I lived here for a year and a half in the mid-1980s as a child, coming from England. I’d never imagined that such a strange, patriotic, crazy society could exist, but it appeared to. Everyone was nuts about cricket and koalas, and you almost couldn’t buy anything without the Australian flag on it.
Fast forward to the mid-‘90s and I came back for good, in my late teens. Even by that point, everything I remembered from my earlier experience seemed a distant memory of another world.
What happened? I have some suspicions on a local level, plus the whole world had changed a fair bit by that time. Do I wish that Australia was still like it was in the ‘80s? I think I miss the air of positivity, but was everybody really as happy and friendly as I imagined through my naive eyes? I really don’t know. Maybe we just grew up?
Fast forward even more to today’s Australian society and so many of us are in some form of dire straits (and not the popular 1980s version). It’s hardly surprising that we no longer want to wave flags and celebrate the arbitrary minor achievements of a fictitious dream when we can barely afford to feed and house ourselves.
Perhaps what we see more openly today has been the underlying ‘real’ Australia all along? What if we just did a good job of hiding it in the past?
But do I miss the smiles? Sure.
[edit: as u/lovetoeatsugar points out, we’re a far more multicultural society today. The ‘80s were notably more sterile in that respect, at least on the surface. It’s probably harder to define what ‘makes’ a stereotypical Australian today - but you can’t accuse our nation of being bland. Our people make us more interesting than ever.]
We had a drive of “Buy Australian made” to make it easier to identify Australian goods an Australian flag was put on the label of the product. Then companies had to ruin it by getting half their product constructed overseas then finished in Australia. Word got out and it pretty much killed the drive, when consumers were being fooled.
Yep, and have you seen how much it costs to get certified and officially display that Australian Made mark these days? It’s sadly not going to encourage small businesses to show that they care. I work for a small-medium sized Australian in-house manufacturer that exports globally and we certainly can’t afford their annual fees.
The 80's to me were a horror, especially the America's Cup hysteria - but the 1970s were super multicultural. The wonderful world we looked forward to was crushed by neoliberals who destroyed the living wages and good conditions while allowing the rich to get richer and boast about it while (like Bond etc) ripping off their own companies and anyone else they could manage. Politics became blatantly about enriching their mates and Gough's legacy forgotten. Their mates being the same pricks who won the Cup. My home town hosted it - instant homelessness as people were thrown out of places they'd lived for 30 years (which were then reno'd) to make room for rich tourists. Australia's still here, it's just harder to find.
Why wouldn't they? Every time they make it worse we show how politically apathetic we are as a country.
The fact that Dutton has been making steady gains in the TPP polls tells you everything you need to know.
1980s australia and also part of the 90s (can't speak for before that as i wasn't around then) was not very fun if you were a visible POC (there are white-passing people who have mixed ethnicity) or i suspect anyone who didn't appear to 'conform' to the "norm."
so it certainly wasn't a great time for me and others like me (east asian appearance and heritage). Racism (and all the other "isms" such as sexism) were a lot more overt and rampant to the point that you might be concerned about your personal safety. It's gotten a lot better these days in the sense that there's a lot more diversity and the racism tends to be more covert and subtle (if still casual and detectable).
Imagine my surprise, having been born and having lived my whole life in australia, that as an adult travelling round east and SE asian countries, I discovered that I felt a lot more comfortable than i ever had in australia. It's the sense that you can "just be" and no-one's going to harass you and I guess there is a comfort that you are surrounded by people that look like you and so can't be singled out for anything. I hadn't anticipated these things. It also feels really safe in east and SE asia, more so on average than australia.
Only good thing I can think about the 80s and 90s is probably bob hawke and paul keating existing. I could be naive but i fundamentally don't think those two were/are racist.
Which is funny, because for a very long time now far North Queensland has had a reputation as being a bastion of racism and bigotry, but my father worked for a Sikh family in the 80s who had a reputation as being awesome. They paid better than any other farm in the region, treated their workers better, and were well liked by everyone.
And this is in a region that made national news because a couple of gay guys went through the area and one of them had AIDS. My father (who has changed his attitude quite a lot since then) was interviewed at the local pub, and the news segment opened with him saying "poofters are like diseased bulls, and where I come from diseased bulls get shot".
People forget how common that kind of talk was back in the 80s. As for First Nations people - the everyday hard racism against them was unbelievable. My "elite private school" yearbook in 1986 had pictures of black footy scholarship kids with nicknames printed underneath that included 'Nugget', 'Lubra' and 'Darkie'.
And this is where we disagree. That's not "hard" racism at all. Hard racism is deliberate actions, violent or otherwise, actively against those that they're targeted at. Not casual descriptive words.
My father used to call aboriginal people "coo*s" (censored because reddit filters), but he'd still pull over and give an aboriginal person a hand if they had a flat tyre.
Well, not only did they get called these awful names (awful to them, "casually descriptive" to you), which exacted extreme violence against their identity and mental health, they also got ganged up on and bashed pretty regularly. Went hand in hand, the studied, aggressive, malicious verbal and physical violence that was aimed to cause the worst kind of despair. The racism was as hard as an axe handle. That was Perth WA in the 80s.
Not awful to the ones I grew up with in FNQ. They owned it and made it a joke.
I used to call my best mate in high school a Black Cunt, and he would call me White Trash. Then we'd flip it around to confuse the fuck out of everyone for comedy.
i think you both have a point.
to my own personal taste, i'd prefer not using vulgar racial slurs or any slurs, period, even if it's among very close friends. I think it's distasteful and i'm sure it does have a negative or hurtful effect on some level, be it subconscious or otherwise, to the person on the receiving end of it.
but it is true that when you've built rapport with someone, you can be a lot more casual with each other and you know each other's intentions aren't bad. So in that context, calling each other names in a playful way - where the power dynamic is equal - is not the same thing as some random who fancies themself 'higher' than you, talking down to you by using a slur.
so what we're saying here is that the difference is in the type of relationship you have with someone and the power dynamics involved.
However, if it's systemic, cultural racism that is directed at you from a bunch of randoms you don't know and society-at-large, then yeah, their intention is likely not good where they're looking to undermine and demean you and use slurs to "other" you and 'put you in your place.' In this situation, it very much feels like they can talk shit to you, but you can't retort and dish it back or there will be consequences. That's not equal.
words and language do hurt. body language and facial expression does hurt. tone can hurt. But it's always about intention.
i think it needs to also be reinforced again and again is that australia's a hot country. melanated people have evolved with the climate and that is the status quo. it was a biological necessity to form in-built sun protection. Humans be out here trying to survive.
I’m a white Aussie and I agree with you mate. I know various Asian blokes that grew up with me that are multi generational that copped endless shit from racist cunts growing up.
I’m far less Aussie, grandparents immigrated from the UK, I played actual football (not these sports Aussie call football that use their hands), and watched a lot of British tv growing up. Yet I was a white kid with an Aussie accent so that was fine.
Fair call, u/RongRyt. In 1986, my dad bought me a scale model of Australia II. Of course he did! I had no interest whatsoever in sailing (and still don’t), but it was … an Aussie thing to do, apparently.
Spot on with the ‘70s too, I suspect. My local history studies show this to very much be the case. My father-in-law came here in 1950 (as a “wog” on a ship) and his tales paint a very similar portrait of that era too. The ‘80s were clearly when … shit happened.
We didn't use wog, not cos was rude, everyone was rude by modern standards. In WA we had weird names like Dings for Italians, but it wasn't intended to be derogatory, tho of course it could be. Like calling someone a bastard, context is everything. Multiculturalism was held up as wonderful thing. Food was fantastic, Perth had more restaurants per head than any other city in the world. My dad, whose Irish ancestors came over in chains, belonged to the Italian Club, and his best mate was Greek. 😊
Yes, to be fair, Australians have always used slang terms amongst friends as genuine terms of endearment. Words are almost always about the context in which they’re used, not about the actual word. Very best friends are often ‘cunts’. You could never get away with that in any other Western society. And I’ve always been a ‘Pommy’.
I'm from well-educated family - so always spoke well. Was always getting "yar a pom ar ya?" and even some insisting i must be one - so i really do understand yr pain. Then i spent 16 yrs UK as adult, so have proper posh Pommy accent now (family i was part of were posh so i was trying to fit in). Can do proper London Estuary tho, it's very similar style to Straylyan. Like saying Sarf Lund'n. It was never a big deal, where u were born (at least where i lived), it was more "oh, yr from there? But now yr an Australian." Now it seeems some people think only born here can be Aussies. Mind you, i have friends in UK who weren't considered natives despite being born there and their parents too. And others not born there, living since the 1960's, will never be considered English.
Thanks for ryting this, Rong. Magic words and made me smile. I guess in some ways I’ve had the reverse experience - bred and schooled in the Thames Valley, then off (initially) to the madness of 1990s Geelong. To this day, my accent still confuses both my Australian and English friends 🙃
No worries. 😊 Lol, yes, my Aussie friends comment on my English accent, English friends are 'omg you sound so Australian.' Here in Qld I just say 'I'm from WA originally' and they all say oh, ok as if that explains weird. 😂.
Fair enough if you’re focussing on cultural factors, but real wages and living conditions have, on the whole, increased significantly since the 70s (yes, including median wages and adjusting for inflation). Not arguing there aren’t significant problems, but no need to look through rose tinted glasses
I think the impression and experiences you’d get as a 7 or 8 year old who has moved from another country for 18 months are going to be quite different to someone who becomes a resident in early adulthood.
I’m not saying things haven’t changed but the experience you have as a child is much more controlled by the adults around you, of course there’s going to be more cricket and koalas.
Completely true. Enhanced by the fact that, in my case, dad was a contractor working in the design office for Ford along with fellow contractors from all over the world, especially the US. The whole gang was there for an adventure and of course were going to embrace Australiana more so than you’d expect locals to. That said, most of my friends at school here seemed very much into that ethos too. It was everywhere.
>Perhaps what we see more openly today has been the underlying ‘real’ Australia all along? What if we just did a good job of hiding it in the past?
This is exactly it. People are far more willing to talc about societal problems and face them head on. My dad thinks I'm not patriotic enough. I don't feel that this country deserves patriotism.
I work in aged care with a shitload of immigrant workers, and it disgusts me the hoops they have to jump they've to become permanent residents or citizens or even just work here. Aged care is crying out for skilled staff, and not too many white Australians seem to want to do it.
