What does it mean to be Australian?

There are things that are uniquely Australian.

These things are dying a slow quiet death.

Australia is heading towards a generic state, as a country. And Australians are looking at transforming into just another generic group of humans, no different from any other group on the planet. That's because the whole planet is following the sedan car deisgn of generic invisibility.

We can now barely tell the difference between an Audi A4 and a Toyota Camry.

That's the future all humans are looking at.

You can't tell an Australian from any other nation, if you blur Australian into every other nation.

So what's at risk? What is an Australian?

What does the question mean? Being Australian has many meanings.

You can be Australian by getting citizenship. By being born in Australia. Having Australian parents. Living in Australia.

That's not what We mean. We mean what is an Australian in the sense of being a member of a nation of people called Australian.

So we proceed on this definition:

Australians didn't just appear. They became Australians and over a long time. But they didn't start out consciously to be different. They evolved naturally, organically from starting out as a British prison colony to becoming a stand alone nation, distinct from their foundings and distinct from the nation of their British forefathers.

More recently, since Federation, Australians have noticed that change. They have now a long history of noticing the special differences between them and other nations, especially between Australians and Mother England and also between themselves and other nations. They have proudly developed these evolved Australian differences into a conscious effort and what it means to be uniquely Australian, not just another British colony.

Note: The idigenous people of Australia are not part of this discussion. They have their own nation and nations more accurately.

Australians created their own national identity and they are well on their way to preserving it.

Australians have created their own culture and national identity over two centuries of national development.

The Aussie lingo, the language itself reflects this national development.

Legacy language has lasted decades, and the idiocentric Australian terminology reflects the unique Australian values:

1. Laid Back

She'll be right, no worries, phrases that reflect the Laid Back attitude of Australians and that contrast with their stiff British heritage.

Aussies don't stride, they stroll.

Relax mate. Calm down. Dress down. Undo your top button. We don't wear suits and tuxedos to restaurants.

Dress and bearing between Brits and Aussies is starkly different. The mix of hot, tropical and desert dry weather helps dictate how Aussies clothe themselves.

This casual approach to everything, this attitude contrasts with the strict, stiff upper-lip, conservative attitude of the Old Country, the British.

Australians don't get tied up in old conventions from Britain. They promote a carefree, take it easy approach to life and social norms.

Aussies recognise the constriction of convention and abandon it unless it's useful, or part of an important tradition, like a wedding, a funeral or job interview, the military.

2. Fair Go

Australians have a long history of valuing egalitarianism, a social glue that promotes fairness and equality for all in stark contrast to the divisive social class system traditional to Britain.

Nepotism, favourtism, status benefit, are all abhorred by Australians. Everyone gets the same deal.

You get to where you are on your own steam, not through inheritance or connection or title.

3. Classlessness

Australians reject the old British class system. Australians all have the same social value. The British have an Aristocratic class, a middle class and a lowly-perceived working class (formerly a peasant class).

Australians are largely descendants of the prisoner colonies Australia was founded on by the Crown.

Australians don't appreciate the luck they had with Aristocrats choosing not to join them.

In opposition to the class divisions of the Old Country, Australians view themselves as equals.

There is no social class in Australia. Australians don't have a House of Lords in parliament.

Australians drop formal titles, Mr, Mrs, Doctor, Sir, Ma'am, in preference to first names, even between strangers.

G'day mate is the standard greeting no matter the status of those greeted. Prime Minister, bosses, leaders, women.

Acceptable standards are lower in Australia than in Britain. Low standards are tolerated. Lower standards in ettiquette, goods and services quality, accuracy, manners. It's all good. Good enough.

Marrying into the right family is foreign to Australians.

4. Rebellion Against Authority

Legacy heroes of Australians include the poster boy of Rebellion, Ned Kelly, who fought to split Victoria from the Crown and defied the local Anglicsied authorities.

