Australian Dreams and Realities

The image that Australia projects to the world is quite rightly that of a healthy and robust democratic nation with vast natural, cultural and intellectual wealth. A great problem of communicating something as complex as national identity is that it is so often reduced to a matter of gross and overly simplistic caricature. Few Australians either look or sound anything like Steve Irwin or Crocodile Dundee. Australians are as likely to resemble Indians, Japanese, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Polynesians or Kenyans as they are to look anything like white European Anglo-Caucasians. The diversity of cultural and religious traditions, structures and beliefs in the Australian community is profound.

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Australia does well to project a positive self-image to the world. We have a lot to be proud of. We also, unfortunately, have much to be sorry for. Homelessness is a significant problem. Social injustice and the iniquities of wealth and poverty are as marked as anywhere else in the world, if a little less extreme in their relative severity than some other places. Racism is still rife in this country and the anger and resentment which in successive generations finds new targets and victims is still alive and well. At one point in our history the Chinese were victimised despite their hard work and valuable social contributions. At other times it was the Greeks, the Italians, the Vietnamese and in ignorance of similar hard work and socially constructive activity. More recently the Lebanese and various Muslim peoples have been on the sharp end of the racist prong. It seems as though classic Anglo-Saxon Australian self-identity is fundamentally insecure about it's own (200 year) history and place in the world and feels compelled to belittle others in an attempt, as though through some form of compensatory psychological transference, to make themselves sturdy and complete in their own eyes. Whether the sought-for psychological completeness and wholeness actually exists (or can ever exist) is a matter of some philosophical contention and one could easily interpret such a jingoistic patriotism as indeed being the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Australia's greatest shame, however, lies in our treatment of our Indigenous peoples - the original inhabitants. Australia is of course not the only country to have brutalised it's indigenous peoples but now, under the new Rudd Labour Government, some of our serious mistakes and past crimes are beginning to be addressed.