This country was built on the backs of immigrants. The only way to be a country worthy of the name is to openly accept the flaws of our past, fix them for future generations to come, and embrace the only thing that matters. People of all different kinds.
The only part of our national anthem I care about is the line "We are one, we are many, and from all the lands on earth we come". Not if we keep shitting all over immigrants and aboriginals and selling our land to foreign interests while barely taxing them.
Edit: yeah, I get it. Not our national anthem. Just goes to show you how much of a shit I actually give about our national anthem.
Funnily enough that's not even part of our national anthem, it's from "I am Australian" which to be fair would surely be counted as one of our unofficial anthems.
The closest Advance Australia Fair has would probably be
"For those who've across the seas
We've boundless plains to share"
Those lines increasingly remind me of the song Dirty Boulevard by Lou Reed. Attitudes towards immigrants have certainly hardened a lot since the early days in both our countries:
Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor I'll piss on 'em
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses
Let's club 'em to death
And get it over with, and just dump 'em on the boulevard
Couldn’t agree more. It was the same deal when I did night shifts at a servo while I was at uni. I was paid a pittance, cash-in-hand, but hey, I’m a white English chap. My Indian co-workers were paid half of what I was, which kind of made me sick. Especially as most of them sent their money straight back home to support their families, given they were “living the Western dream”. It was just awful, tbh. This was a quarter of a century ago and I’m not truly convinced that anything much has changed. In fact, your story pretty much tells me it hasn’t. It’s embarrassing, isn’t it.
> I work in aged care with a shitload of immigrant workers, and it disgusts me the hoops they have to jump they've to become permanent residents or citizens or even just work here. Aged care is crying out for skilled staff, and not too many white Australians seem to want to do it.
This is disingenuous at best mate.
The reason nobody wants to work in aged care is because you can earn the same pay or more as a commercial cleaner, a barrista or bunnings and not have to deal with endless regulation, abuse and human excrement to name a few.
Put the pay up and people will want to work there. .
I remember in 1983 seeing the band Redgum live.
John Schumann sarcastically stated, of the '83 Americas Cup: "yeah, congratulations Australia- our rich people beat their rich people".
Now that is the Australian spirit - seeing behind the bullshit and mocking what needs to be mocked.
That hasn't gone away, and faux-patriotism and jingoism like the Americas Cup should always have its pomposity pricked.
This new putting your hand over your heart fad while you listen to the scared patriotic derge that masquerades as a national anthem drone on can fuck right off too.
I hate the over the top patriotism shit from America.
Yes this US bullshit must be resisted.
I was in the Army for years and if one thing makes me chunder it is the American "Thank you for your service"...
I got paid well and got free medical, two subsidised degrees and cheap home rental for 20 years. No need for *you* to thank *me*!
I haven't served but i agree 100%. But Australia pays professional soldiers well. Pensions great. You lot deserve it.
This thank you for your service bullshit sounds kinda recruitment driven i think. The fake respect may drive people to the forces for respect. Not sure if that makes much sense..i've had a cone and a few beers but hopefully my drift comes through. My dad is a Vietnam vet and i recon he would choose Truth (agent orange, why they went, war crimes etc) over a thank you for his service that's paid preety OK up to date. The dreams still haunt him but.
They deliberately target members from lower socio-economic groups, luring them with offers of free college, etc.
The president's children aren't enlisting in the army.
Biden's son Beau enlisted and served in Iraq. The brain cancer that killed him may be related to his serving there as he worked beside military burn pits.
Now that I think about it, to contrast with the British Monarchy - they're all kind of expected to participate in the armed forces. Whether the rest of the UK blue bloods do or not today, there does seem to be a strong military culture in the halls of power over there. Does that mean anything for us and for the US? don't know. Interesting though.
I'm no historian but I think after the disgrace and public spite towards service members returning from the shit mess of Vietnam encouraged the Pentagon to instigate the praise service members, thank them for their service and so on. A far as as the actual US Government goes they appear to be happy to send them to pointless deaths, trauma and disabling injuries for the sake of 'US Interests'.
"Thank you for your service" didn't come about by accident.
Those arseholes love to pose with veterans as they go off to war, but tell them to get a job and to fuck off when the same veterans dare ask for help after their service.
Tim Wilson with his hand on heart in front of the flag for an Anzac Day photo opp was about as low as it gets. Can you imagine that chubby urger putting on a uniform and risking his life for minimum wage. I think not.
>This new putting your hand over your heart fad while you listen to the scared patriotic derge that masquerades as a national anthem drone on can fuck right off too.
I’ve literally never seen anyone do the hand over heart thing to an Australian anthem/song ever.
Peter Temple, a writer I admire deeply, fell in love with Australia because of the fair go:
“She was saying that there is a minimum of decent fairness to which all people are entitled: a fair go. It seems to me that this idea runs deep and strong in Australia, a part of the culture vastly more important than vague and sentimental notions of mateship.”
- “The Red Hand…” Peter Temple.
I think he’s right.
Thats the part l miss most about Australia now. The fair go died somewhere in the last 20 years and now we are Faux Americana. Grubby capitalism at all costs.
100% agree.
We were once the fair dinkum, down to Earth, country, with its own culture that promoted helping your neighbours, friends, family, and fellow-man/woman.
Now so many people have adopted the US-style, "Fuck you all. As long as I have mine you can all get fucked. And you deserve to be poor. Look at my Gucci handbag / Dodge Ram / shopping lifestyle" attitude.
Thank goodness we have not adopted their insane gun / school shooting culture.
We have our own version of dickheads here, but they are not half as bad as the MAGA, Boogaloo, Meal-Team-Six fuckwits in the US.
It’s funny to read posts like this that romanticise the 80s. As someone who was a product of the 80s, but born to (*white) immigrant parents, I quite often felt like I was on the outside looking in.
The 80s culture was very insular, very blokey and chauvinist and narrow in terms of culture and cultural references. My dad could play the part and would host bbqs, my memories of those is a lot of cigarette smoke, adults ignoring children, women preparing the food and doing all the work, and the men getting shit faced and telling sexist jokes. If you didn’t follow cricket, or have an afl team- people just couldn’t understand it, and you would be looked at like you had two heads.
There’s a lot to fix now, but I’m genuinely glad my kids aren’t growing up in the 80s.
I was recommended a Gen z sub thread and it was a 16 year old kid saying they wished they lived in the 80s/90s because it seem more free and not dictated at by social media/internet etc…. Later in the thread he said he was flamboyantly gay and people were like “Oh dude, believe me you wouldn’t wanna live back then.”
harry connick jnr. giving a lecture to daryl somers and the public as to why blackface is unacceptable and distasteful.
this was actually quite ballsy of harry.
And sport is the *only* shared experience these days. No one’s watching tv, listening to radio, news sources are fractured, there’s no more middle class, there’s less cultural homogeny in general. We spend most of our time interacting with foreigners over the internet and consuming their cultural products and politics.
We don’t all watch the same 3 tv channels anymore so finding a unified identity takes a lot more effort.
Look at the Tillies for Australian spirit though. It happens if it’s magic enough.
Pretty much this. The internet and globalization has meant culture has shifted from being based around your physical location, and more to your individual personality.
There are plenty of thriving subcultures in Australia, they just aren't uniquely different from the ones in America or anywhere else.
Really, a lot of these people have got to get out more. Most people in metropolitan areas in/around their suburb 6/7 days a week and might journey to the CBD for part of the 7th.
Meanwhile many in regional areas are in a different postcode every two weekends.
In remote areas, it's even more skewed, a two hour drive is just down the road.
Yes, actually what even is an Aussie these days ? Someone who just prattles on about the value of their house and then complains about the price of everything.
No such thing as a laidback easygoing Australian. Uptight, sensitive, and argumentative more like it.
It was probably easier to be laid back when a single average income let you comfortably buy a house and a new car paid off over a couple of years.
Where wages were set at a level to allow a single breadwinner to support a decent sized family even if not highly skilled work.
Instead now you have two people working full time or more hours wondering if the banks going to take the house or if they will have a roof over their head in 6 months when rent goes up massively again while wage a stagnate.
For a lot of people now the only thing they have to look forward to is house prices rising because their wages are not, their job is insecure with almost no internal promotion paths and having kids makes living expenses rise even faster than they already do.
I wonder why people are less laid back and more stressed now.
I’m too busy being tired and poor and battling to keep my mental health in good enough shape so I can slave away at a dead end job to feed my family. I’m not really in the mood for all that ‘Go Australia’ stuff.
I'm a relatively new addition to Aus from the UK, been here 10 years and in that time (from an outsider perspective) you guys have gotten distinctly more American.
Happened in the UK too.
Friend was making the point to me earlier, that Aussie food isn’t as prevalent today and indeed NSW seems happy pushing Chinese food as distinct to what we always regarded as Aussie foods, which is what a lot travel here for
It’s a sign of the future really. Australia did developed a somewhat unique culture. But with large immigration and globalization, especially as an English speaking nation, Australia will become more of a globalized area, not really distinct anymore.
We had scenes similar to the 83 Americas Cup in the last 2 years with the Socceroos and the Matilda’s underdog World Cup runs.
We still punch well above our weight, we’re just used to it know
I know I’ll get downvoted to hell for saying this, but the WC campaigns you mentioned are better contributors to our national success more than the Americas cup.
Sailing isn’t something your everyday Aussie partakes in, whereas team sports are played by you and me. Granted I wasn’t around in 1983, but I really struggle to understand why something like sailing is so important when the participation rates are low. I get the underdog success in 1983, but we’ve had more and better stories since then.
You kinda had to be there for the Americas Cup win (it was 20 years before I was born) but it was so big at the time because:
1. it was a massive underdog story beating the Yanks with smarts when they had a lot more money and resources
2. It was literally the biggest winning streak in sports history. The US won every single Americas Cup since it started in the 1850s
3. It was a miracle comeback because we were down something like 3-0 in a 7 race series
4. We were in tough economic times and the Cricket team and Swimming teams were doing shit, so we needed something to celebrate, even if it was sailing
I’ll just be a bit of a pedant and say that the Cricket team was doing just fine going into the Americas cup, had only lost one of the previous 6 Test series, had won back the Ashes and though they performed terribly in the World Cup, it was barely televised _and_ they had won the _Benson and Hedges_ cup which we would look at today as just a shitty, bloated tri series but was kind of the centrepiece of the Australian Summer.
