military service. Originating in Prussia, it wasfirst introduced in the British
Empire by Australia, as theCommonwealth Year Booksfor years proudly recorded.
Why is this province so overgrown? A possible historical–cultural base
of the hypertrophy of societal technology might be sought in the‘worldly
Presbyterianism’—the secularized, rationalistic puritanism—that so dis-
mayed Francis Adams about Australia (Adams 1893, p. 28). An alternative
environmental–economic foundation for Australia’s ‘talent’ for societal
technology might be sought in the benefits of a human machinery, in that
it is the‘world’sfirst and most suburbanised nation’(Clarke 1965, p. 63);^26
and in the low costs of human machinery in Australia on account of the
country’s homogeneity in language and culture. The cost of human machin-
ery is doubtless reduced still further by the country possessing‘the least
diversityofsurfaceofanyofthecontinents’(Taylor 1945, p. 316) and the
sort of well-defined and formidable natural borders that facilitate the close
organization of a society. To illustrate that thought, Australia has had a
penchant for rigorous quarantine (books,the sick, alien races, exotic pests,
asylum claimants,film stars’dogs) because it can have such a penchant.
There are several other candidate causes with broader historical roots.
3.4.1Colonial Origins
Australia’s penchant for bureaucracy might be traced to the fact that Australia
was a colony:
Possibly the most enduring feature of any colonial regime, one of thefirst to appear
and the last to leave, is the administrator, the colonial bureaucrat, high, middle
and low. (Stein and Stein 1970, p. 68)The highest stratum of the original bureaucratic management of Australia was
another bureaucracy, the Colonial Office, presided over in the key years
1825 – 45 by James Stephen, a‘strict legalist’with a‘passion for system and
uniformity’(Pike 1957, p. 35). The next stratum consisted of the governors,
who, too, were public servants, in as much that they were accountable to the
Colonial Secretary. The example of elevated and conscientious colonial
governors—Macquarie, Bourke, King (‘bursting with plans and policies’: Roe
1963, p. 7)—may have provided archetypes for the procession of industrious,
intelligent, and overweening public servants that have been conspicuous in
Australian history. The third stratum was the local staff, and the excellence
and profusion in Australian of that useful tool of government—government
(^26) Dilke opines that Australian town democracy is attracted to state socialism, while the small
agricultural proprietors of the USA are repelled by it (Dilke 1890, vol. 2, p. 265).
Theories of Australian Exceptionalism