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The Idea of Australia (2025) Season 1 Episode 4
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00:00For the best part of 20 years, my career took me overseas.
00:16My nostalgic view of Australia was challenged by the place I returned to.
00:23I wonder, is it time that we all began to reimagine what is the idea of Australia?
00:29When I close my eyes and think of Australia.
00:33I see my dad in his shorts mowing the grass.
00:36The surf lifesaver, the footballer.
00:38Meat pies, Vegemite, big sky, big red dirt road through the desert.
00:43This is like a country, there's no question about it.
00:45I mean, if you're born in Australia, you've won the luxury.
00:48What an extraordinary polyglot place it is.
00:52It is astonishing.
00:53But the idea of who we are as a nation is still a work in progress.
00:59It sparks debate and conflicting views.
01:02It's been served up to our people and it's a shit sandwich.
01:06There is something great and awful about Australia.
01:09This is the story of how Australian films, artists and national icons have shaped our identity.
01:17We grapple with who we are.
01:21Because if you ask what is an Australian story, you're going to get a hundred different answers.
01:26Still called Australia.
01:33We're seeing so much richness, so much beauty with new writers telling old, old, old stories.
01:40I'm astonished to see Australian successes in everything from opera to art to Oscars.
01:46I mean, it's against the odds that we do it, but we do.
01:49That's something that's really beautiful that art does is it brings us together
01:53and it makes us see the humanity in ourselves and in others.
01:57The story we've written for ourselves is incomplete.
02:02Australians have been very much inclined to throw the white blanket of forgetfulness over the past.
02:07We can just invent it as we like.
02:09What is the purpose of a national history?
02:12Is it truth telling or is it nation building or can they be both?
02:16In a rapidly changing and challenging world, how can storytelling help unearth the truth?
02:23We know the world!
02:24To reveal who and what we really are.
02:28I do think that artists are a great way to get to the soul of a nation.
02:32What the arts and culture does, it allows us to explore through the brilliance of others who we are as humans.
02:38If you do understand Australia better, well that love is a deeper and truer love because it's based on truth.
02:46But to truly imagine our idea of Australia, this extraordinary expression of culture, is only part of the story.
02:53How else might we move forward and forge a nation that we can all be proud of?
02:58The Australia I love being part of today is bursting with unique creative expression and vibrancy.
03:16I think for a relatively small nation, there are so many areas of success.
03:32You look at the success of Australian poets, an orchestra like the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
03:38Your architects are going great internationally.
03:41You look at the success of many of your artists.
03:44Australia's got a great story to tell about its own culture.
03:47Australia punches above its weight in terms of producing international quality talent.
03:52We love to think we're a nation of sportsmen and women.
03:55But in fact, the culture is much wider than that.
03:58I was told that more people go to art galleries in Australia than go to football games.
04:02But this is no recent phenomenon.
04:05Since the late 19th century, the arts have been at the heart of who we are.
04:10In the early days of Australia, there was a fund for writers that was a huge valuing put on literary expression.
04:19The early Australian film industry was enormously innovative.
04:22We were producing fabulous art.
04:26There was a self-confidence that was best expressed by the artists and creatives,
04:32that they were willing to see things that maybe other people didn't notice and to express it
04:37and to find a way of communicating that through their art and their skill.
04:45J.C. Williamson was a theatrical entrepreneur who came to Australia in the middle of the 1870s
04:52and staged a play called Struck Oil, which ran for a unique 42 nights,
04:58which is the longest that any play has ever run in the Australian colony.
05:02And from that, then establishes the largest and probably most commercially successful theatre empire in the history of theatre.
05:11It was like the Disney of its day.
05:13Artistically though, it is just not interested in local drama.
05:19The plays performed derived almost entirely from the British motherland.
05:24It was a trend that continued for decades.
05:29By 1950, this lack of self-confidence in telling our own stories led to the coining of the infamous phrase,
05:37the cultural cringe.
05:39The idea that Australia was beholden to Britain for its culture,
05:42that it couldn't create anything of its own that was worth anything,
05:45really came to a head during the 1950s.
05:49And here they are at last, amongst us, painting the big town red, white and blue.
05:54An unwillingness to engage with the uniqueness of what the Australian experience offered and produced.
06:00And so there was a cringe.
06:01You see, so many people think of Australia as a land of kangaroos and rabbits.
06:06But this isn't so?
06:07No, it's absolutely true.
06:10Australians have a reaction to their own culture where they just downgrade it.
06:15They give it a deficit.
06:16Doesn't matter how good it is, unless it's happening in America or Britain,
06:19in which case it gets an increment.