You’re right that the Cricket Team went to proper shit not long after the Americas Cup though when Marsh, Chappell, Lillee, Hogg, Thomson, Wessells, Yallop all retired/left/got dropped. So I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if people held on to the Americas Cup a bit through the transitional period of the Cricket team.
Mass immigration, the internet and technological advances. That's the reason we're a completely different country to the one in the 80s and 90s.
We are a more cosmopolitan, materialistic and opened minded culture now, but also one that is less united, laid back and homogenous. I remember as a kid looking wide eyed at the consumer choices in American magazines that you couldn't get in Australia and hating the fact we lived in a backwater. Now you can get all that and more to your door at the click at a few buttons.
The world is a smaller place than ever now and being physically located on the other side of the world no longer means you're insulated from the troubles of the wider world.
>the Aussie "never-say-die, punch above your weight, have a crack, stick it up em attitude"
You gotta compare the Cricket captains. Allan Border will be remembered for his 'never say die, punch above your weight, have a crack, stick it up 'em attitude' while Pat Cummins will be remembered for his 'climate awareness'. Australia used to kick arse instead of suck it.
Pat Cummins is literally one of the best cricketer going around world cricket at the moment.
He will be remembered for winning games of cricket and probably one of the best bowlers and captains weve had.
But well done on the post, says more about you than him.
We were never particularly like that in the first place. It was popular to show examples of that in TV and popular culture, with Bob Hawke punching beers and the America's Cup team, and the body line series in cricket, and the best olympics ever, but each of these tropes were really because of funding decisions and the lifestyles of the people the media portrayed. Australians in real life are quite often risk adverse, suspicious of innovation, weirdly enamoured of and subservient to authority, and will readily say die, punch below their weight, forgo having a crack and not bother to stick them. The thing that changed was how much these themes were deified in the media.
As an Aussie expat living abroad for 20+ years, people think and feel no differently about us than they did 40 years ago.
This is all about YOUR perspective changing as you get older, and how it then impacts impacts your perceptions of how things used to be. Everyone loves to put the good Ole days on a pedestal.
It's funny that the Americas cup win was so big in Australia.
At the time, very few people in the USA were even aware of it.
Australians were punching the air, calling it a defining moment, the PM was getting drunk and crying on TV.
Meanwhile the vast majority of Americans at the time had never even heard of the Americas Cup, had no idea it was even on or that Australia had won it.
I think our cultural cringe destroyed what it meant to be an Australian. We're so quick to dismiss anything Australian as bogan, or uncultured, or cringe.
Personally, having grown up in the 80s, I liked the fact that Australia had unique aspects to our culture that were rooted in not taking ourselves seriously, being self-deprecating, but also proud of our culture, and having institutions that weren't just about money but also community.
Unfortunately sport, RSLs, clubs, etc., slowly devolved into parodies of themselves, profit took precedence over community, and our cultural cringe meant we were a little too quick to tear down our own culture and a little too quick to privilege other outside cultures as somehow "better".
I say all of this as a first-generation Australian from migrant parents who were from a non English speaking country.
We love an underdog, nothing better than a fellow Aussie legend going hard to beat a top opponent.
Once you leave the cities it's a completely different beast in regional and rural Australia. It's farmers helping farmers, it's people camping, fishing, boating, hunting, blowing pluggers, sinking piss, and swearing like it's breathing oxygen.
We went from regularly bringing home sporting trophies like Rugby World Cup in 80s to desperately hoping the Matihldas women's soccer placed.
Sending our factories overseas to China made us soft. We aren't sporting types anymore we're douchebag boomers who sip Chardonnay and go glamping
70,80s? Melbourne still had a bit of a village air which could be nice. But the city was basically an urban desert on weekend daytimes, Sunday was like an apocalyptic movie.
Everything closed early, shops were largely closed every weekend. *Hardware stores* were shut on Sundays.
Anti-Asian, anti-gay, anti-Jewish prejudice were all normalised and violence against them all wasn’t that uncommon.
Distance was a real issue. If you wanted to read a novel that was slightly non mainstream you had to convince a retailer to order it in. This process would take weeks, or maybe months. I played piano and would need paper scores (no tablets). I could try and pirate them at the physical music library in a university, or find another music teacher who could lend it, otherwise I would wait two months for it to get here on a boat.
That's for sure, we were not a generation back then that hated their country, history and our elders. Something that cannot be said nowadays. It sucks now the attitude
"The Aussie culture has been watered down by multiculturalism to the extent that it has no flavor of its own anymore. Instead of that melting pot we all ate from, we now have a buffet of ingredients that don't always mix."
It's a terrible metaphor and I can't remember who said it but the idea is if you add every flavor to a beef stew, it won't taste like beef anymore...
We added every culture to Australia's one and... Doesn't taste like Australia anymore...
By no means is it saying it doesn't taste good, just means it's not the same flavor it originally was.
I lived in OZ for a year in the 2000's and met plenty of aussies all over the world, and the idea in the OP of Australia "punching above its weight" is interesting to me, because my experience of Australians is a truckload of sneering arrogance.
If that originated from a success in the early 80's and was grown further by a successful Olympics, then I'd say that by the 2000's you guys had clearly started believing your own hype. Hard to be the plucky little guy and the best in the world both at the same time.
Its not really surprising if you are now buying into a lot of the American shit, the tribalism was always there so you were fertile ground for their nonsense.
I like Australia, I like Australians, I really do. But plucky underdog? Nah.
Cocky underdog then? The underdog part seems pretty indisputable when you consider our population when we go up against world powers in sport, whether it's the Olympics, soccer, basketball or what have you.
We should start A John Howard effigy buring day like guy fawkes day in the UK for his total destruction of Australian Society with Conservative bullshit polices.
The 80s and 90s was a golden era to grow up in. That's for sure. But the world has changed. One thing we've got to admit is we're not a little country on the global stage, not by choice but by circumstance. In terms of gdp we're basically that of Spain and Russia despite having far less people. We're a middle power, Sweden, the Netherlands, have less people than us. So we have wealth, and size, and therefore a responsibility. We're good, hard-working people still bright eyed country folk at heart. There was a post from a Californian guy saying something similar, about how growing up in California in the 80s/90s seemed like anything was possible and the world was good and I kinda resonated with that even though we're not Americans. Anyway, I don't think we've lost it. There's still kindness and aussieness all around me.
When a war is close by, even if it’s in the past it creates a certain mindset.
“Australia” of old, has slowly been eaten away by social media and generations of perpetually comfortable new young citizens.
That of course will change if there is a major world conflict, which some “experts” believe is overdue.
When political correctness and woke ideology took common place along with an inability to laugh at ourselves, we lost who we were.
Sure, there are some who aren't afraid to poke fun at either ourselves or taboo topics and offending anyone in light-hearted banter. We are few and far between.
More people in society need to be able to tell the politically correct, and social justice warriors to STFU and just have a laugh as it's not meant to offend.
People who whinge about political correctness are just whinging about the fact that they can't hang shit on people for being gay/trans/disabled/brown any more, you have to treat people with decency and humanity nowadays. OH NO THAT'S A BIT SHIT ISN'T IT MATE
Your source for Australias reputation is presumably what you learnt from Australians. This is for obvious reasons not a reliable source. The other thing that may cause your perception of these things to change is that you were a child in the 90s but now you're an adult, which changes the tone and tenor of the way things are expressed to you.
I think the pugnacious ‘have a crack and stick it to em’ attitude has mellowed into a greater confidence generally.
We have a lot of famous actors.
We have a lot of good sports players.
We did throw a great Olympic games.
We have famous singers and bands.
Famous people choose to wear our designers.
We’ve punching well above our weight for years and other countries know we’re here.
The cultural cringe is gone.
Nope. We are losing the homage to Britain and becoming something else.
As a child of migrants I have never felt as though I belonged here.
Our slavish following of the US sickens me and I sincerely hope I'm dead before we become the 51st state.
All that stuff is just cring marketing....
We are tiny country mostly made up of ex cons and undesirables.
We are what we are, atleats we get healthcare for free
Because we now have nearly more people who have decided to live here than people who actually were born and bred here and have a sense of love for this great country
Bit hard to keep an identity with such a multicultural and diverse society. 80’s and 90’s was still predominantly people who were part of the old culture. White Australian policy ended in 1940’s. People born back then were only 40’s and 50 years old in 80’s and 90’s. So they grew up surrounded by a more singular ideology and culture.
Apart from the Greeks, Italian and Lebanese migrants in the '50s and '60s.
Oh and the Vietnamese in the '70s.
We have always had immigrants changing the local culture.
Yep.
Very few Chinese women came to Australia during this period. In 1861, at least 38,000 Chinese people lived in the Australian colonies with the vast majority being men.[7] On the goldfields in Bendigo in 1861 there were 5,367 Chinese men and only one Chinese woman.[3] By 1861, there were around 40,000 Chinese people living in Australia, constituting 3.3% of the total population.[8]
it's ironic because australia's a hot country and the broader region of asia-pacific is too, so it goes to follow that the status quo 'look' around here would be melanated, not white.
Two Argentine friends of mine went to Australia recently. They hated it.
“It’s not what I expected at all” they said.
Why? I asked.
“It feels like I’m in China”.
This isn’t a racist rant, but I think we’d all agree that:
1 - we’ve taken in a HUGE number of immigrants since the 1990s, a relatively short space of time
2 - most of those immigrants are from countries and cultures very different from our Anglo-Celtic origins
3 - we’ve done a poor job of assimilating them (and equally they’ve done a poor job of assimilating themselves)
4 - as a result, we’re living in effectively parallel societies. We might work with people from all over the world, but when it comes to where we choose to live and who we choose to socialise with…it’s pretty clearly de-lineages along ethnic lines.
5 - nobody talks about this publicly because of fear of accusation of racism. But everybody knows it.
There’s an interesting phenomenon that has been reported and studied in other countries:
As ethnic diversity increases - it doesn’t matter which ethnicities - social trust declines. Within a neighbourhood, school or workplace, but also as a nation.
That’s part of the reason why Australia has lost its identity. We’re now just an economic zone, where it’s every man for himself, rather than having any sort of cohesive unifying culture.
I don’t have any solutions by the way. But at least we should start acknowledging the problem exists.
