National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia
Australia today
It is perhaps odd to describe Australia as a young society. After all, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures flourished on this continent for at least 40,000 years before the First Fleet arrived.
But Australia - like the USA, Canada and Argentina - is 'modern' in that the vast majority of its native-born population is descended from immigrants who arrived here in the last two hundred years, and it is their cultures also that form the basis of a nation that has existed for less than a century.
To that extent Australia is very different from most long-established European and Asian societies. It has a culture which, while already distinctive, continues to develop.
Since 1788 diverse waves of immigrants have interacted with each other and with the first Australians. Out of that process has emerged a society of enormous and rare cultural variety.
Table 1.1 demonstrates how from 1788 the proportion of the population who were of Aboriginal descent dropped rapidly. By the 1840s, 57% of the population was of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Manx and Cornish origin (rather artificially grouped together as 'Anglo-Celt'), and by the 1860s that figure had increased to 78%.
From the middle of the nineteenth century appreciable numbers of Chinese, Pacific Islanders, Lebanese, Afghans, Indians and Europeans arrived. Many settled. Nevertheless by the early twentieth century the proportion of Anglo-Celts had risen to around 87%, and stayed at around that level until the Second World War due to a combination of increased British immigration, policies which discriminated against the entry of non-Europeans, and the decline of the Aboriginal population.
Since the middle of the twentieth century, with a progressive liberalisation of our immigration program, there has been a dramatic shift in the ethnic composition of Australian society. The immigration of large numbers of people from Northern Europe and the Baltic nations was followed by settlers from Southern Europe and, more recently, from the Middle East, Asia and South America.
Today the population balance is around 75% solely or partly 'Anglo-Celt', 20% 'other European', 4.5% 'Asian 'origin' and 1% Aboriginal. The face of Australia has been irrevocably changed and, with the continuation of intermarriage and of immigration at its present rate and composition, will continue to change.
TABLE 1.1 Ethnic Composition of the Australian People (per cent)
| Ethnic Origin | 1787 | 1846 | 1861 | 1891 | 1947 | 1988 |
| Aboriginal | 100.0 | 41.5 | 13.3 | 3.4 | 0.8 | 1.0 |
| Anglo-Celt | - | 57.2 | 78.1 | 86.8 | 89.7 | 74.6 |
| Other European | - | 1.1 | 5.4 | 7.2 | 8.6 | 19.3 |
| Asian | - | 0.2 | 3.1 | 2.3 | 0.8 | 4.5 |
| Other | - | - | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 0.6 |
| TOTAL | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| Nos (000's) | 500 | 484 | 1328 | 3275 | 7640 | 16300 |
Source: Charles Price, Ethnic Groups in Australia, Policy Option Paper prepared for the office of Multicultural Affairs, 1989, p 2.
The scale of immigration to Australia in the last forty years has been enormous, accounting for about half of our population growth. Table 1.3 shows that a remarkably high proportion of Australians are overseas born.
Today well over 20% of Australians were born in another country, of whom more than half came to Australia from non-English speaking countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South America. Combined with their Australian-born children, they constitute 40% of the population.
Many of these people live outside the capital cities and the main urban areas. Of those from non-English speaking backgrounds, 9.1% are scattered throughout towns and communities in every Australian state and territory.
To this must be added a further 7 1 % of the Aboriginal population and 22. 1 % of those from the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand.
TABLE 1.2 People (a) Who Spoke a Language Other than English at Home:
Language by Birthplace
| Language spoken |
'000 |
per cent |
Australian |
| Italian | 405.0 | 20.6 | 158.7 |
| Greek | 267.1 | 13.6 | 111.7 |
| Chinese | 130.8 | 6.7 | 11.0 |
| German | 109.4 | 5.6 | 21.4 |
| Arabic/Lebanese | 106.0 | 5.431.1 | |
| Spanish | 70.1 | 3.6 | 10.2 |
| Yugoslav (nei) | 68.0 | 3.5 | 16.1 |
| Serbian, Croatian | 66.6 | 3.4 | 20.7 |
| Polish | 66.2 | 3.4 | 9.6 |
| Dutch | 61.4 | 3.1 | 7.6 |
| Vietnamese | 59.4 | 3.0 | 1.6 |
| Maltese | 57.8 | 2.9 | 15.5 |
| French | 51.4 | 2.6 | 15.5 |
| Macedomian 43.1 | 2.2 | 14.1 | |
| Aboriginal Languages | 36.9 | 1.9 | 36.7 |
| Turkish | 31.2 | 1.6 | 6.1 |
| Hungarian | 30.9 | 1.6 | 5.0 |
| Russian | 21.7 | 1.1 | 4.0 |
| Other | 282.7 | 14.4 | 61.5 |
| Total (b) ('000) | 2 002.8 | - | 568.2 |
(a) Excludes children aged 0 to 4 years. (b) Includes language not stated response. Source: Australia in profile-Census 86, Australian Bureau of statistics, (Catalogue No. 2502.0) 1988.
