The Sun-Herald

WHO WE ARE: Standout comedy

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A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 11/5/2008
Whenever Australians are asked to describe the core characteristics of this nation, two phrases keep coming up: "laidback attitude" and "sense of humour", which together add up to an eagerness to laugh at ourselves. It's no surprise, then, that the most successful locally made programs in the history of television have been comedies.

In recent weeks this column has been trying to bring some order to the chaos that is Australia's taste in entertainment. I've chronicled our favourite movies, most successful actors and most watched TV shows, and sought your votes on whether the most popular were necessarily the most significant. After last week's column, which identified the top dramas of all time as Homicide, Blue Heelers, All Saints and Home and Away, many readers complained that I had left out, in order of importance, Wildside, The Sullivans, Phoenix, Flying Doctors, Bellbird, Matlock, MDA, Love My Way, Cop Shop, Stingers and Blue Murder.

No doubt there will be similar outcries about what's missing from the list below, which is an attempt to rank the comedies which had both high ratings and long life. Once again quantity is not necessarily the same as quality, but this is designed to get the conversation started ...

The most watched Australian comedies of all time:
1 Hey Dad (1984-94)
2 The Paul Hogan Show (1973-1982)
3 Kath and Kim (2002- )
4 The Comedy Company (1988-1991)
5 The Normal Gunston Show (1975-79)
6 The Mavis Bramston Show (1964-68)
7 Fast Forward/ Full Frontal (1989-1998)
8 Mother and Son (1984-1994)
9 Thank God You're Here (2006-)
10 The Chaser team under various titles (2002-)
11 All Aussie Adventures (2001-03)
12 Frontline (1994-97)
13 Summer Heights High (2007)
14 Kingswood Country (1979-1984)
15 The Naked Vicar Show (1977-78)
16 The D Generation (1986-89)
17 My Name's McGooley, What's Yours (1967-69)
18 Acropolis Now (1989-1992)
19 The Aunty Jack Show (1972-75)
20 The Games (1998-2000)

(I sneaked the last one in because I'm hoping John Clarke will do a version for this year, although the Olympics are probably too close now for it to be feasible.)

It's interesting to note from the chart that Australia's favourite form of TV comedy leans more towards sketches than to sitcoms (which we tend to leave to the experts - America). Even series that purport to be sitcoms were mostly born out of sketches and are structured as fast scenes rather than continuous narratives - Kingswood Country grew from The Naked Vicar Show, Kath and Kim from Fast Forward, My Name's McGooley from a Gordon Chater character in The Mavis Bramston Show, Acropolis Now from Wogs Out of Work on stage.

This may lead you to the view that Australians should add a third quality when they are attempting to describe the national character - along with our laid back attitude and our sense of humour, Australians have a terribly short attention span. Which is no bad thing, since it gives us an ability to multi-task and an enthusiasm for new ideas.

If you'd care to discuss that, or nominate other shows that deserve a place in the Australian TV comedy hall of fame, go to Comments

• by David Dale at 02:35 PM
• Comments (62)

WHO WE ARE: The biggest stars in the southern sky

For the results of The Bogie Awards 2008, go to The Tribal Mind.

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 27/4/2008
Alright, if we can't agree on what is the greatest Australian movie ever made, perhaps we can agree on who is the greatest Australian actor. Last week this column sought your reaction to a remark by a spokesman for the prime minister that "without doubt" the best Australian movie ever made was The Man from Snowy River (despite the fact that 70 minutes go by before there is any movement at the station).

Most readers disagreed with the PM, but after that, the consensus broke down. Obviously this column's readers represent a fair sample of the Australian cinemagoing community, and that community has diverse tastes. This was how the voting went: 1 Chopper; 2 Lantana; 3 Breaker Morant; 4 Gallipoli; 5 Picnic at Hanging Rock; 6 The Castle; 7 Mad Max; 8 Muriel's Wedding; 9 Wake in Fright; 10 Don's Party; 11 A Town Like Alice; 12 The Club; 13 Kenny; 14 Romper Stomper; 15 Bad Boy Bubby.

Most of these films are more than 10 years old. As many readers remarked, Australian flicks these days are perceived as a reason not to go to the cinema. But we continue to admire our own actors, and it might be possible to achieve more agreement on who is the best of them.

As I remarked last week, box office success is not the same as quality, but to get you started, here's a list of the Australians who have been in movies which sold the most tikets around the world. (Pedant warning: In compiling this list, I have defined Australian as "spent the formative years of their career in this country". There is no need to tell me Russell Crowe was born in New Zealand, Sam Neill in Northern Ireland, Mel Gibson in New York, Nicole Kidman in Hawaii, Naomi Watts and Guy Pearce in Britain, and Hugo Weaving in Nigeria. This is a nation of immigrants.)

The most successful Australian actors of all time
1 Hugo Weaving (biggest international moneymakers included the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Matrix trilogy and Australian work includes Priscilla, Little Fish, The Interview, and Proof).
2 Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean, Munich, Shakespeare in Love, Shine, Lantana, Ned Kelly, Candy).
3 Mel Gibson (What Women Want, Braveheart, Lethal Weapon, Mad Max, The Year of Living Dangerously, Gallipoli, Tim)
4 Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, Bicentennial Man, The Hunt For Red October, The Piano, My Brilliant Career, The Dish, Sirens, Little Fish, Dead Calm)
5 Nicole Kidman (The Golden Compass, Bewitched, The Hours, The Others, Batman Forever, To Die For, Days of Thunder, Moulin Rouge, Dead Calm, BMX Bandits)
6 Russell Crowe (Gladiator, American Gangster, Master and Commander, A Beautiful Mind, LA Confidential, The Sum of Us, Romper Stomper, Proof)
7 Cate Blanchett (Lord of the Rings, Elizabeth, The Aviator, Babel, Notes on a Scandal, Little Fish, Oscar and Lucinda. Discussing her latest film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Steven Spielberg said last week: "She's a very threatening villain. Of all the villains I've been able to work with in the Indiana Jones movies, I can say she's my favorite. And I think Cate made her that way. We gave her a template for this, but she invented the character.")
8 Eric Bana (Troy, Munich, Hulk, Black Hawk Down, Romulus My Father, Chopper, The Castle)
9 Toni Collette (The 6th Sense; Little Miss Sunshine, About A Boy, Muriel's Wedding, Japanese Story, The Black Balloon).
10 Hugh Jackman (X-Men, Van Helsing, Swordfish, Deception, Erskineville Kings, Paperback Hero.)
11 Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee, Strange Bedfellows)
12 Guy Pearce (Death Defying Acts, The Time Machine, Memento, LA Confidential, The Proposition,The Hard Word, Priscilla.)
13 Naomi Watts (King Kong, The Ring, Mulholland Drive, Ned Kelly, Gross Misconduct.)
14 Heath Ledger (Casanova, Brokeback Mountain, A Knight's Tale, Ned Kelly, Two Hands, Candy.)
15 Jack Thompson (Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Man From Snowy River, Breaker Morant, Sunday Too Far Away, Wake In Fright.)

Have I missed anybody? And is there a clear winner amongst that lot? Go to Comments to vote.

To learn about our all-time favourites from every country, go to The Films Australia loved

• by David Dale at 12:19 AM
• Comments (56)

WHO WE ARE: Without doubt?

To learn how the tastes of Melbourne differ from the tastes of Sydney, go to The Tribal Mind

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 20/4/2008
A spokesman for the prime minister declared recently that The Man from Snowy River was "without doubt the best Australian movie ever made". He was commenting on a letter of congratulation sent to Kevin Rudd by the actor Kirk Douglas (who played two roles in The Man From Snowy River).

Assuming that the spokesman was conveying his master's view rather than his own, and that he wasn't just being polite to an ageing icon, it's a big claim. Kevin Rudd is this nation's voice to the world. The opinion polls suggest most Australians go along with him on most matters, but would they agree about the best Australian movie ever made?

On the prime ministerial recommendation, I rented The Man at my local DVD store, and I have to say it's an eccentric choice. Yes, the superb camerawork shows graceful horses and beautiful scenery, but the dialogue is clunky, the acting is uncomfortable, and Kirk Douglas's wig and beard look as if he tied a dead bandicoot round his head. Nearly 80 minutes go by before there's movement at the station. And there's no ending, presumably because they were setting things up for a sequel.

If that's the best we've ever done, you can't be surprised that 21st century Australians make a point of avoiding Australian movies. During the past six months, only two local creations have made more than $1 million at the box office - Black Balloon, a dramedy about a family with an autistic kid (seen by 170,000 people), and Gabriel, a science fiction thriller (seen by 140,000 people).

Some say the reason Australian films are doing so badly is that these days, people only go to the cinema to see big budget spectaculars, and Australians can't afford to make those. So how come 1.6 million of us bought tickets in the past six months for a film called Death At A Funeral? It has all the hallmarks of a classic Aussie production - no special effects, no big stars but plenty of eccentric characters, a bit of slapstick and a quirky storyline. Ah, you see, it was made in Britain, so we had no motive to avoid it.

There was a time when we embraced our own work. And from that golden age, I've worked out the 20 films which were seen by the greatest number of Australians, and which might be candidates for "without doubt the best ever made". I divided box office earnings by the average ticket price in the year the film was released, and came up with this chart:

The most popular Australian movies of all time
1. Crocodile Dundee (1986)
2 Babe (1995)
3 Crocodile Dundee 2 (1988)
4 The Man from Snowy River (1982)
5 Happy Feet (2006)
6 Moulin Rouge (2001)
7 Strictly Ballroom (1992)
8 Gallipoli (1981)
9 Mad Max Two (1981)
10 Priscilla Queen of the Dessert (1994)
11 Muriel's Wedding (1994)
12 Young Einstein (1988)
13 The Dish (2000)
14 The Piano (1993)
15 Phar Lap (1983)
16 Alvin Purple (1973)
17 Mad Max (1979)
18 Shine (1996)
19 The Castle (1997)
20 They're A Weird Mob (1966).

Of course, "most seen" is not necessarily the same as "best". There are others, just outside the top 20, which received critical acclaim: Picnic At Hanging Rock; Lantana; My Brilliant Career; Rabbit Proof Fence; Two Hands; Breaker Morant; Puberty Blues; Oscar and Lucinda and Kenny.

Which do you reckon was our all time best? And will we ever get there again? It's all a matter of opinion and we want yours. Please go to "Comments" and set the prime minister straight.

To learn about our all-time favourites from every country, go to The Films Australia loved

• by David Dale at 06:58 AM
• Comments (99)

WHO WE ARE: The city we love to hate

To learn why State governments should be abolished, go to The next big thing.
To learn how Australians spend their spare time, go to The Tribal Mind

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 13/4/2008
The biggest city in the land has managed to inspire serious hatred out there, and not all of it comes from jealous Melburnians. Two weeks ago this column used new figures from the Bureau of Statistics to demonstrate that Melbourne is poorer, older, lonelier and less ethnically diverse than Sydney, but also kinder, faster-growing and more family-oriented (go here for the details). Last week this column asked for slogans to promote Sydney to the world, since the newly announced "Designed to inspire" is misleading and lame.

Both columns provoked outpourings of venom, of which these are but a few examples ...

Marko M of Manly wrote: "$ydney has $old its $oul. Corporate greed has seduced our State Govt to the point where there is an inverse relationship between some companies share price and the happiness and satisfaction of living in this once great and exciting place ... Still they turned around New York and we need only to look to Melbourne as a shining star of Hope."

Daniel argued that "Sydney people are so obsessed with what they look like, are more snobbish, are not the least concerned about the environment (cars everywhere, or they'll take a cab for a ride that would take you 10 minutes to walk). Sydney is a good place to visit. Unfortunately, I live here."

Steve said: "The infrastructure is falling apart, the trains don't work, the roads are inadequate and there are too many tolls, the State schools are all politicised and strike-prone, resulting in more and more people turning to private schools, taxis are absurdly expensive, I could go on and on ... 20 years ago Sydney was clearly a better city, no question about it."

Justin McMurray suggested these slogans: "Vacuous -- but beautiful. Who needs culture when you have a nice harbour? Come, stay ... try to leave. If looks could kill, no-one in Sydney would be alive. City of excellence (except for the transport, hospitals and politicians)."

Lostie offered: "Sydney: Inadequacy at its best. Sydney: It's not ordinary, but we're trying. Sydney: Home of Bling FC. Sydney: You know you want to. Sydney: FOR SALE."

And these were some other slogan suggestions:
The city full of the rudest bastards in the world!!!!!!!
The city of the flying cockroach and hairy huntsman
Great Place to Hang Around (And You'll be Hanging Around A Lot)
Where only the Harbour is deep!
Cracker City -- Every second night there are fireworks going off somewhere
The city that invention never touched
A great lifestyle, for a price
Sydney -- donate to Labor and get development permission
Resting on its laurels
Gateway to more interesting places
Sydney: You're standing in it
Yawn at the Opera House, then go to Melbourne for real coffee and nightlife
Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence
Sydney - Tell someone who cares
The Drunk and Stupid City. Now with Extra Cars!
Where culture goes to die.
It's Yendys spelled backwards.

To leap to Sydney's defence, or to offer a slogan for Melbourne, go to Comments

• by David Dale at 03:32 AM
• Comments (141)

WHO WE ARE: The slogan that never sleeps

For the answers to the cultural literacy test, go to The Tribal Mind

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 6/4/2008
What the bloody hell is going on? On September 13 last year, the NSW Tourism Minister, Matt Brown, announced that the slogan for Sydney would become "City of Celebrations". He said: "With this particular campaign, we're targeting mainly our domestic visitors - people in Queensland, people in Victoria, as well as regional New South Wales. This city has it all."

On April 1 this year, the NSW Tourism Minister, still Matt Brown, announced that the slogan for Sydney would become "Designed to inspire". He said: "We need to get out into the market, we need to let the rest of the country and the rest of our state know that Sydney is a wonderful place to visit and invest."

What next - "Sydney: the city that changes its mind every six months"?

You can understand the thinking, though. NSW wants to get on the slogan-change bandwagon started by the federal government, which announced, soon after taking office, that it would dump "Where the bloody hell are you?" (and its plaintive adaptation for Japan -- "Why don't you come?").

"City of Celebrations" was pretty lame. But the new one is absurd. If there's one thing Sydney is not, it's "designed". It's a town that grew up higgledy piggledy. The randomness of its streets and buildings is part of the fun. The slogan would make much more sense for Canberra, but they seem boringly content with "The nation's capital".

This column was designed to inspire, so today we're going to suggest some better slogans for Sydney.

Sure, they're ripped off from other cities, but nobody will mind. "Live It. Love It." was originally used by Hong Kong, but now it's also the slogan for Leeds in Britain. Here are some candidates which, with marginal adaptation, could sell Sydney to the world:

Lose yourself in Melbourne
Adelaide Alive
Seven Miles from Sydney, a Thousand Miles from Care
Surprising Singapore
Uniquely Manchester
New Orleans: The Big Easy
New York: Capital of the World
Totally LondON (as opposed to "Totally LondOFF").

And a bunch of smaller towns in the US ...
Anchorage: City of Lights
Atlanta: World's Next International City
Bonsall: The Bridge To Paradise
Boston: The Hub of The Universe
Clarkson Valley: Less Government is Good Government
Coconut Creek: Butterfly Capital of the world
Las Vegas: Entertainment Capital of the World
Martinsville: A City Without Limits
Morgan City: Jumbo Shrimp Capital of the World
Nashville: The Music City
Pensacola: Just Do It!
Philadelphia: The City Of Brotherly Love
Sante Fe: The City Different
Whittemore: Cares More, Shares More.

And a bunch of smaller places in Britain ...
Birmingham: The Global City With The Local Heart
Cheshire: Stay. Explore. Relax. Indulge
Edinburgh: Inspiring capital.
Liverpool: The world in one city
Mid-Wales: Because mid-Wales is as unique as you are
Newcastle: World-class culture
Norwich: A fine city
Nottinghamshire: Our Style is Legendary
Peterborough: A city to surprise and delight you
Southport: Day time, night time, great time.
Tweeddale: Adventure, activity, culture, tranquility
Warwick: Experience The Past, Taste The Future
Worcester: An Ancient City with a Modern Outlook.

Ah hell, why don't we just go with "Sydney: The City Without A Slogan".

• by David Dale at 08:50 PM
• Comments (83)

WHO WE ARE: A city that can't be beat

To discuss the lyrics of Macarthur Park, go to The Tribal Mind.
A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 30/3/2008
At last we have the definitive answer to a question that has plagued this nation for 150 years: which is better - Melbourne or Sydney? The once fierce competition between the two capitals has mellowed in recent years into a polite agreement that they are "different but equal" - that Melbourne's deficiencies in scenery are balanced by its advances in sophisticated lifestyle, that Sydney's shallowness is balanced by its energy, etc. To me, this is wimpy and tokenistic. I want a winner - even if that demand betrays my Sydney upbringing.

And now I can get my wish. The Bureau of Statistics has just released a set of social atlases for every capital city in Australia, based on data collected in the 2006 census. I've been over the Sydney and Melbourne atlases with a microscope and come up with comparisons that unlock the essential mysteries. Here they are ...

Who is richer? Earning more than $2000 a week after tax: 27.2 per cent of Sydney households, 20.7 per cent of Melbourne households. Earning less than $500 a week after tax: 20.1 per cent of Melbourne households, 18.2 per cent of Sydney households. Unemployed: 5.4 per cent of the Melbourne workforce, 5.2 per cent of the Sydney workforce. But then again, in Melbourne 37.1 per cent of homes are being purchased by their occupants, compared with 33.7 per cent of Sydney homes.

Who is more ethnically diverse? People born overseas: 37.0 per cent of Sydney's population, 31.6 per cent of Melbourne's. People who arrived from overseas since 2001: 6.9 per cent of Sydney's population, 5.7 per cent of Melbourne's. Indigenous people: 1.0 per cent of Sydney's population, 0.4 per cent of Melbourne's.

Who is better educated? Holding at least one university degree: 30.5 per cent of the workforce in Sydney; 28.5 per cent in Melbourne.

Who is younger? Aged under 5: 6.6 per cent of Sydney people and 6.3 per cent of Melbourne people. Aged over 75: 6.4 per cent in Melbourne, 5.9 per cent in Sydney.

Who is kinder? People over 15 who do unpaid volunteer work: 17.1 per cent in Melbourne, 16.2 per cent in Sydney.

Who is more traditional? In Sydney, 42.5 per cent of families consist of a couple with no dependent children, while in Melbourne the figure is 43.5 per cent. In Sydney 9.7 per cent of families have only one parent living with kids. In Melbourne the figure is 9.9 per cent. So, classic family structure (mum, dad, kids, not necessarily with white picket fence): 47.8 per cent in Sydney, 46.6 per cent in Melbourne.

Who is more eco-conscious? Taking public transport to work: 21.7 per cent in Sydney, 13.9 per cent in Melbourne.

Who is more snobbish? Attending private schools: 39.2 per cent of kids in Sydney, 38.7 per cent in Melbourne.

Who is more tech-savvy? Homes with broadband internet connection: 50.8 per cent in Sydney, 46.5 per cent in Melbourne.

Who is growing faster? Melbourne's population (3.467 million) grew 6.5 per cent since 2001. Sydney's population (3.645m) grew 4.1 per cent. But population density: 2058 people per square kilometre in Sydney, 1532 people per square kilometre in Melbourne.

Who is lonelier? People over 15 living alone: 10.6 per cent in Melbourne, 9.8 per cent in Sydney.

Now you know which is the the more interesting city. Tell us why, here ...

• by David Dale at 12:32 AM
• Comments (79)

WHO WE ARE: A festival of failure

To learn which city is better -- Melbourne or Sydney, go to Who We Are
For regular updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 23/3/2008
Now is not the time to be urging a new hall of fame for Australia. The poverty-stricken federal government, faced with a surplus of only $18 billion, has cancelled funding promised by the previous government for a Fishing Hall of Fame and a Rugby League Hall of Fame. They will not join the Sports Hall of Fame (Melbourne); the Stockman's Hall of Fame (Longreach, Queensland); the Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame (Kalgoorlie, WA); and the Shearer's Hall of Fame (Hay, NSW) in celebrating rare Australian achievements.

But what, we wonder, might be the government's reaction to the notion of a Hall of Failure? Surely we can learn as much about the national psyche from the things that Australians refuse to do as from the things they do. And Australia is often described as a land that loves its losers - a national song about a suicidal sheep rustler, making a hero of a horse thief hanged after bungling a bank robbery, a public holiday for a military fiasco, etc.

My inspiration comes from an institution I visited a few years back in the town of Naples, New York - The Museum of Failed Products. For 30 years a marketing expert named Robert McMath has been collecting the offcuts of capitalism - wondrous potions, gadgets and taste treats that were launched with the highest hopes, only to be spurned by the customers and fade into oblivion.

McMath showed me hair shampoos called A Touch of Yoghurt and Gimme Cucumber; beverages called Panda Punch, Wallaby Squash, and Afrokola (a copy of Coke for black people); instant meals for lonely people, called Singles; green potato chips called "I Hate Peas"; and personal care products described as "edible deodorant" and "spray-on toothpaste".

He even shows a jar of Vegemite, the subject of a brief promotional campaign 20 years ago in America, but rejected as "too foreign-tasting".

So what might be on display in Australia's equivalent? We need look no further than the back catalogue of a company called K-Tel Products, which had huge success during the 1970s with the Feathertouch Knife, the Brush-o-Matic, the Record Selector, the Dial-o-Matic vegetable slicer and the Fishin' Magician. I asked Ken McDonald, the Managing Director at the time, to reveal his worst sellers. He chose three:

The Deggorator, which required you to place a boiled egg in a little lathe and turn a handle so a row of pens painted designs on the egg. Australians preferred chocolate eggs at Easter.

The Single Knitting Needle, a kind of crochet hook designed to let a woman knit with one hand and hold a cup of tea with the other. You needed a PhD in structural engineering to use it.

The Pop-up Cigarette Dispenser, which clung to your car dashboard. It had sold well in Canada, but in our climate, the plastic would melt and buckle, so the device delivered S-shaped cigarettes.

If you have kept any of these devices from the golden age of gadgetry, or if you'd like to suggest other candidates for Australia's Hall of Lame -- products, people or proposals, tell us below.

We might be able to launch this project without government help. And if nobody comes to visit our museum, we can say it's an exhibit in itself.

• by David Dale at 07:00 AM
• Comments (37)

WHO WE ARE: The man who nearly changed everything

To vote for The Bogie Awards, go here

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 16/2/2008
Nobody knows what was actually said in the most important speech ever given in Australia, because it was not written down, and in any case it was in a language nobody speaks any more. We only know that the words almost changed the course of our history.

The speech must have been given in the year 1790 by a warrior named Pemulwuy. It had the effect of uniting the people who lived around Sydney harbour in opposition to the invaders who sailed in two years earlier. It led to 12 years of guerilla warfare. We can surmise that if the authorities in London had been fully aware of that war, they may well have abandoned, as a waste of money and manpower, the prison camp they'd established at the opposite end of the planet.

And we can speculate on what might have happened next: Would the French or the Dutch have moved in and done a deal with the locals? Or would Pemulwuy have continued to unify the tribes and create a new political structure?

Pemulwuy's story has parallels with Robin Hood in England, William Tell in Switzerland, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and Che Guevara in South America -- about equal parts veriable fact and heroic folklore.

A quick history: In 1790 Pemulwuy, a leader of the Bidjigal people who lived near Botany Bay, speared a man named John Mcentire, who worked as gamekeeper for Governor Arthur Phillip. Phillip despatched an officer called Watkin Tench (who kept detailed diaries) to hunt Pemulwuy and his followers, but they had vanished.

Pemulwuy persuaded the Eora, Dharug and Tharawal people to join his campaign against the newcomers. They burned food supplies and attacked settlers on the outskirts of the colony. This culminated in what has been called "the battle of Parramatta" in 1797, when about 100 of Pemulwuy's fighters (including some escaped Irish convicts) confronted English troops near the river. Pemulwuy was shot seven times and taken to the nearby hospital, but escaped (in leg irons) and continued the struggle.