06:20But if it's happening here, then it must be slightly less than good.
06:24We always sent our drunkards and lunatics to the colonies, didn't we?
06:27Oh, come, my dear.
06:29I've yet to meet here a person of real refinement.
06:32The idea of cultural cringe in Australia is something about Australia as a country.
06:38Australia is, or has been for most of its history, a white-identified colony.
06:44So there is a level of insecurity in Australia.
06:48The Colonel and Mrs Bryant.
06:51Australia's always looked for validation from the grown-ups, the parents.
06:55The US, before that the UK.
06:58I think some of the self-belittling commentary has taken hold as well,
07:02and has created this sense that there is this kind of awful anti-intellectualism.
07:07I mean, that's just nonsense.
07:09He's got a great big grin and a great big chin.
07:12Give him half a chance, he'll be in life then.
07:14I mean, I've always been struck not by the cultural cringe, but Australia's cultural clout.
07:18I mean, when I grew up, for instance, every single British journalist wanted to write like Clive James.
07:23Good evening and welcome to the All-Australian Talk Show, where the talkers are all Australians and the show is all talk.
07:30Today, what do you do Clive at the university?
07:32I study English literature.
07:33Oh, you're a poet.
07:34But Clive James left Australia for Britain, finding new opportunities and international acclaim.
07:41He was part of an exodus in the 50s and 60s of some of our best and brightest.
07:47From Robert Hughes.
07:48One doesn't get very much landscape painting of this quality.
07:51Certainly not in Australia, but not in New York either.
07:54To Germaine Greer.
07:56Funny, but Australia's the only place where I've got absolutely no prestige at all.
07:59Just none.
08:00I am treated there as a rat bag.
08:02And Barry Humphreys.
08:04It seems to me that Australia has always produced a very high percentage of talented people for the size of its population.
08:11In terms of Australians leaving Australia to become stars is also related, I think, to the cultural cringe.
08:18Because once you start doing that, you start losing your creative class.
08:21They go.
08:22That starts to tell you, no, you're not the sort of place that can support your artists.
08:26And that becomes a kind of reinforcing prophecy then.
08:29And it's kind of always the case here that if someone has had international success, that is more important than success in Australia.
08:39So the villager has to go to the big city and buy the big fur coat and come back and say, hey, my people, look at me.
08:49I've made it.
08:50And then the villagers look and say, oh, my God, our person has returned from the big city with a big fur coat.
08:58I'm happier in denim than fur.
09:01I think Australia has always been a hotbed of talent and people have taken risks and obviously seen something in us.
09:07But the trailblazers who left Australia in the mid 20th century made it easier for the likes of me to pursue a career overseas decades later.
09:16I don't even think you're capable of committing to anybody or anything, even yourself.
09:21The big difference, of course, was that I wasn't leaving behind some kind of cultural backwater.
09:27You saw that man assault you.
09:29By the early 2000s, Australian creatives had been telling their own unique stories for some time and sharing them with the world.
09:37And we've been doing it proudly ever since.
09:40We produce people who can enter another market and have a high skill level, a level of professionalism and who will have done things that their peers will not have done.
09:53The new queen of Hollywood is Margot Robbie and has had an extraordinary record of success and now is vaulted into a new stratosphere.
10:02Whatever the art is, people around the world would tell you there's an Australian somewhere who has beaten everyone else on the world stage to deliver something that tells us something about ourselves.
10:12And I think people do look at us and think that we are a cultural powerhouse.
10:15And the truth is, artistic Australians have always left these shores to pursue their dreams and showcase their talents.
10:25Con Colliano was a tightrope walker extraordinaire.
10:30Born in 1899 in the Northern Rivers, he was known as the Wizard of the Wire.
10:37He looks like a young Valentino.
10:40As a teenager, Con became the very first person to master the forward somersault, starting and landing on the wire.
10:48He was renowned throughout the world, performing in North America and Europe.
10:52But his story was not how it appeared to be.
10:56His Aboriginal mother and Irish father took the name Colliano to mask their ten children's Indigenous heritage and to give the family a circus flair.
11:08This necessity to deny identity has been part of our story of silencing.
11:14And not just for First Nations artists.
11:17Assimilating, fitting in and excluding voices has often been a hallmark of our narrative.
11:24It's the test, you see.
11:25Test?
11:26I have to pass a test to have a room?
11:28I got my vaccination.
11:30Because we have survived the white man's world.
11:37And you know, you can't change that.
11:39Australia has had amazing storytellers and filmmakers, media makers from the beginning.
