a multicultural History of Australia

Making multicultural Australia

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Commentary on: Australia into the new millennium »

Prof Andrew Jakubowicz.

Text Commentary

How have we changed?

The 1990s - Australia a very different place from what it was in the 1940s...

A perhaps typical migrant family in the 1960s, out for the day in a Sydney park... by the 1990s, the picture is one of growing diversity, Australian migrant families coming from every corner of the earth - not only Europe. Australian society has changed dramatically since the post-war immigration program. Its population has grown from about 7.5 million when the program started in 1946, to nearly 19 million in the late 1990s. A society that was heavily Anglo-Saxon is now one of the most diverse on the planet, drawing its participants from nearly every country in the world. A nation which had proudly defined itself as a whites-only democracy in its creation in 1901, has by the late 1990s equally proudly offered itself to the world as an example of the best in cultural diversity and intercommunal respect and acceptance. Where intolerance stood as the trademark of the 1960s, the 1990s claims a profile of hybridity and tolerance.

In the year 1997-1998, 32.6% of immigrants came from Asia, 25.5% from Europe, 22.9% from Oceania, and about 7% each from the Middle East/North Africa, and Africa. In the three years from 1995 to 1998, there were over two million visitors (mainly tourists) from Japan.

The picture of diversity can be aided by access in this section to some basic data about those changes.

Further reference:
Hugo, Graeme and Maher, Chris Atlas of the Australian People - 1991 Census, Canberra, Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research and Australian Government Publishing Service, 1995.

Hugo, Graeme Understanding Where Immigrants Live, Canberra, Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research and Australian Government Publishing Service, 1996.

Shu, John (et al) Australia’s Population Trends and Prospects 1995, Canberra, Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research and Australian Government Publishing Service, 1995.

Williams, Lynne and McKenzie, Fiona Understanding Australia’s Population, Canberra, Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research and Australian Government Publishing Service, 1996.

Web site: http://www.immi.gov.au.