You would think that discussions in the Australian capitalist press about politics in the coming year would be exhibiting some excitement.
After all, there is going to be a federal election and several state elections. Most bourgeois economists agree there is going to be an economic recession — the first for Prime Minister John Howard's Liberal-National federal government. It follows a strange "boom" in which the rich got richer and poor got poorer.
Instead the capitalist media has been flooded with features about the federation of the six European outposts into one nation-state 100 years ago — events which, they bemoan, most Australians could not care less about. But why should Australia's working people give a damn about Federation?
Contrary to all the guff about Federation being the "birth of a nation" achieved through peaceful means, Federation was not an act of national liberation — like the American Revolution of 1776 was, for example.
The American Revolution involved the mass of the population throwing off oppression and it evoked a passion that has lasted for generations. Australia's federation was simply a bit of political re-ordering by the Australian capitalist class to meet its own selfish needs.
The "great men" of Federation (whose names most Australians can't remember) were not interested in liberating the masses. These bearded, racist old white men met behind closed doors with only their immediate class interests in mind.
Unlike genuinely national-democratic revolutionary movements that restructured political systems in other parts of the world, Australia's conservative founding gentlemen felt no need for a constitionally entrenched bill of rights or democratic reforms that favoured the working masses. Of course, they did enshrine the rights of private property and to conduct business in the constitution. Provisions were included that made nationalisation impossible.
The "mass appeal" at the original celebration of Federation were salutes to the permanence of British Empire and to the maintenance of a "white Australia" — "Australia for the white man, not the cheap nigger, not the cheap Chinese", as the Bulletin's unashamedly racist masthead proclaimed.
One of the first laws to be passed by the new federal parliament entrenched the infamous White Australia Policy. Soon after, tens of thousands of South Sea Islanders in Queensland, whose blood and sweat helped build capitalist Australia and many of whom had been present for decades, were deported. The country's indigenous people were not lawful citizens of Australian until 1967.
As for the coming of Federation peacefully, the vicious "frontier wars" launched by the British invaders in 1788 against the Aboriginal people continued into the 20th century and as late as the 1930s in parts of Western Australia.
The political debate over Federation has focused on how colonial and capitalist Australia's sordid history should be presented: John Howard's "rah-rah" version, the so-called "black armband" version, or a mix of both. At the core of this debate is an argument among Australia's capitalist rulers (and their hired pens in the mass media) about how best to fool us that we are still "one Australia" even while the capitalist neo-liberal offensive sharpens the class divide.
The capitalist politicians and their media want to distract attention from, or discourage any, popular discussion about the issues that the coming federal and state elections might provoke.
Of course, there really isn't a popular discussion to speak of: most people know it will make very little difference if the Howard government is replaced by a Beazley Labor government. This is what dampens mass interest in electoral politics.
The two major parties have the same pro-capitalist, neo-liberal agenda. Both collect millions of dollars from the big corporations to continue the pantomime of competing at elections while serving as the bosses loyal servants. Elections are seen as more irrelevant than ever before.
The Australian people are alienated from the official political process. Little wonder that the "celebrations" of the boring antics of Howard and Beazley's political ancestors a century ago have sparked hardly a murmur of interest.