The distinctiveness of Australian democracy.

DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES have their democracy in common, but how democracy works and what it means to the people differ from country to country. The society in which democracy operates is different in each country and each country has its own history of democracy: how it came about and what came before it.

France became a democracy suddenly when a movement to reform the royal government turned into a revolution in 1789. The first democratic parliament was elected in 1792. It supported a dictatorial government that kept itself in power by executing thousands of its opponents.

Britain became a democracy very slowly and peacefully. The violence in England took place in the seventeenth century when the parliament made itself supreme over the king. That parliament was elected and controlled by landowners. The franchise was first widened 150 years later in 1832 but it took a hundred years to establish full democracy. Since there was no payment of members until 1911, the rich landowners, their friends and relations continued for a long time to be the largest group elected to parliament.

The United States became a separate country by rebelling against Britain. It proclaimed that all men were created equal and set up a new republican form of government. To belong to this new nation was to believe in certain political principles. At first the United States was not democratic. It became so quite soon and without violence. Democracy became identified with America, the natural result of the principles of equality with which the nation had begun.

The Australian colonies became democracies suddenly (like France), peacefully (like Britain) and while remaining colonies (unlike the United States). These three circumstances, as we shall see, had a great effect on what sort of democracy it was and how the people related to it.

The democracies established in the Australian states are now almost 150 years old. The central democracy, the Commonwealth of Australia, is over 100 years old. They are among the oldest and most stable democracies in the world.

This should be one of the things Australians are proud about, but Australians do not think of their political record when they think of what sort of people they are. Society itself in Australia is very democratic, but Australians have little regard for their democratic government. How this strange gap came about and how government works well despite it, are the questions we will now try to answer.