Australia exists, yet it is not the people, the animals, the environment, or the country that once existed, or still exists, on this continent.
Australia is an organised destructive operation. It is not a place, nor a people, nor a culture brought together by a shared history. It is the name given to a colonial project that arrived on this continent in 1788 and has, from its very beginning, been organised around invasion, dispossession, extraction and accumulation. Everything else has followed from this.
The forests did not create Australia. The rivers did not create Australia. The mountains, deserts and grasslands did not create Australia. They existed long before it and have endured despite it. Australia exists upon this continent, but it is not the continent itself. The colony has mistaken itself for the country.
Nor are the people who live here Australia. We are born into its institutions, governed by its laws and compelled to participate in its economy, but this does not make us the colony any more than living under an empire made one the empire itself. Australia seeks to define every relationship on this continent through property, borders, extraction and profit. It demands that all life conform to its logic.
The colony has brought destruction wherever its logic has taken hold. Forests become timber. Rivers become irrigation channels. Mountains become mines. Animals become pests or commodities. Land becomes real estate. Human relationships become markets. Country is no longer understood as something to belong to and care for, but as something to own, exploit and exhaust.
This destruction is not accidental. It is organised.
It is organised through governments that administer extraction. Through corporations that transform living systems into profit. Through police who defend property before people. Through laws that legitimise dispossession while criminalising resistance. Through schools, media and institutions that teach us to mistake the colony for the country itself.
Because the destruction is organised, opposition must also be organised.
If Australia is an organised destructive operation, then outrage alone cannot defeat it. We must organise ourselves with the same seriousness and endurance with which the colony organises extraction. We must build communities capable not simply of resisting the colony, but of making it impossible.
Australia cannot be redeemed because Australia is the colony. Its institutions are not failing to achieve their purpose; they are fulfilling it. The answer is not to perfect the colony, but to abolish it.
Abolish Australia