Governor John Hunter wrote in 1798: "A strange idea was found to prevail among the natives respecting the savage Pe-mul-way, which was very likely to prove fatal to him in the end. Both he and they entertained an opinion, that, from his having been frequently wounded, he could not be killed by our fire-arms."

Pemulwuy was captured in 1802, when he would have been in his 40s. His head was slashed off with a sabre, preserved in alcohol and sent as a specimen to Sir Joseph Banks in London, along with a note from Governor Phillip Gidley King describing him as "an active, daring leader ... Altho a terrible pest to the colony, he was a brave and independent character."

The Pemulwuy story would make a great Australian movie (as in, a film Australians would actually go and see). Geoffrey Rush is Arthur Phillip. There's a role for Nicole Kidman as the Irish woman who joins Pemulwuy's army and advises him on how to demoralise the English invaders. Guy Pearce is Watkin Tench, the humane officer who loved the Irish woman and let Pemulwuy escape, only to see his sweetheart prefer the noble savage.

But who has the charisma to be Pemulwuy? If the film is funded by a Hollywood studio, the part will go to Denzel Washington or Russell Crowe. If we keep control of it here, Ernie Dingo comes to mind. He's impressive when he chooses to be serious. But there must be other candidates.

What do you think? We welcome your suggestions for the great Australian movie.

• by David Dale at 02:27 PM
• Comments (7)

WHO WE ARE: Talk is rich

To discuss whether Nicole Kidman has jumped the shark again, go to Nut guards.
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A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 9/3/2008.
The readers have spoken. By a clear majority, they have given their ruling on who is Australia's greatest orator - the person responsible for the most significant speeches ever made on this continent. And in the process they've disposed of the myth that Australians are a people of few words, laconic bordering on inarticulate.

Last week this column published excerpts from six speeches often described as historical turning points, whether or not you agree with their sentiments. They were Arthur Phillip's warning to the new arrivals in 1788 ("a vigorous execution of the law -- whatever it may cost my feeling -- shall follow closely upon the heels of every offender"); Henry Parkes's call for federation in 1890 ("The crimson thread of kinship runs through us all"); Alfred Deakin's introduction of the White Australia Policy in 1901 ("It is not the bad qualities but the good qualities of these alien races that make them dangerous to us"); Paul Keating's Redfern speech in 1992 ("We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders"); John Howard's Bali bombing memorial in 2002 ("The Australian spirit will remain strong and free and open and tolerant"); and Kevin Rudd's apology last month ("To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.") Click here to read that column.

Readers responded by nominating alternative candidates for the title of Australia's most important speech. Some examples:

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, President of Turkey, remembering the Anzacs, 1934: "There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ... You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well."

Labor leader Arthur Calwell opposing Australia's entry into the Vietnam war in 1965: "It is not our desire, when servicemen are about to be sent to distant battlefields, and when war - cruel, costly and interminable - stares us in the face, that the nation should be divided. When the drums beat and the trumpets sound, the voice of reason and right can be heard in the land only with difficulty. But if we are to have the courage of our convictions, then we must do our best to make that voice heard." (Speech written by Graham Freudenberg)

Prime Minister John Curtin asking the American people for help, 1942: "This war may see the end of much that we have painfully and slowly built in our 150 years of existence. But even though all of it go, there will still be Australians fighting on Australian soil until the turning point be reached, and we will advance over blackened ruins, through blasted and fire-swept cities, across scorched plains, until we drive the enemy into the sea. I give you the pledge of my country. There will always be an Australian Government and there will always be an Australian people. We are too strong in our hearts; our spirit is too high; the justice of our cause throbs too deeply in our being for that high purpose to be overcome. (Click here to hear it)

Liberal leader Robert Menzies on "The forgotten people", 1942: "The middle class who, properly regarded, represent the backbone of this country: First, it has a responsibility for homes: homes material, homes human, homes spiritual ... Second, the middle class, more than any other, provides the intelligent ambition which is the motive power of human progress ... Third, the middle class provides more than any other the intellectual life that marks us off from the beast; the life which finds room for literature, for the arts, for science, for medicine and the law ... Individual enterprise must drive us forward."

PM Paul Keating honouring the Unknown Soldier, 1993: "On all sides they were the heroes of that war: not the generals and the politicians, but the soldiers and sailors and nurses - those who taught us to endure hardship, show courage, to be bold as well as resilient, to believe in ourselves, to stick together. The Unknown Australian Soldier we inter today was one of those who by his deeds proved that real nobility and grandeur belongs not to empires and nations but to the people on whom they, in the last resort, always depend. It is not too much to hope, therefore, that this Unknown Australian soldier might continue to serve his country - he might enshrine a nation's love of peace and remind us that in the sacrifice of the men and women whose names are recorded here there is faith enough for all of us.

Of the 74 responses to last week's column, 22 voted for speeches by Paul Keating (including Redfern, the Unknown Soldier, and Waltzing Matilda). Some simultaneously accused him of incompetence and arrogance.

Several readers pointed out that Keating's speeches were written by Don Watson. So perhaps Watson should get any glory we are handing out today. But as Denise Davies remarked: "Watson wrote the way Keating thought and spoke. No euphemisms, no unambiguous language. Keating is a clear sighted visionary and he had the good fortune to link up with a magnificent speech writer."

Or perhaps we should reward spontaneity. As Micky wrote: "You all missed the point - a great speech by an Australian PM that reflects the ambitions, loves, hates, fears and very soul of its people: 'Any boss who sacks a worker for not turning up today is a bum' - RJ Hawke on the morning after Australia II won the America's Cup yacht race, 1983.

There's one more nomination I'd like to make. We don't know the actual words used in this speech, but we know it had a powerful effect. It was given -- several times, probably --by the Aboriginal leader Pemulwuy early in the year 1790. It caused the previously passive tribes of the Sydney region to unite in a campaign of guerilla warfare against the people they saw as invaders. The warfare ended only when Pemulwuy was captured and beheaded in 1802.

I'll give more details about that in next week's column, but in the meantime, give us your view on the speeches nominated so far ...

• by David Dale at 06:17 AM
• Comments (28)

WHO WE ARE: The power of speech

To learn why State governments should be abolished, go to The next big thing.

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 2/3/2008
It was short, clear and dignified, but was it the most important speech ever given on this continent?

We've had a month to ponder Kevin Rudd's apology. The latest Morgan opinion poll gives him a 77 per cent approval rating -- probably the highest in prime ministerial history -- and federal Labor would get 65 per cent of the two-party preferred vote if an election were held now. So apparently Australians were pleased with it.

But in historical context, its status might shrink a bit, or even enlarge. Consider these six excerpts from 220 years of rhetoric in a nation often described as inarticulate, and try to guess who uttered them:

1. "We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. It was our ignorance and our prejudice and our failure to imagine these things being done to us ... If we have a sense of justice, as well as common sense, we will forge a new partnership."

2. "You have my sacred word of honour that whenever ye commit a fault, you shall be punished, and most severely. I am no stranger to the use you make of every indulgence ... again I add that a vigorous execution of the law (whatever it may cost my feeling) shall follow closely upon the heels of every offender."

• by David Dale at 06:19 PM
• Comments (76)

WHO WE ARE: Chipped, baked, boiled and mashed

To discuss whether Nicole Kidman has jumped the shark again, go to Nut guards.
To discuss the most important speech ever given in Australia, go to Who We Are.

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 24/2/2008
Deep within that seemingly staid organisation called The Australian Bureau of Statistics there are wellsprings of wondrous eccentricity. How else can we explain the Bureau's decision to include, among the 778 useful but dry pages in its just published 2008 Year Book Australia, a chapter devoted to "the world's favourite vegetable" -- a hymn which includes this observation: "The average potato, with the skin, has ... more iron and vitamin C than half a cup of spinach and important B vitamins and natural fibre .... If Popeye the Sailorman had known this, he may well have swapped his can of spinach for a baked potato!"

When I remarked to a friend on the bureau's mysterious passion, he offered this explanation: "Ah, they're sucking up to the new Government. The Labor Party is run by Irish Catholics and the Bureau of Stats thinks it'll get more funding if it promotes the spud."

That's too cynical for me. And it doesn't fit with the timing -- the book clearly went to press before November, because it declares on page 115: "Mr KM Rudd MP (Australian Labor Party) has been Leader of the Opposition since 4 December 2006".

The Bureau has good reason to nominate the potato as Our National Veg - even if it originated in South America (allegedly brought to Britain by Sir Walter Raleigh around 1590 and first successfully planted on this continent in 1797).

Australia is a world leader in spud production. Although we limit ourselves to just 12 of the 5,000 varieties available, it's the veg we produce in greatest quantity (1.3 million tonnes a year, well ahead of the tomato on 449,000 tonnes, and the carrot on 272,000).

The bureau's anonymous essayist says: "Average world yield in 2005 was about 18 tonnes per hectare. Australia's national average yield (35.4 tonnes/ha) easily surpassed this rate and was on a par with that for Denmark and Ireland." Equal with Ireland! It doesn't get much cooler than that, potato fans.

But we're not pulling our weight on the consumption side. "In Europe, people eat an estimated 93 kg of potatoes a year," the chapter reports, while the average Australian swallows only 63 kg a year. "The probable causes for this decline in consumption are lifestyle changes, takeup of well marketed substitute products and dietary factors," the chapter laments.

To me, 64 kg a year for every child, woman and man seems quite a lot, but we need to eat faster if we're to match those frying fools in France.

Of course you are asking at this point: "If the potato is the national vegetable, what is the national fruit?" The answer is round and orange. We produce 496,000 tonnes of oranges a year (from 6.5 million trees), compared with 276,500 tonnes of apples (from 8.8 million trees), 177,000 tonnes of bananas and 175,000 tonnes of pineapples (the bureau doesn't count the number of banana plants and, as you know, pineapples don't grow on trees).

And just to complete the bureau's picture of our eating habits, I should unveil the national animal. We share this continent with 2.7 million pigs, 29 million cattle, 93 million sheep, and 94 million hens and roosters. (Of course, we should be eating kangaro, for both health and environmental reasons, but we don't.)

So the message is clear. For the true patriot, it's chicken and chips every night. Even if you're Popeye the Sailorman.

What should we celebrate as the national veg, fruit and animal?

• by David Dale at 06:59 PM
• Comments (13)

WHO WE ARE: The next big thing is a Statectomy

For regular updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.
To find out if you are suitable to be an Australian citizen, go to Who We Are

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 17/2/2008
A smart shrink once wrote that to be happy, a human being needs three things: something to do, someone to love and something to look forward to. This column can't help with the first two, but I've been pondering lately the question of the next big social transformation this country needs, once we've sorted out the republic. The answer is: abolish the States.

Fixing the republic is almost too easy. We need only change the title of our head of state from governor-general to administrator. We've become constipated by the word "president", which sounds scary because it seems to set up an alternative power base to the prime minister. An administrator, chosen by the government (as now) but no longer in need of rubber stamping from a monarch in another country, would merely open official functions and be available to act as referee if there's an insoluble dispute.

When that's done, we can move to a less symbolic but more important advance -- simplifying the political structure. There's no better time to start because we have unprecedented cooperation between Canberra and the States, and unprecedented public support for the central government (a Morgan poll taken just before last week's apology shows that if an election were held now, Labor would get 62 per cent of the two party preferred vote -- a swing to it of nine points since its victory in November). Do the State leaders have the courage to put themselves out of a job?

Australia must be the most over-governed nation on the planet. We elect 226 politicians to Canberra (76 senators, 150 members of the House of Representatives). We elect 585 politicians to upper and lower houses in our state and territory parliaments.

And we elect 6300 alderfolk to 677 local councils. That's a total of 7,120 elected officials, or one politician for every 3,000 people. Along with them come thousands of public servants, all busily contradicting, confusing and duplicating the work of their counterparts in the other tiers of government.

As Australia's most interesting prime minister, Gough Whitlam, observed: "There are few functions which the State parliaments now perform which would not be better performed by the Australian parliament or by regional councils. The States are too large to deal with local matters and too small and weak to deal with national issues." At the other end of the spectrum, John Howard saw no value in "state parochialism" and remarked that if Australia's system of government had been established at the start of the 21st century, it is unlikely a federal structure would have been the outcome.

Like our monarchy, the States are a hangover from an age when this continent contained colonies with boundaries drawn up by English bureaucrats who didn't understand the geography. Lets eliminate them, and at the same time amalgamate the 677 councils into 100 regional governments, each representing about 200,000 citizens.

The central government would deal with defence, law enforcement, health, education, and environmental and economic management. The regional bodies, with 20 elected officials each, would be responsible for garbage collection, road maintenance, building regulations, licensing of pubs and casinos, fire protection and community activities.

You can already envisage one useful side-effect of abolishing the States and amalgamating the councils -- the liberation of a great deal of magnificent real estate (houses of parliament, ministerial offices, treasury buildings, town halls).

But lets not be greedy. Instead of selling them off, we should preserve them (as theatres, hospitals, museums, prisons, libraries and colleges). Then our grandchildren will see that the visionaries of 2010 knew how to respect the past as well as when to move into the future. That's something to look forward to.

What do you think? Should we abolish the states and when?

• by David Dale at 04:18 PM
• Comments (63)

WHO WE ARE: What every applicant needs to know

For a daily update on social trends, bookmark http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare
To learn why State governments should be abolished, go to The next big thing.

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 10/2/2008
Do you have the knowledge necessary to flourish at work and play in Australia -- not the history stuff you learnt at school and instantly forgot, but an understanding of what Australians are like in the 21st century? Are you brave enough to test yourself?

I'll give you a set of answers, and you suggest the questions that gave rise to them. If you read this column last week, you'll be ahead of the game. Don't look to the end yet ...

The Answers
1 To squash; to remove; go into a rage; an isolated inland area; frequent intercourse (as in bangs like ...); stomach upset.
2. 1.7 % of the population; 26 %; 2.5 %; 54 %; 0.5 %; 85%.
3 The Sound of Music; Crocodile Dundee; Star Wars; E.T.; Titanic.
4 Dancing With The Stars; Kath and Kim; Friends; Border Security; Desperate Housewives.
5 106 times a year.
6 Are you awake, love?
7. 90,000 a year.
8. $644; $3,000; mother father, 1.75 children.
9. AFL, rugby league, tennis, cricket, horse racing, swimming, rugby union, soccer.
10 Heart disease; cancer; strokes; accidents; diabetes.
11 74% of adults.
12 The belief, now declining, that Australia can never do anything as well as the British or the Americans; the belief, now growing, that we have nothing to learn from the rest of the world.
13 Thongs, spaghetti bolognese (pad thai a close second), cappuccino, tomato sauce (soy sauce a close second), G'day.
14 $US3.7 million to Nicole Kidman for a four minute Chanel No 5 commercial.
15 San Remo pasta; Ingham's frozen chicken.
16 Frank McEnroe; Cyril Callister; Norman Lindsay; Max Schubert; Edwin Street.
17 Taken by a dingo at Ayer's rock; lost swimming off a beach near Melbourne; arrested arriving in Bali with marijuana in her boogie board bag.
18. Anzac Day (landing of Australian troops in Turkey in 1915); the English monarch's birthday; the Melbourne Cup horse race; Armistice Day in 1918 and the dismissal of PM Gough Whitlam by the Governor-General in 1975.
19. Boundless plains.
20. The Nobel Prize.

• by David Dale at 06:39 AM
• Comments (2)

WHO WE ARE: How to be suitable

To learn how Australians are different from Americans, go to The Tribal Mind
To join our daily forum about television, bookmark http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare
To learn how Australians talk, go to Head like a chewed Mintie.

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 3/2/2008
Most people who live in this country can go for years without talking about Don Bradman, Walter Lindrum or Hubert Opperman. But if a new citizen doesn't know which of them was a cricketer and which was a pool shark, he or she is likely to become a social leper and an unemployable burden on the economy.

That apparently, is the view of Kevin Rudd, who last week put the kibosh on a plan by his immigration minister, Chris Evans, to give the flick to the Bradman question which may appear in the values test taken by applicants for Australian citizenship. Senator Evans thinks "sporting trivia" is not "critical knowledge" for functioning effectively in this society. His boss thinks it is.

Last year this column spent some time ridiculing the values test and the study booklet which accompanies it, and I was delighted last week at the possibility that the new government might modernise it. I hope the PM does not feel the need to intervene to protect every last vestige of Howard memorabilia.

But it's time I stopped ridiculing and started helping. I hereby submit a set of questions designed to test if you have the essential data for survival in Australia. If you don't get at least 15 of these right, you might as well go back to where you came from ...
1. Define these expressions: "put the kibosh on"; "give the flick to"; "chuck a wobbly"; "back of woopwoop"; "like a dunny door"; "tummy wog".

2. What percentage of Australia's residents are: Muslims; Catholics; of Aboriginal background; obese or overweight; homeless; living within 50 km of the sea.

3. What are the five movies seen by the greatest number of Australians alive today?

4. What are the five TV series seen by the greatest number of Australians alive today?

5. How many times a year does the average Australian say he or she has intercourse?

6. What's an Australian man's idea of foreplay?

7. How many abortions are performed each year in Australia's hospitals and clinics?

8. How much does the average Australian family have as spending money each week, after tax? How much does the average family owe on credit cards? What is the average Australian family, anyway?

9. Rank these sports in order of popularity, as measured by attendances at games and audiences on TV: soccer, tennis, rugby union, AFL, racing, rugby league, swimming.

10. Rank these causes of death in order of frequency: Diabetes; heart disease; strokes; cancer; accidents.

11. What percentage of adults say they agree with the statement "Immigrants make Australia open to new ideas and cultures"?

12. Explain the difference between the cultural cringe and the cultural strut.

13. What is the national footwear, dish, drink, condiment, and greeting?

14. What was the highest fee per minute ever paid to an actor (world record held by an Australian)?

15. Of the 40 top selling products in Australian supermarkets, which two are made in Australia by an Australian owned company?

16. Name the inventer of: The Chiko Roll; Vegemite; the Magic Pudding; Grange Hermitage; the Paddle Pop.

17. What happened to: Azaria Chamberlain; Harold Holt; Schappelle Corby?

18. What do we commemorate on April 25; June 13; first Tuesday in November; November 11?

19. What do we have to share with those who've come from across the seas?

20. What do these men have in common: Peter Doherty; Patrick White; Barry Marshall; Howard Florey?

We'll attempt explanations in The answers. But feel free to give them a try here, and to suggest other revealing questions.

• by David Dale at 04:16 PM
• Comments (51)

WHO WE ARE: Wankers, geeks, and dust sniffers

To learn why State governments should be abolished, go to The next big thing.
For background on popular culture, go to
The films Australia loved.
The TV shows Australia loved.
The music Australia loved.
The DVDs Australia loved.

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 4/2/2007.
Anybody who goes to an art gallery is a wanker, right? There are 3.6 million wankers in Australia. Only geeks go to libraries, so this country has 5.4 million geeks. Dance performances are for poofs and fag-hags, and now we know Australia has 1.6 million people like that.

Outside of school projects, you wouldn't go sniffing dust in a museum unless you were a complete dag. Ring up 3.6 million as the national dag total. And anybody who has time to go wafting round a botanic garden needs to get a life - advice you must now offer to 5.4 million of your compatriots.

A survey released by the Bureau of Statistics under the catchy title Attendance at Selected Cultural Venues and Events challenges the conventional wisdom that Australia is a land of jocks and slobs. It turns out Australians are wankier, poofier, geekier and daggier than most of us imagined.

When I wrote about similar research back in 2002 (using the same introductory paragraph as I used here) the librarians got excited and reprinted my report in their journals. They'll be less inclined to celebrate this time. At the beginning of this decade, 38 per cent of Australians said they visited a library at least once a year. Now only 34 per cent say that.

That's not to say we're replacing scholarly pursuits with vulgar amusements: attendance at sporting events dropped from 46 per cent in 1999 to 44 per cent last year, with the main losers being tennis, motor sports, and cricket. Art gallery attendances have risen from 21 per cent to 23, museums from 20 to 23 and dance from 9 to 10. And the librarians may be consoled to learn that their remaining fans are loyal bordering on obsessive -- two thirds of whose who visit libraries do so more than six times a year, and a quarter of them go more than 20 times a year.

The Bureau drew these conclusions from interviewing people aged over 15 in 14,200 households. That's an enormous sample compared with the 3000 households from which television ratings are estimated. It enabled the bureau to dissect our leisure cholices thus:

HOW AUSTRALIA GOES OUT
Percentage of people over 15 who visit at least once a year ...
1. The cinema: 65 per cent. Peak attenders: women aged 15-24.
2. Sporting events: 44 per cent (of which AFL 16 per cent, horse racing 12, rugby league 9, motor sports 9, cricket 5, soccer 4). Peak attenders: men 18-24.
3 Zoos and aquariums: 36 per cent. Families with young children.
4 Libraries: 34 per cent. Women 35-44.
5 Botanic gardens: 34 per cent. Women 55-64.
6 Pop concerts: 25 per cent. Unmarried people 18-24.
7 Museums: 23 per cent. Families with young children.
8 Art galleries: 23 per cent. Women 45-64.
9 Theatre: 17 per cent. Women 45-64..
Continued here

• by David Dale at 05:40 PM
• Comments (23)

WHO WE ARE: I know what you did this summer

To find out if you are suitable to be an Australian citizen, go to Who We Are
For the latest media trends, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.
For background on popular culture, go to
The films Australia loved.
The TV shows Australia loved.
The music Australia loved.
The DVDs Australia loved.
A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 27/01/2008
There's much to be learned about a nation from the way it relaxes. The Australia Day weekend is the symbolic closure of the summer holidays, when we reflect on what we've seen and heard over those lazy, hazy and (this year) rainy days. Here's what Australia discovered this month:

1. If you type a letter you don't intend to send, and you include a swearword in the letter, and then accidentally send the letter, you shouldn't be surprised if it ruins your life.

2. "I'm Mrs Most likely to get on the TV for strippin' on the streets, when getting the groceries, no, for real. I'm Mrs Lifestyles of the rich and famous. I'm Mrs Oh my God that Britney's Shameless. I'm Mrs Extra! Extra! this just in. I'm Mrs She's too big, now she's too thin."

3. The It Girl of the moment is Katherine Heigl - featured on the cover of every second glossy on the newsstand and able to draw an audience to a movie on the strength of her name alone. Her male counterpart is Will Smith.

4. "My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing. You cut me open and I keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love, keep bleeding I keep, keep bleeding love."

5. It's possible to continue a television career after a car crash in which you suffered massive brain damage.

6. "I feel so untouched right now, need you so much somehow, I can't forget you, I've gone crazy from the moment I met you."

7. Although she's made some dumb script choices in recent years, Nicole Kidman is actually not a bad actress - she's certainly the most interesting thing in The Golden Compass, apart from the special effects. Matt Damon, by contrast, is a limited actor who makes brilliant script choices. One question raises itself, though: what actually was Bourne's ultimatum, and at what point in the film did he deliver it?

8. A packet of mixed fruit counts as "one ingredient".

9. In America in the early 1960s, racial integration was achieved through music.

10. "I'm holding on your rope, got me ten feet off the ground, and I'm hearing what you say but I just can't make a sound."

Those observations are explained by this data ...

What we've been reading: According to Nielsen BookScan, the top selling books this month were Atonement, by Ian McEwan (1); 4 Ingredients, by Kim McCosker and Rachael Bermingham (8); The Persimmon Tree, by Bryce Courtenay; and Jamie At Home, by Jamie Oliver.

What we've been watching: According to OzTAM, the second India vs Australia cricket test peaked at 2 million viewers in the mainland capitals; the Federer-Berdych night match in the Australian Open tennis peaked at 1.9 million; and Top Gear, with Richard Hammond (5) back from his car crash, peaked at 1 million, a miracle for SBS. According to GfK Marketing, the top selling DVDs this month were The Bourne Ultimatum (7), Hairspray (10), and The Simpsons Movie.

