Cultural–historicalexplanationsinvokecultureastheimmediatedetermining
factor, with culture in turn explained by reference to some‘founding’history.
The idiosyncratic institutional origins of Australia obviously invite various
cultural–historical explanations of exceptionalism, and Hartz’sisanillustration.
Anothervariantofthissortofexplanationwouldinvoketheethniccomposition
of the founding immigration, and the Australian illustration would be the
recurrent, if not universally shared, hunch that heavy Irish immigration shaped
Australian distinctiveness.^35 Another use of cultural–historical explanations
consists of invoking the experiences a society didnothave. Australia had no
war of independence; no occupation; no war at all fought purely on Australia’s
account; and is the neighbour of no United States or Brazil.
In contrast, economic–environmental explanations suppose that economic
motivations, when conjoined with material constraints, are decisive. The
leading illustration of the‘economic–environmental’explanation of Austra-
lian singularity is‘the Bush’, the Outback, the Back of Beyond; that enormous
quantity of low and risky value land, studded by (a critical detail) outcrops of
land made precious by their minerals. It is this‘outback’of drought,flood, and
fire that makes the country Australia and not New Zealand: it is the outback
that makes for the Australian way.
The wide brown land is the terrain of Russel Ward, but also Hancock’s
‘public utility state’, where great distances make collective action more
rewarding—possibly even rational; particularly in the natural monopolies of
transport and communication. But other arguments might be woven out of
Australia’s physical endowment. Distance means area, and Australia’s land is
bountiful relative to her small population; more‘arable land’or‘agricultural
land’per head than obvious comparators.^36 The large quantity of land will
obviously make rents per acre low, but may also make rent per capita large.^37
And such high rents per capita will have the appearance of a mound of wealth
that may be apportioned as one pleases, without an unwelcome diminution in
its size.^38 An economy of vertical supply curves is congenial to a collectivist
(^35) Ward gave an accent to Irishness, and explained South Australia’s own individuality by its
relative lack of Irish. Hirst, by contrast, asserts the essential Englishness of Australia (2014, p. 128).
The unusually large presence of Irish is a fact (MacDonagh 1986), but divining the implications of
this fact is perplexed by the fractures in‘Irishness’, and the divergence of the reality of Irishness
from its stereotypes (see Eggleston 1953b, p. 7). One reflective consideration of the question seems
to avoid making a conclusion (O 36 ’Farrell 1986).
It estimated that there is 23,222 m^2 of‘arable land’per head in Australia vs 5220 m^2 in the
USA, 8,700 m^2 in Argentina, and 1,168 m^2 NZ (CIA World Fact Book). The World Bank’s estimates of
the broader category of‘agricultural land’seem generous, but taken at face value they imply
172,400 m^2 of agricultural land per head in Australia; 12,900 m^2 in the USA; 2,480 m^2 in New
Zealand; and 34,600 m 37 2 in Argentina.
38 If the demand for land is elastic then a larger supply of land will increase rents per capita.
‘The Selection Acts were on the face of it a recipe for spreading the wealth and their operation
has been compared to a gold rush. An alternative construction of the Selection Acts was that they
were an attempt to compensate by legislation for an artificial scarcity that had been purposefully
William O. Coleman