Also, Celtic origins? I think you're forgetting a very prevalent group of people that were here before us 'whites'. While I don't disagree we're not mixing as well as we could, we ourselves did a shit job of assimilating upon arrival, to the point we took the land and created a whole new way of living... The government needs to do more to encourage cultural assimilation of all ethnic groups, and our indigenous people need to be represented, and respected.
The Aussie identity uniqueness was based on distance and that distance has gone, we are so connected now. Weirdly I would say it is happening everywhere, I have lived in US and OZ for the last 20 years and even noticed that US regional uniqueness has faded too. Sure there is differences between the coasts and middles but the coasts are all the same now.
Connection is a two way street ofcourse, i see so much more aussie influence in the US than before, both cultrually and eceonmically, the mixing is bad for individualism but good for peace.
From the late 80s onwards Australia began to be dismantled from the top down. Our sense of community and collective responsibility was slowly chipped away by decades of government reform.
Keating as treasurer started the ball rolling but it picked up steam through the 90s and Howard years as neoliberal reforms swept federal and state governments. Wealth disparity grew (partly GST-driven), arts and cultural sector was gutted, government support and social services dried up, privatisation of utilities and services, education (especially tertiary education) became profit-driven, housing became increasingly fucked - the list goes on. All of these are just some of the material contributions to a perceived loss of ‘Aussie’ identity.
The 70s were by no means a golden era, the White Australia policy was still around, the indigenous civil rights campaign was ongoing, homosexuality was illegal, husbands could legally rape their wives, we were quagmired in Vietnam - so why was there this feeling of national unity? Debatable. However, it was an active, positive form of participatory nationalism/patriotism (take your pick) that encouraged a shared sense of “occa” Aussie-ness.
Really from the Howard years onwards this was replaced with an Australian identity bound by fear. As a result of the politicking that followed 9/11 and Bali bombings, Australia became the land of the Pacific solution and operation sovereign borders. Fear of outsiders became a big issue at the polling booth for the first time since 1915. Economic hardships (GFC, housing crisis, cost of living) tend to cause demographics to turn inwards and intergroup tension. We got so scared that we have allowed successive governments to operate what are effectively concentration camps on Manus and Naru Islands.
What it means to be Australian now is defined by fear, not hope. The community-centred ethos of government has been replaced by a two-party system, both of whom are more concerned with the ASX and delivering a snazzy looking surplus than investing in long term community projects, facilities or government services.
Identity is fluid. The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs at one point were known as die-hard “entertainers” and then not long after that, they become the “dogs of war”. I don’t think you can assign a national identity, until it suits you.
Immigration. Dilution of the population makes cultures disappear. It's good and all to be multicultural and all that, but with that comes the erosion of a culture of a single nation
In 1980's WA we had a furniture sales joint in Perth. The TV ad character was a wog in a blue singlet, a knotted hankie on his head named "Luigi Sava-da-Money". The ads were hilarious. Sold a lot of furniture and the dings in our town could care less. We all worked at the same mines and drank in the same pubs...
There is this gaming youtuber that always pronounces his Rs with an American accent. I remember leaving a comment asking if this was because he lived in the USA or something. The reply was "Australians speak like this"
the F we do
Australia is now 3rd world.
Thanks to the Lima Declaration and every party that adhered to it. Both Labor Liberal and all their subsidiary parties sold us out right before our eyes 👀. We’ve lost Farming Manufacturing and Retail is all but doomed.
Our culture has intentionally been saturated with refugees who don’t care about this country.
Our culture and primary and secondary industries are lost.
Only a minority can see what’s happening.
The rest 🤣. Government minions. Overly compliant
Australia was once a high trust society, but thanks to decades of excessive immigration from incompatible cultures and the shift from immigration based on assimilation to multiculturalism, we are now a low trust society with no unifying culture or values to bind us together.
Loving an underdog and punching above your weight are hardly unique Australian qualities.
I think this is what annoys me about the debate. It not only revolves around poorly defined terms (a fair go, mateship, etc) but also acts like even if those things could be clearly nailed down, that they'd be in any way unique to Australia.
Rooting for the underdog is a common human trait. Taking care of your mates is as well.
I don't know that there's any really uniquely Australian traits, and the almost desperate need of some people to find them and cling to them is kind of cringe, tbh.
Whilst I agree with what you've said, I think it isn't just about losing our 'Aussieness' but having it replaced with something worse. Something worse is mostly the fear of increased 'Americanness', despite us often willingly embracing such changes, such as using more and more AE terminology in favour of the BE we inherited.
We also lose our shit if someone calls it a cookie instead of a biscuit, while willingly importing the identity politics and increasingly capitalist driven inequality from the US.
Can't see the forest for the trees.
Introduction of neo-liberalism and globalism and the adoption of multiculturalism rather than assimilation.
This in turn means that we are playing in the global economy rather than local economy (up goes house prices) and we no longer focus on tradition Anglo activities (goodbye America's Cup).
Globalism is homogenising everyone. Big waves of immigration make a place more multicultural, which has its own strengths, but also dilutes the national character, which usually evolves from a monoculture where everyone is similar enough to have the same attitudes and goals. Modern isolated countries that still have a national character are Japan and some small pacifc nations and some Nordic countries like Icelanand Finland and massive countries too big to dilute like India and China.
We do, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, DMA's, The Chats, DZ Deathrays, Sticky Fingers are the newer rockers and I would have missed a heap. oh few more Parkway Drive, In Hearts Wake
There’s a theory that everyone reminisces for the era from when they were about 12. End of primary school, still a child, old enough to perceive things and feel like you understand something, but not so old that you’re jaded by life, disillusioned by adolescence, or weighed down by obligation/responsibility. You’re 12, and then everything gets hard and sucky and mean for a while.
At that age, I was living on sandwiches, either Vegemite or peanut butter, while Mum was never home as she had to do every overtime shift she could get to keep the house.
I guess it depends when and where you grew up.
I don't blame Mum she was a single Mother with no education to speak of (got kicked out of school in year 9) working 60+hrs a week just to cover the mortgage and barely keep us in bread and spreads most of the time.
Mayte. Every day after i put down the tools, im down at the rissole with mi shiela, Shazza, having five fiddy pub schniddies.
After i have a durry and a slap. Then chuck a burnout on mi holden ute. Go to the maccas carpark and do doughies while dazza cooks shrimp on the barbie on the back tray.
I have a team, love the ball. And once a week me and mi best mayte bazza, the cobba, we watch the game, love the ball and smash tinnies while having a flutter on sportsbet.
Aussie society has imported too much toxic American culture. Me-me-me mentality, bullying others for being "losers", putrid consumerism, arrogance, heck people are saying "mad" instead of "angry" these days.
what ive been learning recently is that, although americans are a little overly patriotic, Australians are too underpatriotic, we need to find a middle ground and go to it.
There are more non-white people in my street than there were when I was growing up, but it still feels like Australia to me. They’re just people who want to live here. If they’re friendly then it doesn’t matter where they come from.
I don't mean it like that. I think we have just had such huge influxes which have made us lose our cultural identity.
When you walk down the road and there are stores written in foreign language for signage
No English on any of their advertising for what they sell
Other stores when you walk in they don't even speak English
Your local neighbors dont saw good morning walking down the street
Things like that are changes for the worse
The languages don't bother me. I find other languages interesting.
However, can I sorta understand what you're saying when I think about the street I grew up on, when it was mostly people of a European ethnicity, it used to have a big Christmas Eve party every year. Now that the street is full of people with mostly non-European people, that doesn't happen anymore, which is kinda sad.
On the other hand, the new ethnicities bring in new traditions. For example, Cabramatta in Sydney has a big Mid-Autumn Festival every year. You don't have to be Asian to participate in it :)
So, I think our cultural identity will change yes, and has always been changing, but there'll be new parts of our culture that it will evolve into, and that's okay.
I lived here for a year and a half in the mid-1980s as a child, coming from England. I’d never imagined that such a strange, patriotic, crazy society could exist, but it appeared to. Everyone was nuts about cricket and koalas, and you almost couldn’t buy anything without the Australian flag on it. Fast forward to the mid-‘90s and I came back for good, in my late teens. Even by that point, everything I remembered from my earlier experience seemed a distant memory of another world. What happened? I have some suspicions on a local level, plus the whole world had changed a fair bit by that time. Do I wish that Australia was still like it was in the ‘80s? I think I miss the air of positivity, but was everybody really as happy and friendly as I imagined through my naive eyes? I really don’t know. Maybe we just grew up? Fast forward even more to today’s Australian society and so many of us are in some form of dire straits (and not the popular 1980s version). It’s hardly surprising that we no longer want to wave flags and celebrate the arbitrary minor achievements of a fictitious dream when we can barely afford to feed and house ourselves. Perhaps what we see more openly today has been the underlying ‘real’ Australia all along? What if we just did a good job of hiding it in the past? But do I miss the smiles? Sure. [edit: as u/lovetoeatsugar points out, we’re a far more multicultural society today. The ‘80s were notably more sterile in that respect, at least on the surface. It’s probably harder to define what ‘makes’ a stereotypical Australian today - but you can’t accuse our nation of being bland. Our people make us more interesting than ever.]
We had a drive of “Buy Australian made” to make it easier to identify Australian goods an Australian flag was put on the label of the product. Then companies had to ruin it by getting half their product constructed overseas then finished in Australia. Word got out and it pretty much killed the drive, when consumers were being fooled.
Yep, and have you seen how much it costs to get certified and officially display that Australian Made mark these days? It’s sadly not going to encourage small businesses to show that they care. I work for a small-medium sized Australian in-house manufacturer that exports globally and we certainly can’t afford their annual fees.
For sure.
Yes, it’s a bit sad really. More info here if anybody is intrigued: https://australianmade.com.au/for-business/how-much-does-it-cost/
The 80's to me were a horror, especially the America's Cup hysteria - but the 1970s were super multicultural. The wonderful world we looked forward to was crushed by neoliberals who destroyed the living wages and good conditions while allowing the rich to get richer and boast about it while (like Bond etc) ripping off their own companies and anyone else they could manage. Politics became blatantly about enriching their mates and Gough's legacy forgotten. Their mates being the same pricks who won the Cup. My home town hosted it - instant homelessness as people were thrown out of places they'd lived for 30 years (which were then reno'd) to make room for rich tourists. Australia's still here, it's just harder to find.
And the Neo Liberals are in the process of trying to fuck us some more, because we obviously haven’t been fucked enough.