11:47But we've always come up against gatekeepers who deal with scarcity and say, no, we can't tell that story.
11:54We might drop the women from that story because we can only do five characters.
11:59And the fact that great stories are being discarded is a national shame.
12:04When you have a fairly monocultural group of people making choices, you'll have a body of work that sits within certain parameters.
12:14I'll give you an example.
12:16When I was at film school, all of my white peers, their biggest worry was that their story might be gazumped by someone else.
12:28Because they were working within a certain field, like say a rom-com or a horror movie, and they were worried that someone else would tell their story.
12:37I knew that no one else was going to tell my story.
12:40In terms of gatekeeping, I don't know if that's really changed.
12:46I mean, the network execs and the bosses upstairs are still white, aren't they?
12:53I wouldn't try to throw your weight around.
12:55Finding a pathway to tell stories that truly reflect our national identity has always been challenging.
13:04And sometimes the barriers along the way have been self-imposed, led by government.
13:10Not so long ago, right through the middle of the 20th century, Australian censors banned anything that might cause offence.
13:18Their aim was to keep Australia nice.
13:22I'm watching scenes cut from imported films that were never seen by the Australian public.
13:29Thankfully, the censors had backed off by the time I hit the screens.
13:36Kind of a good thing.
13:38They might have taken out some of my most famous lines.
13:41Stick your drink up your arse, Tanya. I would rather swallow razor blades than drink with you.
13:47Like that one.
13:50The history of censorship in Australia extends well beyond films.
13:55In what's known as the census library in the outer suburbs of Sydney, there are around 800 boxes of books, magazines, comics and educational literature that the Australian government banned for most of the 20th century.
14:10Australia actually is one of the most censorious countries in the English speaking world.
14:15I was looking for that word, censorious.
14:18What made us so censorious?
14:20One answer is that it was just because we could be, because we could draw a cordon around the nation and control imports.
14:28Most of the 20th century, we were a quarantined country that cut ourselves off and said, we are different from the rest of you.
14:34Was it sex? Was it politics? Was it about being critical of England? Like what got the ire?
14:41Yeah, well, by far the majority of bannings were for obscenity. So you could be banned for blasphemy, obscenity and sedition.
14:48So you've got quite a selection of material here.
14:51That one.
14:52Okay, now I'm desperate to open up these brown bits in my bags.
14:55Yes, you do it.
14:56Am I allowed to touch?
14:57Yeah, I think you're allowed to.
14:58Okay, let's see. What is it?
15:01What?
15:02Catcher in the Rye.
15:03So why did we ban this classic coming of A?
15:06Because it's got some rude words in it.
15:08He uses hell and goddamn on the very first page.
15:11That was enough almost to be banned in the late 1950s.
15:14Fuck.
15:15If you ever use the F word in a book, definitely banned.
15:18Did it create a kind of a self-limiting desert in a way of how we expressed ourselves culturally?
15:25Hugely so.
15:26Particularly around swearing, the representation of sex outside marriage and homosexuality and trans.
15:32transgender material, bisexuality.
15:35Those topics were really taboo in Australia for decades and decades.
15:39Much longer than elsewhere.
15:40That must have so affected representation.
15:43Yeah, exactly.
15:44And I think really we can see that in the history in particular of the discrimination and real repression of homosexuality in Australia.
15:52The fact that it just couldn't be represented as an ordinary part of life.
15:55What have we got here?
15:57The why and how of birth control.
16:01Birth control, that's right.
16:03We don't want our ladies to be knowing how to control their own reproduction.
16:08So it was really part of a national mentality that said that populate or perish really Australians needed to have large families.
16:15It was women's responsibility to the nation and that we shouldn't be allowing women to know how to control their own reproductivity.
16:22What a story.
16:23It's an incredible lens to kind of look at our country through, isn't it?
16:27It really is.
16:28How we conceive of ourselves as a nation apart, this history of censorship shows us.
16:34Do you think we're going to be having some of these conversations again?
16:37We have these conversations all the time.
16:39At least once a year, twice a year, there's some censorship controversy of some kind.
16:44The recent one about same-sex parenting.
16:47Opinions change and of course that's how societies transform.
16:51That's how we get a sense of both liberty and safety in culture, which is what we want.
16:57This constant contest about the stories that should and shouldn't be told continues and evolves.
17:04It forms our sense of cultural identity and the very idea of Australia.
17:10G'day Charlie.
17:12You white bastard.
17:13You black bastard.
17:14We grapple with who we are.
17:19Because if you ask what is an Australian story and you do a random sample, you're going to get a hundred different answers.