What we queued for: According to the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, I Am Legend, starring Will Smith (7), sold about 2 million tickets; The Golden Compass (3) and Alvin and the Chipmunks each sold 1.4 million; 27 dresses, starring Katherine Heigl (7), and Enchanted each sold one million.

What we listened to: According to the Australian Record Industry Association, the most downloaded tracks this month have been Piece of Me, by Britney Spears (2); Bleeding Love, by Leona Lewis (4); Untouched, by The Veronicas (6); and Apologise, by Timbaland (10). The top selling albums have been Shock Value by Timbaland; In Rainbows, by Radiohead; and As I Am, by Alicia Keys.

What we've been talking about: Corey Worthington's party; Heath Ledger's death; the collapse of the share market.

And now we can get back to work.

What does all this reveal about Australians?

• by David Dale at 06:14 PM

WHO WE ARE: A State of the Nation report

To find out if you are suitable to be an Australian citizen, go to Who We Are
For the latest media trends, go to The Ratings Race

A column by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 20/1/2008
A landmark in Australian history took us by surprise last year. The population passed 21 million. Twelve months ago the Bureau of Statistics was predicting we'd reach our new millionstone sometime in 2008, based on the theory that we were getting a new baby every two minutes and four seconds and a new immigrant every four minutes.

Then the boffins saw the latest birth and immigration figures and hurriedly revised their calculations, giving us only a few week's notice of the big event on Friday June 29, 2007.

In the mid Noughties, Australian women between 30 and 39 started breeding like bunnies, pushing our birth rate up from 1.79 babies per woman in 2001 to 1.81 in 2006. And the economic boom created huge demand for skilled immigrants, so our net intake rose from 110,000 in 2004-2005 to 147,000 in 2005-2006 -- mostly from Britain, China and India.

If you look at the bureau's population clock today (at www.abs.gov.au), you'll see a figure close to 21,200,000, based on a kid arriving every one minute and 56 seconds and an immigrant joining us every three minutes and five seconds. We'll hit our next millionstone early in 2010. Better start organising the party now.

This is how our 21 million splits up: 13.3 per cent of us are over 65, 19.8 per cent are under 15, 2.3 per cent are of Aboriginal background, and 22 per cent were born overseas (of whom 1.6 per cent speak Italian at home, 1.3 per cent speak Greek and 1.1 per cent speak Mandarin, like Kevin Rudd.) Some 21 per cent are smokers, 48 per cent are overweight or obese, and 85 per cent live within 50 km of the sea.

Here's what else we can say about ourselves after a year of transformations ...

FAMILY LIFE
In 2006 there were 265,900 births - the highest number since 1971. There were 133,700 deaths, which meant the lowest death rate ever. The health system is keeping us alive longer.

But the demographers think the baby shower will be brief -- more of a blip than a boom -- and by the year 2020, Australia's dominant family type will couples without children. At the moment they form 37 per cent of Australia's 5.7 million families (up from 34 per cent in 1996), while 45 per cent are couples with children (down from 50 per cent), and 15.8 per cent of families have only one parent (up from 14.5). In addition, there are 2.2 million households containing only one person.

As our families shrink, our wealth expands. The average household is earning 30 per cent more than ten years ago, and living large - 77 per cent of homes have at least one empty bedroom. The average household has wealth of $563,000 (assets $655,000, debts $92,000).

But we're spending way ahead of what we're making. The Reserve Bank says Australians owe more than $41 billion on our 13.7 million credit and charge cards, almost double the amount of five years ago. Nearly 32,000 people went bankrupt in 2006-07.

RELATIONSHIPS
Maybe it's laziness, or maybe it's modesty, but an online survey organised by the condom maker Durex found that Australia ranks 12th among 16 western nations in terms of the amount of sex we say we're getting.

• by David Dale at 04:50 PM
• Comments (11)

WHO WE ARE: Graduating from the spaghetti sandwich

To find out if you are suitable to be an Australian citizen, go to Who We Are
For the latest media trends, go to The Ratings Race
To find out which stories and characters Australians love best, go to The Tribal Mind

A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 20/1/2008
Peck's paste; lettuce and vegemite; Smith's crisps and tomato sauce; peanut butter, honey, and sultanas; Nutella and margarine; mashed banana and corn flakes ... tempting as these fillings sound, they are not enough to convince me that the sandwich could ever be the pinnacle of Australian culinary endeavour.

Last week (see below) this column lamented the news that Australia's most purchased takeaway item is not the hamburger, not fried chicken, not pizza, not the meat pie but, after all these years of cultural development, still the sandwich. An avalanche of protest descended upon me.

"Sydneysider" wrote: "Nothing but nothing will ever beat the good old Aussie salad sandwich or roll, not forgetting the mandatory beetroot! Mum used to make us our salad sangas for school and thoughtfully wrap the beetroot in a bit of Gladwrap separately so it didn't turn the entire lunch box pink!!!! It's still my favourite for lunch."

Some readers realize now that they didn't know when they were well off ... Louisa: "Coming from an Italian background, my sandwich fillings were always exotic -- crumbed veal (my fav), or fried capsicum (also yum), salami cheese and lettuce, the source of many derogatory comments from my classmates. If I could talk Mum into it, she would give me Vegemite or Peanut Butter (but this was yuck by the time you got to eat it). I was jealous of the devon and tomato sauce sangers my friends used to get."

Onie: "Trading was a bit hard with sultanas & jam, cold meatballs & tomato, home made spag bol (very stinky). I eventually rebelled and asked for tomato, celery and plastic cheese for the next 6 years."

Others found ways of improving on traditional stylings ... Richard Salter: "My favourite was 2 sausage rolls stuffed in a buttered roll." Iain Gorry: "We brought buttered bread from home and put in either a Wagon Wheel or salt & vinegar chips." Shaygh: "My youngest sister invented the crunchy nut breakfast sandwich: crunchy nut corn flakes, peanut butter, honey and squashed banana."

Amy: "I'd buy a pack of BBQ chips and squash them between my chicken roll (or devon) sandwich. Although I really do miss that sugar rush of a 100 & 1000s spinkled on a triangle of buttered bread for only 5 cents."

There were, however, a few readers who shared my horror ... Ian: "Mum made us Peck's paste sandwiches for the week on Sunday - froze them all and gave us them frozen each morning for years. None of us wanted to hurt her feelings so we loyally ate them - sometimes defrosted, sometimes half frozen. Jeez it gave us a strong digestive system."

Crooklyn Dodger: "Nothing was worse than my mum's bizarre early morning concoction for my packed lunch: Nutella and margarine on a cheese and bacon roll! Straight in the bin, love ya mum."

EP: "Occasionally we used to get tinned salmon sandwiches, which were nice fresh but smelt like dead fish after half a day in your 'port' (to use Qld vernacular). But the King of all sandwiches has to be Peanut Butter, Bacon and Banana."

I remain unconvinced. Give me cold leftovers of pad thai noodles any day.

• by David Dale at 07:33 AM
• Comments (82)

WHO WE ARE: Head like a chewed Mintie

For daily updates on media trends, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.

A weekly column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 6/1/2008
Today's column is a thankyou card to the hundreds of readers who contributed over the past 12 months to my ongoing investigations of the Australian soul. Two research projects were particular triumphs: identifying The National Turn of Phrase and identifying The Sounds of Australia .

The first project was inspired by Kevin Rudd's observation that Sheik Taj el-Hilaly might be "a few sandwiches short of a picnic". I asked readers to nominate other Australianisms, and to update the traditional favourites with current personalities and issues. A sampling of the response:

The national turn of phrase
All over the place like a wet dog on lino.
As much hope as the Titanic with Mark Latham in the wheelhouse.
As popular as ... a cross city tunnel; a paparazzo at a Tom Cruise wedding.
Busier than ... a one-armed taxi driver with crabs, a one-armed bill-poster in a stiff breeze, a one-armed bricklayer in Baghdad, a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition.
Couldn't ... fight his way out of a wet paper bag, find a root in a brothel (with a fistful of fivers), organise a fart in a curry house, organise a pissup in a brewery, pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel.
Face like a dropped pie.
Full as a Corby boogie board bag
Going off like your nanna in Spotlight.
Head like a chewed Mintie.
If he fell into a barrel full of tits he'd come up sucking his thumb.
Playing up like a secondhand whippersnipper.
Self-effacing as Eddie McGuire
Silly as a bum full of Smarties.
Smiling like a mother-in-law in a divorce court.
So unlucky he'd be killed by a tsunami in the Simpson Desert.
Slick as snot on a door knob.
Ugly as a hatful of arseholes
Useless as ... tits on a bull, a glass door on a dunny, a letterbox on a tombstone, a pork chop at a synagogue.
Vanished like a fart in a fan factory.
Welcome as a fart in a two-man sub.
Wouldn't shout in a shark attack.

The second project was inspired by The National Film and Sound Archive's appeal for recordings vital to our heritage. Having already preserved the likes of Gough Whitlam's post-dismissal speech, Johnny O'Keefe singing She's My Baby and Down Under, the Archive wanted suggestions on other material of that ilk. I asked readers to think more broadly about the noises we make, and found the suggestions fell into these categories:

Rustic experiences: A creaky gate; lorikeets; didgeridoo; an outdoor dunny door banging in the wind; driving over a cow grate; rain on a corrugated-iron roof; flock of galahs coming in before sunset; screen door slamming; the popping of mangroves; geckos chattering on the ceiling; the splat of a cane toad on bitumen.

Urban experiences: The swipe of a credit card; the final siren of any AFL game; Pluto pups being crisped to greasy excellence; yobbos screaming "F--- off, poofter" as their Holden Commodore sails past.

Suburban experiences: The squeak of a Hills Hoist; the screech of a cockatoo before a storm; magpies warbling; the whine of a mosquito on a steamy night; kookaburras; flying foxes fighting over fruit.

Advertising: It's Time (1972 election); Happy Little Vegemites; A little each day is a good recipe; You oughta be congradulated; Not happy, Jan; Spreading disease with the greatest of ease; Come on Aussie, Come On.

In the end, the only reader's suggestion which overlapped with the archive's selection was the ABC radio news theme, Majestic Fanfare (1943). We hope to have greater impact when the Archive launches its 2008 appeal next month. If you'd like to add nominations in either of our ongoing projects, use the comment space below ...

• by David Dale at 07:30 AM
• Comments (48)

WHO WE ARE: A cure for droopy hair and noisy neighbours

For the latest media trends, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare

A weekly column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 30/12/2007
This column was quite irrationally chuffed to discover, in a London supermarket last week, a product which sought to attract English customers by ascribing mystic properties to Australia. It was labelled thus: "Aussie Mega Shampoo ... It cleans without the build-up that causes hair to droop. Australian Kangaroo Paw Flower grows wild in the south western corner of Western Australia. Multicoloured and velvety to the touch, this flower is blended into our unique formula which adds vitality and shine to hair. 'There's more to life than hair, but it's a good place to start' -- The Aussie Philosophy. Weybridge, Surrey."

So now you know the Aussie philosophy. That capped off a collection I'd been making this year of things other people have said about us, from which we may learn about ourselves. Here are some samples from my collection ...

Our language. The Los Angeles Times published this correction in July: "In Monday's Morning Briefing column in Sports, Australian swimmer Leisel Jones was quoted as saying 'Good honour', referring to former swimmer Amanda Beard's appearing in a Playboy pictorial. In fact, Jones said 'Good on her'."

And in August, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Sophie Reynolds, 41, of Queanbeyan, was met by three police officers on her arrival in Pittsburgh after she said "fair dinkum" to a flight attendant on Skywest Airlines. Reynolds had been frustrated by the attendant's claim that there were no pretzels. "She said they didn't have any, and I said, 'fair dinkum', out of frustration," Reynolds explained. "Say you're telling me a story, and I think it's amazing, I'd say 'fair dinkum'." Reynolds said another attendant requested her passport and copied down her details, and the Pittsburgh police said: "You swore at the hostess and there are federal rules against that." On its website, the newspaper gave readers an opportunity to vote for their "favorite Aussie sayings", with these results: Crikey! (273 votes); G'day! (250); Fair dinkum! (115), and Bob's your uncle! (108).

Our size. In February, The New York Post, which is owned and edited by men born in this country, praised Australia's involvement in Iraq: "It shouldn't be necessary to point out that Australia is a nation of but 17 million, and that 1400 soldiers, relatively speaking, is the equivalent of more than 25,000 American troops - more than an entire division."

In July, John Barrowman, who plays Captain Jack in the flop series Torchwood, told a BBC interviewer: "Funnily enough Torchwood has just aired in Australia and is, like, the second most popular show in Oz. I mean there's about 50 people in Oz but that doesn't make any difference."

Our sensitivity. Writing in The Guardian in August, Germaine Greer described reaction to her suggestion that Steve Irwin had been an animal-exploiter, not a national hero: "Lately someone has been throwing food at the windows of my house in England, mostly eggs, sometimes jam doughnuts, once corned-beef hash and shaved ham, and, this weekend, two dead rabbits ...

"What I said has now also been said by naturalists and conservationists writing in the dedicated press, but still I'm the one who gets the death threats. As Australia gradually morphs into California, it is losing its respect for honesty and directness. Ballyhoo rules, and it's not OK."

Our behaviour. In April, The London Daily Telegraph discussed a report from the Office for National Statistics: "Since the 1980s there has been a fivefold increase in complaints about noise from rowdy neighbours. Campaigners say the problem is likely to worsen with summer looming because many homeowners have begun to treat their gardens as 'outdoor rooms' and have acquired the noisy outdoor habits more usually associated with Australians."

And in August, US talk show host David Letterman, on The Late Show, reported: "Here's a fascinating story: there's a man in Australia and he spent the last 15 years of his life typing -- typing -- the numbers 'one' to 'one million.' Fifteen years of his life typing the numbers 'one,' starting out with 'o-n-e,' fifteen years, 'one' to 'one million' -- and, guess what, girls? He's single.''

Our performers. In November, Film Threat magazine listed Nicole Kidman as one of the least hot people in Hollywood: "She may have escaped Tom Cruise, but when her long legs stopped running, she realised she had trampled her career as well. After a string of bombs including The Stepford Wives, Birth, Bewitched, and The Invasion, Kidman's simply the latest in a long, proud legacy of Down Under Under-achievers ... and Hugh Jackman's on borrowed time as well. Anti-Freeze: Rumor has it that George Miller is casting for Mad Max 4. Perhaps he could use a new Warrior Woman character..."

Our eating habits. In July, The New York Times published an editorial about a California Court decision to ban the use of kangaroo leather in sports shoes, and noted: "Although bald eagle on the menu would seem unthinkable in the United States, in Australia the formerly endangered kangaroo is commonly found as barbecued kebabs or stir fried with vegetables." Really? I'd like to try that.

What insights into the Australian character have you read this year?

• by David Dale at 05:38 PM
• Comments (43)

WHO WE ARE: Using our time nicely

A weekly column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 23/12/2007
Since this is the time of year when Santa is double checking his list for niceness or naughtiness, this column should assist by examining what the kids of Australia have been up to lately. It's looking pretty bright.

We know, for example, that most of them saw at the cinema and then bought on DVD four worthy moral fables: Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, Happy Feet, Transformers, and Shrek The Third. That's all nice - those movies carry useful messages about care for the environment, freedom of expression, standing up to bullies, and loyalty to friends and family.

On television, the under-12s largely avoided ads for junk food and junk toys when they got home from school, and instead watched a wholesome array of ABC programs such as Curious George, Tupu, Word Girl, Dinosapien and Bindi The Jungle Girl. On the commercial networks, their favourite was The Simpsons, with its themes of tolerance for diversity and scorn for hypocrisy.

The research organisation Nielsen Online recently released a survey of 500 families which suggests that kids aged six to 17 average this kind of media usage: watching television 9.2 hours a week; listening to music or radio 7.9 hours; studying 6.4 hours; doing sport or exercise 6.3 hours; on the Internet 6 hours; reading books 5 hours; playing video games 4.9 hours; and using the mobile phone 3.2 hours (25 per cent of kids under 11 and 82 per cent of 15-17 year olds own a mobile).

It's on the web that we're at most risk of finding signs of naughtiness. The Bureau of Statistics says 92 per cent of families with children under 15 have Net access, and 68 per cent of families have a broadband connection. Nielsen's "eGeneration Report" found that 78 per cent of kids say they use the Net for homework research, 71 per cent for online games, 60 per cent for email, 51 per cent for entertainment info, and 50 per cent for instant messaging.

Nielsen found the use of email has dropped 11 per cent since 2005. "It appears the commenting and messaging features of social networking sites like MySpace and bebo have overtaken the less interactive and personal nature of email," the report says. "As more and more youth adopt and engage with these interactive and social sites, it will most likely follow that daily use of the internet will increase - as kids will find it necessary to update their online identities frequently and respond to messages from friends with nearly the same timeliness of phone or face-to-face communications."

Should Santa worry that this is getting out of control? Not necessarily. It seems parents are responding to changing media almost as quickly as their offspring. Nielsen reported that 70 per cent of the families surveyed had introduced rules about Net usage, and more than a third of families had installed some form of filtering or monitoring software.

Nielsen also noted that since 2005, "the incidence of Internet connections in a 'secluded' area of the home such as a study or child's bedroom has decreased significantly - office connections and connections in children's bedrooms are both down 11 percentage points to 31 percent and nine percent respectively. Conversely there has been a large increase in the number of connections in 'other' areas of the household such as kitchens and family rooms where online activities can be more closely observed."

Hopefully Santa will bear this in mind when he comes to analysing how nice parents have been this year. Have a good one.

• by David Dale at 05:44 PM
• Comments (1)

WHO WE ARE: How to be true blue

For daily updates on media trends, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.
To find out if you are suitable to be an Australian citizen, go to Who We Are

A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 16/12/2007
If you're the sort of person who reads this sort of column, you're the sort of person who can help Dr Genevieve Nelson in The National Identity Project. She needs 10,000 individuals who are willing to explain "what it means to be an Australian".

She wants you to go to her website (www.aussiehaveyoursay.com), and spend half an hour agreeing or disagreeing with such propositions as "Australia is the best country in the world"; "The alleviation of poverty in other countries is a problem we should help with"; "I am satisfied with my life"; "I am confident that I could deal efficiently with unexpected events"; and "Being Australian means ... Having a sense of humour .... Gardening ... Being hard workers ... Having strong leaders ... Supporting mates ... speaking English ..." etc. If she gets a representative sample of 10,000, she promises to give the results to this column, so we can tell you about it next year.
Nelson started The National Identity Project after examining the results of a simpler exercise undertaken in 2005 by two of her colleagues in the Centre for Educational Research at the University of Western Sydney, Rhonda Craven and Nola Purdie. They asked 418 high school and university students to write on a single sheet of paper an answer to the question "What does it mean to be Australian?"

They analysed the mini-essays and decided the ideas expressed fell into 14 broad categories. Some 67 per cent of the sample mentioned what the researchers labelled "Societal characteristics" such as "based upon democracy, being religious, being free, peaceful and secure, providing a 'good life' and 'education for all', placing an emphasis on family, being multicultural and possessing civic rights, and freedom of opportunity".

"Citizenship & Participation" was mentioned by 43 per cent, as in "abiding by the laws, migration to or birth in Australia, participating as an active member of the community, participation in Australian culture, and adoption of the Australian way of life".

• by David Dale at 12:13 PM
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WHO WE ARE: The when, how and who of making a republic

A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 9/12/2007
Kevin Rudd (a republican) and Brendan Nelson (a monarchist) agree that another referendum on the republic issue is inevitable, but think most Australians have no sense of urgency about it. Some 125 readers of this column beg to differ - they mustered passionate arguments in response to last week's discussion of whether this nation can consider itself grown up while its head of state is still the monarch of Britain (click here to read that).

But there was no consensus on the key questions: what form should the referendum take; when should the change happen; how might the new head of state be chosen; and what kind of person should the president be?

When? Many worried about hurting Her Majesty's feelings. Gregory: "As both a fervent republican and a considered fan of the Queen -- not for what she represents but for the way she has performed her duty -- I think that we should wait for her passing before we make the formal transition. In the hopefully lengthy interim we should concentrate our energies on getting the constitutional model right."

Michael: "I've just watched The Queen on DVD. The poor ol' duck has enough on her plate with her own 'people' and with her own family and all those woeful property headaches etc. Australia becoming a republic will be one thing off her plate! Give her a rest, and let us cut the greasy apron strings that bind us to that strange little island called the UK."

The feelings of Her Majesty's heirs were a different story. Simon: "There is no guarantee that Charles will become King and not abdicate for the much more popular (and scandal free) William in order to save the monarchy. My guess is Australia would go ga-ga over a young King Bill."

Marg: "Every time I see a picture of the future king of Australia, young William, he's totally off his face. Bring on the republic."

But how would the appointment be made? Ross: "Would those advocating an elected President please understand that you are killing the republican cause. What's wrong with a president approved by two-thirds of the parliament? On what issues could a presidential candidate campaign? Who would fund the campaign etc etc. Think!"

And who would make an appropriate president? Should Kevin Rudd offer the job to John Howard as a gesture of national reconciliation. Would Brendan Nelson nominate Paul Keating in a similar spirit? Might it not be better to compromise on the currently unemployed Naomi Robson?

The solution came from Luke Whitington: "Australia should appoint our head of state by lot, as the ancient Athenian democrats did. A person would be selected from the adult population of the country by lottery, to serve for one year. They would be trained in the constitutional conventions and practices by the same staff that help the G-G.

"They would be obliged to act on the advice of the PM, as currently, and if a constitutional crisis eventuated they would be able to dismiss the Government and call for fresh elections, but then they themselves would be replaced -- a double sacking, if you like. This method would ensure a far higher participation in Australian civics, ensure that women, Aborigines and people from working class and immigrant backgrounds have a far higher chance of becoming our head of state. It is the only truly democratic method."

Give us your theories on how, when and who ...

• by David Dale at 10:41 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Without God or Queen

A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 2/12/2007
At my primary school, a decade or three ago, we had to do this chant, with appropriate gestures, before the headmaster addressed the weekly assembly: "I love my Queen, I honour my God, and I salute the flag". On election night, a week ago, there was a fair bit of flag saluting, in the form of assertions about the greatness of our nation. But where was God and where was Her Majesty? And was their absence a sign that Australia has achieved political maturity?

Lets deal with the deity first. Both leaders were photographed going to church on Sunday, but in their speeches on Saturday, they gave God no credit or blame. This would have been unthinkable in the United States. If Kevin Rudd was a US politician, he'd have thanked the Lord for his success, while John Howard would have said the result was the Lord's will and he'd seek consolation through prayer. But they didn't, because we're not that kind of country. Our politicians can get by without divine intervention.

In last year's census, 70 per cent per cent of Australians nominated a religion (64 per cent a Christian variety). But only 19 per cent of Australians attend church once a month or more. And 60 per cent of marriages are conducted by civil celebrants.

Last year a Newspoll tested the attitudes of Australians to the separation of church and state. Asked if there is a law guaranteeing the separation of religion and government, 46 per cent said that there is not, 20 per cent said there is such a law and 34 per cent didn't know. Asked if Australia "should introduce a new law to separate religion and government", 20 per cent said "don't know", 36 per cent said "No" and 45 per cent said "Yes". So the politicians' judgement seems to match the people's.

The other external authority missing from all the election discussion was Elizabeth Windsor. We were told that on Sunday Kevin Rudd spoke to US President George Bush, British PM Gordon Brown, and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Last time I looked, Australia's head of state was the English monarch, and the protocol after an election was for the leader of the winning party to seek the head of state's commission to form a government. Last week, the Queen seems to have been ignored.

The British press got hysterical about the possibility that Rudd might push for a republic, and last Monday the London Daily Telegraph published an editorial begging him to think again. It said that in 1999, "the monarchist Mr Howard wrong-footed his republican adversaries by calling a referendum on the constitution, and, by presenting Australians with a formula he knew they would reject, effectively buried the issue for a decade ... It is not for us to interfere; but we can hope that Mr Rudd's ear remains finely tuned, and he realises now is not the time to try to force a republic."

