I read a report (to do with Darwin IIRC) from 2003 that showed Sydney getting more religious (and conservative), certainly more than any other main city. The author said that it may be because of Sydney's immigrant inflows that it is becoming more religious and conservative. Which I thought interesting.

All Australia ever does is talk about itself - incessantly. It is just one big useless incestuous navel gazing. We have a great history of action and innovation. That should be guiding our cultural and social history. Not the ineffectual "lets talk about Australia some more".

I guess I am saying these people should write narratives from our history and the actions and events of our people rather than writing about what Australia "means". Because the latter is bs without the former.

South Australia being most utilitarian of all. I mean, look at who was involved in its founding, as inscribed in the street names of Adelaide:

Grote Street
Wakefield Street
Bentham Street
Mill Street

Could go on and on ...

David,
utilitarianism as Australia's public philosophy is one reason why a right's discourse struggles to gain a toehold in our political culture. It is currently entering our political culture/policy culture through talk about property rights.

Good point about the political history though. As the standard narrative about our political culture--- as stated in this article--- says:

Australia's political and strategic cultures are deeply Western in character and---to the bextent that any theory can provide a basis for understanding political and strategic behaviour---they are best understood in terms of American historian, Louis Hartz's 'fragment theory'. According to Hartz, Australia is an historical offspring of European civilisation in general and of Britain in particular--a society transplanted into an alien environment where cultural loyalties persisted long after the growth of local nationalism. As a colonial fragment, Australia bore the powerful culturalimprint of 19th-century British values and beliefs...

This conventional narrative holds that as a result:

19th-century Australian colonial politics were dominated by the utilitarian ideas of Jeremy Bentham, the reformism of the English Chartist movement and a social view of nationalism. These features ensured that the Great South Land developed as a New Britannia rather than as a New Jerusalem....Those that triumphed in Australian politics by 1901--such as Edmund Barton, George Reid and Alfred Deakin--were Benthamites, and they made utilitarianism the dominant political ideology of 20th-century Australia. This philosophical consensus meant that the Australian national style of politics became pragmatic and instrumental, and centred around social economics, emphasising the requirements of material prosperity.

This is pretty standard stuff. Isn't Rundle an editor of Arena? How come he's forgotten this kind of intellectual history? isn't this kind of history taught any more?

Cameron,
A sentence in the linked article article makes the point well:-- 'Australian nationalism was, and remains, social and conservative rather than ideological and utopian in character.' Nationality has been a strong component of Australian political culture, but, alas, Australian nationalism is not really explored apart from it being grounded on mateship and the Anzac tradition to bind the people of a nation.

Nationality comes from Herder and the Romantics not the Benthamite utilitarians.

Australia is a deeply utilitarian country and a good thing too. Romantic nationalism is an ideology drenched in blood.

John,
romantic nationalism is very diverse---it can mean the development of national languages and folklore, the spiritual value of local customs and traditions, or the "self-determination" of nationalities. It underpinned, and provided the justification for, the flowering of Australian culture in the 1890s and under the social democrats in the 1970s (EG Whitlam).This placed itself in opposition to the imperial legitimacy of the state from the "top down" culture emanating from Britain as an imperial/colonial power.

I presume you mean ethnic nationalism as distinct from civic nationalism? It is a classic division.

Gary, you're right that I mean ethnic nationalism, which is, I think, the version propounded by Herder.

Civic nationalism is much closer to utilitarianism in spirit.

John,
'Maybe Herder' should be operative here as Herder is more about cultural nationalism based on the folk with a shared past and culture, than based on an ethnic nationalism where ethnicity is tied to race.

The 1890s cultural nationalism was based on the folk as ethnic as the white British race. The cultural nationalism of the 1970s was that of folk as the Australian people composed of diverse ethnicities.

If Herder is seen as a philosopher of national culture and ethnic naitonalism, then ethnicity here is to be understood to be rooted in the idea of social groups, marked especially by shared nationality, tribal affiliation, religious faith, shared language, or cultural and traditional origins and backgrounds.

It should be contrasted with ethnicity as race where race is understood as rooted in the idea of biological classification of Homo sapiens to subspecies according to chosen genotypic and/or phenotypic traits.