One of the great things to learn from Rachel Perkins’ wonderful Australian Wars series, is how much the very…

One of the great things to learn from Rachel Perkins’ wonderful Australian Wars series, is how much the very existence of the States was just as a mechanism to manage the massive land grab of that time. European Australians have always been good colonialists, acquiring land. /1 https://t.co/sgiZ0KfDhI

Not because they had any affection for land itself, for doing anything useful with it (except hopefully get rich), but because land represented power. As it always has back in Europe, with its endless territorial wars. The European disease. /2

The history of ‘modern’ Australia is acquiring land, and then using it as an extractive industry, to get wealthy. To farm it, to mine it. To ‘develop’ it today for capital gains. The series makes the important point that the colonial (imperial) way of life has never left. /3

Much if not most of Australia is still held in pastoral leases. Crown Land, leased to the modern squattocracy, who bulldoze it to graze cattle mostly. There’s no obligation on them to treat the land well - our land, we’re all the landlords. It’s not freehold. /end