17:27Well that's not the intention. We're celebrating the end of 20 years of conservative rule.
17:32I think the Australian voice is being written and rewritten all of the time.
17:36I think there was an Australian voice that sounded a certain way.
17:39Go and stick your head up a dead bear's bum.
17:42That voice has changed.
17:43I think it continues to change and is rapidly evolving.
17:46I think it's more important than ever for us to be telling Australian stories and stories that are located here.
17:56But sharing these stories has never been easy.
17:58The debate around what tale to tell has caused a lot of conflict because stories are powerful tools to rewrite history and shape our national identity.
18:10The idea of Australia remains unfinished business, something we're all still grappling with.
18:24The telling of history is part of this contest.
18:27The stories we choose to shine a light on versus those we choose to live shrouded in darkness.
18:35What is the purpose of a national history?
18:37Is it to generate national pride or is it to generate a kind of a critical thinking and interrogation of where we come from and asking the difficult questions?
18:47Unless we find a way, we just write another chapter in humanitarian attempts to reconcile the nation.
18:57There's a sense that history should be uplifting and telling stories of progress, of national progress.
19:04And so those really awful aspects of Australian colonial history get sort of taken out of the histories.
19:12When you're a social historian and you're trying to tell the truth about things, it's not necessarily the most popular thing to do because it's confronting all these myths.
19:22You have to look for what's not there as well as what is there.
19:26You have to read between the lines, particularly in a country which has used silence as a weapon.
19:34There have been moments when we've broken this silence and listened to what the past has to tell us.
19:40The result of the referendum on the Aboriginal question was a resounding triumph for the Aboriginal cause.
19:46During the political and social change of the 1960s and 70s, some historians began to write and speak of the unpalatable truths of Australia's dark history.
19:58A reckoning taken up by some of our leaders.
20:02We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.
20:06We committed the murders.
20:09We took the children from their mothers.
20:13We practiced discrimination and exclusion.
20:17There's a growing shift in understanding about what is the purpose of history at that time.
20:22Is it truth-telling or is it nation-building or can they be both?
20:27The Keating government lost the 1996 election to John Howard who disagreed with that conceptualisation of Australia fundamentally.
20:36You know, we don't have anything to be ashamed of, he said famously, you know, I believe Australia has much more to be proud of than ashamed of.
20:46Reconciliation will not work if it is premised solely on a sense of national guilt and shame.
20:52And he carried on a great deal about the guilt industry.
20:56He carried on a great deal about how can our generation be held responsible for what happened so long ago.
21:03I had a long, long discussion with John, in very strange circumstances, about these very things.
21:09Now, I had to say, look, I appreciate, you know, that you're a patriot and you're concerned about the country and you think that this sort of history does make young people, indeed, no longer have an heroic story.
21:25And in a way, that's true.
21:27Goal!
21:28Goal!
21:31His response to that, his repos, was to wind up again the great heroic story of the diggers.
21:39Australia came of age and was born in 1914, so we didn't have to worry about what had happened before.
21:46With John Howard as Prime Minister, a very different kind of battle ensued for the story and soul of the nation.
21:53Politicians and activists are wheeling out historians to back up their positions on key policies.
22:00The history wars were particularly damaging because they were essentially political.
22:05It was an attempt by the state to close down discussion of something that was considered to be difficult.
22:12Well, I think the history wars really, especially for the right in Australia, they saw all of a sudden the very foundations of European settlement
22:22were being brought into question.
22:25Feeling under siege, a group of historians lined up on one side to defend their view of history.
22:31In the early 19th century in Australia, there were a number of people who had vested interests in talking up the violence about the Aborigines.
22:38And a new generation of historians and commentators lined up on the other.
22:42The trouble is with Keith that anyone, anyone at all, who suggests that there was killing on the frontier, he dredges up something to try and discredit them.
22:52Well, again, let me finish.
22:54Whereas those who say there weren't any masochists, he says, ah, these are the people we should believe.
23:00Geoffrey Blaney was one of those who came out strongly against the sort of history I was writing.
23:05I believe that my reading of Australian past and present is a valid one.
23:11It was he who coined the term black armband that the young historians were in mourning about class and gender and race.
23:21This black armband view of our past reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story.
23:29John Howard's black armband of history is very strong and it's easier to criticise if you like the historians than it is to tell the truth.
23:38To take that idea of paying respect, flip it on its head and turn it into a way of criticising and trivialising.
23:48Essentially, that's what it did. It trivialised the idea of looking at our past with remorse and respect was a breathtaking piece of political brilliance but also savagery.
