We came, we saw, we made the very best of it

Posted on 3:20 am, January 25, 2019 by Henry Ergas

As long ago as January 26, 1817, only a few years after the colony of NSW had come into existence, some 40 guests celebrated its founding at the Sydney home of Isaac Nichols, a former convict who was the settlement’s postmaster.

About Henry Ergas

Henry Ergas AO is a columnist for The Australian. From 2009 to 2015 he was Senior Economic Adviser to Deloitte Australia and from 2009 to 2017 was Professor of Infrastructure Economics at the University of Wollongong’s SMART Infrastructure Facility. He joined SMART and Deloitte after working as a consultant economist at NECG, CRA International and Concept Economics. Prior to that, he was an economist at the OECD in Paris from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. At the OECD, he headed the Secretary-General’s Task Force on Structural Adjustment (1984-1987), which concentrated on improving the efficiency of government policies in a wide range of areas, and was subsequently Counsellor for Structural Policy in the Economics Department. He has taught at a range of universities, undertaken a number of government inquiries and served as a Lay Member of the New Zealand High Court. In 2016, he was made an Officer in the Order of Australia.

View all posts by Henry Ergas →

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

9 Responses to We came, we saw, we made the very best of it

Jonesy

#2916736, posted on January 25, 2019 at 6:13 am

Australia, Australia, Australia, we love you. Amen…crack a tube!

We were always more than “Just a penal colony”
a happy little debunker

#2916777, posted on January 25, 2019 at 7:37 am

We were always more than “Just a penal colony”

We became more than just a penal colony – but we started out with a bunch of displaced petty criminals made stateless and sent to the antipodes under brutal conditions in enforced labor and warned to never, ever return.

Whenever someone complains about ‘Invasion day’ remind them that this country was founded by the hard work of the unwanted, the displaced, the abused & the stateless – so perhaps they should just button it with their ‘we woz robbed’ crap.
[email protected]

#2916791, posted on January 25, 2019 at 8:07 am

The hostess for the celebration in 1817 was Isaac Nichols’ wife, Rosanna Abrahams, the first free born Jew to settle in Australia. She arerived on the First Fleet as an infant, born in Newgate prison to the convict Esther Abrahams.
Eyrie

#2916792, posted on January 25, 2019 at 8:08 am

but we started out with a bunch of displaced petty criminals and the scrapings of every Royal Marine brig made stateless and sent to the antipodes under brutal conditions in enforced labor and warned to never, ever return.
FIFY
Eyrie

#2916794, posted on January 25, 2019 at 8:11 am

More than 25 years ago I knew a German engineering technical bloke who met a German TV crew doing a story on Australia. One of the blokes after being here for a while said to him” OK you’ve got huge amounts of land, vast natural resources, not too many people, no large population of natives, a reasonably educated population – how did you fuck up so badly?”
Wonder what he’d say now?
stackja

#2916833, posted on January 25, 2019 at 9:07 am

Eyrie
#2916794, posted on January 25, 2019 at 8:11 am

ALP/Greens always FU. Voters don’t care?
Bruce

#2916835, posted on January 25, 2019 at 9:07 am

The “spirit” of the Rum Corps and the idea of a population of “inmates” is VERY MUCH ALIVE, especially in government (and the “wanna-be” rulers).
max

#2916927, posted on January 25, 2019 at 10:58 am

Eyrie say:
“OK you’ve got huge amounts of land, vast natural resources, not too many people, no large population of natives, a reasonably educated population – how did you fuck up so badly?”  
Just change New Zealand for Australia
The country has been dominated by Fabian socialist ideas throughout the twentieth century. The two political parties have forged a working relationship: the conservative National Party has protected the farmers and local businessmen from world competition by means of agricultural marketing boards, direct subsidies to agriculture, and tariffs. The Labor Party has done its best to protect union members from world competition by keeping tariffs high, imposing other import quotas, fixing exchange rates, refusing to allow currency and other futures trading in world markets, and using the taxing power of the federal government to redistribute wealth (which really means keeping the existing distribution of wealth pretty much fixed: if you got there early, you are locked in for life, or close to it).

A good example of this transformation is the tiny nation of New Zealand. New Zealand is a picture-postcard nation split into two large islands, with a climate and terrain close to western Oregon’s, and a population (3 million) and geographical area (103,000 square miles) almost identical to the state of Colorado, except that it is shaped more like California.
Almost from the beginning of the nation, it has clung to the principles of Fabian socialism. It was perhaps the first “laboratory” for the Fabians to point to. Its mild climate, its vast (and now depleted) forests, its small population density which was made up of mostly educated, white, and vaguely Christian residents, its sheep farms, its remarkable agricultural output, and its geographical isolation (tiny defense budget) gave New Zealand all the resources it needed to compete in world markets. Did it compete?
In some areas of the economy, yes, especially agriculture. But it never did without subsidies and tariff protection. Since the great depression of the 1930’s, the New Zealand economy has relied on protection for producers at the expense of urban consumers and taxpayers. The nation has had a marvelous quality of life, so long as that quality of life was not based on high-quality, low-cost imported consumer goods. The trouble for socialist ideology is that New Zealanders, like everyone else in the West. wanted all those Japanese electronic goodies. And to get access to them, they had to compete in international markets. But their government-protected economy did not encourage this sort of competition.
https://www.garynorth.com/public/14754.cfm
Dr Fred Lenin

#2916967, posted on January 25, 2019 at 11:58 am

I move we get the High Court to declare Australia Invaded “ to appease the activites , then native title and all laws pertaining to aboriginals be declared null and void , thus making aboriginals of all colours and sexes free from socialist opression ,and give them the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens .
I believe years ago the court said Australia was NOT Invaded , paving the way to native title and other discriminatory laws declaring Invasion would negate them and get rid of the racist discrimination against non aboriginal Australians . A true SJW aim innit?