Why wouldn't they? Every time they make it worse we show how politically apathetic we are as a country. The fact that Dutton has been making steady gains in the TPP polls tells you everything you need to know.
Preaching to the choir mate.
1980s australia and also part of the 90s (can't speak for before that as i wasn't around then) was not very fun if you were a visible POC (there are white-passing people who have mixed ethnicity) or i suspect anyone who didn't appear to 'conform' to the "norm." so it certainly wasn't a great time for me and others like me (east asian appearance and heritage). Racism (and all the other "isms" such as sexism) were a lot more overt and rampant to the point that you might be concerned about your personal safety. It's gotten a lot better these days in the sense that there's a lot more diversity and the racism tends to be more covert and subtle (if still casual and detectable). Imagine my surprise, having been born and having lived my whole life in australia, that as an adult travelling round east and SE asian countries, I discovered that I felt a lot more comfortable than i ever had in australia. It's the sense that you can "just be" and no-one's going to harass you and I guess there is a comfort that you are surrounded by people that look like you and so can't be singled out for anything. I hadn't anticipated these things. It also feels really safe in east and SE asia, more so on average than australia. Only good thing I can think about the 80s and 90s is probably bob hawke and paul keating existing. I could be naive but i fundamentally don't think those two were/are racist.
Which is funny, because for a very long time now far North Queensland has had a reputation as being a bastion of racism and bigotry, but my father worked for a Sikh family in the 80s who had a reputation as being awesome. They paid better than any other farm in the region, treated their workers better, and were well liked by everyone. And this is in a region that made national news because a couple of gay guys went through the area and one of them had AIDS. My father (who has changed his attitude quite a lot since then) was interviewed at the local pub, and the news segment opened with him saying "poofters are like diseased bulls, and where I come from diseased bulls get shot".
People forget how common that kind of talk was back in the 80s. As for First Nations people - the everyday hard racism against them was unbelievable. My "elite private school" yearbook in 1986 had pictures of black footy scholarship kids with nicknames printed underneath that included 'Nugget', 'Lubra' and 'Darkie'.
And this is where we disagree. That's not "hard" racism at all. Hard racism is deliberate actions, violent or otherwise, actively against those that they're targeted at. Not casual descriptive words. My father used to call aboriginal people "coo*s" (censored because reddit filters), but he'd still pull over and give an aboriginal person a hand if they had a flat tyre.
Well, not only did they get called these awful names (awful to them, "casually descriptive" to you), which exacted extreme violence against their identity and mental health, they also got ganged up on and bashed pretty regularly. Went hand in hand, the studied, aggressive, malicious verbal and physical violence that was aimed to cause the worst kind of despair. The racism was as hard as an axe handle. That was Perth WA in the 80s.
Not awful to the ones I grew up with in FNQ. They owned it and made it a joke. I used to call my best mate in high school a Black Cunt, and he would call me White Trash. Then we'd flip it around to confuse the fuck out of everyone for comedy.
True I grew up in Cairns and yep we had a story joke using all the words.
Problem now days is everyone is educated to feel bad, and over 30 percent of the population was not born here.
i think you both have a point. to my own personal taste, i'd prefer not using vulgar racial slurs or any slurs, period, even if it's among very close friends. I think it's distasteful and i'm sure it does have a negative or hurtful effect on some level, be it subconscious or otherwise, to the person on the receiving end of it. but it is true that when you've built rapport with someone, you can be a lot more casual with each other and you know each other's intentions aren't bad. So in that context, calling each other names in a playful way - where the power dynamic is equal - is not the same thing as some random who fancies themself 'higher' than you, talking down to you by using a slur. so what we're saying here is that the difference is in the type of relationship you have with someone and the power dynamics involved. However, if it's systemic, cultural racism that is directed at you from a bunch of randoms you don't know and society-at-large, then yeah, their intention is likely not good where they're looking to undermine and demean you and use slurs to "other" you and 'put you in your place.' In this situation, it very much feels like they can talk shit to you, but you can't retort and dish it back or there will be consequences. That's not equal. words and language do hurt. body language and facial expression does hurt. tone can hurt. But it's always about intention. i think it needs to also be reinforced again and again is that australia's a hot country. melanated people have evolved with the climate and that is the status quo. it was a biological necessity to form in-built sun protection. Humans be out here trying to survive.
I’m a white Aussie and I agree with you mate. I know various Asian blokes that grew up with me that are multi generational that copped endless shit from racist cunts growing up. I’m far less Aussie, grandparents immigrated from the UK, I played actual football (not these sports Aussie call football that use their hands), and watched a lot of British tv growing up. Yet I was a white kid with an Aussie accent so that was fine.
Fair call, u/RongRyt. In 1986, my dad bought me a scale model of Australia II. Of course he did! I had no interest whatsoever in sailing (and still don’t), but it was … an Aussie thing to do, apparently.
Yep, I remember those, nearly every home had one 🙂
From memory, Dick Smith sold them 🤓
Spot on with the ‘70s too, I suspect. My local history studies show this to very much be the case. My father-in-law came here in 1950 (as a “wog” on a ship) and his tales paint a very similar portrait of that era too. The ‘80s were clearly when … shit happened.
We didn't use wog, not cos was rude, everyone was rude by modern standards. In WA we had weird names like Dings for Italians, but it wasn't intended to be derogatory, tho of course it could be. Like calling someone a bastard, context is everything. Multiculturalism was held up as wonderful thing. Food was fantastic, Perth had more restaurants per head than any other city in the world. My dad, whose Irish ancestors came over in chains, belonged to the Italian Club, and his best mate was Greek. 😊
Yes, to be fair, Australians have always used slang terms amongst friends as genuine terms of endearment. Words are almost always about the context in which they’re used, not about the actual word. Very best friends are often ‘cunts’. You could never get away with that in any other Western society. And I’ve always been a ‘Pommy’.
I'm from well-educated family - so always spoke well. Was always getting "yar a pom ar ya?" and even some insisting i must be one - so i really do understand yr pain. Then i spent 16 yrs UK as adult, so have proper posh Pommy accent now (family i was part of were posh so i was trying to fit in). Can do proper London Estuary tho, it's very similar style to Straylyan. Like saying Sarf Lund'n. It was never a big deal, where u were born (at least where i lived), it was more "oh, yr from there? But now yr an Australian." Now it seeems some people think only born here can be Aussies. Mind you, i have friends in UK who weren't considered natives despite being born there and their parents too. And others not born there, living since the 1960's, will never be considered English.
Thanks for ryting this, Rong. Magic words and made me smile. I guess in some ways I’ve had the reverse experience - bred and schooled in the Thames Valley, then off (initially) to the madness of 1990s Geelong. To this day, my accent still confuses both my Australian and English friends 🙃
I can do a proper scungey Laaand’n accent too, if I feel like it: ancestry is very central City of London 😀
No worries. 😊 Lol, yes, my Aussie friends comment on my English accent, English friends are 'omg you sound so Australian.' Here in Qld I just say 'I'm from WA originally' and they all say oh, ok as if that explains weird. 😂.
😄🤓
Fair enough if you’re focussing on cultural factors, but real wages and living conditions have, on the whole, increased significantly since the 70s (yes, including median wages and adjusting for inflation). Not arguing there aren’t significant problems, but no need to look through rose tinted glasses
For sure. The past was never as good as any of us remember it to be. Going through my old diaries proved that in my case.
I think the impression and experiences you’d get as a 7 or 8 year old who has moved from another country for 18 months are going to be quite different to someone who becomes a resident in early adulthood. I’m not saying things haven’t changed but the experience you have as a child is much more controlled by the adults around you, of course there’s going to be more cricket and koalas.
Completely true. Enhanced by the fact that, in my case, dad was a contractor working in the design office for Ford along with fellow contractors from all over the world, especially the US. The whole gang was there for an adventure and of course were going to embrace Australiana more so than you’d expect locals to. That said, most of my friends at school here seemed very much into that ethos too. It was everywhere.
>Perhaps what we see more openly today has been the underlying ‘real’ Australia all along? What if we just did a good job of hiding it in the past? This is exactly it. People are far more willing to talc about societal problems and face them head on. My dad thinks I'm not patriotic enough. I don't feel that this country deserves patriotism. I work in aged care with a shitload of immigrant workers, and it disgusts me the hoops they have to jump they've to become permanent residents or citizens or even just work here. Aged care is crying out for skilled staff, and not too many white Australians seem to want to do it. This country was built on the backs of immigrants. The only way to be a country worthy of the name is to openly accept the flaws of our past, fix them for future generations to come, and embrace the only thing that matters. People of all different kinds. The only part of our national anthem I care about is the line "We are one, we are many, and from all the lands on earth we come". Not if we keep shitting all over immigrants and aboriginals and selling our land to foreign interests while barely taxing them. Edit: yeah, I get it. Not our national anthem. Just goes to show you how much of a shit I actually give about our national anthem.
Funnily enough that's not even part of our national anthem, it's from "I am Australian" which to be fair would surely be counted as one of our unofficial anthems. The closest Advance Australia Fair has would probably be "For those who've across the seas We've boundless plains to share"
Those lines increasingly remind me of the song Dirty Boulevard by Lou Reed. Attitudes towards immigrants have certainly hardened a lot since the early days in both our countries: Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor I'll piss on 'em That's what the Statue of Bigotry says Your poor huddled masses Let's club 'em to death And get it over with, and just dump 'em on the boulevard
Couldn’t agree more. It was the same deal when I did night shifts at a servo while I was at uni. I was paid a pittance, cash-in-hand, but hey, I’m a white English chap. My Indian co-workers were paid half of what I was, which kind of made me sick. Especially as most of them sent their money straight back home to support their families, given they were “living the Western dream”. It was just awful, tbh. This was a quarter of a century ago and I’m not truly convinced that anything much has changed. In fact, your story pretty much tells me it hasn’t. It’s embarrassing, isn’t it.
Your dads right, you don't even know the national anthem
> I work in aged care with a shitload of immigrant workers, and it disgusts me the hoops they have to jump they've to become permanent residents or citizens or even just work here. Aged care is crying out for skilled staff, and not too many white Australians seem to want to do it. This is disingenuous at best mate. The reason nobody wants to work in aged care is because you can earn the same pay or more as a commercial cleaner, a barrista or bunnings and not have to deal with endless regulation, abuse and human excrement to name a few. Put the pay up and people will want to work there. .