24:03There's been these writers who have been telling you a pack of lies.
24:08They're trying to turn people against Australia. These people are traitors.
24:12That's the sort of rhetoric that was being espoused by the media.
24:17Ah, I've got you. You're a liar. You're a fabricator.
24:21It was terrible. I mean, I found it quite threatening.
24:25One historian in particular found himself in the crosshairs of attacks.
24:29Manning Clarke has been described as Australia's most famous historian.
24:36But his work became a target for Conservatives who condemned his interpretation of the past.
24:43Your father's work really was celebrated by a generation who were looking to look at our history from a non-Anglo-fied kind of point of view.
24:54His view of the colonial period was complex and he often referred to various people who had been sort of highlighted as great heroes of the colonial period as men with fatal flaws.
25:10How do we keep being proud of who we are as Australians? How do we, you know, have a common ground on big challenges if we just feel bad about themselves?
25:18My father's intention was certainly not to make people feel bad about themselves.
25:23History is an exploration of life.
25:25To understand more about not just where we are now but where we've come from and why we are what we're like now.
25:33And that's what Dad was trying to do.
25:36He would have been deeply hurt at the accusation that he was somehow or another a traitor to his own country.
25:41The article that is published in the Korea Mail says, what about your father? What are the key claims?
25:50The key claim was that he was a communist spy and that was then moderated to an agent of influence.
25:58And this was proved, according to them, by the fact that he'd been awarded in secret the Order of Lenin, which was the highest order at the Soviet Union.
26:06It is an accusation of treason.
26:10It is an accusation of treason.
26:13You're absolutely right.
26:15The story was completely wrong.
26:18It was just fatuous nonsense.
26:20They published the eight pages.
26:22There was huge reaction.
26:25Ultimately, because they provided no evidence and the evidence against it was so overwhelming,
26:30the press council said the Korea Mail should withdraw the story, but the paper never did.
26:36The desperate need of my father's critics to not just attack him, but to delegitimize him at character assassination,
26:47but to cancel my father and cancel his history of Australia.
26:52Do you think you can read Manning-Clark, agree with Manning-Clark, and still be proud of this country?
26:59Yeah, of course I do, yeah.
27:01His relationship with Australia was very complex.
27:04He sometimes was very, very grief-stricken about Australia, disappointed in Australia, critical of Australia.
27:11Of course he was, but he loved Australia.
27:12If you do understand Australia better, well that love is a deeper and truer love because it's based on truth.
27:24Disputes over our history still rage today.
27:28Vandals have defaced several monuments in a popular park.
27:31Scrawled across the statue of Captain James Cook in Hyde Park, changed the date, and no pride in genocide.
27:37The debate continues over how necessary or valuable it is to look back in order to move forward.
27:46I think the history wars show how political Australian history is, and that the importance of history to the nation,
27:54and what stories we tell about ourselves, and where do we want Australia to be, and who do we want Australia to be.
28:00We've got to get rid of the Three Cheers view of Australian history,
28:03and we've got to get rid of the black armband view of Australian history.
28:08These are caricatures, they're ideological fixations, they don't help.
28:13We end up being a divided country today.
28:16It's no big deal.
28:18It's simply recognising what happened and moving on.
28:20Canadians do it, and New Zealanders have done it.
28:24They simply say, terrible thing happened, we understand, we're trying to make better, but we don't.
28:28Newspapers and media have always helped tell and shape the idea of Australia.
28:38In the late 19th century, we were among the most well-read people on Earth.
28:44Australia had a really high proportion of people reading and buying newspapers,
28:48so we were always known as a very literate, very interested in news and current affairs sort of population.
28:59So every little town, every little settlement had its own newspaper.
29:03So people coming to the colonies in the late 1890s described it as the land of newspapers.
29:08There were so many newspapers.
29:10So how did the land of newspapers become so dominated by one man?
29:14When Rupert Murdoch started out with his first newspaper in Adelaide and then Sydney and then created the Australian newspaper,
29:22I don't think his ambition was anything like the way it plays out now.
29:27Rupert Murdoch's been probably the most powerful player, I think, in Australian politics for the last 50 plus years.
29:33Somehow he manages to know what buttons to press for ordinary people in Australia or in Britain or in America.
29:38He has a common touch.
29:41It's a genius. It's a real genius in terms of message.
29:44And he loves to use the power that he's got.
29:47There are powerful forces in this country that own significant monopolies of the press that control the narrative.
29:56To the detriment, not only our people, but to democracy in this country.
30:02They can influence Australians with just an editorial.