Rudd has reassured the Brits by declaring that another referendum is not a priority in his first term. Has he correctly judged that Australians have lost interest?

In January this year Newspoll asked "Are you in favour of or against Australia becoming a Republic?", and got 45 per cent in favour and 36 per cent against, with 19 per cent uncommitted. When the question changed to "If Prince Charles does become King, would you then be in favour or against Australia becoming a Republic?", support for a Republic rose to 51 per cent.

That must be what Kevin Rudd is waiting for. Roll on King Charles and the day when Australia can become a grownup.

Are we right to free ourselves from God and Queen?

• by David Dale at 04:01 AM
• Comments (140)

WHO WE ARE: Arrivederci paparazzi

A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 25/11/2007
Does it sound snobbish to say I'm cheered by the revelation that Australians are losing interest in their weekly gossip magazines? Would it be fair to conclude that this indicates an improvement in national taste?

The downward sales trend, shown in figures released last week by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, is startling. Overall, the five mags that specialise in paparazzi pics and celebrity speculations seem to have lost 141,000 regular buyers between September 2006 and September 2007. Woman's Day dropped 10 per cent (to 470,000 copies a week), New Idea dropped 10 per cent (to 388,500), Who Weekly dropped 6 per cent (to 144,000), NW dropped 12 per cent (to 177,000) and Famous dropped 16 per cent (to 76,000).

How far we've fallen from gossip's golden age (1992), when an issue of Woman's Day featuring photos of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, having her toes sucked by her balding lover sold 1.4 million copies in one week. There was a dramatic sales slump towards the end of the 90s, when some readers apparently felt the gossip weeklies had played a role in the death of Diana Spencer, and avoided them. But by the middle of the Noughties the weeklies were doing healthy business again - until now.

This year's slump is tightly focussed on five magazines. It is not part of a general decline in reading of mass market publications. Over the same period, sales of newspapers have been steady, which means that the biggest selling regular publications in the land are still The Sunday Telegraph (668, 500), The Sunday Herald-Sun, Melbourne (622,500), The Sunday Mail, Brisbane (595,000), The Herald-Sun, Melbourne (530,000), and The Sun-Herald (500,000).

What are Australians reading at the moment instead of tales about stars who are splitting up, having babies, having affairs, gaining weight, losing weight, and doing drugs? Literature, it seems, thought not of the Jane Austen and Charles Dickens variety.

Here's a sampling of Australia's best selling books so far this year, according to ACNielsen's BookScan: 1 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J. K. Rowling; 2 The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne; 3 Guinness World Records 2008; 4 Double Cross, by James Patterson; 5 The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards; 6 The Dangerous Book For Boys, by Con and Hal Iggulden; 7 Bones to Ashes, by Kathy Reichs; 8 Exit Music, by Ian Rankin; 9 The Six Sacred Stones, Matthew Reilly; 10 CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet Book 2, by Dr Manny Noakes & Peter Clifton; 11 High School Musical 2: Book of the Film; 12 4 Ingredients, by Kim McCosker & Rachael Bermingham; 13 A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini; 14 Those Faraday Girls, by Monica McInerney; 15 Jamie at Home, by Jamie Oliver.

So around the 10th anniversary of Diana Spencer's death, the readers of Australia may be in the process of swapping their decades-old passion for scandal and rumour with a fascination for magic, self-development, mighty achievements, suspense, adventure, dancing, comedy and healthy eating.

Or maybe the celebrity gossip just hasn't been that hot lately.

What's your theory on the scandal sales slump?

• by David Dale at 12:20 AM
• Comments (9)

WHO WE ARE: A nation of idealists after all

This edition of the blog is now a heritage item -- worth studying but no longer current. For the latest media trends, go to ttp://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare
A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 18/11/2007
Another of the foundations of our national self-image is crumbling: the tall poppy syndrome. Australians like to think of themselves as a cynical bunch, viewing politicians and authority figures as crooks, liars, hypocrites or lazy bastards. The attitude is a remnant of the convict days, we say proudly, when we knew the people pushing us around were no better than we were, so we'd take any opportunity to cut them down to size.

But a survey of 3902 adults just published by the Centre for Social Research at the Australian National University suggests we may not be not so tough-minded after all. Compared with other western nations, we're actually rather idealistic, even enthusiastic about the people who organise our lives.

Last week we reported that the survey, published in a book called Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, Work and Aspirations (UNSW Press) showed surprising support for trade unions and for taxation (click here to read that), while 61 per cent agreed with the statement "The government doesn't care what people like me think" and 62 per cent said "Political parties do not give voters real policy choices".

But this doesn't mean we are more cynical about political institutions than other countries. An even higher percentage of the population think the government doesn't care in Poland, Japan, Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

Shown the statement "Most of the time we can trust people in government to do what is right", only 40 per cent of Australians agree. But in Japan, only 9 per cent agree. In Germany, it's 10 per cent, in France 22 per cent, in Britain 29 per cent and in the United States 31 percent. The only nations that trust their governments more than we do are Denmark, Finland and Switzerland.

Asked how widespread is corruption in the public service, 80 per cent of Poles, 63 per cent of Israelis, 42 per cent of Japanese, 30 per cent of Americans, and 16 per cent of Australians answered "A lot of people" or "Almost everyone".

Asked about their fellow citizens, 58 per cent of Australians say other people can "almost always" or "usually" be trusted, while that is said by only 15 per cent of Chileans, 26 per cent of Japanese, and 46 per cent of Britons and Americans.

The researchers conclude that when our attitudes are "examined in a cross-national perspective, Australians' assessments of democracy appear rather optimistic. Compared to other rich democracies, Australia experiences high levels of trust in government, a public very approving of how well democracy is working, high levels of personal (internal) efficiency, and very low levels of perceived political corruption. Australians also place more value on obeying laws, honesty in tax payments, and voting than citizens of most other nations examined here ... while Australians can be negative about politics, they remain among the most trusting citizens, both interpersonally and politically, of the world's democracies."

Hardly the land of the tall poppy syndrome. Better save the title for Japan, Germany or France. The convicts are optimists after all.

• by David Dale at 04:37 PM
• Comments (11)

WHO WE ARE: We like taxes and unions after all

A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 11/11/2007
Most of the time, and especially this month, politicians love to tell us what Australians want, need, believe and won't stand for. They apparently base their understanding of the Australian psyche on divine inspiration or something they once heard on talkback radio. The Centre for Social Research at the Australian National University takes a slightly different approach. Every two years it asks a sample of about 4,000 Australian adults what they want, need, believe and won't stand for.

Just in time for the election, but too late to affect the policy platforms, the Centre has published a book called Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, Work and Aspirations, based on their survey done in late 2005. It's a healthy antidote to the current pontificating, because it challenges much of what the politicians and their advertising agencies assume to be fundamental national attitudes. For example.

Australians hate and fear trade unions. The researchers disagree: "There is qualified but widespread support for unions among Australian workers, even among those who do not belong to them. Nearly half (46 per cent) of those respondents who said they were not a union member (and did not want to be) agree that, without trade unions, working conditions for employees would be much worse, and nearly a third agree that trade unions are very important for the job security of employees."

Overall, 79 per cent of the people surveyed agree with the statement "There should be a law to protect all workers in Australia against unfair dismissal", 69 percent agree that "Award wages are the best way of paying workers and setting conditions", and 52 per cent DISAGREE with the statement "Unions should have less say in how wages and conditions are set" (with only 24 per cent agreeing).

Australians demand lower taxation. Asked if the government should introduce tax cuts or increase spending on services like health and education, 34 per cent choose reducing taxes, 19 per cent say the situation should stay as it is now, and 47 go for increased social spending.

Australians think being a good citizen means being white and Christian and able to answer questions about Don Bradman. Asked what makes a good citizen, more than half the sample identified these qualities as very important: "Always vote in elections" (69 per cent); "Always obey laws and regulations" (66 per cent); "Never try to evade taxes" (61 per cent); and "Keep watch on actions of government" (54 per cent).

Given these discrepancies between what politicians assume and what Australians actually believe, these results may not be surprising: "The government doesn't care what people like me think" (61 per cent agree); "Thinking about the federal government in Australia these days, would you say that it is: a) run mainly for a few big interests looking out for themselves" (60 per cent) or b) "run for the benefit of all the people " (40 per cent); "Political parties do not give voters real policy choices" (62 per cent agree).

The candidates are no doubt too busy at the moment to read Australian Social Attitudes 2, which is probably just as well. It would only upset them.

• by David Dale at 07:46 AM
• Comments (5)

WHO WE ARE: Disgraced Businessman Day and other festivities

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A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 4/11/2007
National Sickie Day and National Disgraced Businessman Day were two useful suggestions sent in by readers last week after this column wondered which classically Australian phenomena should be celebrated with a special date. I'd been inspired by the introduction of a National Thong Day (October 24) and suggested we could extend the principle to National Loud Shirt Day (honouring the right of fathers to embarrass their offspring at barbecues), National Amoxycillin Day (honouring our most prescribed antibiotic) and National Chiko Roll Day, honouring our (sadly vanishing) contribution to fast food culture.

A reader who wished to be known as Bill Steamshovel reckoned that on Disgraced Businessman Day, "we could pay homage to the greats of the 80s like Alan Bond and Christopher Skase, whilst also giving thanks that we have a new generation pitching in with the likes of Rodney Adler".

Scott nominated "National Lookamoi Day - the one day where it is acceptable for people to quote/mimic Kath and Kim and get away with it -- for a donation of $1 per annoying line."

And "G" thought that on Sickie Day, "we could all phone in a lame excuse for why we can't come to work as we sound as ill as humanely possible while heading to the beach or the cricket or a long weekend up the coast!"

Clearly we're on a roll. Speaking of which, how about National Dung Beetle Day? You may think we're afflicted by flies at the moment but it would be far worse without the tireless efforts of the little creatures who break up the mounds of cow and sheep manure where flies do most of their breeding. The CSIRO has been spreading a specially bred superbeetle around the countryside and future generations should perform the Great Australian Salute in its honour.

The inventiveness of the CSIRO will also be remembered on ...

National Trouser Crease Day. In 1957, Dr Arthur Farnsworth from the Division of Textile Industry developed a permanent press woollen pants process called Siroset, which conquered the world.

National Counterfeit-proof Banknote Day. The polymer plastic printing technology developed in the 1980s has been sold to the central banks of 23 countries.

National Clever Clover Day. This is not honouring Sydney's Lord Mayor but a plant which aerates and fertilises the soil for vegetable growers.

National Bunny Slaughter Day. This would recognise the development of strains of myxomatosis and calicivirus to control a pest introduced in 1859 by an idiot Englishman who wanted Australia to be more like "home".

National Castration Day. This may be harder to sell to the populace, but it's as important as the earlier revelations. According to The Dictionary of Australian Inventions and Discoveries, "Surgical castration (the removal of the testicles of a male animal) and spaying (the removal of the ovaries of a female animal) of sheep and cattle is traumatic and costly in terms of lost production. A consortium of CSIRO, Peptide Technology Ltd and Arthur Webster Pty Ltd is developing an injectable vaccine which has the same effect as surgical neutering."

Good old Aussie know-how at its pinnacle. We'd love to hear more suggestions.

• by David Dale at 10:45 AM
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WHO WE ARE: With a thong in our heart

A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 28/10/2007
You probably didn't notice, but last Wednesday was National Thong Day. It was an event staged to draw attention to poverty in Australia (which still exists, despite the economic boom). The organisers chose an icon that symbolises the casual, egalitarian nature of this society.

Sadly both John Howard and Kevin Rudd declined to be photographed wearing thongs, so the anti-poverty message didn't get much publicity. Better luck next year, when there'll be no election campaign to give the politicians an inflated sense of their own dignity.

Pedants may quibble that the thong is not an Australian invention, and is therefore not worthy of celebration, but I don't think that matters. We have an honourable tradition of adopting ideas from other countries and making them our own (spaghetti bolognese our national dish, cappuccino our national drink, poker machines our national vice, etc).

Like the pavlova, the thong is an invention of New Zealand, where they call it the Jandal (short for "Japanese sandal"). Our contribution was to give it a better name. But we discovered that the name has not spread beyond our shores in 2000, when we saw an episode of the sitcom Friends.

Elle Macpherson was guest starring as a new flatmate for Joey, the show's lustful bachelor. Joey decided to take a cold shower to distract himself from the sight of Macpherson doing exercises. Within seconds he emerged from the bathroom, saying "Oh my God". Macpherson: "Oh, sorry about that stuff hanging in there. It's just my thongs are too delicate for the dryer."

On the face of it, this was a bizarre exchange. Much as we love our footwear, Australians don't tend to put them in the dryer, or consider them to be delicate. And Joey had no prior history as a shoe fetishist.

Of course, in America the word "thong" refers to what we call a g-string. Their name for the jandal is "flip flop". (Which makes you wonder if politicians would have responded any more enthusiastically to an event called "National Flip Flop Day").

In any case, I think the anti-poverty campaigners created a great precedent by naming a day after a popular symbol. We could look forward to ...

National Amoxycillin Day, celebrating our most prescribed antibiotic and honouring our Nobel Prize-winning scientist Howard Florey, who discovered how to isolate and mass-produce penicillin.

National Chiko Day, commemorating Victoria's Frank McEnroe, who was inspired by the Chinese spring roll to create, in 1951, this country's own contribution to fast food culture.

National Phantom Day, commemorating the comic book hero embraced by Australia. Although invented in America, The Ghost Who Walks appealed to something deep in our psyche, perhaps because his tale of being abandoned on a fatal shore and forced to survive a brutal environment resonated with our foundation myth.

National Loud Shirt Day, honouring Mambo's reinvention of the Hawaiian shirt and asserting the right of fathers to embarrass their offspring at barbecues.

National Day of The Body, commemorating the international success of Australian models, and assuring Elle Macpherson that, although she lives overseas, she can hang her thongs in our shower any time.

Tell us your suggestions for other national days worth celebrating ...

• by David Dale at 03:04 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Growing bigger, not necessarily better

A weekly column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 21/10/2007
It was, of course, pure coincidence that, a matter of weeks before the election was announced, the Bureau of Statistics published a report showing that Australians are vastly better off than they were ten years ago. The revelation was part of the bureau's annual MAP analysis, where MAP stands for "Measures of Australia's Progress". Apparently we are doing really really well.

The word "growth" appears often in that report, just as it does in the Liberal Party's campaign slogan. But if the MAP analysis becomes a tool for election propaganda, the Government should stock up on Band-aids, because it's a two-edged sword. In this decade we are being told that growth is good, just as we were told in the 80s that greed is good. But the English language allows for the word to be used in a different context, as in "she's having a growth removed".

First, lets do the good news about how Australia has grown in the past ten years: life expectancy is up (from 78 to 80); more of us have after-school educational qualifications (up from 48 per cent to 59 per cent of Australians over 25); national income is soaring (we're 30 per cent better off in average earnings than ten years ago); unemployment is down (from 8 per cent to below 5 per cent); we're living spaciously (77 per cent of homes have at least one spare bedroom); we're helping each other (the proportion of Australians who say they participate in voluntary work has risen from 32 per cent to 35 per cent); and we're one of the world's most participatory democracies (the Bureau reports that "the vast majority of eligible Australians are enrolled to vote").

But other effects of the Growth is Good decade show up in sections of the MAP report headed "The Natural Landscape", "The Air and Atmosphere" and "Oceans and Estuaries". Here's what the Bureau says:

"Between 1996 and 2006, the number of bird and mammal species assessed as extinct, endangered or vulnerable rose by 44 per cent from 119 to 171 (of which 68 were birds and 103 were mammals). At 1 June 2006, just under half (47 per cent) of those species were vulnerable, around one third (35 per cent) were more seriously threatened (endangered) and the remainder (18 per cent) were presumed extinct over the ten year period ...

"In 2005, for fish stocks managed by the Australian Government, 24 of the 83 principal species ... were overfished or subject to overfishing. This compares with 3 species in 1996".

The bureau reports that for 2005, Australia's net greenhouse gas emissions were estimated to be 559.1 megatonnes of "carbon dioxide equivalent". This was 2.2 per cent higher than in 1990, which is "the base period for the reporting of emissions under the Kyoto protocol". Apparently we've managed to achieve the highest per capita level of greenhouse gas emissions of all the OECD countries.

So along with the economic boom, Australia has enjoyed a boom in animal extinctions, overfishing and air pollution. Going for growth may not be an aspirational goal in every aspect of our lives.

• by David Dale at 10:22 AM
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WHO WE ARE: We can be heroes

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 14/10/2007
The government is keeping secret the list of 200 questions with which it will test peoples' suitability to become citizens of Australia, but a glance through the study guide, Becoming An Australian Citizen, suggests that a propensity for hero-worship would give the applicant a head start. The text, written at the comprehension level of an eight year old, speaks with infectious enthusiasm about the giants who created this nation. Let me quote some highlights ...

Arthur Phillip "took great care over the feeding and welfare of the convicts and very few died on the voyage. When starvation loomed in the early years of the colony, he put the whole settlement, including himself and military officers, on the same ration."

Governor Lachlan Macquarie "is remembered with great affection because he treated reformed convicts as if they had never offended. He invited rich ex-convicts to government house and expected the free settlers to treat them as equals."

"English woman Caroline Chisholm, who came to Australia with her army officer husband in 1838, became known as 'The Immigrants' Friend'. She worked to improve life on the ships bringing people to Australia and helped people start new lives."

"The failure of Burke and Wills, though easy to explain, can not easily be forgotten. Their story has inspired great writing and art. It remains a symbol of a country that can destroy you."

"Sir Charles Kingsford Smith became an international aviation hero in 1928 when he and Charles Ulm completed the first trans-Pacific crossing from the United States to Australia in the Fokker trimotor Southern Cross."

"Except for small scale battles between settlers and Aboriginal people, Australia has been a remarkably peaceful country. There have been no civil wars or revolutions. It is strange then, that it has a very strong military tradition and that the ordinary soldier, the digger, is a national hero."

Anzac Day "honours the qualities of the ordinary soldier: mateship, endurance, humour in the face of adversity. One individual soldier has come to stand for all these qualities - John Simpson Kirkpatrick ... He acquired a donkey and was allowed to work on his own carrying the wounded back to the shore."

John Monash "was one of the most creative generals in the war and the only Australian general who has come close to having heroic status."

The Melbourne Cup: "the great winners have become national heroes ... Phar Lap, the most famous of them ... made many people happy in dark days."

Sir Donald Bradman "was the greatest cricket batsman of all time. He was small and slight but amazingly quick on his feet, playing his shots almost like a machine ... Among all Australian sporting heroes, Bradman is the best known."

If the applicants for citizenship are as simpleminded as this level of writing assumes, they may draw the conclusion that to become a good Australian, you need to invite rich ex-convicts to dinner (ensuring your ration is the same as theirs), befriend immigrants, get lost in the desert, acquire a donkey, fly in a trimotor, and be quick enough on your feet to make people happy in dark days.

• by David Dale at 10:04 AM
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WHO WE ARE: A contribution of value

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 7/10/2007
The anonymous authors of the booklet called Becoming an Australian Citizen take a stab at listing those elusive creatures called "Australian values" which the radio talk jocks keep going on about. It's not apparent if the authors are claiming that these are what Australians actually believe in, or what the government thinks we ought to believe in.

Interestingly, their list has similarities to a statement of "core beliefs of average Australians" offered two years ago by the prime minister when he was launching a Liberal Party magazine called The Conservative. This was Mr Howard's list:

1 We live in a very successful nation.
2 Australia is well-regarded around the world.
3 Individuals should be given a fair go if down on their luck but, once helped, should not expect continued community support.
5 Traditional institutions like the family are central but people with alternative views should not be persecuted.
6 People should be very tolerant of diversity, but also believe in unity when facing a common threat.
7 Society should be classless, where a person's worth is determined by personal character and hard work and not religion, race or social background.

This is the list of Australian values in the citizenship booklet: 1 Respect for the equal worth, dignity and freedom of the individual; 2 Freedom of speech; 3 Freedom of religion and secular government; 4 Freedom of association; 5 Support for parliamentary democracy and the rule of law; 6 Equality under the law; 7 Equality of men and woman; 8 Equality of opportunity; 9 Peacefulness; 10 Tolerance, mutual respect and compassion for those in need.

Presumably any immigrant who can memorise and repeat those principles will have no trouble getting admitted to this country. But would those new citizens then have any better idea of what most Australians actually believe? If they're curious about that, they'd be better off studying a publication called Australian Social Attitudes (published by University of NSW Press), which reports the results of a survey conducted between 2003 and 2005 by the Centre for Social Research at the Australian National University.

It is based on the answers to questionnaires filled in by 4270 adults -- an impressive sample size, considering that million-dollar programming decisions in television are based on ratings from a sample of only 3,000. People were asked to tick "agree", "disagree" or "don't know" for a series of statements about social issues. These propositions attracted the most agreement:

1. To be truly Australian, it is fairly important that you speak English (92 per cent agreement)
2. The father should be as involved in the care of his children as the mother (90)
3. A woman should have the right to choose whether or not she has an abortion (87)
4. The gap between those with high incomes and those with low incomes is too large (84)
5. Generally speaking, Australia is a better country than most other countries (83)
6. When big businesses break the law they often go unpunished (81)
7. Media ownership in Australia is too concentrated among a few rich families (81)
8. Large international companies are doing more and more damage to local businesses in Australia (75).

Strangely, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship chose not to offer this insight into national values to readers of its booklet.

• by David Dale at 12:05 AM

WHO WE ARE: The Government's idea of foreplay

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 30/9/2007
Tomorrow, by order of parliament, the Australian Values Test comes into force. Any of us can be stopped in the street by federal security officers and asked questions about what this nation stands for.

Get two wrong in a row and you'll be issued with an Australian Values Order, which requires you to turn up at your local citizenship office within seven days for a re-education course. Anyone who breaches an AVO faces deportation to New Zealand (which is happy to take recalcitrant Australians to make up for all the people it has lost to our side of the Tasman).

Well no, it hasn't quite come to that yet. The test that starts tomorrow applies only to foreigners who are seeking citizenship. If someone stops you in the street and asks "In what year did federation take place" or "Who was the first prime minister of Australia?" they are probably a member of The Chaser team.

But just in case, it wouldn't hurt to look at the booklet called Becoming An Australian Citizen which the government will hand out to people seeking to become permanent residents, and that's what this column intends to do over the next two weeks. It would be pretty embarrassing if upwardly mobile foreigners ended up knowing more about this land than those who were born here.

Before I begin this process, I need to confess a bias. Early this year I published a small book called Who we are - A snapshot of Australia today. My dream was that the government would buy thousands of copies from me (at a patriotic discount, of course) and hand them to desperate immigrants, and I'd retire on the profits.

Instead, the government decided to write its own little book. Perhaps my book should not have included a section on the Australian sense of humour (What's an Australian man's idea of foreplay? "Are you awake, love?"). The Government's book is nothing if not serious.

So as you read my analysis of the government's book over the next two columns, allow for the possibility that I will be hyper-critical. But I could hardly be as critical as the Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison, who last week described the sample citizenship test as "stupid". She said it was "ludicrous" to deny someone citizenship just because they did not know that the golden wattle was the nation's floral emblem, or that Sir Donald Bradman was a great cricketer. "This is a test designed to exclude people on the basis that they can't memorise answers to some pretty obscure questions," she said.

She particularly objected to this question: "Which one of these is a responsibility of every Australian citizen? (1) Renounce their citizenship of any other country; (2) Serve in Australian diplomatic missions overseas; or (3) Join with Australians to defend Australia and its way of life, should the need arise." The correct answer is (3).

"It sounds to me as if the Government wants to reintroduce compulsory military conscription," Senator Allison said. "Or perhaps it's just designed to make us feel as though we're under attack, because we all know that when we're afraid, the Government can get away with just about anything."

Next week: what the government says are "Australian values".

