Federation of Australia

Essentially, ever since...

Federation of Australia in 1901, there have been two sides, the Labor side and the non-Labor side.

And the non-Labor side has gone through a lot of different permutations.

The current one that exists is basically what came into existence in 1944, when the Liberal Party, as it now exists, was born under the leadership of Robert Menzies.

But can we remember about 100 years or so ago, as we mentioned over the last decades, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that somebody, there's a cereal company, that is run by a church group.

I believe the church is going back 100-plus years ago, the Federation of Australia.

Is that

sanitarian?

From its birth as a nation, Australia has been shaped by conflict.

When Federation occurred in 1901, 16,000 Australians were already fighting in the Boer War in South Africa.

The decades that followed brought participation in two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's a military history written largely on foreign battlefields.

From a capitalist perspective, they are right to, because despite terra nullius being proved a legal fiction in the high courts, there was no significant change to who held power and wealth.

The Federation of Australia has a constitution that is based on the idea of this place that we live in belonging to no one, and being a boundless opportunity for capital.

our situation is closer to that of the United States of America, except that our political system, history and environment has led to some different outcomes around urbanisation, which is also partly due to the United States of America.

You see, Australia has always been an outpost for Western imperialism in the Southern Hemisphere, Whether it is the British Empire or the American Empire, or both, through AUKUS, we do not build our own futures.

Right.

Since Federation of Australia in 1901, a total of 125 people were sentenced to death and those sentences carried out, plus another 30 on Norfolk Island.

30?

Was that a

In it, a mother sits in the centre of her brood, four young children and a lap baby.

It's a fairly standard image of Federation-era respectability.

The family is all dressed in dark, well-tailored clothing.

The children's little leather boots are polished.

One Nation is showing once again, this is exactly why One Nation poses an unacceptable and dangerous risk to Australian workers.

Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg recently criticised compulsory superannuation as one of the biggest public policy failures since Federation.

Deputy Opposition Leader Jane Hume says One Nation's policy is a headline that hasn't really been explained.

Does the tax status of your superannuation, your discounted tax status, does that remain? So do you get a tax discount for paying your rent? How does it affect your concessional caps? How does it affect your bring forward provisions, carry back provisions? How does it affect your superannuation balance at the end of the day? Are we turning our superannuation funds into banks? None of these questions have been answered.

Health Minister Mark

Butler there.

Well, one of the veterans who laid down his four generations of service medals in Federation Mall this morning is Sean Smith, the retired Warrant Officer Class 1 served in the Australian Army for 27 years with tours of Bougainville, Timor and Afghanistan.

Sean joins me now.

It's an interesting question.

They're all pre-Federation Australia, but these were actually almost all perpetrated by colonists.

So the vast majority of massacres, when you look at massacres, it's like less than a third are perpetrated by British soldiers.

It's probably not even a quarter.

And the period of your life growing up tends to colour how you read the past through adult eyes anyway.

So I tend to look back at the first eight decades of Australian Federation leading up to the opening of the economy in the 80s as the past dependency in terms of all the local identities and rivalries.

And I wonder now, this is where a bit of revisionism coming in for me.

I wonder whether the 80s and 90s are the exception to the rule, where because the project was a national reform project, beginning obviously at the social end with the Whitlam government and continued in a way with the Fraser government, you know, the end of the White Australia policy and the sort of the building, this big Commonwealth government with a huge safety net attached to it.