30:08The newspaper can create great controversies.
30:11It can throw light on injustices.
30:14Just as it can do the opposite.
30:15It can hide things and be a great power for evil.
30:18I think the important thing is that there'll be plenty of newspapers with plenty of different people controlling them,
30:25so that there's a variety of viewpoints and that there's a choice for the public.
30:29I think that Rupert Murdoch's power today gives him the scope to shut down debate if he wants to,
30:35to distort debate if he wants to, to incite fear in politicians if it suits his purpose.
30:41Those on the margins argue they've increasingly become victim to attacks from sections of the media.
30:48Fairfax papers report the Jewel Brownlow medalist is now considering immediate retirement.
30:52As long as you play the part and you fit in squarely into a certain box of what you're expected to say and do,
31:03then you can participate.
31:05And if you have divergent views or divergent thoughts, then you will be labelled and criticised.
31:12So the willingness to target young women is really something that is a new low in terms of the use of that corporate power against people whose views may be slightly different to what that corporation holds.
31:27All this does is make Grace look like a child in an adult's world because indeed that's exactly what she was behaving like.
31:35The press have this image that they've very insidiously crafted over a long period of time that I'm this dilettante airhead.
31:46They're not just in isolation, you know, it's not just like one little horrible headline trying to discredit.
31:52It's the cumulative effect of all of these things is to condition people to have a certain view.
31:57But we've now entered a very different era. How news and information is disseminated and consumed is changing rapidly.
32:08And with it comes new players and new power brokers who shape the story of Australia.
32:15It was fake. What we've learned about fake over the last little while. Fake news.
32:20Meanwhile, a major announcement this morning from Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
32:28We're going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms.
32:32It means we're going to catch less bad stuff.
32:34The level of misinformation is about to skyrocket.
32:36There's a cyber war taking place around the planet and bad actors are using social media on an industrial scale to spread conspiracy theories, lies and hate.
32:51Most people are completely unaware that they're victims of a cyber war.
32:55Major conglomerates essentially having all this influence over the content and news that we watch, read, consume.
33:02We've got the creation of these massively wealthy companies that are almost like sovereign nations in themselves.
33:08They've been making up their own rules as they've gone along.
33:11They are a kind of corporation that I don't think we've seen before.
33:15And to a significant degree they have been beyond the wit and beyond the power of sovereign governments to actually determine how they should function in countries like Australia.
33:24I think we need to address media ownership, social media and how disinformation and political acts through how the algorithms are designed.
33:35Otherwise, we're not going to be the great country that we all love and we're not going to progress to where many of us want to be.
33:41Part of our democracy is usually threatened by not having as many voices and I think social media has freed that up and made it possible to hear a thousand voices, but that's almost a thousand uncontrolled voices.
33:52So we're worse off than we were, I think, 50 years ago in terms of getting out information from our media.
33:58The media is a fundamental pillar of a liberal democracy. Without a strong independent media, you cannot expect to have a strong democracy. You just can't. So the weaker our media is in Australia, the weaker our democracy almost certainly is.
34:15And so in this world where technology is king and information is weaponised, how can Australia's many and diverse storytellers continue to challenge us, illuminating not just our past and our present, but also our future.
34:33National institutions are part of the story we tell ourselves about Australia. The ones we celebrate, the ones we revere and the ones we don't have. All help define who we are and what we value as a nation.
34:55Well, we are lucky in Australia that we do fund significant national institutions. National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia, you know, we invest in institutions because we care about them.
35:09The funding of our and the resourcing of our collecting institutions is absolutely vital. This is the sort of basic brickwork of our historical inquiry.
35:20The national cultural institutions really are the memory bank of the nation. I find it particularly telling that there are no national museums that are devoted solely to the indigenous story of Australia, that there is no national museum of colonisation and that there's no national museum of migration.
35:39One of our great institutions is perhaps venerated above all others, an extraordinary honouring to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, telling the story that has so often shaped our national narrative.
35:56I spent most of my life. I spent most of my life working in Parliament House every day. I'd look down Anzac Parade and I'd see a war memorial. And the war memorial captured the spirit and duty and soul of Australia.
36:13We have probably the best military museum in the world. The war memorial in Canberra is magnificent. So we look at every scrap from the Sudan right through to Afghanistan today. We've covered them all except we don't cover this great race war that we had in Australia.
36:30A particular kind of war is being memorialised at the Australian War Memorial. Not the Australian wars. Not the wars that first Australians fought on our soil, on our shores, for their land, for their freedom to exist.
