CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIA

2. National Identity
Sara Cousins

From the Monash University National Centre for Australian Studies

course, developed with Open Learning Australia

In this, the second week of the course, Sara Cousins asks: What does it mean to be
Australian in a multicultural society? Is there an elusive quality, a ‘national identity’,
which binds us all as Australians? And what about the ‘Australian way of life’? Does it
still reflect the traditional virtues of egalitarianism, classlessness, ‘a fair go’, stoicism and
mateship?

Sara Cousins is a research fellow with the National Centre for Australian Studies,
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

2.1 What does it mean to be Australian?

2.2 National symbols and places
2.3 Terra Nullius
2.4 The ‘Australian Type’
2.5 The ‘Australian Way of Life’
2.6 Post-nationalist Australia?
2.7 Further reading

2.1 What does it mean to be Australian?

There is no ‘real’ Australia waiting to be uncovered. A national identity is an invention. Richard White
(1981) Inventing Australia

Each one of us could describe ourselves with a multitude of different identities. These
identities can be seen as defining us as people and may be cultural, ethnic, religious,
gendered, class-oriented or ideological. They are as varied as our imagination. In
Australia, the religious, cultural and ethnic complexity of our society is particularly
diverse.

In the midst of this diversity, is there an elusive quality, a ‘national identity’, which binds
us all as Australians? There are certainly national cultural stereotypes and national
symbols that we all recognise as Australian, but do these really reflect the everyday
reality of living as an Australian today? Do national identities ever have anything to do
with cultural experience or are they more to do with a constructed image of a ‘nation’?
What is it about our cultural stereotypes, if anything, that continues to resonate with
Australians? Who is excluded? Does our national identity still depend upon a white
Anglo-Celtic male viewpoint?

2.2 National symbols and places

Australia’s national symbols and revered national places reveal the extent of our ties with
Britain. Australia is loyal to the British Crown with our head of state derived from the
hereditary line of the British monarchy. Australia has the Union Jack as an integral part

© National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, 2005. All rights reserved.
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of its national flag. Australia’s national anthem was only changed from ‘God save the
Queen’ in the 1970s. Our ceremonial days, oaths of loyalty, and citizenship ceremonies
are linked inextricably to Britain.

Every Australia Day, we explore what it means to be Australian. Reflection about this
national identity is invited on the 26th of January, a day that recalls a British invasion and
is ‘celebrated’ as Survival Day by Indigenous Australians. Are the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander flags now seen as national symbols?

2.3 Terra Nullius

Indigenous imagery is all around us today. We see Aboriginal motifs on Qantas

aeroplanes, public transport, tourism advertisements, T-shirts and tea-towels. There are
Aboriginal arts and cultural festivals, like the Festival of the Dreaming in Sydney, that
attract a wide following of both locals and overseas visitors. During the recent Sydney
Olympics, we were treated to an extravaganza of Indigenous artistic talent broadcast to
the world.

Yet, it took until 1967 before Aboriginal people were accorded basic citizenship rights
and were counted in the national census of the Australian people. Prior to this, the
country’s original inhabitants were not even counted as citizens. It was not until the High
Court’s Mabo v Qld decision in 1992, that the legal fiction of ‘terra nullius’ was not
recognised by the common law. Australia’s legal system finally acknowledged that
Australia was not an empty continent. Prior to this, Aboriginal people simply did not
exist within the eyes of the law as a sovereign people. The Australian Constitution still
does not recognise the sovereignty of Indigenous Australians. How might Indigenous
Australians’ call for a treaty affect visions of national identity?

Non-Indigenous Australians still struggle today to come to terms with this past history of
colonial dispossession, neglect and erasure. The impact of this history on Aboriginal
peoples’ lives is experienced continually in the present. How might Indigenous
Australians view national identity? What purpose has their exclusion from ideas of the
‘Australian type’ served both in the past and today?

2.4 The ‘Australian Type’

The myth of the ‘Australian Type’ is shaped by society’s contemporary dominant

ideologies. Over time, political and social ideology has shaped views on morality,
character, race, values and religion, and has led in many cases to active discrimination
and a subversive ‘writing out’ of certain sections of society from our national history.
What then are the dominant images of Australia’s national identity that continue to have
resonance today?