• by David Dale at 01:14 PM
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WHO WE ARE: These are a few of our favourite things

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 23/9/2007
An organisation called the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), has compiled what purports to be a listing of the works of art that most stimulated people in Britain in the first half of this year, and this column has been inspired to attempt a comparative insight into Australian tastes.

ERA brought together sales figures for DVDs, books, CDs and computer games, and came up with what it called The Culture Chart 2007: 1. Casino Royale (which sold 2.3 million copies on DVD in Britain); 2 The Queen (DVD); 3 Happy Feet (DVD); 4 Hot Fuzz (DVD); 5 Night at the Museum (DVD); 6 Borat (DVD); 7 Back to Black by Amy Winehouse (CD); 8 The Devil Wears Prada (DVD); 9 Now That's What I Call Music 66 (CD); 10 The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld (book).

With help from GfK Marketing, the Australian Record Industry Association and Nielsen BookScan, I formed an impression of what entertained the largest numbers of Australians between January 1 and June 30. Here is Australia's Culture Chart 2007: 1 Happy Feet (DVD); 2 Casino Royale (DVD); 3 I'm Not Dead by Pink (CD); 4 Borat (DVD); 5 The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (book); 6 The Devil Wears Prada (DVD) 7 Rearview Mirror by Pearl Jam (CD) 8 Silvia by Bryce Courtenay (book); 9 Dirty Dancing 15th anniversary edition (DVD) 10 Eyes Open by Snow Patrol (CD).

Apart from displaying how similar in tastes we are to our former colonial masters, this list is close to useless. It leaves out two huge ingredients in the Australian cultural diet: television and cinema. And it covers a ridiculously narrow time span.

We need to be more ambitious if we are to investigate the shared audiovisual experiences of the people currently inhabiting this continent. Lets go the whole hog ...

The Complete Culture Chart (20 things likely to have been seen or heard by the majority of modern Australians):
1 The 1997 funeral of Diana Spencer (TV);
2 The opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympics (TV);
3 Crocodile Dundee (cinema, video, DVD, TV);
4 The Sound of Music (cinema, TV, video, DVD);
5 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (book, cinema, TV, DVD);
6 Abba's Greatest Hits (radio, vinyl and CDs under various titles);
7 The Star Wars trilogy (cinema, TV, video, DVD);
8 Grease (cinema, TV, CD, DVD);
9 Ian Thorpe swimming (TV);
10 The Lord of the Rings trllogy (cinema, DVD);
11 Cathy Freeman running (TV);
12 Titanic (cinema, video, DVD);
13 Whispering Jack by John Farnham (CD);
14 Shrek 2 (cinema, DVD, TV);
15 Raiders of the Lost Ark (cinema, TV, video, DVD);
16 Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf (vinyl and CD);
17 Finding Nemo (cinema, DVD);
18 The Australian Open Tennis Final 2005 (TV);
19 The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (book, film);
20 E.T. (cinema, video, DVD).

After much pondering, I decided to leave the 1969 moon landing off the list, because 52 per cent of the people now living on this continent were not born when it happened (and many of those who did see it have since died). I'd be happy to discuss that and any other glaring omissions here.

For more detail on Australia's favourite movies, TV shows, music and DVDs, go to The culture.

• by David Dale at 05:01 PM
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WHO WE ARE: Love the discs, pity about the flicks

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 16/9/2007
A dignified outburst of patriotic fervour was the appropriate response last week to two revelations which suggest Australians are going through a phase of liking themselves again.

First, the Australian Record Industry Association issued its report on CD sales for the first six months of the year, and noted that locally made albums represented 34.8 per cent of the Top 100 sellers, up from 31.8 per cent last year. Australia's representation in the top ten included 3 Missy Higgins On A Clear Night; 4 Silverchair Young Modern; 6 Damien Leith The Winner's Journey; 9 Powderfinger Dream Days At The Hotel Existence; and 10 John Butler Grand National.

Second, we discovered that every program in the top 20 television ratings chart at the moment is Australian-made. After decades of preferring American material to our own, we now embrace Kath and Kim, Thank God You're Here and The Chaser as our favourite comedies and City Homicide, Sea Patrol and All Saints as our favourite dramas.

We're reliving the famous moment in 1966 when the TV analyst Harry Robinson noted a seismic shift in the nation's viewing habits. Under the headline "Let All Loyal Australians Rejoice", he reported that the local cop show Homicide was out-rating the US hit The Fugitive. He wrote:

"The importance, of course, is not that Homicide is doing well, but rather that Australians may at last be willing to consider their own people with their own ways worth watching. Till now, as any showman will tell you, Australians have preferred to watch anybody but their own kind, no matter what the quality. Perhaps we have grown up enough to give ourselves a fair go."

And this month it's happening again - at least in television. That's not to say that we have made a wholesale transfer from the cultural cringe to the cultural strut. There is still the problem of Australia's attitude to Australian movies.

These were the figures for the most successful local films at the box office this year: 1 Romulus My Father $2.5m; 2 Bra Boys $1.6m; 3 Clubland $1.4 m; 4 Noise 743,000 5 Lucky Miles $545,000. A brilliant little thriller called The Jammed, which stars Saskia Burmeister (of Sea Patrol, but hotter here) and which got rave reviews, has just dropped out of the box office chart after earning just $237,000 in four weeks. Its writers would have done better to sell it as a script for City Homicide, where their work would have been seen by 1.4 million more people than saw it in cinemas.

While no Australian film has made more than $2.5 million this year, a film in Swedish called As It Is In Heaven has made $2.6 million, a film in German called The Lives of Others has made $2.6 million, and a film in American called The Simpsons Movie has made $31 million.

We do go through phases of liking our own flicks. In the mid 90s we spent more than $16m on tickets for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and for Muriel's Wedding. In the early noughties we spent more than $12m on tickets for The Dish, Lantana and The Wog Boy.

Apparently our movie cycle is out of synch with our TV cycle and our music-liking cycle. There's only so much national pride we can stand in any one year.

To see how these compare with the most seen movies of all time, go to The films Australia loved. If you have suggestions on what might cause us to start liking our own movies again, this is the place to enter the discussion ...

• by David Dale at 11:47 AM
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WHO WE ARE: The delights of de facto

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 9/9/2007
It's a scary thought that two out of three marriages end in death. It's almost enough to make you apply for a divorce, so you can be in the remaining third. But lets start from the assumption that being in a long term relationship with another person is A Good Thing. It's probably good for the happiness of the individual, and it's certainly good for the continuation of society. So most of what you're about to read will be comforting news.

Australians are divorcing less than they were six years ago (rate down from 2.9 per 1,000 people in 2001 to 2.5 per 1,000 people last year), according to a report released last week by the Bureau of Statistics. When divorces do occur, the marriage has usually lasted longer than it did two decades ago (median duration of marriage up from 10.1 years in 1988 to 12.5 years in 2006). And the proportion of divorces where children under 18 are involved has dropped from 59.7 per cent in 1986 to 50.1 per cent in 2006.

It seems that women are more likely to be unhappy in marriage than men -- 40 per cent of divorces are sought by the wife, while 29.5 per cent are sought by the husband. But the proportion of divorces sought jointly by both parties has risen from 7.4 per cent in 1986 to 30.3 per cent in 2006. So it's increasingly the case that couples can agree on one thing, at least.

Now we enter the danger zone. One in three marriages still end in divorce and you'll want to know your personal odds. The couple most likely to get divorced this year has been married just over 12 years. The man is aged between 40 and 44, the woman between 35 and 39. Both were born in Australia. They live in Queensland.

Don't breathe a sigh of relief yet. A third of all divorces involve separation in the first five years of marriage, and 16 per cent of couples who divorce have been married 25 years or more. And although NSW has the lowest divorce rate of all the states (2.1 per 1,000 to Queensland's 3.0), this is the State with the shortest emotional attention span - median duration of marriage here is 11.2 years, while in South Australia, marriages last 13.8 years.

And when you consider the reason for the falling divorce rate, you can't necessarily conclude that Australian men and women are getting on better. It may simply be because the marriage rate has been falling over the past three decades, and if there are fewer marriages, there must, after a few years, be fewer divorces.

In 1970, there were 9 marriages per 1,000 population. Last year there were 5 marriages per 1,000 population. But Australians are still getting together. As the marriage rate has been dropping, the de facto rate has been rising. In the latest census 15 per cent of all couples who described themselves as permanently involved were in de facto relationships. That's up from 12 per cent in 2001 and 8 per cent in 1991. (Incidentally, four per cent of the couples who described themselves as "de facto" in the 2006 census were same sex).

They may be living in sin, but at least they're not living alone. Society has a future.

What do you think? Is marriage better than living together? And is a high divorce rate the sign of a more honest society?

• by David Dale at 08:49 AM
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WHO WE ARE: The game we play on earth

To learn what Australia is watching, and speculate why, go to The Tribal Mind

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 2/9/2007
It's not often that this column makes a complaint about the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which supplies most of the data that lets me discuss our national identity each week. But the bureau does seem to have suffered a rare lapse of attention recently on one issue.

For some time I've been wanting to devote a column to a fundamental question: what is Australia's national sport? When the Bureau produced a report earlier this month called Sport and Recreation: A Statistical Overview, Australia, 2007, I fell on it with glee, only to be disappointed.

That's not to say it's useless - just incomplete. The report is divided between what we play and what we watch. Just over nine million Australians say they perform some sort of physical activity each year. In terms of active participation, you could say our national sport is walking - done (or claimed to be done) by 33 per cent of women and 17.5 per cent of men. For men, that's followed by golf (12.4%) and swimming (9.9%). For women, that's followed by aerobics (13%) and swimming (11.8%).

Australians are better at watching than doing. Seven million (48 per cent of adults) say they attend at least one sports event a year. The Bureau reports that "Australian Rules Football was the sport most attended by both males (1.5 million or 21 per cent) and females (1.0 million or 13.4 per cent) aged 18 years and over. The second most highly attended sport overall was horse racing, with 1.1 million males (14.8 per cent) and 802,600 females (11 per cent)." Next came motor sports, rugby league, cricket, soccer, rugby union, and basketball.

This might suggest that, in terms of sheer numbers, our national sport is aerial pingpong, closely followed by racing. But I have two problems with the bureau's list.

First, is it fair to call Going To The Races a sport? If watching horses run round a track in order to find out if you've made money is a sport, then so is watching the dials spin round on a poker machine. And with that definition, there'd be no doubt about what is Australia's national pastime, both in terms of playing and in terms of watching: putting money into a slot and pressing a button.

Second problem: in discussing our most popular spectator sports, the bureau has ignored a huge source of information. Most Australians don't do their watching from a grandstand. They do it from the couch. And when we look at television ratings for this decade so far, we get a very different picture of national tastes.

Among the 50 most watched programs in Australia since 2001 (excluding Commonwealth Games and Olympics), 25 were sporting events. Six of the programs that drew more than 2.3 million viewers in the mainland capitals were AFL grand finals, three were Melbourne Cup races (I'm grudgingly sticking with the bureau's definition), three were rugby league grand finals, three were Rugby World Cup matches, two were World Cup soccer matches and two were cricket matches.

But on top of the 50, the program most watched by Australians in the past six years, ahead of all the Big Brothers and Australian Idols and Beaconsfield reports and Irwin commemorations, with 4.04 million viewers in the mainland capitals, is an event described as "Australian Open men's final - Hewitt v Safin 2005".

Now, without help from the Bureau of Statistics, we know what is Australia's national sport. What do you reckon?

To see how sport fits within Australia's entertainment choices, go to The TV Shows Australia Loved. To read the Bureau's analysis, go to abs.gov.au

• by David Dale at 08:10 AM
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WHO WE ARE: The sinful alternative to breakfast

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 26/8/2007
Somehow I can't see Uncle Toby succeeding in his current scheme to transform the breakfast habits of a nation. Have you noticed how he's spending millions to promote a new product called Oat Brits? He's hoping we've retained enough of the cholesterol paranoia that started in the 1980s to shift from our decades-long addiction to wheat and corn in the morning. But Uncle Toby is pushing fibre uphill. He'll never replace the mighty rectangle.

Consider this Nielsen chart of market share in the cereal business ...
What Australians eat for breakfast: 1 Weet-Bix 8.7 per cent; 2 Kellogg's Nutri-Grain 7.2; 3 Uncle Toby's Plus 5.4; 4 Kellogg's Just Right 4.9; 5 Kellogg's Coco Pops 3.8; 6 Kellogg's Special K 4.4; 7 Kellogg's Sultana Bran 4.4; 8 Sanitarium Up & Go 4.2; 9 Kellogg's Corn Flakes 3.7; Kellogg's Crunchy Nut 2.5.

So entrenched are the breakfast habits of Australians that there's been very little change in that chart for 20 years, apart from a slow decline for Corn Flakes and the arrival last year of Up & Go, which is simply Weet-Bix in liquid form.

(If you want to know the rest of the Aussie morning ritual - most of us cover our cereal with Pura or Paul's milk, throw down a glass of Berri or Golden Circle fruit juice, spread Vegemite on a slice of Wonder White, and wash it all down with a cup of Nescafe Blend 43).

Despite the homely sounding name, Uncle Toby's is owned by one of the world's biggest food companies - Cereal Partners, a consortium of America's General Mills and Europe's Nestle. Kellogg's is American, of course. Weet-Bix is Australian-owned - produced by Sanitarium, a branch of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

It seems odd that a church would be in the food business until you learn why breakfast cereal was invented in the first place: to stop the sin of masturbation.

When Dr John Kellogg became superintendent of the Seventh Day Adventist Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1876, he found that the patients were prone to all manner of unhealthy practices, according to his view of the world. He concluded this was because they were not regular.

The answer, he declared, lay in starting the day with high fibre. By toasting blobs of maize hash, he created a product he called Corn Flakes, and by shredding and compressing wheat, he created rectangles he called Granose. His brother Will Kellogg formed a company in 1906 to market the vision to the world (with added sugar).

One of Dr John's disciples at the Institute was a young Australian Adventist minister named Willy White. He returned to Melbourne in 1898 and set up the Sanitarium Health Food Agency, which started making corn flakes and granose. After Kelloggs started in Australia in 1924, Sanitarium changed the name of its shredded wheat rectangles to Weet-Bix, and became Australia's biggest competitor to the US company which had provided its inspiration.

With all the effort now put in by Sanitarium, Kelloggs, and Uncle Toby's to ensure our morning regularity, it's a wonder there's a single masturbator left on this continent.

• by David Dale at 10:02 AM
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WHO WE ARE: The drink we have when we're having a drink

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 19/8/2007
The left of the Labor party and the right of the Liberal party are united in a strange delusion - they think we're a nation of beer swiggers and tea sippers. They use "chardonnay socialists" and "the latte set" as insulting synonyms for minorities whose views are not worthy of consideration because they are not part of The Real Australia.

They want us to believe that anyone who consumes a white wine named after a particular grape, or a coffee with an Italian name, must be a wanker - downright unAustralian. But as Daryl Kerrigan would say, tell them they're dreamin. Or, as Skyhooks would sing, they're livin in the 70s.

Here in the late Noughties, our national drinks are cappuccino and chardonnay. Tea lost its battle for our hearts and tongues long ago -- coffee consumption on the way up passed tea consumption on the way down in 1979. And on present trends, wine consumption on the way up will pass beer consumption on the way down in 2009.

Back in the early 80s, Australia was the third biggest consumer of beer per capita in the world (after Germany and Belgium). Now we're the ninth biggest beer consumer (with the Czech republic on top). Over the past 30 years we've nearly halved our beer consumption and nearly doubled our wine consumption.

The average adult Australian drinks five glasses of wine a week. Two of these are red and three are white. And two of the three whites are chardonnays.

These were the top selling whites of the past 12 months: 1 Jacob's Creek chardonnay; 2 Brown Brothers crouchen/reisling; 3 Houghton Smooth Dry White; 4 Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc; 5 Queen Adelaide chardonnay; 6 Wolf Blass Eaglehawk chardonnay; 7 Lindeman's Bin B65 chardonnay; 8 McWilliams Inheritance Fruitwood sauterne; 9 Evans and Tate Margaret River classic; 10 Wolf Blass Red label chardonnay.

I should explain at this point that I'm not devoting today's column to chardonnay because it's my favourite drop (pinot grigio is my preference). I'm telling its story to demonstrate the speed of social change in this country.

Thirty years ago there was no chardonnay planted in commercial quantities (our favourite white then was Ben Ean Moselle, made of muscat, gordo and sultana). Now it's our most grown grape -- 450,000 tonnes harvested a year (compared with 440,000 tonnes of shiraz and 40,000 tonnes of sauvignon blanc).

In the mid 1970s, a Perth businessman named Denis Horgan hired the Californian winemaker Robert Mondavi to turn a Margaret River cattle property called Leeuwin Estate into a vineyard. Mondavi planted his favourite French grape, fermenting it with a special yeast he'd brought from the Napa Valley and ageing it in oak casks.

The first release of this rare drop in the early 1980s coincided with the rise of the "greed is good" decade, when businessmen were desperate to show off wealth they didn't actually have. Horgan found he could charge whatever he liked for Mondavi's creation. Other winemakers frantically started planting chardonnay and copying the oaky buttery style. By the late 1990s chardonnay had spread from the posh restaurants of the inner city to the bottle shops of the outer suburbs.

So the Labor left and the Liberal right need to find a new term of abuse. Chardonnay has changed from an elite indulgence to the taste of Australia.

Can you explain the mystery: what is it about this particular wine that so appeals to us?

• by David Dale at 06:32 AM
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WHO WE ARE: The Bollywood of the south

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 12/8/2007
Skilled young Chinese and Indians: They're the people who are going to clinch Australia's claim to the title of "most interesting country in the world" by 2010.

Last week we noted a pleasant pattern in the way Australians have reacted to each new wave of immigration since 1788 - first suspicion, then tolerance, then enthusiasm about the way new ideas keep making this a livelier country. Apart from the occasional racist loony, most readers agreed with this analysis, but wanted to know more about the latest arrivals, in order to speculate on the kind of social changes we'll be enjoying in the next few years.

Helpfully, the Bureau of Statistics put out a report during the week called Australian Social Trends 2007, and buried in it are the figures we needed.

We know from the recent census that 23 per cent of Australians were born in another country, which breaks down as around 6 per cent born in Britain, 12 per cent born in Europe, and 5 per cent born in "East, Central or Southern Asia".

In 2006, we had a net gain of 132,000 foreigners intending to become Australian residents. Of these, 45 per cent were classified as "skilled settler arrivals", selected on their "ability to contribute to the Australian economy"; 26 per cent were "family settler arrivals", reuniting with earlier immigrants; and 9 per cent were "humanitarian settler arrivals", who had "suffered substantial discrimination amounting to a gross violation of their human rights" (mostly refugees from Sudan and Iraq).

So what kind of people are they? First, they tend to be younger than the people already here - 72 per cent of the new arrivals are under 35, while only 48 per cent of the existing population is under 35. The bureau says this is mainly because "Australia's immigration policy makes it compulsory for assessed applicants granted a skill migration visa to be aged under 45".

Where are they from? The countries that send most immigrants to Australia continue to be Britain and New Zealand, but the Asian contribution is growing fast. "In 2005-2006," says the Bureau, "China and India were the third and fourth largest sources of all migration to Australia, and the second and third largest sources of Skill Stream migration after the United Kingdom."

Between 2001 and 2006, the number of skilled migrants from China rose from 3,800 to 12,500 and the number of skilled migrants from India rose from 4,700 to 12,300.

The stereotype is that the Indians staff call centres and open curry shops (which would be no bad thing if true, since the current curry standard is pretty low). In fact, the Bureau says the peak occupations of Indian-Australians are computing, medical, clerical and business/ administration.

Apparently, 95 per cent of Indian settlers speak English "very well", 34 per cent describe their faith as Hindu, and 31 per cent describe themselves as Catholic.

Even the racist loonies would have to agree that they sound like highly respectable - and more important, highly interesting - additions to the national bubble and squeak.

• by David Dale at 11:46 AM
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WHO WE ARE: The shock of the new

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 5/8/2007
Bloody foreigners -- they come here, don't speak the language, and act like they own the place. Australians have been saying that about new arrivals at regular intervals since the year 1788. The delightful thing is that after each burst of verbal or literal spear-throwing, Australians come around not just to tolerating the visitors but to revelling in the new ideas they have brought.

In 1833, Robert Lyon, a Sydney teacher, expressed surprise at the welcoming attitude of the original Australians. He told a gathering of English immigrants: "Ye destroy the natural productions of the soil on which they live, ye devour their fish and their game, and ye drive them from the abodes of their ancestors. They have all along shown themselves ready to be reconciled, desirous to live in peace and amity with you, and even willing to be taught your manners, laws and polity."

In effect, the original Australians were saying: "For those who've come across the seas, we've boundless plains to share." Later Australians took a while to achieve that generosity of spirit.

When the Chinese arrived in search of gold and stayed to run restaurants, the initial reaction was antagonistic. Introducing the first bill ever put to federal parliament in September, 1901, the Attorney-General Alfred Deakin said: "It is not the bad qualities but the good qualities of these alien races that make them dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that makes them such competitors ... We are united in the resolve that this Commonwealth shall be established on the firm foundation of unity of race."

But in January, 1951, the Governor General, William McKell, propounded a different view of "the great immigration project upon which we are now firmly embarked". He said the newcomers were "bringing to Australia not only the benefits of their knowledge and skills, but of their age-old cultures. The old and the new should blend into a better and more varied community of people."

When I was growing up in the early 1960s, I often heard older passengers on buses muttering "Speak Australian, why doncha?" to couples conversing in unfamiliar languages. Terms such as wog, dago, balt, chink, spick, pom, nip and the all-encompassing "reffo" were in everyday usage.

But by the 1990s, spag bol was our national dish, cappuccino was our national drink and a survey found that soy sauce and curry paste were in the cupboards of 70 per cent of Australian households. A poll of 4270 adults conducted in 2005 by the Australian National University's Centre for Social Research found that 74 per cent agreed with the statement "Immigrants make Australia open to new ideas and cultures", and 69 per cent agreed that "Immigrants are generally good for Australia's economy".

Last week one of our most entertaining politicians, the Immigration and Citizenship Minister Kevin Andrews, declared he would not "be scared off by people who don't stand up for Australians ... We've got to balance up bringing people from overseas but with an ability to actually be able to properly settle and integrate into the Australian society."

There's more of Deakin's "unity of race" than McKell's "more varied community" in that comment -- which is understandable. On the strength of the Immigration Restriction Act, Alfred Deakin went on to become prime minister.

Is variety or uniformity the spice of immigration? Are pleasant surprises better than comforting predictability?

• by David Dale at 10:45 AM
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WHO WE ARE: How clean do we need to be?

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 29/7/2007
It's your fault inflation is on the march again. You've been buying too much stuff. Australians have become so eager to spend their new wealth, they've been pushing prices up -- not just on luxuries such as giant TV screens and tiny iPods but on the so-called necessities we pick up each week in the supermarket.

With the help of the research agency ACNielsen, lets look at some of this nation's most purchased products and consider how essential they really are.

Australia's favourite toothpaste, Colgate. The US giant Colgate-Palmolive spends $7 million a year advertising its toothpastes in Australia, and we spend $250m a year buying them.

The ancient Romans found that a mixture of sand and urine did a great job of cleaning the teeth - the sand was an abrasive to rub off that furry feeling, and the ammonia in the urine served as an astringent mouthwash. Colgate simply embellished the concept with sweetening, odorising, colourising and lubricating agents - all of which we can do without -- plus occasional fluoride, which we already get in the water.

Australia's favourite deodorant, Rexona. At the start of the 20th century Australians either didn't smell or didn't care how they smelled. Then an American marketing genius found a way to panic us. In 1919, a US ad for a cream called Odo-Ro-No urged readers to "take the Armhole Odor Test" to see if they suffered from "BO". The pioneering deodorant in Australia was Mum, but these days we spend $100m a year on Unilever's Rexona. Do we really smell that much?