36:48They should not be honoured in the war memorial. They should not be honoured in the war memorial. That is not the brief. That is not the purpose of the war memorial. There should be, in Canberra, at a prized location, a new memorial constructed to the frontier wars.
37:07So the half billion dollars that was recently given to the war memorial, which blows every other budget of any other cultural or collecting institution out of the water, is not going to the service of truth telling about the wars that went on in Australia.
37:25And so a military history becomes one that then is prioritised. A military history is one that is reproduced digitally because part of this huge funding is going to the digital reproduction of many of these documents.
37:36And of course you can see that that is then prioritised as areas of study. So it feeds through to students and what students will then choose to look at.
37:44The Australian war memorial has heard the criticism and will recognise the Australian wars as part of its multi-million dollar redevelopment.
37:56Other institutions and forms of storytelling reveal alternative versions of our national story. Art has always done this.
38:07From paintings dating back thousands of years to contemporary works, including Vincent Namajira's Australia in Colour at our National Gallery.
38:20With Outwards, Vincent's portraits tell our story in such a fresh way.
38:25They critique wealth, power and influence and put First Nations people back in the picture.
38:32It's all done in a style that just, it makes you smile.
38:37And for many years places like this barely showed any black faces.
38:42And standing in front of Vincent's work you just think, God, wasn't that hard was it?
38:50First Nations storytelling in all its richness and diversity now takes centre stage in Australia.
38:58The creatives of today telling a new story by drawing on inspiration from the past.
39:06Long, long time ago, ten of us men went on the swamp to hunt the eggs of kumang, the magpie goose.
39:16I think that explosion in Aboriginal storytelling, it happened because Aboriginal people are culturally natural storytellers.
39:25So this old fella tell him a story.
39:32A story before a long time ago.
39:34There's some unbelievable stories and they're hilarious, some of them, right?
39:38And some are tragic and some are obsessive and some are, you know, who's going to listen to a boring story?
39:43You know, you've got to pass it on for millennia.
39:46You want to tell it around the fires?
39:48It's full of lust and lewd stuff and funny stuff, as stories should be.
39:53And so that you have a lot of willing listeners.
39:55Won't you come over darling, cause I'm feeling blue, and horny too.
40:04And now we're seeing so much richness, so much delight, so much beauty with new writers telling old, old, old stories.
40:14And it's very inspiring and it's going to change the country.
40:24We have a challenge in our country in that first people are only about three and a half percent of the population, right?
40:30So filmmaking is a way that we can reach millions of people.
40:35And hopefully we can open their hearts and inform them so that they can walk in our footsteps for a moment.
40:44Because most Australians didn't learn anything at school about Aboriginal past, history, culture, technology.
40:52When you look behind, you'll see the future in your footprints.
40:56Your identity is always ahead of you.
40:59So, you know, this idea of who are we? Well, we're not there yet.
41:04We don't know.
41:07It seems looking back to move forward also means embracing the ever-changing face of Australia
41:14and giving voice and presence to those who have been silenced.
41:19Less than three percent of statues in Australia are of historical women.
41:24There are more statues of animals than of women.
41:27Who we see on the pedestals around us tells us who we are as a nation.
41:33It's this idea of if you can see it, you can be it.
41:36And the only reason I started writing and performing poetry is because I saw an Arab Muslim woman in a video performing her poetry.
41:45That for me was the impetus to start writing and performing my own poetry.
41:49And I don't think that if I had watched that video that I would have ever thought that I was capable of doing it myself.
41:55When people ask me where I'm from, I tell them punch bowl.
42:00More often than not, they smile and reply, no, where are you from?
42:06I sigh, roll my eyes in an explanatory tone and say, punch bowl, you know, it's near Bankstown.
42:14I worked on a show called The Family Law.
42:16You wouldn't know what it's like to slay your guts out for this family.
42:19We took a Chinese family, very dysfunctional, very fucked up and very normal, relatable and funny and we put them in people's living rooms.
42:32And what was relatable was not their Chineseness, it was actually being in a family.
42:38Thank goodness someone took the initiative to seek outside help for this family.
42:43And I think that that is valuable.
42:45I think that that's one of the things that having other cultures represented can do.
42:50So the stories we now tell because of the freedoms of today are about the life of gay people or the life of women or the life of Chinese here or Muslims in Australia and so on.
43:00So it's all there before us.
43:02That's something that's really beautiful that art does is it brings us together and it makes us see that we are so similar.
43:10And it makes us see the humanity in ourselves and in others.
43:15Storytelling holds up a mirror and reflects who we are, but it can also help change who we are.
43:24One of the things that diverse representation can do is humanise other lives.