TABLE 1.3 Population by birthplace
1986 |
|||
| Birthplace | per cent |
'000 |
|
| Australia (a) | 79.2 | 12 354.8 | |
| Overseas | 20.8 | 3 247.4 | |
| TOTAL | 100.0 | 15 602.2 | |
| Overseas | |||
| English speaking countries | 44.3 | 1 438.7 | |
| Non-English speaking countries | 55.7 | 1 808.6 | |
| Africa | 3.3 | 108.5 | |
| Egypt | 0.9 | 30.6 | |
| South Africa | 1.1 | 37.1 | |
| America | 3.6 | 116.5 | |
| Canada | 0.6 | 20.4 | |
| United States | 1.3 | 42.4 | |
| Asia | 16.5 | 536.2 | |
| China | 1.2 | 37.5 | |
| Cyprus | 0.7 | 23.6 | |
| Hong Kong | 0.9 | 28.3 | |
| India | 1.5 | 47.8 | |
| Lebanon | 1.7 | 56.3 | |
| Malaysia | 1.5 | 47.8 | |
| Philippines | 1.0 | 33.7 | |
| Sri Lanka | 0.7 | 23.6 | |
| Turkey | 0.8 | 24.5 | |
| Vietnam | 2.6 | 83.0 | |
| Europe | 68.4 | 2 221.8 | |
| Austria | 0.7 | 22.6 | |
| Baltic States (b) | 0.6 | 20.0 | |
| Czechoslovakia | 0.6 | 17.9 | |
| Germany | 3.5 | 114.8 | |
| Greece | 4.2 | 137.6 | |
| Hungary | 0.8 | 27.2 | |
| Italy | 8.1 | 261.9 | |
| Malta | 1.7 | 56.2 | |
| Netherlands | 2.9 | 95.1 | |
| Poland | 2.1 | 67.7 | |
| UK & Ireland | 34.7 | 1 127.2 | |
| USSR (c) | 0.8 | 25.7 | |
| Yugoslavia | 4.6 | 150.0 | |
| Oceania | 8.1 | 264.4 | |
| New Zealand | 6.5 | 211.7 | |
| TOTAL Overseas Born | 100.0 | 3 247.4 | |
| Australia (a) | 12 354.8 | ||
| Overseas | 3 247.4 | ||
| TOTAL | 15 602.2 | ||
(a) Includes persons whose birthplace was unknown (b) Includes Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (c) Does not include the Baltic States
Source: Overseas Born Australians 1998: A Statistical Profile, Australian Bureau of Statistics, (Catalogue No. 4112.0) 1988.
There has been a strong pattern of intermarriage between these Australians of different backgrounds. Today less than half the population is of pure Anglo-Celtic descent. Over 60% of Australians have at least two, different ethnic origins, and 20% have four or more.
The most rapidly growing group in Australian society are those of combined Anglo-Celtic and non Anglo-Celtic ancestry. About one-quarter of Australians have no Anglo-Celtic background.
The integration of successive waves of immigrants into our society and workforce with very little social friction is a remarkable achievement. The reality of everyday life in a multicultural Australia is that we all have as family members, friends, colleagues and neighbours people who come from extraordinarily diverse origins.
And although most of us - including immigrants - want to be accepted as Australians and have a firm commitment to the institutional framework of our political and legal system, there is a growing recognition that this does not preclude us from maintaining those aspects of our cultural heritage which give meaning to our lives.
Indeed it is the vigour of our diversity, and the degree of interaction between different cultures, that contributes so much to the uniqueness of the Australian identity today.
Some elements of this diversity can be easily demonstrated. Table 1.2 shows that over two million Australians, or about 14% of those aged five years and over, speak a language other than English at home. it is clear that Italian and Greek, and to a lesser extent Chinese, German and Arabic, are spoken in Australia as community languages.
Table 1.4 reveals that although Australia remains a predominantly Christian society, with more Catholics than Anglicans, a growing minority (some 300,000 Australians) are followers of non-Christian religions, and nearly two million Australians do not subscribe to any religion.
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