http://www.boston.com/dailynews/129/world/Australians_celebrate_100_year:.shtml

Australians celebrate 100 years of nationhood

By Peter O'Connor, Associated Press, 5/9/2001 10:55

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) Thousands of dignitaries gathered Wednesday to commemorate the first sitting of Australia's Federal Parliament 100 years ago the high point in a year of festivities that has seen the country's political roots come under fire.

Australia's political, cultural and business leaders listened to bands and patriotic speeches in Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building to honor the launch of the legislature in the same vast hall exactly a century ago.

''This above all days is an occasion to celebrate the success of Australian democracy,'' Prime Minister John Howard told those assembled.

The opening of the first parliament followed the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia on Jan 1, 1901, when six British colonies joined together in a Federation.

Australia's head of state, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, delivered a message through her representative Governor General Sir William Deane in which she said the country had ''established and nurtured one of the best parliamentary democracies in the world.''

But many people were less enthusiastic.

''The carping criticism that the anniversary is chiefly a celebration of the dull deeds of forgotten men with long beards,'' Melbourne newspaper The Age said in an editorial.

Critics point out the original constitution excluded Aborigines from citizenship and the first order of business of the parliament, which included no women, was the White Australia policy which excluded Asians and non-Europeans for more than 50 years.

On Tuesday, Aboriginal leader Geoff Clark told a gathering in the Victorian State Parliament that Aborigines ''have nothing to celebrate in this year.''

Paul Keating, prime minister in the last Labor government, told a dinner Tuesday night there were no George Washingtons or Thomas Jeffersons among the men who wrote Australia's constitution.

''It was put together by lawyers and businessmen, mostly old forelock tuggers, who set us up as a British satellite,'' said Keating.

-- Anonymous, May 10, 2001