43:31The best example of this, I think, is actually gay and lesbian representation on screen.
43:39God's sake Bev I thought you knew otherwise I'd have told you sooner.
43:42That would have made it different I suppose.
43:43Yes it would.
43:44I think there was a long time you didn't see any gays and then suddenly they were everywhere.
43:49Do you have a boyfriend?
43:50No boyfriends.
43:51By doing that it took the fear away from it.
43:55Everyone should be treated equally.
43:57I'm doing it for my brother.
43:58So that when we came to gay marriage, you look at the statistics of how many people were against it to how many people were for it in a relatively short period of time.
44:08And I do think that television was part of that.
44:15What a day for love, for equality, for respect.
44:18Australia has done it.
44:21This extraordinary place and its people have been shaped by collective creative brilliance.
44:27But we can't rely on our storytellers alone.
44:30What else must we do to move forward and create our idea of Australia?
44:40At least 65,000 years of history.
44:44Home to people who have arrived from almost 200 different countries and the only nation on earth that is also a continent.
44:53So, what's your idea of Australia?
44:57A place?
44:58A people?
44:59Or a state of mind?
45:00And can we learn from the boldest moments of our past as well as our missed opportunities to imagine something even greater?
45:08To write ourselves an even better story?
45:19There's a lot of listening has to happen.
45:21You know, the phrase is truth telling, but really truth listening is far more important.
45:30And how might we build a nation that provides a voice and opportunity for all?
45:36Equality and the fair go.
45:39We've got to have a pretty open and frank debate about intergenerational inequality in this country.
45:47It's difficult to come to grips with answers because what we're talking about here is a redistribution.
45:54And so the day when we are all equally Australian, that's the day when we can say, you know, this is one of the most beautiful countries on earth.
46:06My idea of Australia at its best is when we are listening to those who deserve to be listened to, listening to the marginalised and really actively listening.
46:20I'm hopeful for Australia because we're one of the richest countries in the world and we can literally afford to do anything we want.
46:27We can't afford to do everything we want, but we can literally afford to do anything we want if we prioritise it.
46:34I think we can make not just our country a better place, I think we can contribute to making the world a much better place.
46:41And could Australia embrace its extraordinary and unique migration story to become a trailblazer for the world?
46:50My idea of Australia is that everybody who's here feels like they belong.
46:55I hope that my daughter won't have to endure the small aggressions that I had to endure.
47:03I hope that people ask how to pronounce her name.
47:07I hope that people don't typecast her because of her background and her faith.
47:15I hope a young 18 year old girl who might be Indian says, I want to be an actress.
47:20She just turns up and auditions.
47:22She doesn't have to have someone say, sorry, we've already cast our one brown person.
47:27My idea of Australia is an ideal that this could become the most successfully multicultural country in the world.
47:36Got a long way to go.
47:38But I really do believe that Australia could become a global exemplar on that front.
47:43Perhaps it is by facing our fears and taking inspiration from our great achievements
47:49that we can truly become the best version of ourselves.
47:54I'm very positive.
47:55We've got the essence.
47:56We've got the foundations for something fantastic.
47:59I'd love to be here in Australia for a hundred years time.
48:02I tell my grandchildren that the opportunities they've got in front of them now.
48:06But we need to have a go.
48:08We just need to be brave.
48:09We need to push the boundaries, push the envelope a bit, to fix things.
48:13Because most of our problems are fixable if we've only got the courage to do it.
48:18My idea of Australia is that we build upon that great tradition of radical reform.
48:24In the early 20th century, Australia was the most democratic, the most successful society in the world.
48:30Free.
48:31Tolerate.
48:33Raw.
48:34Australians at times have promised so much.
48:37We have done things for which we can always be proud.
48:40We've done things ahead of the rest of the world.
48:42We've shone a light on any number of occasions.
48:45But we are this land of contradictions.
48:48And the two biggest contradictions to me are our fear and our courage.
48:52My idea of the Australia that I want to see is an Australia that is able to conquer its fears and pursue its hopes.
49:03I have great confidence that young people will be able to face the history of this country in a far more open way than has ever been done before.
49:15And the great potential of this country is investing and caring about this extraordinary set of advantages we have.
49:21I have huge ambition for a nation that should we choose to care about it is unstoppable.
49:42It seems that if we can somehow confront and draw upon the past, galvanize the best of who we are in the present,
49:50that we will have a remarkable story to tell ourselves and the world in the future.
49:57An Australia built on fairness and inclusion, a generosity of spirit and possibility for all.
50:03Now that is an idea.
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