Why Australia earns ignore the horrible search for ‘identity’

Press, 1 February 1988, Page 18

Why Australia earns ignore the horrible search for ‘identity’

The examines what Australia should

be celebrating in its bicentennial year

SOME PRETTY peculiar countries are to be found knocking about the world these days, the products of Pilgrim Fathers and European em-pire-builders and ideologically crazed revolutionaries. Few are as odd as Australia.

For much of the 200 years since it was first settled by white men, the place was a sump into which Britain poured its undesirables. Other countries similarly settled by Europeans could boast noble origins. The United States was created by high-minded people in search of religious and political freedom; Canada and South Africa by high-minded people in search of raw materials and other loot; Israel by high-minded people escaping the yoke of tyrants. But Australia was settled by an “excrementitious mass,” projected as far out of sight as possible in an effort to rid Britain of its criminal class. Never before or since has so much fifth been swept under such a distant carpet.

Yet it has not turned out badly. Indeed, in terms of prosperity, democracy, contentment and tolerance, Australians today have few rivals. All that low-minded-ness seems to have served them just as well as the utopian ideals on which so many other countries have been founded.

That is not to say that Australians have always behaved well. The past 200 years have not been happy ones for the Aboriginal inhabitants of this island beyond the seas. Even so, in their treatment of the Aboriginals, Australians have behaved no worse than other settlers in other parts of the world.

And, more important, they are now making amends. The protests that will be heard during the celebrations next week to mark the bicentenary of the landing of the First Fleet would have had more force had recent governments not done so much to recognise past injustices and make restitution. The celebrations do, however, raise other questions. Many are questions that have not been given much attention before: in general, Australians have not been greatly troubled by Socrates’s view that the unexamined life is not worth living. Now they are digging into

their history, coming to terms with a convict past, wondering at the brutality of their origins and asking themselves what sort of a nation they are. Much of this introspection is welcome; some of it is misplaced and probably futile.

The welcome bits are of two kinds, one destroying myths, the other promoting self-knowledge. Many of the myths live more strongly abroad than they do at home (see below). Foreigners like to see Australia as a nation of rugged individualists, a bit chip-on-shoulder but happy-go-lucky, beer-swilling and tough. They may not be highly sophisticated in terms of culture, but then you would not be, would you, if you lived your life in the bush rounding up sheep and throttling kangaroos with your bare hands? The reality is a bit different. Australia is one of the most urbanised — or more accurately, suburbanised — societies in the world. The middle of the country is empty and, much as nature abhors a vacuum, so do the Aussies: four-fifths of them live in coastal cities.

They are fond of a can of beer, and delighted to sell it to foreigners, but they still keep most of their wonderful wine for themselves. When' they are not on the beach or having a barbie by the pool, they like to go to galleries and plays and concerts.

Never mind the Australians who have made their names in the arts abroad: Percy Grainger, Robert Helpmann, Thomas Keneally, Sidney Nolan, Joan Sutherland, Patrick White and ■. the rest. Remember rather that Sydney chose as its great civic icon not a convention centre, a statue or a government building but an opera house. Australians know all this. They are less aware of some of their other characteristics. Above all, they are reluctant to see how fond they are of government. Too fond. They have too much of it and they expect too much of it. They elect it too often and they let it interfere too much with their affairs, especially their economy. . For years this bred an attitude of national and individual insecurity, made manifest in trade protection, immigration controls and regulation of the labour and product markets. Now, with a gigantic external deficit and an uncertain outlook for their traditional exports, they are having to pay the price in terms of high interest rates, pneumatic inflation and falling real wages. Their current economic troubles are obliging Australians to adjust. Last year they reelected for the second time a market-oriented Labour Government dominated by economic rationalists. Protective barriers are falling, markets are being

freed, the Budget is being balanced.

Gradually Australians are being made to see that their prosperity depends on their ability to compete in the world, and gradually they are gaining the confidence to go out and do so. This confidence has long existed among Australian sportsmen. More recently it has been acquired by businessmen, at least by such exuberant entrepreneurs as Alan Bond, Ron Brierley, John Elliott, Robert Holmes a Court, Rupert Murdoch, immigrants though many of them are. But Australians at large have yet to feel at ease in a world, particularly the Asian world on their doorstep, which still looks unduly competitive and forbidding.

It will be easier for Australians to come to terms with the world once they have come to terms with themselves. If the bicentenary binge promotes this, so much the better.

The misplaced endeavour, however, is the search for an “identity.” It is horribly fashionable. Practically every book on Australia published this past year seems to have dwelt on the need for a national identity. Romantics have long exaggerated the significance of the outback, Australian politicians have introduced idiotic national anthems, and film-makers have played fast and loose with his-

tory to propagate a view of Australia that fits the desired self-image. They are wasting their time. A contrived national identity will be a bogus one. Fortunately, most Australians are unpretentious and suspicious of artifice. A genuine identity will come in time. There is no need to hurry it. For, though Australia celebrated a bicentenary last week, it was that of the landing of a prison fleet in what was to become New South Wales. The Australian colonies did not join in federation until 1901 and for its defence — surely the first responsibility of a sovereign country — that federation still relied on the mother country, Britain, until the 19405, when it turned to America.

This .is not to say that Australia is not a country or that the Australians are not a nation. But they are a young nation, whose identity is still in the making. The signs are that the democratic and egalitarian traditions bequeathed by Australia’s nine-teenth-century political forefathers will blend interestingly with the contributions of its increasingly varied immigrants. But identities are formed by inherited attitudes and the experience of events, not by proclamation.

And if Australia’s early history as a penal colony composed of Britain’s criminal class teaches anything, it is surely that the designs of man often have the most unpredictable consequences. That is cause for celebration, not regret.

Copyright — The Economist