Ned Kelly drafted a Victorian Constitution and sought to break the state of Victoria from the British Empire.

The second Australian national flag is the flag of the Eureka Rebellion. The Southern Cross stars overlaying a simple cross.

Australians replaced the Order of the British Empire with the Order of Australia.

Australians do not keep Butlers, servants, chaiffeurs, as the British Lords do.

5. No Worries

Australians have honed the rejection of fuss, trouble, sqaubling.

Stop arguing and get on with it. Get over it.

Australians are laconical. They don't elaborate on a point or labour a point. Make a bloody decision and stop jabbering on.

6. Have a Crack

Give it a go, attitude.


THE BRITISH CONNECTION

These disitncitvely Australian attitudes derive mainly from the feeling of separation from Britain's Monarchy. The Australian character derives from a relative freedom from the Crown and its conservative conventions.

However, the break from Mother England wasn't a clean break. There are some wholely British institutions kept and held dearly by Australians as time honoured traditions from their British heritage.

Australia is a Christian country and derives its moral bearings from the Anglican values of the Commonwealth. The Christian morality is Australia's moral foundation. Australians still hold to Christian teachings and doctrine.

The sanctity of the individual over society, except in national defence and war. Christmas and other Christian celebrations and ceremonies. Marriage is between no more than two people. Separation of Church and State. Secular government.

Other British traditions are held today.

Freedom of expression. Democracy. Fair trial. Innocence until proven guilty. Education for all. The right to vote.

Sunday Roast. English food. Cricket, Rugby and Football. Christmas. Beer.

Romanitc love leading to marriage and partnerships, as opposed to arranged marriages based on tribal appeasement, tribal status and financial stability.

Clinging onto the past... older Aussies still keep a stash of the old British currency, and pictures of the Queen on their walls.

AUSTRALIANA

Each of the these attitudes are fundamental to how Australians behave, from what they eat to how they treat each other. Australians have modified British traditions to make them their own.

Australians have made the simple BBQ a social institution.

A cold beer on a hot day. The primacy of beer above all drinks. The lampooning of fancy cocktails.

The meat pie, a British tradition, has been sanctified as an Aussie symbol up there with the national flag.

Australians worship sport and sporting champions are treated as hereos and role-models.

Australian men are encouraged to be tough, fearless and averse to expressing emotion.

So, we have thus far defined what it means to be Australian by disitnct behaviours modified by a common British heritage and a break from that homeland, by distinct attitudes to life, society, freedom and status. These differences make Australians stand out as their own nation of people with a shared history, shared values and expression of those values.

A nation also has a shared language among its people.

An Australian speaks English at home because they descended from the English. It is the sole language of the founders of Australia.

Unsurprisingly there is an Australian accent, itself divided into three variants (Plumbish, Ocker, Moderate). The Australian accent has a drawl to it. There is a particular pronunciation of some long vowels like "i", spoken more as "e". Latent dipthongs and tripthongs, like when "day" is spoken with a, e and i.

Australian, like all national languages, has its own colloquialisms, idioms, slang.

If you want to understand what makes a nation in the world, looking at its language and speech is a good start.

Food:

A good way to see how nations differ is with their food, their diet, their cooking techniques.

We can all answer instantly the foods likely to be eaten by a nation as their staple diet.

Food tells us instantly what nation we belong to. Australians have their own staples in their daily diets which they inherited from the British and modified a little, but kept the essentials as fundamental.

What people eat day to day is the smoking gun of their nationality.

Some nations eat rice three times a day every day, as their staple. The Australian staple was potatoes. That's changing but the fall back is always bangers and mash or some other Brit meal.

So far, being Australian means belonging to a nation, which means a shared history and heritage, a shared ethnicity, shared values and their expression, shared home language and speech, shared diet. A shared approach to life and attitude to society.

It is these things that define and identify your nationality and distinguish your nation from others.