Australia’s convict origins have been variously written in and out of the national
consciousness. While it was once a shameful admission to have a convict ancestor, today
it is more likely to be seen as a badge of honour. Victorian notions of morality and
scientific theories of the early 20th century influenced the view that a convict past was a
moral ‘contagion’ that could be inherited through successive generations. As views
changed, more emphasis was placed on the social environment as the most influential
factor in shaping character and behaviour.

© National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, 2005. All rights reserved.
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With the cessation of transportation, the gold rushes of the 1850s and the influx of free
settlers, a view of the ‘born colonist’ emerged. Always male, he was regarded as a hardy
type, adaptable, independent, sport loving and resolute. He was egalitarian and valued
mateship highly above any respect to authority. The anti-authoritarian character of the
‘Australian Type’ was perpetuated by images of bushranging, the persistent eulogising of
Ned Kelly, the independence, resolve and uprisings on the gold digging fields and the
unionists of the late 19th century. Explore visions of life on the goldfields.

The ‘Australian Type’ was always portrayed as Anglo-Celtic, in part a reflection of the
make up of the population at the time but also a cultural suppression of the identities of
Aborigines, Torres Strait and Pacific Islanders, Chinese, Germans and many more. Even
though the vast majority of Australians lived in urban environments in the late 19th
century, he was also a pioneer of the bush. The literature of writers and poets such as
Henry Lawson, A.B. Banjo Paterson, Steele Rudd, epitomised the idea of the bushman as
a resourceful larrikin who tamed the landscape, was resilient in the face of hardship and
heroic in overcoming the odds - which were inevitably stacked against him. The
Heidelberg School of artists of the late 19th century idealised the bush and pioneer life.
One of most famous articulations of the mythologised bush was painted three years after
Federation. Frederick McCubbin’s triptych, The Pioneer, depicts the hardship and toil of
Australia’s pioneering history. Tom Roberts’ Shearing the Rams romanticises the tough
masculine environment of the shearing shed. Walk 'In the Artists' Footsteps'.

These images served to colonise the landscape, suppress frontier violence, carve out an
economic independence and legitimacy based on exploitation of natural resources, and
code nationalistic sentiment as a purely masculine domain. Subversive images of racism,
brutality, violence, sexism, alcoholism and corruption never made it on to the national
stage. In the shadows of heroic images of the pioneer, lay the tenuousness, isolation and
fragility of those colonising forces.

Over time, there have been various incarnations and reincarnations of the bush
pioneering spirit and larrikin stereotype. The archetypal larrikins, ‘The Sentimental
Bloke’ and Ginger Mick created by C.J. Dennis during World War I, the ANZAC legend
of the ‘digger’ most recently epitomised by Mel Gibson in Gallipoli, our sporting heroes,
the bronzed Aussie Bondi volunteer lifesaver of the 1950s, the Aussie Battler as
portrayed in the 1997 film The Castle, and even the heroic portrayal of our local
volunteer fire fighters today can be seen as forming a continuum of national myth-
making. Explore current online tributes to the ANZACS, the Ned Kelly legend,
Australia’s pioneers in the Stockman’s Hall of Fame and country fire fighters.

Contemporary manifestations of these myths by dominant political and cultural

institutions continue to shape our imagining of national identity. Prime Minister
Howard’s attempts to include ‘mateship’ in the Preamble to the Constitution during the
1999 Republic Referendum made clear and unambiguous reference to the past. The
debate that ensued and the consequent removal of the word ‘mateship’ is perhaps an
indication that past notions of Australian identity are not perceived as relevant or
inclusive enough anymore. Read more about the preamble debate…

2.5 The ‘Australian Way of Life’

© National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, 2005. All rights reserved.
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The ‘Australian Type’ was not just a character but embodied a ‘way of life’ that we think
of as Australian. The ‘Australian way of life’ is seen as reflecting traditional virtues of
egalitarianism, classlessness, ‘a fair go’, stoicism and again mateship. It is sometimes
referred to as the ‘national ethos’ whereby a certain lifestyle is seen as central to the
welfare of the whole community, not just one class of society. The shared ethos of leisure
and the ‘quarter acre block’ is one articulation of the ‘Australian way of life’.

