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00:00For the best part of 20 years, my career took me overseas.
00:22My nostalgic view of Australia was challenged by the place I returned to.
00:29I wonder, is it time that we all began to re-imagine what is the idea of Australia?
00:37When I close my eyes and think of Australia, I see my dad in his shorts mowing the grass.
00:42The surf lifesaver, the footballer.
00:44Meat pies, Vegemite, big sky, big red dirt roads through the desert.
00:49This is like a country.
00:50There's no question about it.
00:51I mean, if you're born in Australia, you've won the lottery.
00:55What an extraordinary polyglot place it is.
00:58It is astonishing.
00:59But the idea of who we are as a nation is still a work in progress.
01:05It sparks debate and conflicting views.
01:09It's been served up to our people and it's a shit sandwich.
01:11There is something great and awful about Australia.
01:16This is the story of how Australian films, artists and national icons have shaped our identity.
01:24We grapple with who we are.
01:27Because if you ask what is an Australian story, you're going to get a hundred different answers.
01:36We're seeing so much richness, so much beauty with new writers telling old, old, old stories.
01:47I'm astonished to see Australian successes in everything from opera to art to Oscars.
01:52I mean, it's against the odds that we do it, but we do.
01:55That's something that's really beautiful that art does is it brings us together and it makes
01:59us see the humanity in ourselves and in others.
02:04The story we've written for ourselves is incomplete.
02:08Australians have been very much inclined to throw the white blanket of forgetfulness over
02:12the past.
02:13We can just invent it as we like.
02:15What is the purpose of a national history?
02:18Is it truth telling or is it nation building or can they be both?
02:22In a rapidly changing and challenging world, how can storytelling help unearth the truth to reveal
02:30who and what we really are?
02:34I do think that artists are a great way to get to the soul of a nation.
02:38What the arts and culture does, it allows us to explore to the brilliance of others who
02:43we are as humans.
02:44If you do understand Australia better, what about love is a deeper and truer love because
02:50it's based on truth.
02:52But to truly imagine our idea of Australia, this extraordinary expression of culture is
02:57only part of the story.
02:59How else might we move forward and forge a nation that we can all be proud of?
03:17The Australia I love being part of today is bursting with unique creative expression and vibrancy.
03:24I think for a relatively small nation, there are so many areas of success.
03:39You look at the success of Australian poets, an orchestra like the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
03:45You know, architects are going great down internationally.
03:48You look at the success of many Euro artists.
03:50Australia's got a great story to tell about its own culture.
03:53Australia punches above its weight in terms of producing international quality talent.
03:59We love to think we're a nation of sportsmen and women, but in fact, the culture is much
04:03wider than that.
04:04I was told that more people go to art galleries in Australia than go to football games.
04:08But this is no recent phenomenon.
04:12Since the late 19th century, the arts have been at the heart of who we are.
04:17In the early days of Australia, there was a fund for writers that was a huge valuing put
04:22on literary expression.
04:25The early Australian film industry was enormously innovative.
04:28We were producing fabulous art.
04:31There was a self-confidence that was best expressed by the artists and creatives, that they were
04:38willing to see things that maybe other people didn't notice and to express it and to find
04:44a way of communicating that through their art and their skill.
04:51JC Williamson was a theatrical entrepreneur who came to Australia in the middle of the 1870s.
04:58And staged a play called Struckwell, which ran for a unique 42 nights, which is the longest
05:05that any play has ever run in the Australian colony.
05:08And from that, then establishes the largest and probably most commercially successful theatre
05:15empire in the history of theatre.
05:18It was like the Disney of its day.
05:20Artistically though, it is just not interested in local drama.
05:26The plays performed derived almost entirely from the British motherland.
05:31It was a trend that continued for decades.
05:35By 1950, this lack of self-confidence in telling our own stories led to the coining of the infamous
05:42phrase, the cultural cringe.
05:46The idea that Australia was beholden to Britain for its culture, that it couldn't create anything
05:50of its own that was worth anything, really came to a head during the 1950s.
05:55And here they are at last, amongst us, painting the big town red, white and blue.
06:00An unwillingness to engage with the uniqueness of what the Australian experience offered and produced.
06:06And so there was a cringe.
06:07You see, so many people think of Australia as a land of kangaroos and rabbits.
06:12Australians have a reaction to their own culture where they, they just downgrade it, they give
06:21it a deficit.
06:22Doesn't matter how good it is, unless it's happening in America or Britain, in which case
06:25it gets an increment.
06:26But if it's happening here, then it must be slightly less than good.
06:30We always sent our drunkards and lunatics to the colonies, didn't we?
