parliament and also to achieve some measure of control over the administration of the Northern Territory. The thesis ends with the granting of self-government in 1978 and the end of rule by remote control from Canberra.

Ruled by remote control : the Commonwealth's role in the history of Darwin, 1911-1978

In this paper, we contend that the visual discourses of poverty and inequality are constructed through everyday social relations – the visual, spatial and bodily ‘encounter’ with homelessness in public space, steeped in the politics of the stigmatised Other. Bringing together Erving Goffman’s theory of everyday encounters with Guy Debord’s society of the spectacle, we explore the intersection between the ‘sight’ and ‘scene’ of homelessness and the spectacle of capital in public space. We identify how everyday encounters with homelessness perpetuate the notion that homelessness is ‘out of joint’ in relation to the spatial and aesthetic logic of capital and commodity consumption and performance. Reflecting on the repercussions of this for understanding homelessness, we explore the aesthetic dimension of the experience of homelessness within the context of a public space saturated by the social and aesthetic relations and of capital.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0042098014542135

The 'lamentable sight' of homelessness and the society of the spectacle

Following recent calls to monitor intensifications of settler-colonial structures (Journal of Genocide Research, Vol 9, No 4, 2007, p 403), this article focuses on an as yet poorly recognized site of settler-colonial violence against indigenous peoples. Rather than engaging in what the author argues is ultimately a fruitless and potentially diversionary debate over whether the killings, massacres, disappearances and structural elimination of West Papuans amount, conceptually, to genocide, this article focuses on the kinds of discursive and epistemic violence that provide the enabling backbone and camouflage for genocidal practices. The larger questions with which the paper engages is why it is that we remain so reluctant to detect the crime of genocide, and what it is that popularly diverts our attention? In the modern era, when a body of international human rights law maintains some, if largely ineffectual, global scrutiny, it is not only the acquiescent consent of settlers on the scene that needs manufa...

“A thousand miles of cannibal lands”: imagining away genocide in the re-colonization of West Papua

...................................................................................................... i List of figures ............................................................................................. iv Abbreviations .............................................................................................. v Key Terms .................................................................................................. vi Acknowledgements .................................................................................... x Preface ......................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................................... 8 Australian Identity ...................................................................................................... 8 Why Victoria? ............................................................................................................. 12 Contribution to the field ............................................................................................ 14 Theoretical framework ............................................................................................... 15 Thesis outline ............................................................................................................. 18 Aims ............................................................................................................................. 19 Plan .............................................................................................................................. 19 Chapter 2: Theoretical Literature Review ........................................................ 21 Race ............................................................................................................................ 24 Whiteness .................................................................................................................. 35 Settler colonialism ..................................................................................................... 39 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 50 Chapter 3: Methodological Literature Review ................................................ 52 Constructing the Other: Contemporary Research Practices in Australia ............. 52 Methodology .............................................................................................................. 64 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 74 Chapter 4: Introducing the settler colonial psyche: white belonging in Australia ........................................................................................................... 76 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 76 The settler colonial psyche ....................................................................................... 77 Introducing white belonging and narratives of nationhood ................................. 84 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 98 Chapter 5: The Goldfields: A case study into the invisible presence of Aboriginal people in the central and western goldfields district of Victoria ......................................................................................................................... 102 Introduction: Frank of Ballarat ............................................................................... 102 The gold rush and Australian national identity ..................................................... 105

Connecting the Dots: Case Studies into the ‘Invisible Presence’ of Aboriginal People Living in Victoria

This thesis uses political cartoons from the mainstream press over the period 1886 – 2001 to explore the politics of Australian asylum seeker and refugee policy. Australian asylum seeker and refugee policy is highly contested and increasingly ch

Drawing race and refugees: making sense of political cartoons of Australian refugee policy 1886 – 2001

As a way of making a contribution to this discussion and to think about what we can both build, and build upon, in Australia I want to begin by talking about the production of history in Australia In doing so I will call on people, intellectuals and writers, whom I feel affiliated with, personally, creatively and politically I am keenly interested in processes of cooperation and collaboration

/pdf/i-could-feel-it-in-my-body-war-on-a-history-war-x6z96u6szm.pdf

‘I could feel it in my body’: War on a history war

During the Centenary of Federation celebrations in 2001 some historians and a raft of political and social commentators have failed yet again to come to terms with either this country's colonial past or the place of Aboriginal people in contemporary Australia. It is clear that we remain in many ways a young nation, and one that is yet to grow up.

'History is Never Bloodless': Getting it Wrong After One Hundred Years of Federation

This article is concerned with the role of photography as an agent of ‘social truth’, with a particular interest in the way that the technology was used by slum reformers in Melbourne from the 1930s into the postwar era. The article focuses its attention on the streets and people of the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy and two ‘crusaders’, F.O. Barnett (founder of the Methodist Babies Home) and Father Gerard Tucker (of the Brotherhood of St. Laurence), who would use the propagandist value of the photograph to influence their social and moral interventions into the lives of Fitzroy's poor.

/pdf/these-children-have-been-born-in-an-abyss-slum-photography-3qdhdloy0t.pdf

'These children have been born in an abyss': Slum photography in a Melbourne suburb

Tout au long de l'histoire, les Aborigenes ont ete devalorises et denigres afin de justifier la politique coloniale de « terra nullius » et d'assimilation. Meme le cas Mabo cree des versions d'Aboriginalite qui desavantageraient les Aborigenes, la societe non-aborigene continuant d'inventer des categories d'aboriginalite

A Mabo blood test

https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/download/3468/3606

Tony Birch

Papers

‘I could feel it in my body’: War on a history war

'History is Never Bloodless': Getting it Wrong After One Hundred Years of Federation

'These children have been born in an abyss': Slum photography in a Melbourne suburb

A Mabo blood test

A Songline for Minoru