Australian Consequentialism: An Australian Critique

We Australians sometimes think of ourselves, flatteringly, as
straightforward, no-nonsense, down to earth. And it is true that a certain kind of pragmatism marks our national character. Perhaps it originates in the convict ships which transported men and women halfway across the world for often-trivial offences with no arrangements for their return home after their time had been served. Perhaps it originates in what they discovered on arrival: not a wonderfully bounteous land but a thin coastal strip of rich plains which quickly gave way to endlessly harsh desert. Whereas the first settlers in the United States actively set out to discover, even invent, a new and better world, a land of the free, the first settlers in Australia were brought here against their will and just had to make do in a convict colony. Thus, perhaps, our dry matter-of-factness, our practical ('scientific'), matey ('democratic') pragmatism.