Australia's favourite shampoo, Pantene A century ago, people used soap. In 1933, the US company Procter and Gamble released the world's first mass-produced hair detergent under the name "Drene shampoo" (derived from the Hindu word champu, to massage or rub). The first home grown hair cleanser was Decore, developed in 1939 by a Sydney hairdresser, Sigmund Sperling, and taken over in the 1960s by the British firm Reckitt and Coleman.

Now supermarket shoppers must decide if their hair needs nourishing, strengthening, volumising, vitamising, thickening, moisturising, balancing, more body, more bounce, more protection, more manageability or more protein. We spend $100 million a year on Pantene alone. Soap would save us both time and money.

Australia's favourite tampon, Libra Once women would soak up monthly blood with cloth bandages. In 1931 Dr Earle Haas, of Denver, Colorado, developed a machine that squeezed sanitary pads into a tube-shape suitable for insertion into the vagina. In 1934, Gertrude Tenderich bought his patent for "tampons" (from a French word for plug) and started advertising a product "that enables you to be completely free of embarrassment, completely comfortable, completely sure of safe protection". These days we spend nearly $100 million a year on Libra, made by the Swedish company Sancella.

Australia's favourite toilet paper, Sorbent. We spend $250m a year on Sorbent, plus $200m on Kleenex Cottonelle and $100m on the rising star in the wiping business, Quilton. All are classic unnecessary products. Instead of reading this online, buy today's Sun-Herald for an alternative to supermarket excess.

What other everyday products can we do without?

• by David Dale at 12:22 AM
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WHO WE ARE: You know the words

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 22/7/2007
It's reasonable to assume the majority of people living on this continent can provide the last four words of this phrase "When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad, I simply remember my favourite things, and then I ...."

It is, of course, from The Sound of Music, which was seen by more people than any other film ever shown in Australian cinemas (yes, even more than Crocodile Dundee), had the highest audience share of any film ever broadcast on television, and sold in the hundreds of thousands on video and DVD. The songs of TSOM are embedded in the psyche of Australians, amongst the clutter of assumptions, ideas, stories, jokes and half-remembered historical details that make up our shared culture.

What other songs can we assume most Australians hold in their minds? That's the topic today. This column was inspired by an announcement from Channel Nine that it will do a local version of the American hit show The Singing Bee, in which contestants complete the lyrics to supposedly familiar tunes. It seems to be a hybrid of Spicks and Specks, It Takes Two and a night in a karaoke bar. Channel Nine will have the problem of choosing material with which the viewers at home will have the best chance of joining in. We're here to help.

After research into the most popular albums, movies and TV shows of the past four decades, I've constructed a test of your familiarity with the shared culture. I commend it to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. You simply have to sing the next four words in each of these lines:

1. Yes, I've been brokenhearted, blue since the day we parted. Why, why did I ....
2. Met a girl, crazy for me. Met a boy, cute as can be. Summer days, drifting away to ....
3. If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and ....
4. How long can we look at each other down the ....
5. Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be, there's a ....
6. I guess I'll go on home, it's late, there'll be ....
7. I don't think that I can take it, cos it took so long to bake it and I'll never ...
8. It's like you're always stuck in second gear. When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month ....
9. Drove my chevy to the levee but ....
10. I thought love was only true in fairy tales, meant for someone else ....
11. I would have liked to know you, but I was just a kid. Your candle burned out long before ....

Clues: Australia's all-time best selling albums include John Farnham's Whispering Jack, Abba Gold, and The Beatles 1; our best selling single was Elton John's Candle in the Wind; our most downloaded digital single of the past 12 months was Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol (also heard in Grey's Anatomy); our most watched TV sitcom was Friends; and our most seen movies included Pretty Woman, the Shrek trilogy, and Grease.

There's no prize here, just the satisfaction of being in tune with the mass psyche (or, if you got none right, the satisfaction of knowing you're an individualist). To find the answers, click here. To discuss what other songs might be part of the shared culture of Australia, go below.

• by David Dale at 06:04 AM
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WHO WE ARE: the songs Australia knows best

by David Dale.
These are the answers to the Who We Are quiz about the songs most Australians would know.
1. Yes, I've been brokenhearted, blue since the day we parted. Why, why did I ever let you go? (From Abba's Mama Mia)
2. Met a girl, crazy for me, Met a boy, cute as can be. Summer days, drifting away to uh-oh those summer nights (From Summer Nights in Grease)
3. If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world. (From Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars)
4. Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be, there's a shadow hanging over me. (From Yesterday, by The Beatles)]
5. I guess I'll go on home, it's late, there'll be tomorrow night, but wait. (From Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman)
6. It's like you're always stuck in second gear. When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year. (From the Friends theme, by The Rembrandts)
7. I don't think that I can take it, cos it took so long to bake it and I'll never have that recipe again (from Macarthur Park, by Jim Webb, originally sung by Richard Harris)
8. How long can we look at each other down the barrel of a gun? (from You're The Voice, by John Farnham.)
9. Drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. (From Don McLean's American Pie)
10. I thought love was only true in fairy tales, meant for someone else but not for me. (From I'm A Believer, by Neil Diamond, sung by Smash Mounth in Shrek.)
11. I would have liked to know you, but I was just a kid. Your candle burned out long before the legend ever did. (From Elton John's Candle in the Wind)
12. And the girl in the photo is Britney Spears, none of whose songs are among Australia's best knowns.

• by David Dale at 06:04 AM

WHO WE ARE: There is nothing like a dame

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 15/7/2007
If you've lived on this planet very long, you've probably formed the theory that women operate differently from men. We know, for example, that women are more likely than men to be visiting a library, seeing a doctor, seeking a divorce, sexually assaulted, walking for exercise, over 70, at the movies, and using contraception, but less likely to be murdered, in jail, watching sport, paying golf, dying of cancer and injured in an accident.

The recently published census figures give precise data on many other gender differences, but raise many enigmas. Why, for example, are Australian women more likely to be Buddhists than men, and less likely to describe themselves as having no religion?

Why are women far more likely than men to do more than 15 hours a week of unpaid housework? Why are women more likely to speak Japanese at home, and less likely to speak Arabic? Why are women more likely to have completed year 12 at school? And more likely to be the only adult in a house with two dependent children?

There's no mystery in the census revelation that there are 200,000 more women than men in Australia, and more women living alone, and more women with disabilities. It's a fact of nature that males die earlier, leaving females to rattle around in houses that are way too big for them, growing increasingly fragile and dependent on outside help.

And we're not really shocked to learn that there are 684,000 households described as "lone parent (female)" compared with 139,400 "lone parent (male)". Australia is a society with traditional ideas about who is better equipped to do the nurturing.

Nor is the news about housework utterly astonishing - 2.2 million males over the age of 15 say they do less than five hours unpaid domestic work a week, while 2.9 million women say they do more than 15 hours of unpaid domestic work a week. Women are just fussier about cleanliness than men. Or possibly men are more modest, preferring to give the credit to their partners when filling out the census form, while the women who filled in the form vented their frustration against their lazy partners by exaggerating how little effort the men made about the house.

It's the religious details that pose the particular puzzle. Apparently Australia has 222,500 female Buddhists and only 196,200 male Buddhists; and 2.66 million female Catholics and 2.46 million male Catholics. The only categories in which men dominate are "No religion" (1.98 million men, 1.73 million women); Hinduism (79,900 men, 68,300 women); and Islam (178,000 men, 163,000 women - and, by the way, aren't those numbers small in comparison with all the publicity this faith receives?).

Are we entitled to conclude from all of this that women are smarter, harder-working, more responsible and more spiritual than men -- or do they just give the kind of answers on census forms that imply they are superior beings? I'd be interested to hear your theories.

And for what else the census reveals, click here. To test your knowledge of the songs famiar to most Australians, go to Who We Are.

• by David Dale at 07:14 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Anywhere but here

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 8/7/2007
They like us, they really like us. It's such a pity, then, that we don't really like ourselves.

A Harris poll of 2372 adult Americans, published last week, showed that "if cost were no object", the place Americans would most like to visit is Australia (ahead of Italy, Britain, and France).

Clearly our campaigns, from "Slip another shrimp on the barbie" to "Where the bloody hell are you?" have been working. This will come as some consolation to local tourism officials currently pondering research which suggests that, if cost were no object, Australia is pretty much the last place Australians would like to visit.

It seems we're not that excited about unravelling giant balls of wool in the back lanes of Melbourne. And we're content to never never go and thus never never know. We'd rather be anywhere else.

After interviews with people in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, the Travel Research Centre, in a report to the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, says: "Australians are searching for holidays that offer a significant contrast to everyday life ... It is the prospect of a temporary 'new life' that motivates them -- not just in terms of places to see and things to do but also in terms of learning, personal development and gaining genuine social and cultural insights."

And that's where this country fails. Bluntly, the people interviewed thought Australia offers little prospect of cultural enrichment, its attractions are too widely separated and too much the same, its accommodations are too expensive or too drab, and there's not enough for families to do.

"Travel within Australia does not currently offer the experiences and gratifications sought from a holiday," say the authors. "Some Australians are currently resentful of the poor value for money travelling domestically offers ... Not only is Australia not different but it has a high degree of perceived homogeneity. Indigenous culture is not motivating to most Australians and thus does not provide that cultural contrast.

"The idea that travel is educational is stronger for Europe. This allows parents to feel that they are 'good parents' and that they are doing the trip for others. More importantly, parents dread the thought of car travel with children."

The authors conclude there is "a major long term task to refresh Australia, especially in the eyes of younger consumers". Their suggestions include starting a national accreditation scheme for accommodation, creating more informative "tourism packages", and "developing ways to make the journey bearable or even enjoyable" (though they don't say how).

They come up with this alarming proposition: "The key need is to demonstrate to parents the educational benefits of domestic travel as compared to international travel. If ethically possible, marketing travel to children as fun can leverage the formidable power of the 'nag factor'".

So you can stop worrying about McDonald's and start worrying about Brand Australia manipulating vulnerable young minds into Pester Power: "Aw mum, can't we go to Brisbane instead of Paris this year?"

I know the readers of this column can do better. Give us your ideas on how to refresh Australian travel for Australians, below.

And click here to learn what the Census figures revealed about Australians.

• by David Dale at 12:49 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Less married, more together

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 1/7/2007
If we were to report last week's census announcement in the traditional manner of a federal budget ("Beer, cigs up; huge tax slug"), then we'd have to say "Superstition down, gaiety up; marriage on way out".

But that would be a cruel oversimplification. Last Sunday this column attempted to predict the main social changes that the census would reveal about this country -- with mixed success, as it turned out. (We've republished last week's column and your comments below.) Lets go from most to least prophetic:

Faith: I thought the census would show Australians becoming more sceptical. I predicted people saying "no religion'' or leaving the space blank would rise from 27 per cent of the population in 2001 to 29 per cent this time. In fact it rose to 30 per cent.

I thought Catholics and Anglicans would drop (and they did), and Muslims and Buddhists would each rise to 2 per cent of the population, but I was a bit off -- Muslims turned out to be only 1.7 per cent while Buddhists are now 2.1 per cent.

The fastest growing religion was Hinduism - doubling in ten years (though still below 2 per cent). That's apparently because Indians have been the fastest growing segment of our immigration intake. I'll examine this more closely in a future column.

Sexuality: I thought the nation would seem to be gayer, as more people declared themselves to be living in same sex relationships. That happened.
Australia has 25,606 couples of the same gender who were prepared to say on the census form they were living as de factos - more than double the 10,214 who said that in the 1996 census. About 13,000 couples are male, 12,000 female. Across the whole country, four per cent of de facto couples are of the same gender, but in NSW, the figure is 5.4 per cent (while in Canberra it's 5.3 per cent, in Victoria it's 4.5 per cent and in Tasmania it's 2.6 per cent).

Home life: I thought traditional households would be a less significant part of the population and as it turned out, the "mum, dad and kids" structure dropped from 47 per cent of families to 45 per cent of families. They are now outnumbered by a combination of couples without kids and single parent families.

Married people are less than half of the adult population, while the number of de factos is rising. So Australians are still pairing off, but without fuss.

Other rash prophecies: Median age of the population predicted to be 37.5, actually turned out to be 37 (although in South Australia and Tasmania it's 39); average household size -- predicted 2.3, reality 2.6; people born overseas -- p 24 per cent, r 22; people of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin -- p 4 per cent, r 2.3; having a disability that requires regular help with everyday living - p 2.4 million, r 900,000 (my excuse is I was working on a different definition of disability from the Bureau of Stats)

If you'd care to discuss the changes revealed in the census, go below.

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). His latest book is Soffritto -- A delicious Ligurian memoir. To join a daily discussion of Australian attitudes, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.

• by David Dale at 12:51 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Signs of civilisation

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 17/6/2007
Every society thinks it's civilised, but comes up short in the judgement of history. The Aztecs had a sophisticated lifestyle but tore the beating hearts out of 20,000 people a year as a sacrifice to the gods. The Romans were excellent builders and lawmakers, but they systematically crucified people they identified as troublemakers.

Renaissance Spain sent brave sailors to explore the world, and burned people at the stake because of their religious beliefs. The Germans in the 20th century used gas chambers with the same rationale.

How civilised is Australia as we near the end of the first decade of the 21 st century? The Bureau of Statistics set out to answer that question recently by interviewing people over 18 in 13,375 Australian households.

The General Social Survey stated its purpose thus: "Among the many, often interrelated aspects of life that are important to human wellbeing are good health, good family relationships and engagements with wider social networks, good educational opportunities and outcomes, suitable employment, a decent income and freedom from financial stress, a decent and affordable place to live, feeling safe and secure, and having access to public transport."

That sounds to me like a fair definition of civilisation. So are we there yet? Here's what the survey revealed:

Relationships: 96 per cent of the people interviewed reported having contact in the previous week with family or friends with whom they did not live, and 93 per cent said they would be able to ask people outside their household for small favours.

A sense of security: 86 per cent said they felt safe at home alone after dark, but only 48 per cent said they felt safe walking alone in their neighbourhood after dark (even though only 11 per cent had been a victim of some sort of crime in the past 12 months). Only 54 per cent thought "most people can be trusted", but 89 per cent trust their doctor and 76 per cent said their local police could be trusted.

Moving around: 84 per cent said they could easily get to the places they needed to go, but then again, 86 per cent said they had access to a car. And 43 per cent said they had shifted house in the past five years.

Community involvement: 77 per cent said they had donated money to a charitable cause in the past 12 months, while 32 per cent of men and 36 per cent of women said they did volunteer work to help others.

Stress: 59 per cent had experienced "at least one potentially stressful situation or event in the last 12 months" (62 per cent of women, 57 per cent of men) - mostly a serious illness of self or someone close, inability to get a job, or a separation. Only 18 per cent said they had experienced "one or more cash flow problems" in the past 12 months. Overall, we're cheerful - 84 per cent considered themselves to be in "good, very good or excellent health".

If you'd care to discuss whether these are the symptoms of a civilised society, go below.

• by David Dale at 11:46 AM
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WHO WE ARE: The boom is back

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 10/6/2007
Question: How could the Bureau of Statistics have got it so wrong? Answer: Don't be too hard on the bureau. Nobody could have anticipated that Australia would suddenly turn into a nation of sex maniacs.

A couple of months back, this column asked readers to prepare themselves for a party early in 2008, to celebrate a landmark in Australian history: the population reaching 21 million. I based this invitation on the bureau's population clock, which at the time was ticking over at the rate of one new person every two minutes and 11 seconds.

The speed of the clock was determined by the bureau's estimate that on average, a new baby joined us every one minute and 59 seconds, while we got a new immigrant every four minutes and 47 seconds and somebody died every three minutes and 54 seconds.

But last week the bureau sent me a message saying they had decided to speed the clock up. The statisticians had just put together all the data on births and arrivals for last year, and got a big shock. In 2006, there were 265,900 births in this country -- the second highest figure in our history. It was only surpassed by the 276,400 births registered in 1971.

Since the mid 70s, our birth rate has been on a toboggan. But two years ago, possibly encouraged by Peter Costello's $2,500 "baby bonus", or because economic good times made them feel they could feed a third or fourth mouth, Australians started going at it like bunnies. And so a new baby boom begins.

There was also a mini-boom in immigration last year - a net gain of 147,700 people, up from 110,000 in 2005.

So if you go to the population clock today (click here) you'll see our population sitting at 20,984,000. It now assumes an overall population growth of one person every 1 minute and 45 seconds.

At that rate, we will click over to 21 million on Friday June 29, 2007. A millionstone to celebrate.

Australia reached its first million in 1858, when the fertility rate was about six babies per woman. In 1918, when we crossed 5 million, the fertility rate was three babies per woman. It dropped to 2.5 during the Depression in the 1930s, but in 1959, when the population hit 10 million, it was back up to 3.5.

The arrival of The Pill in the 1960s and legalised abortion in the 1970s gave women more choice in the matter, so the fertility rate had dropped below two babies per woman by 1981, when we reached 15 million. When we hit 20 million in 2003, it was 1.7. Now it's back up to 1.8.

And that's why I can give you only two weeks and five days notice to lay in stocks of champagne.

Click here to learn what the Census figures will reveal about Australians. To discuss why TV is a dying medium, click here. And if you'd care to explain why we've started breeding again, go below ...

• by David Dale at 09:46 AM
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WHO WE ARE: How the bloody hell do we do it?

A column about Australia by David Dale, Published in The Sun-Herald, 3/6/2007
It seems to me that cynicism is not a core ingredient of the Australian character, so I was surprised at the bitterness manifested in some of the responses to my call last week for ideas on how to promote Australia overseas. I had complained that the slogan "So where the bloody hell are you?" had a tone of arrogance and entitlement that was alien to the traditional modesty of Australians.

'Will' suspected this column's motives: "Yeah, 'help' you and yer media cronies make a motza out of some affable Aussie's brilliantly simple idea offered in genuine innocence and willingness to help. Bugger that, mate. How about ... A land of plenty milked by talentless 'suits' who would fail in LA or New York, or even Singapore!"

Paul Wallis asked: "How about a more honest approach? 'Come and see 20 million people who don't recognise their own identities and/or are too damn spineless to admit to them!' We'd be buried under market psychologists and anthropologists for years. Of course, failing that we could come up with some really inspired, expensive cliches. That might happen."

MAT couldn't see the point of promoting a "beautiful rich country full of 'friendly' fake people that don't even talk of Aboriginal people or if so, they will say 'They are different'. So multiculturally full of delicious food and so cruel."

A. McNeill suggested: "Australia: Too Bloody Expensive and Too Bloody Far."

Jet wrote from Over There: "The slogan means NOTHING to the local Chinese (here in Hong Kong). Apart from the odd cuddle of a koala, the Chinese are NOT interested in thw natural environment, they want shopping, shopping, shopping, eating, eating, eating and massage, sauna, spa. Can't speak for the ad's impact in other cultures but here in Asia it's gotta be a giant dud."

From Adam Baudelaire: "Everyone knows that Australia is beautiful. What is missing is a campaign that says we are NOT the racist pigs we are thought to be by the world, but actually a friendly, welcoming and affable lot. The campaign needed to be very personal, about us. They missed it by a mile, and like every aspect of our current personna, foreign policy included, I'm deeply embarrassed."

Rob offered some individually tailored slogans: "For the Asian market: Come to Australia and help pay off our foreign debt. For the US market: George Bush doesn't live here. For the UK: Try the real Oz - It's like Earl's Court, but warmer. For the world in general: Warning! If you don't come visit us, we will all come over and visit you!"

AWM felt strongly that "It is incumbent upon those who hold the values of Australia dear, those of modesty, hard work, undustry and mateship, to influence the media representations of our country, especially those of the national government who are funding this sales pitch." Perhaps the funding government would endorse the suggestion of OJ, whose recommended slogan had a familiar ring: "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come." M. Johnson had a similar thought: "Welcome to Australia -- America's Deputy Sherriff in Asia."

Andrew was one of the few who was willing to defend the existing slogan, describing it as "playful, youthful, confident". But Andrew admited to being a New Zealander.

Now that readers have had an opportunity to vent their scepticism, I'd still like to hear more positive promotional ideas, below

• by David Dale at 10:40 AM
• Comments (46)

WHO WE ARE: We are moderately fond of a sunburnt country

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 27/5/07
An Australian who goes overseas and pokes poop at his homeland is never popular. So I'm confessing my sin now before somebody finds me out and dobs me in to the UnAustralian Values Commission. And I'm offering this defence: I wasn't knocking Australia, I was knocking Tourism Australia.

Here's what happened: a few weeks ago a travel magazine in Singapore asked me to write an article about the Australian character, apparently because I had produced a book called Who We Are: A snapshot of Australia today. Singapore is one of our fastest-growing sources of tourists (22,000 a month), so this was quite a responsibility. But the more I thought about it, the more I grew annoyed about the way this country has been promoted overseas this year.

So this was how I started the article: "The tourism authorities will kill me for saying this, but I'm not at all comfortable with their latest international advertising campaign, built around the phrase 'So where the bloody hell are you?'

"They're pleased with the way the ad agency included The Great Australian Expletive in a slogan, and with all the free publicity this has generated. My concern is not with the alleged rudeness of the word. It's with the attitude implied in the statement. There's an arrogance there, a sense of entitlement, that is not characteristic of the Australia I know and like.

"The quality I admire most in my compatriots is modesty. We know we have exported some pretty good actors, directors, cricketers, swimmers, musicians and models. And we know we have some pretty spectacular scenery, even if it's too widely separated for comfort (try seeing the Barrier Reef, Uluru, Monkey Mia and the Tasmanian wilderness in one week and you'll need a holiday when you get home). But we still don't think of ourselves as particularly worth a journey.

"The statistic that five million people visit us every year comes as a surprise to most Australians. A more realistic slogan to represent our attitude to international tourism would be 'Why the bloody hell would you bother?'.

"The tone of the campaign is alien to my sense of the Australian character -- aggressive and aggrieved rather than calm and cheerful (an approach implied by the expression 'she'll be right, mate')."

My article went on to discuss a theory of John Carroll, Professor of Sociology at Melbourne's La Trobe University, that in their relaxed approach to life Australians resemble their native animals, according to. "Peoples, like individuals, take flight into ideology, dogmatism and ranting when they feel under inner threat," Carroll said in the Deakin lecture of 2001. "It is a leading mark of Australia as a political culture to have always and without exception been sceptical of idealism, hostile to extremists, innately drawn to the moderate, the sensible, the unassuming. It points to a fundamental security of being.

"Special warmth has grown for the kangaroo, koala, platypus, and echidna that is more than the cuddly toy sort. The marsupials set a tone, in their way of being. In part it is their lack of aggression, except when cornered. The quiet way they go about negotiating their habitat has affinity with the way the people respond to bureaucratic controls. The kookaburra reminds humans, prone to taking themselves seriously, that they are easy to laugh at."

Of course, having rubbished the slogan in another country, I'm obligated to come up with a better idea. Can you help? If you can think of a more suitable way to sell us to the world, share it here ...

• by David Dale at 01:49 PM
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WHO WE ARE: Ratbags on parade

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 20/5/2007
This nation stands accused of smugness, arrogance, and worst of all, blandness. And this column stands accused of bias. Last week I wondered if Australia was losing its great tradition of ratbaggery - its talent for producing stirrers who inspire and enrage us with ideas that sometimes take decades to turn into conventional wisdom. I nominated Bob Brown, Germaine Greer, Peter Singer, Tim Flannery and Philip Nitschke as Great Aussie Stirrers of the 21 st century.

Several readers pointed out that if we define a ratbag as an individual who provokes debate, then there were three glaring omissions from my list: Pauline Hanson, Sheik Taj El-Din al-Hilaly, and Fred Nile. The readers wondered if I'd excluded them because I disagreed with their opinions. No, it was sheer carelessness on my part. A stirrer is a stimulant to democracy on any side of the philosophical fence. Here are some of the other nominations from readers:

Veronica Brady, a nun who attacks her church's stance on abortion, homosexuality and contraception;
Eva Cox, activist for women's rights;
Pru Goward, who went boots and all into NSW parliament, attacking the sexism of her colleagues on her first day as an MP;
Rachel Griffiths, who took her top off in protest against the Melbourne casino.
Phillip Jensen, the ultra-conservative Anglican Dean of Sydney;
Barnaby Joyce, who resists pressure from his own party and defends what he sees as the needs of his State;
The cartoonist Leunig;
Pat O'Shane, NSW magistrate with a healthy skepticism about the police;
Jenny Shale, "a Queensland teacher with a vision for equity in education";
"The two guys who painted 'No War' on the Opera House".

