Backbencher

In lecture six we started to become more familiar with the different classes in Australian and New Zealand society. This lecture touched back on some of the founding mythologies that took place back in lecture four. Those being that Australia was a convict settlement, there was an overthrow of the squatters by the bourgeois, the fact that they are not English, the utopian society planned for New Zealand, retaining ties to the empire, and an idea of a classless society are some of the mythologies that these nations were founded on. This lecture focuses more closely on the classes in society. Russell Ward identified a class of people as bushrangers, or those that lived in the wilderness, Miran Dixson viewed the classes of society having to deal more with gender, and A.G.L. Shaw took a look into the urban country stating that society was absent of wealthy leisured class. After reading Sinclair and Clark I would tend to agree with Shaw on that one. I didn't notice that there was a wide range of classes, especially in New Zealand. I don't know how many times we heard Sinclair say that New Zealand had the highest standard of living on the planet, but no one was overly wealthy. Shaw would agree with that because he saw that people were seeking adequate comfort and reasonable convenience instead of being overly wealthy. The native populations at this time were defying fatal contact, and the idea of multi-cultural and Anglo Celtic core culture was starting to become more prevalent. The two nations did differ in class locals in the two countries where Aussies took more to urban migration, and New Zealanders took with the green interest in the countryside. Through all of this I don't really notice much of a class structure. I think the closest thing to that could be the different sports that were mentioned could be different classes, but even that is a stretch. The sports of Footie, and Rugby would be the upper-class because they attract more viewers, and the sports of net ball, field hockey and cricket would make up the class below that. Overall this lecture started to fill in the blanks, but there are still some that are blank. The title implies that there really are no classes except for those that make up sports teams. Is there a wide range of classes in either of these countries compared to the US? Because it seems like everyone is just the same as everyone else.