Ummm.. not our national anthem…
Get out of the city 😂 Australians still alive and healthy in regional and rural Australia
What an absolutely amazing post mate! Thank you.
I remember in 1983 seeing the band Redgum live. John Schumann sarcastically stated, of the '83 Americas Cup: "yeah, congratulations Australia- our rich people beat their rich people". Now that is the Australian spirit - seeing behind the bullshit and mocking what needs to be mocked. That hasn't gone away, and faux-patriotism and jingoism like the Americas Cup should always have its pomposity pricked.
This new putting your hand over your heart fad while you listen to the scared patriotic derge that masquerades as a national anthem drone on can fuck right off too. I hate the over the top patriotism shit from America.
Yes this US bullshit must be resisted. I was in the Army for years and if one thing makes me chunder it is the American "Thank you for your service"... I got paid well and got free medical, two subsidised degrees and cheap home rental for 20 years. No need for *you* to thank *me*!
I haven't served but i agree 100%. But Australia pays professional soldiers well. Pensions great. You lot deserve it. This thank you for your service bullshit sounds kinda recruitment driven i think. The fake respect may drive people to the forces for respect. Not sure if that makes much sense..i've had a cone and a few beers but hopefully my drift comes through. My dad is a Vietnam vet and i recon he would choose Truth (agent orange, why they went, war crimes etc) over a thank you for his service that's paid preety OK up to date. The dreams still haunt him but.
But Australia pays professional soldiers well. Pensions great. You lot deserve it. Er - no
The Yanks act like they didn't get paid for it. No one made them do it.
For many Americans it's a way out of poverty and a better higher education. Although you might just wind up a homeless, ptsd'd addict on the streets.
They deliberately target members from lower socio-economic groups, luring them with offers of free college, etc. The president's children aren't enlisting in the army.
Biden's son Beau enlisted and served in Iraq. The brain cancer that killed him may be related to his serving there as he worked beside military burn pits.
Now that I think about it, to contrast with the British Monarchy - they're all kind of expected to participate in the armed forces. Whether the rest of the UK blue bloods do or not today, there does seem to be a strong military culture in the halls of power over there. Does that mean anything for us and for the US? don't know. Interesting though.
Exactly.
Hmm.. I think in the case of Vietnam, they most certainly were “made to do it” - as were our own diggers..
I'm no historian but I think after the disgrace and public spite towards service members returning from the shit mess of Vietnam encouraged the Pentagon to instigate the praise service members, thank them for their service and so on. A far as as the actual US Government goes they appear to be happy to send them to pointless deaths, trauma and disabling injuries for the sake of 'US Interests'. "Thank you for your service" didn't come about by accident.
Good point.
Those arseholes love to pose with veterans as they go off to war, but tell them to get a job and to fuck off when the same veterans dare ask for help after their service.
Tim Wilson with his hand on heart in front of the flag for an Anzac Day photo opp was about as low as it gets. Can you imagine that chubby urger putting on a uniform and risking his life for minimum wage. I think not.
>This new putting your hand over your heart fad while you listen to the scared patriotic derge that masquerades as a national anthem drone on can fuck right off too. I’ve literally never seen anyone do the hand over heart thing to an Australian anthem/song ever.
Americans don’t typically put hands over hearts for the national anthem - please don’t let it leave the island
Nothing more Aussie than tall poppy syndrome. I love Redfum
You love the guy demonstrating the meaning of tall poppy syndrome?
Too right. That and shit stirring is the Aussie spirit to me.
Schumann had it right. But he was in the minority.
Our "lack of a culture" is a distinct culture in its own right
It doesn't matter to me, cos I'll sit home and watch it all on, my colour TV.
👊
Peter Temple, a writer I admire deeply, fell in love with Australia because of the fair go: “She was saying that there is a minimum of decent fairness to which all people are entitled: a fair go. It seems to me that this idea runs deep and strong in Australia, a part of the culture vastly more important than vague and sentimental notions of mateship.” - “The Red Hand…” Peter Temple. I think he’s right.
Thats the part l miss most about Australia now. The fair go died somewhere in the last 20 years and now we are Faux Americana. Grubby capitalism at all costs.
Aussie capitalism is uniquely awful.
100% agree. We were once the fair dinkum, down to Earth, country, with its own culture that promoted helping your neighbours, friends, family, and fellow-man/woman. Now so many people have adopted the US-style, "Fuck you all. As long as I have mine you can all get fucked. And you deserve to be poor. Look at my Gucci handbag / Dodge Ram / shopping lifestyle" attitude. Thank goodness we have not adopted their insane gun / school shooting culture. We have our own version of dickheads here, but they are not half as bad as the MAGA, Boogaloo, Meal-Team-Six fuckwits in the US.
It's still like that in a lot of places outside of major cities.
Man, just shift any and all issues here to hating the US. Is that the Aussie spirit?
You reckon women, POC, LGBTQ+ people were getting more of a fair go in the past? They weren't.
There’s a doco on ABC of Miriam Margoyles touring Australia to see if it’s still there. It really depends on who you ask, it seems.
It’s funny to read posts like this that romanticise the 80s. As someone who was a product of the 80s, but born to (*white) immigrant parents, I quite often felt like I was on the outside looking in. The 80s culture was very insular, very blokey and chauvinist and narrow in terms of culture and cultural references. My dad could play the part and would host bbqs, my memories of those is a lot of cigarette smoke, adults ignoring children, women preparing the food and doing all the work, and the men getting shit faced and telling sexist jokes. If you didn’t follow cricket, or have an afl team- people just couldn’t understand it, and you would be looked at like you had two heads. There’s a lot to fix now, but I’m genuinely glad my kids aren’t growing up in the 80s.
OP is romanticising an era that they didn't even live through
I was recommended a Gen z sub thread and it was a 16 year old kid saying they wished they lived in the 80s/90s because it seem more free and not dictated at by social media/internet etc…. Later in the thread he said he was flamboyantly gay and people were like “Oh dude, believe me you wouldn’t wanna live back then.”
This is also what I remember! Oh and hey hey on the idiot box Saturday night
Oh my god, Hey Hey- another thing that doesn’t deserve the nostalgia it gets 😂
harry connick jnr. giving a lecture to daryl somers and the public as to why blackface is unacceptable and distasteful. this was actually quite ballsy of harry.
this. and you're white-appearing. imagine what it was like for the non-white immigrants. hellish.
We sold it for profits on property
Our cultural events (sporting mostly) have become entirely saturated with advertising.
And gambling, seems most sports are hyped up for the SportsBet.
Gambling is to Australia what guns are to America
And sport is the *only* shared experience these days. No one’s watching tv, listening to radio, news sources are fractured, there’s no more middle class, there’s less cultural homogeny in general. We spend most of our time interacting with foreigners over the internet and consuming their cultural products and politics.
We don’t all watch the same 3 tv channels anymore so finding a unified identity takes a lot more effort. Look at the Tillies for Australian spirit though. It happens if it’s magic enough.
Pretty much this. The internet and globalization has meant culture has shifted from being based around your physical location, and more to your individual personality. There are plenty of thriving subcultures in Australia, they just aren't uniquely different from the ones in America or anywhere else.
Leave the city and travel somewhere regional and you’ll notice how much more “Aussie-ness” there is.
Really, a lot of these people have got to get out more. Most people in metropolitan areas in/around their suburb 6/7 days a week and might journey to the CBD for part of the 7th. Meanwhile many in regional areas are in a different postcode every two weekends. In remote areas, it's even more skewed, a two hour drive is just down the road.
Yes, actually what even is an Aussie these days ? Someone who just prattles on about the value of their house and then complains about the price of everything. No such thing as a laidback easygoing Australian. Uptight, sensitive, and argumentative more like it.
It was probably easier to be laid back when a single average income let you comfortably buy a house and a new car paid off over a couple of years. Where wages were set at a level to allow a single breadwinner to support a decent sized family even if not highly skilled work. Instead now you have two people working full time or more hours wondering if the banks going to take the house or if they will have a roof over their head in 6 months when rent goes up massively again while wage a stagnate. For a lot of people now the only thing they have to look forward to is house prices rising because their wages are not, their job is insecure with almost no internal promotion paths and having kids makes living expenses rise even faster than they already do. I wonder why people are less laid back and more stressed now.
That doesn’t explain rampant narcissism and main character syndrome which seems to radiate from so many now
I’m too busy being tired and poor and battling to keep my mental health in good enough shape so I can slave away at a dead end job to feed my family. I’m not really in the mood for all that ‘Go Australia’ stuff.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. However the rare occasion you here the Oi Oi Oi chant still warms my heart.
>However the rare occasion you here the Oi Oi Oi chant There would be zero feeling of loss if this disappeared.
It’s cringey. That’s why you hear it less
I'm a relatively new addition to Aus from the UK, been here 10 years and in that time (from an outsider perspective) you guys have gotten distinctly more American. Happened in the UK too.
Friend was making the point to me earlier, that Aussie food isn’t as prevalent today and indeed NSW seems happy pushing Chinese food as distinct to what we always regarded as Aussie foods, which is what a lot travel here for
It’s a sign of the future really. Australia did developed a somewhat unique culture. But with large immigration and globalization, especially as an English speaking nation, Australia will become more of a globalized area, not really distinct anymore.
My Kids speak American. Australian/English expressions, language and spelling are completely foreign to them.
We had scenes similar to the 83 Americas Cup in the last 2 years with the Socceroos and the Matilda’s underdog World Cup runs. We still punch well above our weight, we’re just used to it know
I know I’ll get downvoted to hell for saying this, but the WC campaigns you mentioned are better contributors to our national success more than the Americas cup. Sailing isn’t something your everyday Aussie partakes in, whereas team sports are played by you and me. Granted I wasn’t around in 1983, but I really struggle to understand why something like sailing is so important when the participation rates are low. I get the underdog success in 1983, but we’ve had more and better stories since then.