Such a list tends to contradict the pessimism of most readers about the spreading drought in ratbaggery. Cath Stuart wrote: "Our culture is getting more and more mainstreamed, and there are less and less places for ratbags to exist. If we destroy universities, student unions, trade unions, and (god help us) the AB friggin' C and 'The Glass House', where do we expect 'larrikinism' to exist?

"Most laughter I hear these days is either moronic, extremely bitter and cynical, or too tinged with real despair. Or the smug arrogant kind that thinks if you have enough equity and super and a fat share portfolio for yourself, then nothing else really matters."

Boris wrote: "The sad reality that ultimately Australians are amongst the most passive of populations, which no doubt pleases any incumbent government no end. In modern times it is almost unheard of for Australian people to change things from the ground upwards, and today to have a divergent opinion is too often characterised as 'unAustralian'."

And "The Old Guy" wrote: "In a time of almost vanilla everything, the stirrer spoon should go to anyone willing to put their head above the trench parapet of life and be stupid enough to go over the top. We are so humdrum in our lives. It is unfortunate that in our quest for consumption we have completely forgotten the concept of taste and proportion."

Do you agree? Has the Aussie ratbag been suffocated to death? Join the discussion here

• by David Dale at 06:30 PM
• Comments (26)

WHO WE ARE: Raise the ratbag flag

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 13/5/2007
Call them stirrers, visionaries, or ratbags. They surprise us, irritate us, inspire us and entertain us. Australia has a great tradition of savagely mocking them in their lifetimes and building statues to them after their deaths, when their outrageous ideas have turned into conventional wisdom. But I'm wondering if this country's historic embracing of stirrers is fading.

The 19th century was a golden age of ratbaggery. In the 1830s there was Robert Lyon, a Sydney teacher, who urged making a peace treaty with the original inhabitants of the continent or "your own children, for whose sakes ye have invaded the country, will join with the disinherited offspring of those ye have slain to pour a flood of curses upon your memory".

In the 1840s there was Robert Lowe, a lawyer, who rallied 5000 people to Circular Quay to block the arrival of a convict ship, and warned that if Britain did not stop sending this form of slave labour for the rich farmers, "so will injustice and tyranny ripen into rebellion, and rebellion into independence". (The Brits listened, stopped sending slaves, and an Australian revolution was averted -- some might say unfortunately).

In the 1880s, Louisa Lawson wondered why women were treated as property: "Every man may vote, let his character be bad, his judgement purchasable, and his intellect of the weakest, but an honourable and thoughtful and good woman may be laughed at by such men." She was so silly.

From the 20th century, we have to thank the likes of Arthur Calwell for pushing through the biggest immigration program the world had ever seen, Don Dunstan for pioneering law reform on abortion and sexual preference, and Jack Mundey for demonstrating that unions have a social responsibility beyond making money for their members.

But what's the state of ratbaggery today? Two of the most stimulating stirrers of recent decades - Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Garrett - have been absorbed and neutralised by the political system. That leaves us with these nominees for the title of Top Stirrer of the Noughties:

Bob Brown He's been the only consistent Opposition leader for the past ten years, speaking against detention of asylum seekers, the weakening of industrial relations laws, and the sending of troops to Iraq, when Labor was unable to get its act together. And of course, Brown was green long before global warming was the cause du jour.

Peter Singer He introduced the concept of animal liberation, and has successfully combined rigorous logic with ethical humanism.

Tim Flannery He's been making the case for Australia to cut its population to below 18 million or risk depleting the landscape, and now he's challenging us to rethink our attitudes to nuclear energy.

Philip Nitschke After almost getting voluntary euthanasia legalised in the Northern Territory, he's still campaigning for the right of terminally ill patients to end their own lives.

Germaine Greer She retains her talent to amaze and outrage. Just when you thought you'd figured out what she believes, she challenges you on a whole new issue.

Those are my suggestions for the stirrers we'll be honouring next decade. If you'd like to suggest others, proceed here ...

• by David Dale at 04:10 PM
• Comments (34)

WHO WE ARE: Got to admit it's getting better

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 6/5/2007
One of the most endearing qualities of Australians is their modesty, as manifested in the cultural cringe and the tall poppy syndrome. But there's one time in the year when we must cast aside the drab cloak of humility and celebrate an inescapable fact: almost every day, in almost every way, we are getting better and better.

The proof is in the annual MAP report released by the Bureau of Statistics, where MAP stands for Measures of Australia's Progress. The Bureau has isolated what it calls 14 "headline dimensions" on which the nation's mental, physical and financial health can be judged. And this year we seem to be doing brilliantly on ten of them.

You can read the full report on the ABS site, so I'll just breeze through the bottom lines. First the positives:

We're getting healthier. Life expectancy is now four years longer than it was ten years ago, so a man should reach 78, and a women 83. There's a catch though -- if you are Aboriginal, your life expectancy is 17 years less than the rest of the community.

We're better educated Now 59 per cent of adults have an after-school qualification (degree, diploma, etc) compared with 48 per cent back in 1995.

More of us are working, and we're earning more. The unemployment rate dropped from 8.2 per cent in 1996 to 4.9 per cent in 2006. The average "real net national disposable income" is rising by 3 per cent a year. And this isn't just the rich getting richer. The bureau says the income of the poorest segment of the community rose 22 per cent over the past ten years.

We're comfortable at home. Most of us - 77 per cent - live in houses with one or more spare bedrooms. Only 3 per cent live in accommodation that is too small for their needs.

We help each other. Or at least, we say we do -- "Between 1995 and 2002, the proportion of people aged 18 years and over who reported that they did some voluntary work during the previous 12 months rose from 24 per cent to 34 per cent".

We're more egalitarian. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of women MPs in the House of Representatives has risen from one in 20 to one in four..

But here's the downside of all that lovely progress:

We're endangering our animals and depleting our oceans. Australia is one of the most biodiverse continents on earth, but, says the Bureau, "between 1996 and 2006 the number of bird and mammal species assessed as extinct, endangered or vulnerable rose by 44 per cent, from 119 to 171 ... In 2005, for fish stocks managed by the Australian Government, 24 of the 83 principal species were overfished or subject to overfishing. This compares with 3 species in 1996."

We're degrading our soil and polluting our air. About 4.6 million hectares of agricultural land are "affected with high salinity hazard", says the Bureau, and Australia's greenhouse gas emissions are 2.3 per cent above 1993 levels, "largely reflecting increases in emissions from energy, industrial processes and land use, land use change and forestry".

Maybe next year's MAP report will show how we've started spending some of that extra money we're making on protecting our country's future. What do you reckon?

• by David Dale at 06:58 AM
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WHO WE ARE: The morning fog must disappear

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 29/4/2007
When you find yourself in times of trouble, here's an easy solution: move to Canberra. You'll be fitter, you'll go to more cultural events, you'll be less likely to commit suicide, you'll use the internet more, you'll make more money, and you'll live longer.

Your sex drive will go down, of course. But that's actually a positive, because you'll have more time to concentrate on the important things: your work.

Recent releases from the Bureau of Statistics suggest that if Canberra is not paradise on earth, it is certainly paradise in Australia. Everything is bigger, better and gayer there (compared with other capitals, it has the highest proportion of residents who are prepared to say they are living in same-sex relationships).

The Bureau revealed last month that "a boy born in the ACT during 2005 could expect to live 79.9 years, while a girl could expect to live 84.0 years. This compares with 78.5 and 83.3 years respectively, at the national level."

Not that a great number of children are actually being born there: the total fertility rate in the ACT is 1.65 births per woman, compared with a national figure of 1.81 births per woman.

An explanation for this apparent lack of sexual activity may be found in another release: "Canberrans have the highest sports participation rate in Australia ... Eight out of ten Canberrans (80%), aged 15 and over, participated at least once in sports and physical recreation activities during 2005-06. The national participation rate was 66%. Walking was the most popular activity, undertaken by one-third (36%) of Canberrans during 2005-06. Aerobics & fitness was the next most popular activity (18%), followed by cycling (12%)."

Presumably because it is based there, and because the politicians who fund it work there, the Bureau of Stats is passionate about discussing every scrap of data it can find about the national capital. Look at this menu of reports for the past 12 months, offered on the bureau's website:

"Household Wealth and Distribution in the ACT; School Age Population in the ACT; What will the 2006 Census reveal for the ACT and Queanbeyan areas?; Population changes in the ACT; State of Mental Wellbeing in the ACT; Health Risk Factors: How ACT residents shape up; The ACT Labour Force: Participation Rates and Unemployment Rates for Males and Females; Environmental Issues in the ACT; Tourist Accommodation in the ACT; Schools in the ACT; Recorded Crime in the ACT; Museums and Libraries in the ACT; Average Retail Prices in the ACT; Innovation in Business, ACT."

As a taxpayer, I have to say I'm slightly aggrieved that the Bureau does not display the same fascination with my city, which happens to be Sydney. But if it did, doubtless I'd only get depressed by the perpetual bad news. I guess the Bureau reports on Canberra so regularly in order to set an example of what every Australian city could be like if it only pulled its socks up.

Canberra is like that town called, I think, Seahaven, in the Jim Carrey movie - not the one called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (though that would be appropriate) but The Truman Show. In the film, watching a TV program about Seahaven gave "hope and joy and inspiration to millions", according to the producer. Or it's like Camelot, where "The rain may never fall till after sundown. By eight, the morning fog must disappear. In short, there's simply not A more congenial spot For happily-ever-aftering than here in Camelot."

Thank God it's there, I say. If Canberra did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

• by David Dale at 09:43 AM
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WHO WE ARE: How Italy liberated us

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 22/4/2007
On Wednesday, a nation celebrates the heroism of thousands of young men who sacrificed their lives for freedom. The nation I'm talking about is, of course, Italy.

April 25 is what they call Liberation Day, commemorating the point in 1945 when the Germans surrendered, after occupying northern Italy for the final two years of the war. There'll be ceremonies to honour the partisans who pinned down the Nazis and their Fascist supporters while the Americans, British and Australians moved up the peninsula. It's perceived as a day of joyous victory from oppression.

The Italians came out of the war stereotyped as inept warriors and military losers. But the last laugh is with them. They went on to conquer the world without firing a single shot. All the images of coolness that clutter the collective unconscious of the west in the 21st century originated in the middle of the Mediterranean. Italy set the standards in fashion, film, food, furniture, and futurism.

Australia is their most successful colony. As I've noted before in this column, our national dish has become spaghetti bolognese, our national drink is cappuccino, and our national attitude is mellow. Here's how the cultural colonies are controlled:

The way things look: From the 1950s, the Fiat factory in Turin defined the image of sleekness and speed. The classic (and cliche) Sports Car is Italian. Meanwhile, Milan convinced us it's the only credible source of chairs, kettles, lamps, keyboards, jewellery and cheese-graters. Oh, and Milan made a few clothes as well.

The way we eat and drink: What are the most comforting foods in the world? Pizza and pasta, preferably hand-made. What's the tastiest salad dressing? Extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. What's the trendiest dessert? Tiramisu. Best way to serve ham? Prosciutto. Most interesting sauce? Pesto. Best cheese for sprinkling? Parmesan. Most accessible red wine? Chianti.

The way we watch: Surnames such as De Niro, Scorsese, Coppola, Travolta, DeVito, Pacino, and Tarantino dominate film-making. Italy's particular contribution has been to crime stories, from The Untouchables on 60s television to The Sopranos in the Noughties, from The Godfather in 70s cinema to Ocean's Twelve in the Noughties.

The way we talk: Ciao, bella. If the Mafia hadn't existed, it would have been necessary to invent it, in order to populate a million plotlines about sweaty men with cigars and busty women with big hair, and to enlarge the English language with a label for any tight-knit semi-secret group.

So while we commemorate the last vestiges of our ties to the British Empire on Wednesday, we might also think about Liberation Day, and thank the half a million Italians who changed Australia over the last half century for liberating us from the monotony of our Anglo heritage.

At least half of what makes Australia such-a nice-a place in 2007 is the way we've embraced the most invigorating invasion in history.

• by David Dale at 12:44 AM
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WHO WE ARE: How they bang for our bucks

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 15/4/2007
It may not feel like it, but you're getting richer. We all are. One way to confirm this proposition is to look at the tax we're paying. The Bureau of Statistics reported last week that in the year 2006, the average Australian paid $14,551 in taxes. That included income tax, GST, stamp duty, local council rates, and every other way our rulers have found to screw money out of us. In the year 2001, the average Australian paid taxes totalling $11,118.
That $14,551 could buy a nice round-the-world trip, with a few nights at the Ritz in Paris, for every one of us. So they'd bloody better be spending our money on stuff we need. Because, of course, our governments are getting richer too. We handed the federal government $245 billion in 2006, up from $176 billion in 2001. About $68 billion of that was in the form of GST, and $176 billion was income tax.

We gave our State governments $44 billion last year ($13 billion of which was payroll taxes, and $17 billion was property taxes). That was up from $33 billion in 2001. And we gave local councils $9 billion (up from $6 billion in 2001).

So what do they spend it on, and is it worth all of us taxpayers forgoing those nights at the Ritz? If you take the Government's propaganda at face value, it looks pretty impressive -- $91 billion last year on social security and welfare, $39 billion on health, $17 billion on defence, and $16 billion on education, even if you might raise an eyebrow at a figure of $29 billion for "general government services".

But such Big Picture assertions only boggle the mind. As ever, God is in the details. And when you go looking for the details in the Budget papers, you find a fascinating literary phenomenon. The bureaucrats who spend our money are now obliged to write a description of the "outcome" they expect that money to achieve.

Some are better at it than others. For example, justifying the $7.3 million it received last year, the Office of Film and Literature Classification (our censors) say "Outcome: Australians make informed decisions about films, publications and computer games which they, or those in their care, may view".

ASIO's outcome writer could learn from the censors. How vague is this for $174 million: "A secure Australia for people and property, for government business and national infrastructure and for special events of a national and international significance." Where's the promise to stop terrorism and right wing plots?

The Australia Council justifies its $150 million with "Australian citizens and civic institutions appreciate, understand, participate in, enjoy and celebrate the arts". Do they really? That's reassuring. The ABC's $774 million last year ensured "audiences throughout Australia and overseas are informed, educated and entertained."

The outcome I found most plausible was this: "Informed decision making, research and discussion within governments and the community, based on the provision of a high quality, objective and responsive national statistical service". Can't think of a more worthy recipient of $318 million than the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which keeps all the other bastards honest.

On what do you think the government should spend your money -- and NOT spend your money?

• by David Dale at 01:22 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Sound judgements

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 8/4/2007
The things you take for granted are the things you miss the most, wisely said a reader called Mo in response to last week's column (below) about the sounds that symbolise Australia. She's currently resident in London but got a "lump in the throat (bloody stupid aint it?)" at the aural imagery we discussed. She was not alone in her reaction. Some 40 readers offered suggestions for the noises that make us what we are, which I have attempted to divide into convenient categories ...

Rustic experiences: A creaky gate; lorikeets; didgeridoo; an outdoor dunny door banging in the wind; driving over a cow grate; an windmill turning; rain on a corrugated iron roof; cows complaining as you try to make them get off the road on a long paddock; flock of galahs coming in before sunset; car on a gravel road or crossing a wooden bridge; screen door slamming; the popping of mangroves; geckos chattering on the ceiling; the splat of a cane toad on bitumen.

Urban experiences: The swipe of a credit card; the final siren of any AFL game; Pluto Pups being crisped to greasy excellence; yobbos screaming "F--- off poofter" as their Holden Commodore sails past.

Suburban experiences: The thump thump thump of a creepy crawly stuck in the corner of a pool; the squeak of a Hills Hoist; the screech of a cockatoo before a storm; Magpies warbling; the whine of a mosquito on a steamy night; kookaburras; a car door slamming and the patter of bare feet running across hot concrete at a petrol station; flying foxes fighting over fruit; possums bounding across your roof under a midnight moon.

Advertising: It's Time (the 1972 Federal Election campaign); We're happy little Vegemites; A little each day is a good recipe; You oughta be congradulated; Not happy Jan; Spreading disease with the greatest of ease; Come on Aussie, come on.

Music: the ABC news theme; The Last Post on Anzac Day; Gangajang's This is Australia; Daddy Cool's Eagle Rock; The Skippy theme; Redgum's Only 19; Paul Kelly's Dumb Things; Farewell Aunty Jack; There's a bear in there, and a chair as well; Peter Allen's I Still Call Australia Home; the Neighbours theme; Midnight Oil's Blue Sky Mine; Yothu Yindi's Treaty Yeah; the Prisoner theme - "but that was on the outside".

Sayings: Please explain; Hullo possums; And the winner is Syderny; Bob Hawke "any boss ... is a bum" after Australia won the America's Cup in 1983; Harold Holt's "All the way with LBJ" in 1965; So where the bloody hell are you?; That'll do, pig; You're terrible, Muriel; Tell him he's dreaming; Lock it in; I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie; She'll be right; Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi; A dingo took my baby; Your shout; Yeahhhh; Nahhhh; Lets give the kiddies their Chrissie pressies by the barbie; Avagoyermug; Youwannagomate?; Whadareya?

Any more?

• by David Dale at 12:58 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Bogans, dags, sooks and other endangered species

by David Dale.
Australian culture? What Australian culture? Australian language? What Australian language? There was a tone of bitter regret in many of the responses to the topic raised by this column recently: are Australians just mini-Americans? Today we want to inspire a fightback.

Some readers lamented a loss of national identity, and thought the solution might lie in becoming a republic ("Get rid of the Queen and Ronald McDonald will follow", said Bob). A reader who wanted to be known as "Not Happy" complained: "Once we 'employed people', now we 'hire' them. Once we put people in 'gaol', now we 'jail' them. Once we had 'STD' calls, now we have 'Long Distance'. Once we had 0800 numbers, now we have 1800s. Once we 'hired' videos, now we 'rent' them. Once we made & ate 'biscuits', now we buy 'cookies'."

With the exception of biscuits, this column isn't shedding any tears over those linguistic shifts (a long distance call is preferable to a sexually transmitted disease any day, and "collect" is easier to say than "reverse charges"). But the comment did start us thinking about expressions unique to this continent that are worth preserving.

A book called Who We Are, just published by Allen and Unwin, examines the attitudes and habits that make up a 21st century Australian, and offers an abbreviated national vocabulary. Here, in reverse afferbeck lauder, are some examples of what we'll lose if we internationalise our language:

Zed. The vanishing pronunciation of the last letter of the alphabet. Most Australians under the age of 20 prefer "zee" -- thus endangering that old synonym for sleeping: "Putting some zeds in the air".

Thongs. In America that's the word for g-strings, and they join the British in using "flip-flops" to describe our summer footwear. Australia thinks it invented the thong, but apparently the cheap rubber version originated in New Zealand, based on an ancient Japanese sandal, hence the Kiwi name Jandals (pronounced "jendels").

Smart alec. A pretentious person who shows off knowledge. (Q: Is a smart alec exactly the same as a smartass?)

Skite. Boast. (Q: Would Americans understand the latest cyber jargon for a vanity blog -- "webskite".)

She'll be right. The phrase implies a laid-back approach to work and relationships, signifying calm optimism or complacent fatalism. The Prime Minister expressed the notion during the 1999 election campaign when he said Australians wanted to be "relaxed and comfortable". Soon afterwards, this changed to "alert but not alarmed".

Lair. A show-off. (Q: Is a mug-lair the same as a hoon? And do the Americans have a word for this?)

Dunny. As a synonym for promiscuous, "bangs like a john door" doesn't have the same spark (and see barrack vs root, below).

Dag. An unfashionable person, derived from a term for the matted wool around a sheep's anus, and subtly different from dork or geek.

Crook. Sick or angry. "Don't go crook on me" and "I'm feeling crook today".

Cactus. Defeated, in big trouble: "If she finds out, you're cactus".

Blind Freddy. The person who immediately sees the bleedin' obvious: "Blind Freddy can tell he's a bludger."

Barrack. To cheer a team or player (the US equivalent is "root", which has a different meaning here, so that "root, root, root for the home team" sounds like an invitation to an orgy).

We haven't even mentioned such classics as bodgies, bogans, cot-cases, daks, ratbags, rorts, shonks, skerricks, sooks, wusses, write-offs and yobboes.

What other Australian terminology would you like to see preserved? How would you defend our vocabulary?

• by David Dale at 12:55 AM
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WHO WE ARE: What really happened, if ...

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 25/3/2007
Last week's revelation that the first Europeans to land in Australia were probably Portuguese (before the Dutch, the French and the English) hurls us into a branch of scholarship known as allohistory or "counterfactualism". That's the study of the might-have-beens of the past -- looking, for example, at what the world would be like if Hitler had won the war, if Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, if the dinosaurs had survived the asteroid strike, or if Mark Latham had won the 2004 election. Actually, no allohistorian has dared to tackle the last of these, but you get the idea.

I must confess to being a dabbler in allohistory, and for a while now I've been working on a parallel universe in which all the European nations that sent explorers to this island between 1521 and 1770 made good on their territorial claims and built colonies where they landed. In 2007, the continent once known as Terra Australis Incognita is divided into four nations, temporarily at peace but with a history of shifting antagonisms and alliances -- in the west, Nieuw Holland, in the south Nouvelle Normandie, in the north Java le Grand, and along the east coast New South Wales, a land where the English dumped their surplus convicts after their belated settlement in 1788.

Although the Portuguese were the first to map the Australian coastline, they didn't do much with the territory across from Timor until the late 1700s. That was when they realised the potential of a narcotic plant called pituri (Dubosia hopwoodii), which the local Indigenes were drying and chewing. When Portugal's biggest colony, Brazil, declared its independence in 1822, thousands of Brazilians loyal to the king moved to Java le Grand and established pituri plantations. Over the 20th century, they promoted their export as a healthy alternative to tobacco, using the slogan "Join the dreamtime". By the 1990s Java le Grand's economy, based primarily on pituri and cork, had outpaced both Brazil's and Portugal's.

The French were the only colonists to take full advantage of the continent's culinary opportunities, particularly les cangouroux, les ouombattes, and les quandongs, washed down by fine wines made with grapes transplanted from Bordeaux. The settlers of Nouvelle Normandie reached agreement with the Indigenes to harvest the local game and package it for a fast food that would conquer the world. Grilled spiced mince on a brioche, marketed as "Le Rou", had low-fat qualities that easily surpassed the stodgy beef-on-a-bun products the Americans were trying to export.

In their homeland, the Dutch had too much water, but in their southern colony they had the opposite problem, which they solved by building an elaborate canal system from the western ocean to a new Zuider Zee they created 100 km inland. In the 19th century they used slave labour from Indonesia to turn their country into the flower basket and the coffee pot of Asia.

• by David Dale at 10:53 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Forewarned is eight-armed

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 18/3/2007
You're up for the death penalty these days if you even suggest changing the Australian flag, so I won't go there. But the government has so far failed to criminalise attempts to change Australia's coat of arms, and I'm going to tackle that issue while I still can.

To see it, click here and quickly come back. It's a daggy looking thing, isn't it? A tired old emu and a motheaten kangaroo framing a shield engraved with archaic state insignia. My proposal will update it at minimal cost, while retaining the principles on which it was designed in the first place. I don't want to remove anything, or redraw any existing artwork. I just want to add one detail that will make this mighty symbol more relevant to the current state of our nation.

Essentially what you see when you look at the coat of arms is a meal. Both animals on it are edible -- the emu best served as prosciutto, the kangaroo best served barbecued, charred on the outside and rare in the middle, with beetroot sauce (left). The shield functions as a plate. So any proposed addition should be consistent with that culinary theme.

