Humanities and social sciences / Year 5 / Knowledge and Understanding / Civics and citizenship

Curriculum content descriptions

The key values that underpin Australia’s democracy (ACHASSK115)

Elaborations
  • discussing the meaning of democracy
  • discussing the meaning and importance of the key values of Australian democracy (for example, freedom of election and being elected; freedom of assembly and political participation; freedom of speech, expression and religious belief; rule of law; other basic human rights)
  • considering how students apply democratic values in familiar contexts
General capabilities
  • Personal and social capability Personal and social capability
  • Ethical understanding Ethical understanding
ScOT terms

Democracy,  Civil rights,  Social equality,  Fair play

Video

Tour of NSW Government House

This resource is a YouTube playlist containing a series of videos taken as a group of senior high school students are given a guided tour of NSW Government House in 2010. The tour covers primary sources such as architecture, furniture and images significant to the history of Australia and NSW.

Video

NSW Governor Marie Bashir – 2010 speech to students

This resource is a YouTube playlist containing a series of videos from a speech the NSW Governor Marie Bashir gave to senior high school students at Government House in 2010. She speaks on a range of topics, including the Australian system of government, the history of Australia and NSW, and her life. She also answers ...

Online

Magna Carta: The story of our freedom

This is a resource about the Magna Carta (Great Charter) agreed between King John and his rebellious barons in 1215 and its influence on the development of human rights and democratic freedoms to the present day. The resource consists of: an animated infographic ‘Tell the story’ with hyperlinks to further information; an ...

Interactive

Discovering democracy: Federation timeline

Use a timeline to find information about significant events and ideas in the establishment of a federated Australia. Nominate specific years or scroll from 1788 to 1901 to see what steps were key in determining the nature of government in Australia.

Image

Pacific Islander workers on a coffee plantation, c1900

This black-and-white photograph shows indentured Pacific Islander labourers manually gathering coffee beans from lines of bushes on a Kuranda coffee plantation on the Atherton Tableland in Queensland. This image shows male, female and child labourers standing among the shoulder-high coffee bushes. The Pacific Islanders ...

Image

Pacific Islander labourers outside slab-hut dwellings, late 1800s

This is a black-and-white photograph showing indentured Pacific Islanders and their families posing by their slab-hut homes, probably on a coastal Queensland sugar plantation. They are wearing Western-style clothes, with the women in long skirts and the men wearing jackets and trousers. The huts appear to have been constructed ...

Video

Counted: Australian culture in the 1960s

What was Australia like in the 1960s? Why does reporter Stan Grant say that "change is coming" at this time, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? Choose one of the people mentioned in this video and do some research into their sporting, artistic or political achievements.

Video

BTN: History of voting

Australia's first parliamentary election was in 1843. What was different about voting then? When and how did that change to resemble elections we have now? See if you can list the three significant dates in Australia’s history of voting and the changes that occurred on those dates.

Image

Pacific Islander labourers planting sugar cane, Mackay, 1870s

This is a black-and-white photograph showing large groups of poorly dressed indentured Pacific Islanders planting sugar cane on a plantation at Mackay in Queensland. Fourteen or more Pacific Islanders are manually placing sugar-cane cuttings at regular intervals in long furrows. Two mounted white men oversee their work ...

Image

Pacific Islander labourers in the Mackay District, late 1800s

This posed black-and-white photograph shows indentured Pacific Islanders by their grass hut homes, probably on a Mackay sugar plantation in Queensland. Some are seated on logs or rough timber benches and one woman can also be seen. They are dressed in Western-style clothes. More huts can be seen on the cleared rise in the ...

Text

Defining moments in Australian History

This extensive web-based resource examines events, people and places of profound significance to the Australian people and their personal, community and national histories. The resource includes a list of 100 'defining moments' identified by historians supported by background information, images, video and links to the ...

Online

Indigenous Stories about War and Invasion

This is a website about Indigenous experiences of invasion and war during the British invasion, World War I and World War II. The resource is presented in three sections: Introductory information; Story Objects; and Story Education Resources. There are eight story objects that tell the stories of individuals, events and ...

Image

Pacific Islander labourers hoeing a cane field, c1902

This black-and-white photograph shows indentured Pacific Islanders methodically hoeing weeds from a large sugar-cane field at Herbert River in north-eastern Queensland. They wear Western-style clothes and hats. A white man, only just visible on the left and facing the Islanders, stands in front of the line of labourers, ...

Image

Pacific Islander women planting sugar cane at Bingera, c1897

This black-and-white photograph shows several indentured Pacific Islander women planting sugar-cane stalks, or setts, in freshly made furrows in a large field at Bingera near Bundaberg, Queensland. The women, dressed in Western-style clothes, are following directly behind a horsedrawn plough that is worked by indentured ...

Image

Pacific Islander women working in cane fields, c1890

This sepia photograph shows eight indentured Pacific Islander female labourers preparing to hoe weeds in rows of cane at Hambledon Mill, near Cairns in Queensland. The women and girls, some barefoot, stand at the edge of the cane, which is above head height. The foreground is bare soil and a thickly wooded hill rises in ...

Image

Pacific Islander labourers clearing land, c1895

This is a black-and-white photograph showing nine Pacific Islander men using picks and axes to clear undergrowth and small trees from a clearing in a thickly vegetated area at Farnborough in central Queensland. The men are bare-chested, hatless and barefoot, with some wearing sarong-like garments. A white man stands in ...

Image

Pacific Islanders at irrigation channels, c1905

This sepia photograph shows around 20 Pacific Islander men posed on either side of a narrow irrigation channel in a cane field at Bingera Plantation near Bundaberg in Queensland. Some are holding long-handled hoes or shovels. A junction of the irrigation channel is visible in the foreground with equipment necessary to divert ...

Image

Pacific Islanders arriving at Bundaberg, 1895

The black-and-white photograph shows Pacific Islander men and women arriving in the sugar port of Bundaberg after being recruited to work as indentured labourers on Queensland's sugar plantations. The posed shot shows more than 60 Pacific Islander men, women and boys and one European on the deck of a schooner at the dock. ...

Image

Pacific Islanders harvesting cane on Bingera Plantation, 1884

This sepia photograph shows around ten Pacific Islander labourers in a sugar-cane field at Bingera Plantation near Bundaberg in Queensland as the cane is being harvested. A well-dressed European man and two young children pose in the cleared foreground, while in the mid-ground stands a fully laden horsedrawn wagon with ...

Image

Pacific Island labourer recruiting ship 'Para', c1880

This is a drawing of the two-masted brigantine 'Para', probably completed by Master Mariner William Wawn during a successful five months voyage to the Solomon Islands in 1894. One of a series of sketches of his impressions of the islands in pencil, ink and watercolour, it shows the recruiting ship offshore at anchor, as ...