Canem Malum wrote:

"British Australian's built Australia's infrastructure from nothing."

That is more of the Terra Nullius nonsense. There were people here when the British came. They were feeding themselves. They had a spiritual life. The British forced Christian superstitions on them to replace Aboriginal superstitions. The British took their land on which they were surviving to build cattle stations and other structures supporting their society. The war that is not mentioned in the Australian War Memorial is the original war in which the British took the Aboriginal land. The British did not build Australia's infrastructure from nothing. They replaced one society with another society and tried to force the original inhabitants to accept new superstitions and be servants to the new society.

David

perhaps you could point to any structure pre civilization in Australia

Dear shadow minister,

You don't have to have an elaborate structure to have a society. The Aborigines had humpies which provided sufficient shelter for them. You apparently have a similar mindset to Canem Malum. The elementary forms of Religious life used one case study in depth, the Australian aborigines. Durkheim choose this group because he felt they represented the most basic, elementary forms of religion within a culture. To say there was nothing denies that culture. Presumably, if the Aborigines had been left alone they would be living as their ancestors did. Canem Malum and you consider it nothing. Our ancestors lived in similar circumstances. As far as we know since the beginning of humanity humans have lived in some of society. It is wrong to call it nothing if it is not the same kind of society that you are used to.

Adding insult to injury, it has become fashionable to refer to aboriginal people as "first nations", as if they too were afflicted by that white-man's disease.

Before white man came they had no alcohol hence no alcoholism, no nation hence no nationalism - these are the cursed ills brought over by the white man!

Thank you david f, a man of my soul. Unfortunately saying that, it wont win you any "kudos" from the Kudos Kid, but maybe another one of his quotes from That renowned Greek philosopher and Souvlaki shop owner Demetrius Arsethrottle. "Ah, you'a wanna up-size.... only a dollar extra!" I found that quote rather profound, particularly late on a boozy Friday night in Marrickville... what do you think?

"You don't have to have an elaborate structure to have a society. "

Well that's true, if you stretch the meaning of 'society' beyond recognition. But you do have to have a structure to have infrastructure which was Canem's original point.

We've been down this road before. The aboriginals were a stone age people who lived unchanged for millennia apart from thoroughly altering the landscape in their original guise. Like most stone age peoples, their lives were short and brutish, war was prevalent, women little better than chattels, kids even less, the entire tribe one bad season away from disaster.

A dead-end as far as human development is concerned.