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Property ownership has been about status and wealth since our convict days; Land ownership gained prestige and smaller landholders were pushed out of the market.
Topic Started: 15 Sep 2017, 03:34 PM (503 Views)
Bardon
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Property ownership has been about status and wealth since our convict days

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While Australia has an egalitarian mythology, where everyone has a chance, the roots of problems with access to housing lie in our colonial history.

The first land grants were given to former convicts as a way to control an unfenced prison colony.

As free settlers arrived in Australia, priorities changed, land ownership gained prestige and smaller landholders were pushed out of the market.

When Governor Phillip stepped onto Australian soil for the first time, in 1788, he carried with him a set of instructions to guide him through the early days of the newest British colony.

Included was some authority to grant land, and the number of acres each male convict could receive at the end of his sentence.

Eighteen months later, the colony received further instructions from home secretary William Grenville, permitting soldiers and free settlers to receive parcels of land if they chose to stay in the colony.

Build, buy or bust?


Should you sacrifice lifestyle to buy? Or just rent forever? Are there other ways?
Grenville's instructions also set out the pattern of land granting that would dominate the colony for the next two decades.

Groups of grants were to be placed at the edge of a waterway, with each individual property stretching back into the land rather than along the bank.

These rules had a long history; the American colony of Georgia received almost identical phrasing in 1754, but other versions had been in place since the early 18th century.

The rules had two specific purposes in Australia; to foster productivity, and to maintain surveillance over the landholding population, which consisted largely of former convicts.

Initially, all land grants were required to conform to these instructions, and status was shown by the amount of land received. Former convicts started at 30 acres, while free settlers got at least 100 acres.
Under this scheme everyone would receive a mixture of good and bad soils, access to a navigable river and the safety of a surrounding community — important in an unfamiliar land.

These grants would reduce the colony's reliance on imported provisions. Instead, it could feed excess produce into the ports that restocked passing ships.

Colonial exploration and expansion could then continue to stretch to the furthest parts of the globe. But the rules also kept the grantees contained and within a day's travel of a centre of governance (Hobart or Launceston, for example).

Free settlers' arrival changed the rules

In 1817, the Colonial Office began to encourage voluntary emigration to the Australian colonies, and ambitious free settlers arrived.

People complained about the failings of the former convicts, as they practised a rough agriculture that did not fit British ideals.

At the same time the management of convicts in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) moved towards the harsh penitentiary system today associated with convicts.

Using land grants to pin the former convict population to specific locations, while permitting them the freedom to live their lives, conflicted with free settlers' aspirations for the colony.
It is no accident that Bothwell, in Tasmania's Derwent Valley, was not directly connected to Hobart by river and was dominated by free settlers.

The spread of Europeans across the land resulted from the mix of an expanding overland road network and the reduced need to keep these higher-status settlers within arm's reach.

A lithograph showing German settlers at Bethany, in South Australia's Barossa Valley, in the 1840s.
PHOTO: Free settlers were given priority over convicts when it came to land grants. (National Gallery of Australia: JW Giles, copyright free)
Land granting policies that excluded poorer settlers — most of whom were former convicts or the children of convicts — were introduced.

Only those people with 500 pounds in capital and assets (roughly $80,000) would be eligible. The minimum grant would be 320 acres.
One writer, the colonial surveyor GW Evans, asked at the time whether this was intended to drive those without means to the United States of America instead.

Even if they scraped together the money, the sheer quantity of land would be beyond their ability to cultivate.

A graph showing the increases in average grant sizes.
INFOGRAPHIC: Average grant sizes, taken from specific representative regions to eliminate duplicates in the records. (Supplied: Imogen Wegman)
Locating former convicts on the rivers ensured productivity and the reliable transportation of goods, but these grants also kept them under close observation.

As the penal system became more punitive convicts lost the hope of gaining a small piece of land after their sentence.

But before this, far from being intended as any kind of reward or enticement, the first land grants given in Australia represented ongoing control over the lowest class of settlers — those who had been "transported beyond the seas".

Since the beginning of our colonial history, land ownership in Australia has been intricately connected with role and status.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-12/property-has-been-about-status-and-weatlh-since-colonial-days/8892586
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Chris
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Murdering for wealth has also been a component of society since convict days as well, should we champion that barfon
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Bardon
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Chris
15 Sep 2017, 03:50 PM
Murdering for wealth has also been a component of society since convict days as well, should we champion that barfon
Well you seem to love playing the role of the serial victim, so yes don't let me stop you in your murderous ways.

Wouldn't your outlook in life improve a little by at least trying to understand or come to terms with some positives about something, anything, surely life is not that bleak for you?

What about the improvements in tenants rights since Federation, why don't you champion that cause, especially it being something that you can speak first hand about. Even if you think your rights have diminished since the start of this century at least you would be doing something constructive by writing about it, try it you may be surprised to see how your life could improve.

It doesn't have to be like this for you.

There is more to life than owning a house.




Edited by Bardon, 15 Sep 2017, 04:29 PM.
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Bardon
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Property is a fundamental common law right, the right to own a property is a true measure of freedom in Australia

There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few, that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right.

The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of property: which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land ... The laws of England are ... extremely watchful in ascertaining and protecting this right. Upon this principle the great charter has declared that no freeman shall be disseised, or divested, of his freehold, or of his liberties, or free customs, but by the judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.

So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community. If a new road, for instance, were to be made through the grounds of a private person, it might perhaps be extensively beneficial to the public; but the law permits no man, or set of men, to do this without consent of the owner of the land ... Besides, the public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual’s private rights, as modelled by the municipal law. In this and similar cases the legislature alone can, and indeed frequently does, interpose, and compel the individual to acquiesce. But how does it interpose and compel? Not by absolutely stripping the subject of his property in an arbitrary manner; but by giving him a full indemnification and equivalent for the injury thereby sustained ... All that the legislature does is to oblige the owner to alienate his possessions for a reasonable price; and even this is an exertion of power, which the legislature indulges with caution, and which nothing but the legislature can perform

Sir William Blackstone (July 10, 1723 – February 14, 1780) was an English jurist and professor who produced the historical treatise on the common law called Commentaries on the Laws of England.
Edited by Bardon, 16 Sep 2017, 07:44 PM.
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Chris
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Bardon
15 Sep 2017, 04:20 PM
There is more to life than owning a house.




Not if sadistic crunts like you had your way.

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Bardon
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Chris
16 Sep 2017, 09:52 PM
Not if sadistic crunts like you had your way.
Something must have went terribly wrong for you during your upbringing but its your children that I fear for most.
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