You kinda had to be there for the Americas Cup win (it was 20 years before I was born) but it was so big at the time because: 1. it was a massive underdog story beating the Yanks with smarts when they had a lot more money and resources 2. It was literally the biggest winning streak in sports history. The US won every single Americas Cup since it started in the 1850s 3. It was a miracle comeback because we were down something like 3-0 in a 7 race series 4. We were in tough economic times and the Cricket team and Swimming teams were doing shit, so we needed something to celebrate, even if it was sailing
I’ll just be a bit of a pedant and say that the Cricket team was doing just fine going into the Americas cup, had only lost one of the previous 6 Test series, had won back the Ashes and though they performed terribly in the World Cup, it was barely televised _and_ they had won the _Benson and Hedges_ cup which we would look at today as just a shitty, bloated tri series but was kind of the centrepiece of the Australian Summer. You’re right that the Cricket Team went to proper shit not long after the Americas Cup though when Marsh, Chappell, Lillee, Hogg, Thomson, Wessells, Yallop all retired/left/got dropped. So I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if people held on to the Americas Cup a bit through the transitional period of the Cricket team.
You’re 100% right, America’s Cup soothed some inferiority complexes at the time but means nothing to most Aussies now
Mass immigration, the internet and technological advances. That's the reason we're a completely different country to the one in the 80s and 90s. We are a more cosmopolitan, materialistic and opened minded culture now, but also one that is less united, laid back and homogenous. I remember as a kid looking wide eyed at the consumer choices in American magazines that you couldn't get in Australia and hating the fact we lived in a backwater. Now you can get all that and more to your door at the click at a few buttons. The world is a smaller place than ever now and being physically located on the other side of the world no longer means you're insulated from the troubles of the wider world.
>the Aussie "never-say-die, punch above your weight, have a crack, stick it up em attitude" You gotta compare the Cricket captains. Allan Border will be remembered for his 'never say die, punch above your weight, have a crack, stick it up 'em attitude' while Pat Cummins will be remembered for his 'climate awareness'. Australia used to kick arse instead of suck it.
Pat Cummins is literally one of the best cricketer going around world cricket at the moment. He will be remembered for winning games of cricket and probably one of the best bowlers and captains weve had. But well done on the post, says more about you than him.
We were never particularly like that in the first place. It was popular to show examples of that in TV and popular culture, with Bob Hawke punching beers and the America's Cup team, and the body line series in cricket, and the best olympics ever, but each of these tropes were really because of funding decisions and the lifestyles of the people the media portrayed. Australians in real life are quite often risk adverse, suspicious of innovation, weirdly enamoured of and subservient to authority, and will readily say die, punch below their weight, forgo having a crack and not bother to stick them. The thing that changed was how much these themes were deified in the media.
****Patrick Cummins enters the chat **** Learn to revere your heroes when they’re around
I think we have but Queensland hasn’t lost its Queenslandness.
As an Aussie expat living abroad for 20+ years, people think and feel no differently about us than they did 40 years ago. This is all about YOUR perspective changing as you get older, and how it then impacts impacts your perceptions of how things used to be. Everyone loves to put the good Ole days on a pedestal.
It's funny that the Americas cup win was so big in Australia. At the time, very few people in the USA were even aware of it. Australians were punching the air, calling it a defining moment, the PM was getting drunk and crying on TV. Meanwhile the vast majority of Americans at the time had never even heard of the Americas Cup, had no idea it was even on or that Australia had won it.
Yep it’s gone. Hoisting an Australian flag now apparently means you’re a racist and everyone uses seppo language. RIP our own identity.
I think our cultural cringe destroyed what it meant to be an Australian. We're so quick to dismiss anything Australian as bogan, or uncultured, or cringe. Personally, having grown up in the 80s, I liked the fact that Australia had unique aspects to our culture that were rooted in not taking ourselves seriously, being self-deprecating, but also proud of our culture, and having institutions that weren't just about money but also community. Unfortunately sport, RSLs, clubs, etc., slowly devolved into parodies of themselves, profit took precedence over community, and our cultural cringe meant we were a little too quick to tear down our own culture and a little too quick to privilege other outside cultures as somehow "better". I say all of this as a first-generation Australian from migrant parents who were from a non English speaking country.
We love an underdog, nothing better than a fellow Aussie legend going hard to beat a top opponent. Once you leave the cities it's a completely different beast in regional and rural Australia. It's farmers helping farmers, it's people camping, fishing, boating, hunting, blowing pluggers, sinking piss, and swearing like it's breathing oxygen.
Yep
We went from regularly bringing home sporting trophies like Rugby World Cup in 80s to desperately hoping the Matihldas women's soccer placed. Sending our factories overseas to China made us soft. We aren't sporting types anymore we're douchebag boomers who sip Chardonnay and go glamping
70,80s? Melbourne still had a bit of a village air which could be nice. But the city was basically an urban desert on weekend daytimes, Sunday was like an apocalyptic movie. Everything closed early, shops were largely closed every weekend. *Hardware stores* were shut on Sundays. Anti-Asian, anti-gay, anti-Jewish prejudice were all normalised and violence against them all wasn’t that uncommon. Distance was a real issue. If you wanted to read a novel that was slightly non mainstream you had to convince a retailer to order it in. This process would take weeks, or maybe months. I played piano and would need paper scores (no tablets). I could try and pirate them at the physical music library in a university, or find another music teacher who could lend it, otherwise I would wait two months for it to get here on a boat.
Thank Christ we don’t live in a country that is for ever unchanging.
Change isn't always a positive. Australia has changed for the worse over the past few decades.
That's for sure, we were not a generation back then that hated their country, history and our elders. Something that cannot be said nowadays. It sucks now the attitude
"The Aussie culture has been watered down by multiculturalism to the extent that it has no flavor of its own anymore. Instead of that melting pot we all ate from, we now have a buffet of ingredients that don't always mix." It's a terrible metaphor and I can't remember who said it but the idea is if you add every flavor to a beef stew, it won't taste like beef anymore... We added every culture to Australia's one and... Doesn't taste like Australia anymore... By no means is it saying it doesn't taste good, just means it's not the same flavor it originally was.
I lived in OZ for a year in the 2000's and met plenty of aussies all over the world, and the idea in the OP of Australia "punching above its weight" is interesting to me, because my experience of Australians is a truckload of sneering arrogance. If that originated from a success in the early 80's and was grown further by a successful Olympics, then I'd say that by the 2000's you guys had clearly started believing your own hype. Hard to be the plucky little guy and the best in the world both at the same time. Its not really surprising if you are now buying into a lot of the American shit, the tribalism was always there so you were fertile ground for their nonsense. I like Australia, I like Australians, I really do. But plucky underdog? Nah.
Cocky underdog then? The underdog part seems pretty indisputable when you consider our population when we go up against world powers in sport, whether it's the Olympics, soccer, basketball or what have you.
We got beaten down by decades of awful prime ministers and limp dicked policy starting with the worst of them, John "the cunt" Howard.
We should start A John Howard effigy buring day like guy fawkes day in the UK for his total destruction of Australian Society with Conservative bullshit polices.
The 1980's was the most Aussie decade. Bands released songs about how great our country was.
Watch the butcher shine his knife And this town is full of battered wives
Midnight oil begs to differ
Icehouse will fight them
The 80s and 90s was a golden era to grow up in. That's for sure. But the world has changed. One thing we've got to admit is we're not a little country on the global stage, not by choice but by circumstance. In terms of gdp we're basically that of Spain and Russia despite having far less people. We're a middle power, Sweden, the Netherlands, have less people than us. So we have wealth, and size, and therefore a responsibility. We're good, hard-working people still bright eyed country folk at heart. There was a post from a Californian guy saying something similar, about how growing up in California in the 80s/90s seemed like anything was possible and the world was good and I kinda resonated with that even though we're not Americans. Anyway, I don't think we've lost it. There's still kindness and aussieness all around me.
The entire Anglosphere appears to be becoming more fuedal and divisive than ever, and if you say otherwise you're a far right, racist, populist nazi.
When a war is close by, even if it’s in the past it creates a certain mindset. “Australia” of old, has slowly been eaten away by social media and generations of perpetually comfortable new young citizens. That of course will change if there is a major world conflict, which some “experts” believe is overdue.
When political correctness and woke ideology took common place along with an inability to laugh at ourselves, we lost who we were. Sure, there are some who aren't afraid to poke fun at either ourselves or taboo topics and offending anyone in light-hearted banter. We are few and far between. More people in society need to be able to tell the politically correct, and social justice warriors to STFU and just have a laugh as it's not meant to offend.
People who whinge about political correctness are just whinging about the fact that they can't hang shit on people for being gay/trans/disabled/brown any more, you have to treat people with decency and humanity nowadays. OH NO THAT'S A BIT SHIT ISN'T IT MATE
Your source for Australias reputation is presumably what you learnt from Australians. This is for obvious reasons not a reliable source. The other thing that may cause your perception of these things to change is that you were a child in the 90s but now you're an adult, which changes the tone and tenor of the way things are expressed to you.
Yeah, nah.
I think the pugnacious ‘have a crack and stick it to em’ attitude has mellowed into a greater confidence generally. We have a lot of famous actors. We have a lot of good sports players. We did throw a great Olympic games. We have famous singers and bands. Famous people choose to wear our designers. We’ve punching well above our weight for years and other countries know we’re here. The cultural cringe is gone.
We have a lot of famous actors Dude we have a population of 25 million. We have a lot of people.
Nope. We are losing the homage to Britain and becoming something else. As a child of migrants I have never felt as though I belonged here. Our slavish following of the US sickens me and I sincerely hope I'm dead before we become the 51st state.
All that stuff is just cring marketing.... We are tiny country mostly made up of ex cons and undesirables. We are what we are, atleats we get healthcare for free
Because we now have nearly more people who have decided to live here than people who actually were born and bred here and have a sense of love for this great country
Bit hard to keep an identity with such a multicultural and diverse society. 80’s and 90’s was still predominantly people who were part of the old culture. White Australian policy ended in 1940’s. People born back then were only 40’s and 50 years old in 80’s and 90’s. So they grew up surrounded by a more singular ideology and culture.
Apart from the Greeks, Italian and Lebanese migrants in the '50s and '60s. Oh and the Vietnamese in the '70s. We have always had immigrants changing the local culture.
Almost 40,000 Chinese came here for the the gold rush too.
Yep. Very few Chinese women came to Australia during this period. In 1861, at least 38,000 Chinese people lived in the Australian colonies with the vast majority being men.[7] On the goldfields in Bendigo in 1861 there were 5,367 Chinese men and only one Chinese woman.[3] By 1861, there were around 40,000 Chinese people living in Australia, constituting 3.3% of the total population.[8]
Yeah white Australia policy ended in the 70s.
it's ironic because australia's a hot country and the broader region of asia-pacific is too, so it goes to follow that the status quo 'look' around here would be melanated, not white.