Donald Horne described Australia as the first suburban nation in his book, The
Australian People written in 1972. The great Australian dream of owning your own
home on the quarter acre block reached a height in the 1960s, and was satirised by Barry
Humphries’ creation of housewife Edna Everidge whose popularity continues today. The
housing sector, manufacturing industries and retailers sold the domestic consumption of
goods and along with them, the ‘lifestyle’. The Holden was marketed as ‘Australia’s
Own Car’. By 1962, one million had been sold. Today, the prevalence of lifestyle shows
on Australian national television attests to a continuing preoccupation with the pursuit of
leisure and home improvement. The ABC television show Kath & Kim continues to
lampoon the idealised vision of Australian suburbia.

How do contemporary visions of the diversity of Australian multiculturalism fit into this
construction of the ‘Australian way of life’? Do representations of the ‘Australian way of
life’ incorporate cultural difference? A wave of critique by Australian feminists,
Aboriginal activists, and ethnic community leaders has challenged the dominant
representation of what it means to be an Australian. In contesting standardised
assimilationist views of an ‘Australian way of life’, they argue for an acceptance of
diversity and choice over all aspects of lifestyle, culture and religion. Has multi-
culturalism as an official government policy led to the imagining of a multiplicity of
identities in Australia?

2.6 Post-nationalist Australia?

Globalisation is characterised by a high degree of mobility of people and capital.

National boundaries are becoming less important in terms of trade and investment and
this could lead to anxieties and insecurities about national identity. Globalisation is
perceived by some as a fragmenting of national culture and society. Will this lead to a
reassertion of cultural identity that focuses on social coherence rather than emphasising
multi-culturalism and multi-racialism? Perhaps ideas of civic values and a renewed
appreciation of our interconnectedness through local communities will reinvigorate ideas
of national identity in ways that do not need to ‘assimilate’ difference? How might this
vision of national identity view the difference and choice of Indigenous Australians?

© National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, 2005. All rights reserved.
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2.7 Further reading

National symbols

It’s an Honour: Australia celebrating Australians, Awards and National Symbols

Commonwealth Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet
http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au

Ausflag
An organisation seeking to secure popular support of Australians for adoption of a ‘truly
Australian flag’.
http://www.ausflag.com.au/

Australian National Flag Association

An organisation seeking ‘to communicate positively to all Australians the importance
and significance of our chief national symbol’.
http://www.australianationalflag.com.au

Australia Day orations

Australia Day Council of New South Wales

New South Wales State Government
http://www.adc.nsw.gov.au

Australia Day Committee, Victoria

Victorian State Government
http://www.australiaday.vic.gov.au

Some Australian icons

Welcome to Driza-bone Online

Driza-bone Pty Ltd
http://www.drizabone.com.au/

The Australian Word Map

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Macquarie Library Pty Ltd
http://abc.net.au/wordmap/

Search ‘Australian Icons’

Art Gallery of New South Wales
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au

Essays and commentary on national identity

The One and the Many, Unity and Diversity in Australia

The Barton Lectures on ABC Radio National
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/sunspec/barton

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The Idea of Australia: John Carroll and Rodney Hall
The Deakin Lectures on ABC Radio National
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/deakin/content/session_4.html

The Boyer Lectures

ABC Radio National
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/boyers/

Australia’s Sacred Sites

The Spirit of Things, ABC Radio National
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/features/sacredsite/

Online exhibitions

Search Nation, Tangled Destinies, Eternity and Belonging

National Museum of Australia
http://www.nma.gov.au

Belonging, a century celebrated

State Library of Victoria
http://www.belonging.org/

Search Baron von Mueller’s Melbourne

State Library of Victoria
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au

Cultural representation

Australian Literature on the Internet

National Library of Australia
http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/litsites.html

The World of Film in Australia

Urban Cinefile, Andrew L. Urban
http://www.urbancinefile.com.au

Archives of 19th century racial images

University of Newcastle
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/discipline/fine-art/theory/race/race2.htm

Indigenous Australia
Australian Museum Online
http://www.dreamtime.net.au

National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame

Created with the support of the Northern Territory Government
http://www.pioneerwomen.com.au

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The Peoplescape Stories
Centenary of Federation project
http://www.peoplescape.com.au

Irish Australia on the web

http://www.irishaustralia.com/

Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation

Latrobe University, Chinese Museum and Shanghai’s East China Normal University
http://www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au/

Italy Down Under

National Magazine of Italian Australian Affairs and Culture
http://www.italydownunder.com.au/

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