Where the current CoA notably fails is in portraying the close relationship of Australians with the ocean. Our home is girt by sea and 85 per cent of us live within 50km of it. Immigrants came across the sea, our boundless plains to share, but that, too, is ignored by the CoA. My addition will solve both deficiencies in one blow.

Lets put a third native animal into the scene: an octopus, sitting on top of the shield (where there is currently a star) with some of its arms embracing the kangaroo and some of its arms embracing the emu.

I hit upon this inspiration one morning when I was visiting the Sydney fish market, and saw a whole lot of octopus being tossed around in a modified cement mixer.

• by David Dale at 07:11 PM
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WHO WE ARE: Welcome as a fart in a two man sub

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 11/4/2007
Australia has three virtues which some people mistakenly call vices: the tall poppy syndrome (healthy skepticism); the cultural cringe (modesty); and a scurrilous turn of phrase (sensayuma). In pursuit of the third of these virtues, I asked readers to suggest topical modern variations on such classic Aussie expressions as "a few sandwiches short of a picnic" and "ugly as a hatful of arseholes".

Some readers complained that by their very nature, witticisms about political or social issues were unlikely to become classics, since (hopefully) nobody in ten years time will understand references to Morris Iemma, Peter Debnam, Schappelle Corby, Eddie McGuire, the Qantas hottie, or Brian Burke. Well, maybe Schappelle Corby, since she'll be getting out of jail about then.

Alert reader Morris Graham made this observation: "I fear that in hunting for a modern National Metaphor you are looking for a needle in a haystack, even flogging a dead horse. True, these were common, but not Australian, expressions but if ever there was anything poetic in Australian language it has been replaced by foreign images. You might expect some local colour from Australia's most dominant interest, sport, but the cliches are from baseball, not cricket: 'out of left field', 'ball park figure'. Lleyton Hewitt was reported in a Davis Cup match as 'stepping up to the plate'.

"Don't look for redemption from a new generation. They have no poetry but a new imported language where meanings are reversed: what is 'hot' is 'cool' and what is 'good' is 'wicked'. And there's no room for imagery in SMS. But keep up the search. You might find a flash of gold in the pan some day."

We need only look at the vigorous wordplay sent in to this column in the past fortnight to overturn Mr Graham's pessimism. Here are my favourites:

As boned as an Australian sitcom.
About as politically correct as a Lakemba mufti.
As good as a politician's promise.
As exclusive as the Dick Cheney fan club.
As much hope as the Titanic with Mark Latham in the wheelhouse.
Like looking for WMDs in Iraq.
So unlucky he'd be killed by a tsunami in the Simpson Desert.
As sincere as a second term prime minister.
As popular as a cross city tunnel; as a paparazzo at a Tom Cruise wedding.
Wouldn't shout in a shark attack.
Shoot through like a George Bush supporter.
Playing up like a secondhand whippersnipper.
Slick as snot on a door knob.
Welcome as a fart in a two-man sub.
As useless as a back pocket on a singlet.
The wheel is spinning but the mouse is dead.
My boss goes on and on ... he'd take an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes.
All over the place like a politician in an interview.
Wouldn't turn up at his own funeral.
Going off like your nanna in Spotlight.

Yep, we've still got it. So what if they'll be forgotten in ten years? By then there'll be others, about Prime Minister Turnbull, Opposition leader Garrett, Premier Goward, President Howard, Pope Abbott, etc, etc. The great Aussie insult will never die.

To read or suggest more, go below.

• by David Dale at 05:46 AM
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WHO WE ARE: The plausibility of the periodicals

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 4/3/2007
You can tell a lot about a people from the things they read. But first you need to be sure the information you're given about a nation's reading habits is accurate.

For years, book publishers got away with calling every second release a "best-seller" because there was no reliable public data about actual sales. Now there is, in the form of ACNielsen's weekly Bookscan, which draws figures from the cash registers of 1000 retailers and shows that our favourite literary experiences include Harry Potter, diets, housecleaning, Dan Brown, and Bryce Courtenay.

But bookbuyers are a minority of the population. What most Australians read is magazines. And finally we can discuss with some confidence the particular periodicals they like best.

Confession: in another life I spent two years as the editor of a glossy magazine. I was aware that its publishers went to extraordinary lengths to boost its apparent circulation -- giving copies away with other products; donating or discounting copies for hotels, airlines and other upmarket locations; and sending copies to subscribers who hadn't renewed their subscriptions for months or even years (probably because they were dead). Publishers do this boosting in order to convince advertisers that their spiels will reach vast audiences, because the profits in magworld come from ads, not cover price.

Since then I've been skeptical about the sales figures that were published every six months by the industry body called The Audit Bureau of Circulations. But not any longer. The Audit Bureau has removed from its counting process some of the anomalies I encountered in my editing days, and has just released a whole new chart for Australia's most popular periodicals. We can have faith that this represents a fairly accurate portrait of the reading habits of Australians.

The Bureau claims Australia's top selling magazine is the Foxtel program guide, which averages 816,000 copies a month. I think we can learn more by looking at the kind of publications people need to actually go out and buy, so I've ignored it in the chart below. The other liberty I've taken is including the circulation figures published last year, even though they are not strictly comparable with the new figures. They either show how the popularity of the mag has changed or how many copies had to be removed from the analysis because they were not sold at full price.

What Australia reads
1. Women's Weekly 605,000 a month (apparently down from 610,000 a year ago)
2. Woman's Day 504,000 a week (down from 526)
3. New Idea 411,000 a week (down from 432)
4. Readers Digest 360,000 a month (up from 355)
5. Better Homes and Gardens 335,000 a month (up from 282)
6. That's Life 326,000 a week (down from 346)
7. Super Food Ideas 321,000 a month (down from 341)
8. Take 5 258,000 a week (down from 260)
9. TV week 273,000 a week (down from 281)
10. Cosmopolitan 203,000 a month (down from 216)

We may conclude either that Australians are diminishing their devotion to gossip, scandal and orgasms, or that they were never as interested in them as we assumed.

Two magazines defied the general shrinkage and took a leap in public estimation -- Readers Digest and Better Homes and Gardens. What's that about? Am I drawing too long a bow to see this as symptomatic of a social shift towards conservatism and traditional values? If it's a trend, we'll know in the July magazine audit.

What do you think it means? Tell us here ...

• by David Dale at 10:21 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Ugly as a hatful of ...

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 25/2/2007
The readers of this column have created an essential resource for every scholar of the Australian language. Last week I suggested that if our National Gemstone is the opal, our National Drink is cappuccino and our National Dish is Spaghetti Bolognese (now under challenge from Pad Thai), then we should try to declare a National Comparison, since we're a land that takes pride in its turn of phrase.

My candidate for National Metaphor was The Magic Pudding, because it's the image used most often in political rhetoric and most appropriate to describe the way we regard our continent. But on the very day I wrote that, the British media raised a candidate for National Simile -- the father of a Qantas fight attendant speculated that the people who dobbed her in for dallying with Ralph Fiennes were probably "as ugly as a hatful of arseholes".

I asked for your proposals, and from the 60 dissertations you sent, I derived this glossary of useful comparisons for every occasion:

All over it like a seagull on a sick prawn.
All over the place like a wet dog on lino.
Better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick.
Busier than ... a one-armed taxi driver with crabs, a one-armed bill-poster in a stiff breeze, a one-armed bricklayer in Baghdad, a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition.
Colder than a mother-in-law's kiss, a well-digger's arse, a witch's tit.
Couldn't ... fight his way out of a wet paper bag, find a root in a brothel (with a fistful of fivers), organise a fart in a curry house, organise a pissup in a brewery, pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel.
Couldn't sell ... beer to a drover, icecream in hell.
Dry as ... a dead dingo's donga, a pommy's bath towel.
Face like a dropped pie.
Finer than frog's hair.
Flat out like a lizard drinking.
Full as ... a butcher's pup, a fat lady's gumboot, a Catholic school.
Few snags short of a barbie.
Gone like last week's pay.
Happy as a dog with two tails.
(The winner's) harder to pick than a broken nose.
Head like a chewed Mintie.

• by David Dale at 12:37 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Cut and come again

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 18/2/2007
You've no doubt noticed in recent months the rise of a mode of speech we'll have to call "the unfinished simile". People now say things are "smooth as", "boring as", "sick as" or "funny as" without bothering to complete the concept. It's a verbal shorthand which avoids both the embarrassment of repeating a cliche and the challenge of coming up with a fresh comparison.

Labour-saving it might be, but as far as I'm concerned it's unAustralian. Vigorous metaphors and similes are a glorious tradition in this country, as demonstrated recently by Kevin Rudd when he speculated that Sheik Taj el-Hilaly might be "a few sandwiches short of a picnic". Rudd could have taken the lazy course and just called the sheik "mental as", but instead he drew on a treasure trove of imagery that includes "a few bricks short of a load", "lights on but nobody's home", "not playing with a full deck" and "roos loose in the top paddock".

Australians have always been adept at turning a phrase, and the rise of the unfinished simile puts us in danger of losing this part of our heritage. Here's a way to prevent linguistic atrophy: in the same way as we've declared The National Flower (the golden wattle), The National Gemstone (the opal) and National Colours (green and gold), lets declare a National Metaphor and a National Simile.

The National Comparison, prime candidates:
Flash as a rat with a gold tooth
All over her like a cheap suit
As ugly as a hatful of arseholes
Up that like a rat up a drainpipe
Driving the porcelain bus (or technicolour yawn)
Waddya think this is - bush week?
A basket case (or cot case)
Putting some zeds in the air
All over the place like a mad woman's knitting (or dog's breakfast)
Bangs like a dunny door in a gale
Hanging around like a bad smell.

All are worthy contenders, but my favourite is a metaphor created in the year 1918 by the artist and writer Norman Lindsay, which became so widely used that it ended up with its own entry in the Macquarie Dictionary (defined as "endlessly renewable resource"). Lindsay said his creation operated on two rules: 1) "The more you eats, the more you gets. Cut and come again is his name, and cut and come again is his nature"; 2) If you want to change his flavour, just whistle three times and turn the basin round. Then he'll encourage you to "eat away, chew away, munch and bolt and guzzle. Never leave the table till you're full up to the muzzle."

We're talking, of course, about The Magic Pudding. The world, said Lindsay, is divided into Puddin' Owners and Puddin' Thieves. Paul Keating used to call John Howard a Puddin' Thief, and accused the Liberal Party of repeatedly using Telstra as a Magic Pudding, "from which they could cut a slice to pay for their election commitments." More recently environmentalists have argued that we treat this continent as if it were a Magic Pudding, and thus are exhausting its resources.

So the phrase "a Magic Pudding" is itself a magic pudding, able to be drawn on again and again whenever a politician needs a rhetorical flourish. Lets declare it The National Metaphor.

• by David Dale at 01:03 PM
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WHO WE ARE: Head full of zombie

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 11/02/2007
It seems unlikely that Senator Amanda Vanstone will capture the hearts of Australians with the attempt at a national song she revealed last week. For a start, it is set to the tune of that British hymn to imperialism, Land of Hope and Glory. The notoriously republican Vanstone probably considers this an example of irony, but it will simply sound stodgy to most Australians under the age of 75. And secondly, lyrics such as "shining light for freedom", "valiant into battle", and "nature's earthly heaven" would be too cringe-making even for an anthem, let alone for a song to be used on informal occasions.

Until now, our national song has been Waltzing Matilda, which contains no embarrassing boasts about supposed national talents (unless you count sheep-stealing and suicide). It's a rollicking tale ideally suited to the pioneering phase of our development, but largely incomprehensible nowadays.

In my view, a national song should leave pomposity to the anthem and display our virtues only by implication. We need lyrics which make it apparent that the best quality of Australians is our sense of humour. These would be my eight candidates, and I'd like to get your vote on which is best:

Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport. This would have been the obvious winner, except for the recent confession by Rolf Harris that he is ashamed of the original version, because it contained this verse: "Let me Abos go loose, Bruce. Let me Abos go loose. They're of no further use, Bruce. Let me Abos go loose." Although Harris no longer performs that version, the remaining bush imagery may not be relevant on a continent where 85 per cent of the populace live within 50 km of the sea.

Down Under. A backpacker finds that the land where women glow and men chunder is so fashionable in Europe that a man in Brussels gives him a Vegemite sandwich. It's a cute twist on traditional stereotypes, but the drug reference ("head full of zombie") might lose votes with older Australians.

The Sounds of Then. The narrator reminisces about sitting on a patio breathing the humidity and watching the lightning over the cane fields. He laughs and says "This is Australia". May be too Queensland-oriented to have national appeal.

Shaddup You Face. An immigrant recalls his mother's irritation whenever he expressed nostalgia for his homeland. She tells him Australia is not so bad -- in fact, it's a nice-a-place. Despite her odd pronunciation, she'd have a better chance of passing the government's Australian Values test than he would.

The Pub with no Beer. Various outback characters -- stockman, boss, swagman, blacksmith -- whinge that there is nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear as a bar which only serves wine and spirits. May not be relevant to modern drinking patterns.

I've Been Everywhere, Man. The narrator offers an introduction to Australian geography in a list beginning with Tullamore, Seymour, Lismore and Mooloolaba. Crowds attempting to perform it on public occasions might prefer the version by Norman Gunston, who listed only Wollongong and Dapto.

Australiana. Written by Billy "12th Man" Birmingham and performed by Austen Tayshus, this is not so much a song as a collection of puns (Marsu pee, Al; go, Anna; cossie, Oscar, etc), but it portrays a classic Aussie barbecue.

Neighbours. The most suburbanised nation on earth only needs a little understanding to find the perfect blend. And mostly, we have.

Register your vote, or add your new nomination, below.

• by David Dale at 11:15 PM
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WHO WE ARE: An anthem ready for rewrite

A column about Australia, by David Dale. Published in The Sun-Herald 28/1/2007.
Every year at this time the Bureau of Statistics offers us the chance to conduct a reality check on the national anthem. The just-released 746 page blockbuster called Year Book Australia lets us judge whether we are turning our children into liars whenever we make them sing Advance Australia Fair.

Our land is still girt by sea, and 85 per cent of us live within 50 km of it (still waiting for the ships to come and take us home?). But Year Book 2007 says we're exploiting it alarmingly: "The level of fishing activity has increased over the last decade to the point where almost all the major well-known fish, crustacean and mollusc resources are fully used. Some major species such as southern bluefin tuna, eastern gemfish and school shark have suffered serious biological depletion."

The nature's gifts in which our land abounds aren't holding up too well either. "Changes to the landscape and native habitat as a result of human activity has put many of these unique species at risk," says the Bureau. Since 1999, "the number of listed threatened fauna rose by 20 per cent from 323 to 384 (of which 130 were birds and 117 were mammals)." About half of these 384 creatures are "vulnerable", one-third are "endangered" and the rest are "presumed extinct".

Now for the key line "We've golden soil and wealth for toil". The Year Book reveals that only half of it is accurate. Much more of our soil is brown dust than was the case when the anthem was written in 1878 or even when it was approved by referendum in 1977.

That's partly the result of degradation through over-use and partly the result of climate change. The Bureau suspects 2005 was the hottest year Australia has ever known, but it can't be sure because "most pre-1910 data is not comparable with post-1910 data, because the louvred, white painted screen (the 'Stevenson screen') which is used for sheltering thermometers from direct solar radiation was only introduced as a national standard around that time. Many pre-1910 temperatures were measured in locations such as underneath tin verandahs or even indoors, and cannot be validly compared with more recent data." (Now you'll be able to respond to "What is the Stevenson screen?" at your next trivia night)

We're on safer ground with wealth and toil. The net worth of the average Australian household is $467,600 (assets of $537,100 minus liabilities of $69,400). That makes us rich and rare among the tribes on this planet. The Bureau says there has been a real growth of 21 per cent in the "equivalised disposable income" of the average household since 1995. That's because we're toiling harder -- average hours worked per week by a full time employed person rose from 39.1 in 1986 to 40.1 in 2006.

And we do share our boundless plains with those who've come across the seas. The Year Book

• by David Dale at 12:16 AM
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WHO WE ARE: "We don't want to be up ourselves"

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald 21/1/2007.
As I suspected, the readers of this column have the answer to the eternal mystery: why Australians won't go to see their own films. In fact, they have many answers, as revealed in their reactions to last week's commentary on the cultural cringe (see below).

Carl D. Thompson pointed out that "to be successful a movie must offer people an avenue of escape ... I do not believe that people are interested in paying the high cinema prices to watch a movie about someone who is as miserable and desperate as they are."

Agner Sorensen suspects the problem is with the way Australian films look: "If you note with most high production films the filming and the accent used by actors show a high degree of affluence, which makes films easier to watch. So the clear film, colours, and sharpness of the production bring out quality films, and this level of quality is not usually found in Australian films, due to the climate being drier in Australia, so scenery is not lush colours, the same as is found in wetter places around the world. If you watched Cold Mountain, it was set in a time of poverty but the film had the richness of vibrant colours which showed the richness of the setting, the background affluence."

Tony Llewellyn-Jones says there's a problem of timing: "I often despair at how and when distributors and exhibitors release product, often in the same month - or even the same week. They cannot survive so close together. Maybe we make too many films ... We need to push for co-operation between competing product. If only we didn't speak 'English'!"

A reader who wishes to be known as The Punchbowl Punisher wonders if Australians are too sophisticated for their filmmakers. "Australia is now a different place than it was 10 years ago. We can talk all we like about poorly performing funding bodies, underdeveloped scripts, poor marketing, small population and overseas competition but there is a fundamental reason why there are more misses than hits.

• by David Dale at 10:17 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Inferiors R us

A weekly column by David Dale.
The cultural cringe is making a comeback. Australians are going through one of those phases where the world seems to like us more than we like ourselves. The cringe -- a tendency to avoid our own creations because we think other countries do everything better than we can -- was the dominant national attitude until the mid 1970s. Then, confronted with evidence that our actors, our directors, our chefs and our models were conquering the world, we shifted for a couple of decades to the cultural strut. Now the inferiority complex is reasserting itself.

The international media monitoring agency Eurodata has just released its NOTA (New On The Air) report on the most trendsetting TV shows around the planet. You'll be heartwarmed to learn that two little Aussie battlers receive special mention. Under the heading "factual programming", Eurodata says:

• by David Dale at 10:54 PM
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WHO WE ARE: Boozers, slackers, breeders

A weekly column by David Dale.
Published in The Sun-Herald, 31/12/2006.
This is the last day on which I can write the words "This is what Australians learned about themselves this year", if what I mean is 2006. If you're reading this with a hangover from New Year's Eve festivities, cast your mind back to the year when the Bureau of Statistics declared Australia to be a nation of ...

Wheezers. Our rate of asthma is the second highest in the world (after Scotland) -- 10 per cent of Australians say they have it, and it's the most common disorder of children under 14.
Geezers. Half the population are now over the age of 37, and 15 per cent are over 65. A century ago, the median age was 22 and only four per cent were over 65. That's because medicine is prolonging our lives. The Bureau reported that this year's "standardised death rate" of 6.0 deaths per 1,000 population is the lowest on record, way down from 9.8 in 1985. Soon we'll all live forever, and our schools will be turned into nursing homes.
Boozers. While 62 per cent of adults drink alcohol at least once a week, 13 per cent drink at what the bureau calls a risky to high risk level -- averaging more than four glasses of wine or beer a day for men, more than three glasses a day for women. The bureau warns that this kind of alcohol consumption makes them prime candidates for "heart, stroke and vascular diseases, liver cirrhosis and some cancers. It also contributes to disability and death through accidents, violence, suicide and homicide." In 1995, only 8 per cent drank at a level risky to health.
Speeders. Only 14 per cent of Australians use public transport, while 80 per cent use cars to get to work or education. The Bureau says 11.2 million passenger vehicles were registered in 2006, up 11 per cent on 2002.
Slackers. We sit around too much, with 70 per cent of adults confessing exercise levels less than the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of moderate activity a week. Of these, nearly half recorded no useful exercise at all in the two weeks before they were surveyed. The bureau warns that this kind of physical inactivity "increases all causes of mortality, doubles the risk of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and obesity. It also increases the risks of colon and breast cancer, high blood pressure, lipid disorders, osteoporosis, depression and anxiety."
Sinners. We're getting married later, or not at all. The median age for men to marry is now 32 (up from 29 in 1995) and for women it's 30 (up from 27). And 76 per cent of people who get married say they lived together beforehand. Tasmania is the wickedest State --

• by David Dale at 01:38 AM
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WHO WE ARE: Yobbos, intellectuals and romantics

A weekly column by David Dale.
YOU can judge a nation by the ways it entertains itself. This column's holy grail is a unified field theory that will explain everything that Australians enjoy, and the best clues come at this time of year, when we can amalgamate the amusements upon which Australians spent their money. In the best tradition of scientific scholarship, lets examine the evidence before we offer the theory. Here's all you need to know about the shared cultural experiences of the great southern land this year ...

Australia's favourite movies of 2006 (in cinema and on DVD):
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest; The Chronicles of Narnia; The Da Vinci Code; Casino Royale; Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan; Ice Age 2: The Meltdown; Cars; The Devil Wears Prada; Over The Hedge; High School Musical; Kenny; X-Men 3: The Last Stand; Click; Walk The Line. All these flicks were seen by more than 900,000 of us.

Our favourite albums in 2006:
Back To Bedlam, James Blunt; The Winner's Journey, Damien Leith; Boned, the 12th Man; two Motown albums, Human Nature; I'm Not Dead, Pink; Tea and Sympathy, Bernard Fanning; Ultimate Kylie, Kylie Minogue; Wolfmother, Wolfmother; The Secret Life of, The Veronicas; Black Fingernails, Red Wine, Eskimo Joe; Here Come The Drums, Rogue Traders; Stadium Arcadium, Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Each of those was bought by more than 200,000 of us.

Our favourite television in 2006:
The Commonwealth Games opening; the footy finals;the Beaconsfield miners interview; Dancing with the Stars; Border Security; Thank God You're Here; The Men's Open Tennis Final; the Australia vs Italy World Cup match; Desperate Housewives; House; Grey's Anatomy; the Terri Irwin interview; CSI; The Biggest Loser. They were watched by more than two million of us.

Australia's favourite reading in 2006: the magazines Women's Weekly (610,000 copies a month); Woman's Day (526,000 a week); New Idea (432,000 a week); and Readers Digest (355,000 a month); and the books The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet (244,600); Spotless (Lush and Fleming -- 238,000); The Da Vinci Code (167,400); Sybil (Bryce Courtenay 157,500); Guinness World Records 2007 (157,450); Cross (James Patterson - 88,100); The Valley (Di Morrissey - 85,400).

Our favourite Google searches:
Qantas, Jetstar, Australian Idol, Steve Irwin, Paris Hilton, Trading Post, Myspace, Jessica Alba, AFL, Wikipedia. (For detail, go to the Australian section of google's monthly archives)

So there's your data. What does it make us:

• by David Dale at 12:06 AM
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WHO WE ARE: A little examination

A column about Australia, by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 17/12/2006.
The only word for it is uncanny. Last Sunday in this column (see below) I discussed the US Government's plans for a new citizenship test, and suggested some questions that might be used if Australia were to follow suit. The very next day, John Howard announced he was going to introduce a test based on the American model.

I suggested last week that any citizenship test could source its questions from the little book Who We Are: A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin), which was inspired by this column's readers. Mr Howard did say on Monday that applicants for naturalisation would be given "reading materials" to prepare them for interrogation, so I live in hope. I fear, however, that he may have been having a slap at this column's inclusion of popular culture topics when he said: "This is not some kind of Trivial Pursuit". One person's Trivial Pursuit is another person's deep understanding of what separates human beings from the animals.

In any case, I have done some rethinking about the kind of questions that should be in the citizenship test. As Mr Howard knows, the reason Australia changed in the past 50 years from one of the dullest places on earth to one of the most interesting was immigration. If we're to avoid sinking back into boredom we must keep adding variety to the populace. So here's a quiz designed not to frighten away would-be citizens but to educate them about the land they want to make their own ...

• by David Dale at 12:15 AM
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