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| Country : Australia Official name: Commonwealth of Australia Head of State: Queen Elizabeth II (since 1952), represented by Governor General Major General Michael Jeffery (from 11 Aug 2003) Head of government: Prime Minister John Howard (leader of LP) (since Mar 1996; re-elected for a fourth term 9 Oct 2004) Ruling party: Liberal Party (LP)-National Party (NP) coalition (since 1995; last re-elected 9 Oct 2004) Area: 7,682,300 square km Population: 20.23 million (2004) Capital: Canberra Official language: English Currency: Australian dollar (A$) = 100 cents Exchange rate: A$1.30 per US$ (Nov 2004) GDP per capita: US$25,100 (2003) GDP real growth: 2.40% (2003) Labour force: 9.82 million (2003) Unemployment: 6.00% (2003) (seasonally adjusted) Inflation: 2.80% (2003) Oil production: 731,000 bpd (2003) Balance of trade: -US$18.26 billion (2003) Foreign debt: US$176.80 billion (2003) |
Historical profile
1778 Captain James Cook reached Australia and sailed the entire length of the
East Coast. He claimed the land for Britain.
1788 British Naval captain, Arthur Phillip, founded a penal colony at Sydney. He had arrived with a fleet of 11 vessels and nearly 800 convicts.
1829 The Colony of Western Australia was established at Perth by Captain James Stirling.
1837 South Australia was established with Adelaide as its capital city.
1851 The discovery of gold in New South Wales sparked a wave of migration to Australia, known as the 'gold rush'. Within 10 years of the gold find, the population was estimated to have grown from 500,000 to 1.5 million. The Aborigines were treated badly.
1856 Australia became the first country to introduce the secret ballot for elections (known as the `Australian ballot').
1877 The first Test cricket match between Australia and England was played in Melbourne.
1901 The Commonwealth of Australia was created. The former British colonies became the six states of Australia: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania. There are two self-governing states – the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory.
1911 Canberra was founded as the new capital city.
1914–1918 Australia fought alongside Britain during the First World War. Australian troops bore the brunt of the fighting and casualties during the ill-fated beach landing at Gallipoli in Turkey in 1915.
1929–31 Following the Wall Street Crash came the Great Depression, which hit the Australian economy badly. Recovery was slow and uneven. The Labor government was defeated in the elections.
1939–45 Australia fought alongside Britain and the US during the Second World War. In 1942, Japanese aircraft bombed Darwin (Northern Territory), the only direct foreign attack on Australia since its creation.
1948 Australia began to promote immigration from Europe and over the next three decades, more than a million people arrived, a third of whom came from Britain.
1950 Australia participated in the Korean War.
1951 Australia, New Zealand and the US signed the Anzus Pact, a security pact for the South Pacific.
1956 Australia hosted the Olympic games in Melbourne.
1963 The 'White Australia' policy of immigration restrictions was ended.
1965 Australia fought alongside the US in Vietnam. At the height of Australia's involvement, the task force numbered 8,500 troops.
1967 A national referendum approved changes to the constitution: the section which excluded Aboriginal people from the official census was removed and another change enabled the federal government to pass laws on Aboriginal issues.
1975 Australia restricted the immigration of non-skilled workers. The governor general, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Gough Whitlam's government following its repeated failure to pass the budget in the upper house of parliament. A caretaker government under Malcolm Fraser was installed.
1985 The issue of Aboriginal land rights was first addressed.
1986 Australia's legislative links with the UK were severed by the Australia Act, which abolished the UK parliament's residual legislative, executive and judicial controls over Australian state law.
1990 Bob Hawke and his Australian Labor Party (ALP) government narrowly won the federal election – the first ALP administration to win three consecutive elections.
1991 Paul Keating (ALP) succeeded Bob Hawke as prime minister.
1992 The Citizenship Act was amended to remove the obligation to swear an allegiance to the British Crown. Keating's government pledged to make Australia a republic and develop links with the rest of Asia.
1993 The ALP won the general election with an increased majority. The Native Title Act granted the Aborigines compensation for the loss of land rights.
1996 The Liberal Party (LP)-National Party (NP) coalition won a landslide victory in elections and John Howard, leader of the LP, took over as prime minister.
1998 The LP-NP coalition was re-elected at the general elections, but with a reduced majority. Delegates to a constitutional convention voted to replace the Queen with a president elected by parliament.
1999 Fifty-five per cent of votes cast in a national referendum opposed Australia becoming a republic. After East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia, Australia led an intervention force to counter pro-Indonesia militia violence. Australia's relationship with Indonesia worsened.
2000 Australia hosted the Olympic Games in Sydney; they became known as the `friendly games'.
2001 Peter Hollingworth was sworn in as governor general. Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologise to `stolen generations' of Aborigines who, as children, were forcibly removed from their parents to live with white families. Howard won a third term in the federal elections after gaining support for his 'Pacific Solution' – the policy of refusing entry to asylum seekers and directing them to other countries in Asia-Pacific.
2002 There were riots in the Woomera desert detention camp for asylum seekers. Eighty-eight Australian citizens were killed in a night club bombing in Bali, Indonesia.
2003 Australia contributed 2,000 troops to the Iraq War. Governor General Peter Hollingworth stood down and Major General Michael Jeffery was appointed in his place. Bush fires raged across the country. The Senate passed a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister John Howard over his handling of the Iraq crisis. Australia headed a peacekeeping force in the Solomon Islands.
2004 On 1 February, the first passenger train to cross Australia from south to north (the Ghan) made its journey from Adelaide to Darwin. In February, the inhabitants of a predominantly Aborigine Sydney suburb rioted in protest at the death of a young Aborigine as the result of a police car chase. In the same month, a parliamentary committee cleared the government of lying about the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In September, there was a bomb attack outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. The LP-NP coalition government led by John Howard won a fourth term in October federal legislative elections. In November, the death of an Aboriginal man in police custody sparked more riots on Palm Island, off the north-east coast.
2005 In January, the worst bush fires for more than two decades killed nine
people in South Australia.
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