More Related Content Similar to Australian Freedom and an Australian Modern Slavey Act checked copy (7) Australian Freedom and an Australian Modern Slavey Act checked copy3. Our Australian passion for freedom may seem odd given we started as a penal
colony on land that had belonged to Indigenous people, here for a long time. Yet
today, The Legatum Prosperity index places Australia in the very top tier for personal
freedoms. An enormous achievement in just a few hundred years.
We didn’t have a Thomas Jefferson, who wrote some of the most profound words in
history on freedom (while himself holding slaves). Instead we had men enlightened
for their times who were short on words and long on action, men like the Captain of
the First Fleet, Arthur Phillip and the convict James Ruse.
Phillip’s papers don’t reveal a lot of philosophy, but they do reveal deep conviction.
In a detailed Memorandum of his plans for the new proposed colony, he wrote to
Lord Sydney of two surprising things.
First, for the convicts, Phillip wanted a free life for them:
I shall endeavour to make them sensible of their situation, and that their happiness or
misery is in their own hands,—that those who behave well will be rewarded by being
allow'd to work occasionally on the small lots of land set apart for them, and which
they will be put in possession of at the expiration of the time for which they are
transported...
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‘ ADMIRAL PHILLIP: THE FOUNDING OF NEW SOUTH WALES, BY LOUIS BECKE AND WALTER
JEFFERY, LONDON, T. FISHER UNWIN, PATERNOSTER SQUARE, MDCCCXCIX’
4. Second and perhaps even more startling for the time and appropriate for
us tonight Philip wrote:
There is one [law] that I would wish to take place from the moment His Majesty's
forces take possession of the country: that there can be no slavery in a free land, and
consequently no slaves.
2
That is to say, perhaps the very first law of Australia that was uniquely Australian was
that there would be no slavery .
Philip’s enlightened attitude to the world was not confined to slavery and led to
perhaps one of my favourite stories to tell about both my electorate and the
development of individual rights and freedoms in our country:
In 1789 the young colony of Sydney was in a crisis. The government farms,
throughout my electorate at Castle Hill, had regularly failed to produce any crops.
The colonists were all starving. In desperation in 1791 a convict named James Ruse
and his wife were to host what Governor Phillip described at the time as “an
experiment”. Governor Phillip granted the convict James Ruse a small uncleared
piece of land and made him an offer. If Ruse could successfully farm the land, not
only would he become a free man but also that land would be his. By 1791 what began
as a radical “experiment” had demonstrated that the individual, his family and his
enterprise could do something that the government with all of its power and all of its
2
Keith Windschuttle ‘ ADMIRAL PHILLIP: THE FOUNDING OF NEW SOUTH WALES, BY LOUIS
BECKE AND WALTER JEFFERY, LONDON, T. FISHER UNWIN, PATERNOSTER SQUARE,
MDCCCXCIX’
5. convict labour could not. At Experiment Farm, James Ruse and his family were the
first Australians to successfully run a farm, the first citizens to take themselves off the
government store and sustain themselves without government support. I have always
been especially proud to represent a region of Sydney that is home to the first free
enterprise in our nation’s history.
So whilst we know that our history is not always perfect we can regard freedom from
slavery as one of the birthrights of our nation and something to be grateful to our
forebears like Arthur Philip for. And as always I believe it is our job to conserve that
birthright.
In this case it was Phillip who set out this freedom, but, like the fine conservatives
who lead the government in England at the time, he was building on the good ideas
of others. One of those people was the Judge Lord Mansfield. It was his job to look at
the possibilities of how the common law would work with people who the British
Empire would absorb, following Cook’s contact with Terra Australis . In 1772, Lord
Mansfield handed down his judgment in which he said:
The state of slavery is of such a nature, that is incapable of being introduced on any
reasons, moral or political … it’s so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it
… Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision. I cannot say
[slavery] is allowed by the laws of England.
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3
Somerset vs Stewart Easter Term 12 Geo. 3, 1772, K.B. May 14, 1772 at 510; (1772) 98 ER
499 (“Somerset’s Case”) per Lord Mansfield.
6. And the judge hadn’t come up with this idea by himself either. The Wesley brothers
had been preaching innate dignity for decades before. And it wasn’t just protestants
carrying the torch. Pope Paul III forbade slavery in 1537. In the 5th Century,
St Augustine believed that slavery was a manifestation of sin in the world and it’s
reported he had his church bankrupt themselves to purchase manumission,
otherwise known as freedom, for the slaves.
But however strong this ideal was, like other nations, Australia has many instances of
shame in its past.
The practice of ‘black-birding’ in Far North Queensland on the sugar cane fields,
which enslaved thousands of Pacific Islanders; and more violently, the forced labour
of Indigenous people in The West Kimberley for the Pearling Industry.
But these two should be seen as aberrations outside the principles of Australia. They
were egregiously rationalised under the rubric of economic progress. The idea of
owning another human being was entirely outlawed.
Those practices of black-birding and forced labor a century ago outrage us now, and
so they should. So why are we not more concerned by the existence of slavery just
outside our shores? And, more pointedly, shouldn’t we be worried at the fact that
many of the goods and services we enjoy, have slavery built in to their supply chain.
15. The first abolitionists called themselves ‘The Society for Effecting the End of the
Slave Trade’. And one of its most effective members was the businessman Josiah
Wedgwood, who was a prominent businessman and is still a household name today
for his exceptional ceramic products.
Interestingly, inspired by his membership in this society, he asked himself how he
could contribute to the abolitionist movement with what he had. He used it to create
a range of anti-slavery medallions, crockery, figurines, tea-sets, snuff boxes...and
many types of goods, that all featured an inscription with a slave in chains asking the
simple question ‘Am I Not A Man and a Brother?’ . This figure on these medallions it
was said
'ended up probably being the most famous image of a black person in all of
18th Century Art...these goods had a huge impact on the first abolitionist
movement, and really become the icon of the movement. It also had the
broader effect of making it seem honourable to promote the cause of justice
and, humanity and freedom'
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Wedgwood showed how business can create remarkable change. He was an
innovator with technology. But his thinking and his message on the ceramic
collectibles came right out Paul’s Epistle to Philemon.
10
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/africans_in_art_gallery_02.shtml Retrieved 2009-04-11. The
Wedgwood medallion was the most famous image of a black person in all of 18th-century art.