This phrase comes from Australia having started its European settlement period as a British penal colony, so we inherited ‘the System’ as a foundation stone of our society.
- Robbie Lloyd
- Pearls and Irritations
It was the term commonly used for the British system of “transportation, assignment and secondary punishment of convicts,” as described in detail by Australian writer Robert Hughes in his book The Fatal Shore (Hughes, 1986, p. xxi).
Now it has become part of the language that many citizens use to describe the…