Winner said:
On the future of Australia, its place in the world, its ties with Europe and so on.
We are European, insofar as we have European institutions, a European populace (mostly), but we are manifestly not "European" in any other sense of the word you care to count. Most of us don't look at
Europe Great Britain with puppy eyes anymore, that died at Gallipoli, in the collapse of British Asia during the Second World War - symbolized by the destruction of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse followed by the collapse of Singapore and the exposure of the myth of British invulnerability which they had assiduously propagated, in the refusal by senior British military figures to allow the regulars to return home despite a looming threat to their homeland; after a point you have to get inured to the disasters and turn towards the successes which were coming in from a different quarter - America.
Our military policy had for a long time hinged on the belief that Britain could defend us, that was manifestly shown to be false and was after the war compounded by her defeats and forced decolonization in Asia. We even had to help pick up the British tab in Malaya twice with the Emergency and Konfrontasi actions which really didn't help Australia's position abroad. the Konfrontasi bought us lasting enmity from our largest and second closest neighbor which is still acting against our interests even now.
The process of transitioning away from the Motherland was cemented for New Zealand with the entry of Great Britain to the Common Market and its abandonment of Empire First that forced us to liberalize economically and undergo a decade of economic and political strife ending with Muldoon. With Australia, I think it was more of a general process of disillusionment rather than a specific event.
We are not Asian either, in large part, most of our "Asians" after a generation or two are Australians. We have a remarkable ability to assimilate different groups we are simply speaking institutionally good at doing it. Sure the Chinese might claim to be "Chinese" some of the time (or all of the time) but most of the time they are Australian (no matter how much they protest to the contrary).
We are a weird amalgam of all kinds of different cultures, we really always have been, Australia was majority Irish and Scottish in its early days, New Zealand during its early days of European Colonization had just as many Germans and other miscellanea as Englishmen. South Australia was founded by Germans. The Northern Territory had more Chinese than Europeans till something like 1940 when Darwin was flooded with troops. Queensland had a large population of Pacific Islanders till they were deported having been 'rescued' from forced labor here. Western Australia was founded by troglodytes and the list goes on. In any case what is "Europe", does it include Russia, or Turkey, or North Africa, or Great Britain, or the Crimea, or the Basques, or the Sami or anyone else who might possibly not be your typical Romance or Germanic speaking "Europeans".
Arwon said:
(Psst, Cami, the largest group of "not born heres" are still Brits and Kiwis)
I'm going to have to take my evil immigrant ass back across the Tasman! RATS!