You write:

“The anonymous writer above clearly has an insufficient grasp of how important our self-conception as a country is for the maintainance of our institutions.”

I’d be interested to know what you have in mind here as I would have thought the situation was more the other way around.

Whatever – this doesn’t seem to be my point, which is that the notion of Asutralia as a “nation” does not suit the needs and of the people whole live on this continent, and that something else is sorely needed.

To further my point – many of us have grown up being wearied by endless references to Australia “coming of age” and whether “our (sic) national identity” is this or that. Whatever was their justification, I am confident these notions are now completely bankrupt. The very idea of *any* people “coming of age” smacks of colonialism – not even post-colonialism. Further, there is no sense of talk about “its” (ie Australia’s) culture as new or young, when indigenous peoples have been here 60 000 years and the European culture played out here has at least as ancient a pre-history and a recorded history dating at least 3 000 years, let alone the histories of other peoples who are also living here such as the Chinese (likewise, 3 000 years). If the point is that they are newly juxtaposed, this point then could and should be made of Europe, or of the UK, or the USA as starkly and abundantly as for Australia. Yet few, when speaking like this, think of Europe as “new”, “young” etc – as if the EU and its emerging institutions weren’t straight out of the packet. Even the notion of “nationhood” when applied to Australia, would see the formation of Australia about or not long after that of Italy, Germany or before Poland. I am pointing out that our discourse around “new” and “young” and “old” and “mature” just has to be taken with a pinch of salt, though it usually taken just so seriously.

As a result, many Australian’s carry around with themselves an utterly defunct sense of ‘Australia’. Indeed, on the contrary, there is less that is new or green in society of the people who inhabit this land, and more that is old and now profoundly redundant.

AGainst this, I am not suggesting Australia play catch-up, I am suggesting that people living on the terrain of Australia start working with the magic of the place and its people fully comprehended, and create something which befits the land and the history of its various peoples.

Clive

I would like to quote him in an article I am pitching to Fairfax

One of the cut through lines that Labor has been reciting this year has been “ensuring prosperity beyond the resources boom”. There’s obviously a degree of political spin in it, but there’s also some truth. State Labor governmen…

we ALREADY compete interationally

Um, here’s how we compete internationally (from the ABS 2007 Yearbook):

Top product exports (2005-05 year):

Coal $24 billion
Iron ore & concentrates $13 billion
Gold $7 billion
Aluminium ore & concentrates $5 billion
Aluminium metal $5 billion

Education exports earned nearly $6 billion, but as university quality improves elsewhere and diminishes here, our competitiveness is built on shifting sand. Still, we can always dig up and ship out more stuff, sell off more Australian companies and real estate to foreign investors – until everything digupable and saleable is gone.

Then what?

If competing internationally means having a trade profile like a 19th century British colony then we are doing really, really well.

we need in Australia to generate highly networked nodes of cultural and social production, circulation, transportation and transition. Putting aside all regional oppositions the country needs to aggregate its education possibilities, the education system needs to work from cradle to the grave has to be oriented towards creating a virtual urban culture that can compete internationally – and macro/micro economic management must privilege this.

one would have to say the first line reads like management babble; the line on education something I’d agree with; the virtual urban bit silly (we ALREADY compete interationally); and the whole conception that Australia is best viewed as one city is also strange. We’re a fairly dispersed set of cities with a lot of recreational space and highly profitable mines in between. That’s quite different to a single city.