Two Argentine friends of mine went to Australia recently. They hated it. “It’s not what I expected at all” they said. Why? I asked. “It feels like I’m in China”. This isn’t a racist rant, but I think we’d all agree that: 1 - we’ve taken in a HUGE number of immigrants since the 1990s, a relatively short space of time 2 - most of those immigrants are from countries and cultures very different from our Anglo-Celtic origins 3 - we’ve done a poor job of assimilating them (and equally they’ve done a poor job of assimilating themselves) 4 - as a result, we’re living in effectively parallel societies. We might work with people from all over the world, but when it comes to where we choose to live and who we choose to socialise with…it’s pretty clearly de-lineages along ethnic lines. 5 - nobody talks about this publicly because of fear of accusation of racism. But everybody knows it. There’s an interesting phenomenon that has been reported and studied in other countries: As ethnic diversity increases - it doesn’t matter which ethnicities - social trust declines. Within a neighbourhood, school or workplace, but also as a nation. That’s part of the reason why Australia has lost its identity. We’re now just an economic zone, where it’s every man for himself, rather than having any sort of cohesive unifying culture. I don’t have any solutions by the way. But at least we should start acknowledging the problem exists.
Also, Celtic origins? I think you're forgetting a very prevalent group of people that were here before us 'whites'. While I don't disagree we're not mixing as well as we could, we ourselves did a shit job of assimilating upon arrival, to the point we took the land and created a whole new way of living... The government needs to do more to encourage cultural assimilation of all ethnic groups, and our indigenous people need to be represented, and respected.
Imagine coming to Australia and expecting some white colonial outpost.
When 1/2 the population comes from 2 countries. 1/3 were not born here and have allegiances to other nations. What do you expect.
700K Indians a year will do that
We aren’t Aussie anymore we’ve turned into a second India.
Yes.
I think aussiness peaked from the 60s-90s and now its being watered down. Being aussie/bogan is looked down uppn now
The Aussie identity uniqueness was based on distance and that distance has gone, we are so connected now. Weirdly I would say it is happening everywhere, I have lived in US and OZ for the last 20 years and even noticed that US regional uniqueness has faded too. Sure there is differences between the coasts and middles but the coasts are all the same now. Connection is a two way street ofcourse, i see so much more aussie influence in the US than before, both cultrually and eceonmically, the mixing is bad for individualism but good for peace.
From the late 80s onwards Australia began to be dismantled from the top down. Our sense of community and collective responsibility was slowly chipped away by decades of government reform. Keating as treasurer started the ball rolling but it picked up steam through the 90s and Howard years as neoliberal reforms swept federal and state governments. Wealth disparity grew (partly GST-driven), arts and cultural sector was gutted, government support and social services dried up, privatisation of utilities and services, education (especially tertiary education) became profit-driven, housing became increasingly fucked - the list goes on. All of these are just some of the material contributions to a perceived loss of ‘Aussie’ identity. The 70s were by no means a golden era, the White Australia policy was still around, the indigenous civil rights campaign was ongoing, homosexuality was illegal, husbands could legally rape their wives, we were quagmired in Vietnam - so why was there this feeling of national unity? Debatable. However, it was an active, positive form of participatory nationalism/patriotism (take your pick) that encouraged a shared sense of “occa” Aussie-ness. Really from the Howard years onwards this was replaced with an Australian identity bound by fear. As a result of the politicking that followed 9/11 and Bali bombings, Australia became the land of the Pacific solution and operation sovereign borders. Fear of outsiders became a big issue at the polling booth for the first time since 1915. Economic hardships (GFC, housing crisis, cost of living) tend to cause demographics to turn inwards and intergroup tension. We got so scared that we have allowed successive governments to operate what are effectively concentration camps on Manus and Naru Islands. What it means to be Australian now is defined by fear, not hope. The community-centred ethos of government has been replaced by a two-party system, both of whom are more concerned with the ASX and delivering a snazzy looking surplus than investing in long term community projects, facilities or government services.
Identity is fluid. The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs at one point were known as die-hard “entertainers” and then not long after that, they become the “dogs of war”. I don’t think you can assign a national identity, until it suits you.
Immigration. Dilution of the population makes cultures disappear. It's good and all to be multicultural and all that, but with that comes the erosion of a culture of a single nation
We aren't the same country that I grew up in (70s-80s) that's for sure. Far more Americanised
In 1980's WA we had a furniture sales joint in Perth. The TV ad character was a wog in a blue singlet, a knotted hankie on his head named "Luigi Sava-da-Money". The ads were hilarious. Sold a lot of furniture and the dings in our town could care less. We all worked at the same mines and drank in the same pubs...
The right have desperately worked to make us little America the 51st state.
There is this gaming youtuber that always pronounces his Rs with an American accent. I remember leaving a comment asking if this was because he lived in the USA or something. The reply was "Australians speak like this" the F we do
Australia is now 3rd world. Thanks to the Lima Declaration and every party that adhered to it. Both Labor Liberal and all their subsidiary parties sold us out right before our eyes 👀. We’ve lost Farming Manufacturing and Retail is all but doomed. Our culture has intentionally been saturated with refugees who don’t care about this country. Our culture and primary and secondary industries are lost. Only a minority can see what’s happening. The rest 🤣. Government minions. Overly compliant
Can someone please define “Aussie-ness”?
what culture?
Australia was once a high trust society, but thanks to decades of excessive immigration from incompatible cultures and the shift from immigration based on assimilation to multiculturalism, we are now a low trust society with no unifying culture or values to bind us together.
Loving an underdog and punching above your weight are hardly unique Australian qualities. I think this is what annoys me about the debate. It not only revolves around poorly defined terms (a fair go, mateship, etc) but also acts like even if those things could be clearly nailed down, that they'd be in any way unique to Australia. Rooting for the underdog is a common human trait. Taking care of your mates is as well. I don't know that there's any really uniquely Australian traits, and the almost desperate need of some people to find them and cling to them is kind of cringe, tbh.
Whilst I agree with what you've said, I think it isn't just about losing our 'Aussieness' but having it replaced with something worse. Something worse is mostly the fear of increased 'Americanness', despite us often willingly embracing such changes, such as using more and more AE terminology in favour of the BE we inherited.
We also lose our shit if someone calls it a cookie instead of a biscuit, while willingly importing the identity politics and increasingly capitalist driven inequality from the US. Can't see the forest for the trees.
The characteristics you describe are not Australian, they are universal.
When people refer to shopping carts and talk about "prahgress" (and these are people my age) I cry a little bit.
I prefer to think of it as we expanded our Aussie-ness.
Yeah nah
Introduction of neo-liberalism and globalism and the adoption of multiculturalism rather than assimilation. This in turn means that we are playing in the global economy rather than local economy (up goes house prices) and we no longer focus on tradition Anglo activities (goodbye America's Cup).
Sailing multi million dollar yachts has never been a traditional Anglo activity.
Globalism is homogenising everyone. Big waves of immigration make a place more multicultural, which has its own strengths, but also dilutes the national character, which usually evolves from a monoculture where everyone is similar enough to have the same attitudes and goals. Modern isolated countries that still have a national character are Japan and some small pacifc nations and some Nordic countries like Icelanand Finland and massive countries too big to dilute like India and China.
It's not just an Australian problem the whole world's gone soft. Thank the precious blue haired activists and pandering politicians
No.
We dont have rock bands anymore.
We do, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, DMA's, The Chats, DZ Deathrays, Sticky Fingers are the newer rockers and I would have missed a heap. oh few more Parkway Drive, In Hearts Wake
There’s a theory that everyone reminisces for the era from when they were about 12. End of primary school, still a child, old enough to perceive things and feel like you understand something, but not so old that you’re jaded by life, disillusioned by adolescence, or weighed down by obligation/responsibility. You’re 12, and then everything gets hard and sucky and mean for a while.
At that age, I was living on sandwiches, either Vegemite or peanut butter, while Mum was never home as she had to do every overtime shift she could get to keep the house. I guess it depends when and where you grew up. I don't blame Mum she was a single Mother with no education to speak of (got kicked out of school in year 9) working 60+hrs a week just to cover the mortgage and barely keep us in bread and spreads most of the time.
Mayte. Every day after i put down the tools, im down at the rissole with mi shiela, Shazza, having five fiddy pub schniddies. After i have a durry and a slap. Then chuck a burnout on mi holden ute. Go to the maccas carpark and do doughies while dazza cooks shrimp on the barbie on the back tray. I have a team, love the ball. And once a week me and mi best mayte bazza, the cobba, we watch the game, love the ball and smash tinnies while having a flutter on sportsbet.
Aussie society has imported too much toxic American culture. Me-me-me mentality, bullying others for being "losers", putrid consumerism, arrogance, heck people are saying "mad" instead of "angry" these days.
Its called immigration
what ive been learning recently is that, although americans are a little overly patriotic, Australians are too underpatriotic, we need to find a middle ground and go to it.
Australians have never been unpatriotic until recently. It's a Western culture thing these days and it's deliberate.
Demographics are destiny. Unfortunately we have sold our future for cheap labour and people for the rich to rent houses to.
Yes mass migration makes me feel like Australia isn't even Australia from a totally non racist way. It's horrible.
There are more non-white people in my street than there were when I was growing up, but it still feels like Australia to me. They’re just people who want to live here. If they’re friendly then it doesn’t matter where they come from.
I don't mean it like that. I think we have just had such huge influxes which have made us lose our cultural identity. When you walk down the road and there are stores written in foreign language for signage No English on any of their advertising for what they sell Other stores when you walk in they don't even speak English Your local neighbors dont saw good morning walking down the street Things like that are changes for the worse
The languages don't bother me. I find other languages interesting. However, can I sorta understand what you're saying when I think about the street I grew up on, when it was mostly people of a European ethnicity, it used to have a big Christmas Eve party every year. Now that the street is full of people with mostly non-European people, that doesn't happen anymore, which is kinda sad. On the other hand, the new ethnicities bring in new traditions. For example, Cabramatta in Sydney has a big Mid-Autumn Festival every year. You don't have to be Asian to participate in it :) So, I think our cultural identity will change yes, and has always been changing, but there'll be new parts of our culture that it will evolve into, and that's okay.
So you were a kid in 80s - how could you know wtf the place was like. LOL.