Having citizenship is not enough to make you a member of a nation. Living in a country is not enough.

THE QUIET DEATH OF AUSTRALIANA

All the above Australianisms are facing existential destruction today.

External forces have crept into Australian life that are quietly chipping away at what Australians have long believed to be quintessential Australian features, values and treasures. And Australians are doing a poor job of resisting their own slow national death.

Immigration, political correctness, extreme liberal views are combining as a global force that will accidentally or intentionally eradicate everything above that makes Australians Australian.

Australians are now told to stop or dial down everything Australian in order to accept social changes brought in from outside Australia.

Larrikin behaviour, traditionally treated as a harmless cheeky behaviour, is now at least politically incorrect and offensive or at worst a criminal offence.

Australians are now being compelled to accept external national and global influences, other nations, religions, external values and are forced to sit back and watch their country fill up with:

1. Arranged marriages

2. Child brides

3. Supremacy of religion as the moral and social authority

4. Christmas being sidelined to make way for other religions

5. Behaviours offensive to minorities cleaned up or abolished

6. English demoted to just one of many national languages


WHAT DISTINGUISHES AUSTRALIANS FROM OTHER NATIONS?

1. English language.

2. Australian accent.

3. Australian colloquialisms.

4. Australian values: fair go, no worries, laid back.

5. Australians swear and speak coarsely...


If all it takes to be Australian is to live in Australia, then what it means to be Australian means nothing more than living in Australia.

But immigrants living Australia don't just live in Australia. They practice the nationality of where they came from. Australia has become a nation living alongside other nations.

APOLOGISTS

It is clear when you ask people, Aussies, that they have no idea what Nation means.

Australians asked on the street "what does it mean to be Australian" just say things that every other nation says: tolerant, freedom, democracy, easy going, happy, fortunate.

But these things are said by all nations, so they say nothing about how being Australian is distinctively Australian from other nations. It just says what it has in common with other nations.

What's a bath? It's a thing that holds water. So a glass is a bath?

Everyone says their nation is tolerant, democratic, happy.

No one in Australia knows what it means to belong to their nation. They don't think about it.

Many state that Australia is a nation that has lots of other nations in it. How does that define your nation? You define your nation as being a composite of all nations. That's no definition of your nation, that's a definition of all other nations.

The question unanswered is What does it mean to belong to a Nation?

What is a Nation?

The UN defines Nation by shared qualities: history, ethnicity, language, values.

That explains a lot of nations: Jews, Chinese, Muslims.

It should also define Australia as a nation. Australians have a British history, Anglosaxon ethnicity, English language, Christian values.

Australians call themselves a multinational country. How can you be multinational and national at the same time?

So is there no Australian nation?

If you believe that Australia is multinational then the answer is yes. Australia is simply a place where many nations live. Australia is an international airport. No identity itself.

Some answers from TV discussions and Vox Pops:

1. Safety, freedom, environment, beaches, weather.

So being Australian means beaches?

2. Plumber's cracks, thongs, helping out a mate.

3. Being proud, being nice, being multicultural, being kind to others.

4. Swooped by magpies.

5. Willing to embrace all people, values people, opportunities for everyone.

6. Healthcare.

7. Diversity. Open-minded. You can be yourself.

8. Patriotic. Lots of opportunities.

9. Open-hearted and open-minded.

10. I don't know. I just can't think of anything.

11. The beach. Relaxing. BBQs.

12. Love the outdoors. Gum trees.

13. Poking fun at ourselves.

Are these people saying only Australians have these things? Really?

None of this is distinctively Australian. These are just typical human values. They are not national values. They are things that all nations claim to have.

If this is what it means to be Australian, then being Australian is no different to being any other nation. Being Australian to these idiots is just being a nice human. So if this is what is means to be Australian, then there is no Australian identity.

So the question is unanswered.

To be Australian you need to show how being Australian differs from being anyone else.

We have shown what we think the difference is above.