counterfactual.^14 The counterfactual serves the sense that‘other histories’are
possible; that events need not of necessity turn out as they did; and things
are not the way they are from some deep (grand?) necessity, but instead have
arisen from chance, a chance that might be trivial and low. Perhaps the only
extended examination of the counterfactual in Australian history is by Portus
(1944)—an adherent of Australia exceptionalism—and, tellingly, his message
was how little difference different happenstance would have made to the
long-run course of affairs in Australia.
Another form of silence is to not talk about those who have talked about it.
W. K. Hancock’sAustraliahas remained unreprinted infifty years. Despite
being known, read, and saluted, it seems to constitute a samizdat.
The present work’s overriding purpose is to breach this silence, and to
increase the awareness of Australian non-conformity. For that purpose, this
book brings together a diverse range of authors, united by the view that the
topic is important and worth pondering. No deeper unity amongst the
authors need be looked for: this book is not a manifesto, and its authors are
not some company of‘the undersigned’.
In serving its overriding purpose, the book ranges widely, and begins with
the unparalleled encounter between the Aborigines and Europeans that
marked the genesis of modern Australia (Chapter 2). Yet the present work is
not committed tofinding exceptionalism wherever it ranges: thus one chapter
argues that the temptation to see Australia as unusually secular is misplaced
(Chapter 4).Neitherdoesitcommititselftolook forexceptionalismeverywhere:
Australia’s economy and politics are this work’s primary focuses. Even within
the confines of the economic and political, the volume does not attempt to
comprehensively survey the territory, but instead takes the measures of some
prominent features of the terrain. Chapters are devoted to accounting for
the vacuity of Australian federalism (Chapter 6); charting the industrial rela-
tions maze (Chapter 7), along with one of its strange progeny—compulsory
superannuation (Chapter 10); dispelling the lazy-minded characterization of
Australian governance as‘Westminster’(Chapter 14); pondering the‘poverty
of discourse’in Australian social affairs (Chapter 5); uncovering the legacy of
government ownership of railways on politics and administration (Chapter 9);
puzzling out how Australian agriculture could be both so laggard and dynamic
(Chapter 13); identifying‘the difference’from New Zealand, that—after so
long tracing a parallel path—has now diverged so much from Australia; and
furnishing a biographical insight into H. B. Higgins, one the most significant
‘hero-villain-fools’of Australian history (Klapp 1954) (Chapter 12).
(^14) One exception is found in Blainey’s speculations on the consequences of the creation of a
state of North Queensland (1980, pp. 200–4).
William O. Coleman