06:33Oh, come my dear.
06:35I've yet to meet here a person of real refinement.
06:39The idea of cultural cringe in Australia is something about Australia as a country.
06:45Australia is, or has been for most of its history, a white-identified colony.
06:50So there is a level of insecurity in Australia.
06:53The Colonel and Mrs. Bryant.
06:57Australia's always looked for validation from the grown-ups, the parents.
07:01The US, before that the UK.
07:04I think some of the self-belittling commentary has taken hold as well.
07:09And has created this sense that there is this kind of awful anti-intellectualism.
07:13I mean, that's just nonsense.
07:14He's got a great big ring and a great big chin.
07:17Give him half a chance, he'll be in life then.
07:20I mean, I've always been struck not by the cultural cringe, but Australia's cultural clout.
07:24I mean, when I grew up, for instance, every single British journalist wanted to write
07:27like Clive James.
07:29Good evening and welcome to the All-Australian Talk Show, where the talkers are all Australians
07:34and the show is all talk.
07:36So what do you do at Clive at the University?
07:37I study English literature.
07:38Oh, you're a poet?
07:39But Clive James left Australia for Britain, finding new opportunities and international
07:46acclaim.
07:47He was part of an exodus in the 50s and 60s of some of our best and brightest.
07:53From Robert Hughes…
07:54One doesn't get very much landscape painting of this quality.
07:57Certainly not in Australia, but not in New York either.
08:00…to Jermaine Greer.
08:01Funny, but Australia's the only place where I've got absolutely no prestige at all.
08:05Just none.
08:06I am treated there as a rat-back.
08:08And Barry Humphreys.
08:10It seems to me that Australia has always produced a very high percentage of talented
08:14people for the size of its population.
08:17In terms of Australians leaving Australia to become stars is also related, I think, to
08:22the cultural cringe.
08:24Because once you start doing that, you start losing your creative class.
08:27They go.
08:28It starts to tell you, no, you're not the sort of place that can support your artists.
08:32And that becomes a kind of reinforcing prophecy then.
08:35And it's kind of always the case here that if someone has had international success, that
08:41is more important than success in Australia.
08:45So the villager has to go to the big city and buy the big fur coat and come back and say,
08:52hey, my people, look at me, I've made it.
08:56And then the villagers look and say, oh, my God, our person has returned from the big
09:02city with a big fur coat.
09:04I'm happier in denim than fur.
09:07I think Australia's always been a hotbed of talent.
09:09And people have taken risks and obviously seen something in us.
09:13But the trailblazers who left Australia in the mid-20th century made it easier for the
09:18likes of me to pursue a career overseas decades later.
09:22I don't even think you're capable of committing to anybody or anything, even yourself.
09:27The big difference, of course, was that I wasn't leaving behind some kind of cultural
09:32backwater.
09:33You saw that man assault you.
09:35By the early 2000s, Australian creatives had been telling their own unique stories for
09:40some time and sharing them with the world.
09:43And we've been doing it proudly ever since.
09:46We produce people who can enter another market and have a high skill level, a level of professionalism,
09:55and who will have done things that their peers will not have done.
09:58The new queen of Hollywood is Margot Robbie and has had an extraordinary record of success
10:05and now has bolted into a new stratosphere.
10:08Whatever the art is, people around the world will tell you there's an Australian somewhere
10:12who has beaten everyone else on the world stage to deliver something that tells us something
10:17about ourselves.
10:18And I think people do look at us and think that we are a cultural powerhouse.
10:22And the truth is, artistic Australians have always left these shores to pursue their dreams
10:28and showcase their talents.
10:31Con Colliano was a tightrope walker extraordinaire.
10:35Born in 1899 in the Northern Rivers, he was known as the Wizard of the Wire.
10:42He looked like a young Valentino.
10:45As a teenager, Con became the very first person to master the forward somersault, starting and
10:51landing on the wire.
10:53He was renowned throughout the world, performing in North America and Europe.
10:58But his story was not how it appeared to be.
11:01His Aboriginal mother and Irish father took the name Colliano to mask their ten children's
11:07Indigenous heritage and to give the family a circus flair.
11:13This necessity to deny identity has been part of our story of silencing.
11:19And not just for First Nations artists.
11:22Assimilating, fitting in and excluding voices has often been a hallmark of our narrative.
11:29It's the test, you see.
11:31Test?
11:32I have to pass a test to have a room?
11:34I got my vaccination.
11:36Because we have survived the white man's world.
11:42And you know, you can't change that.
11:45Australia has had amazing storytellers and filmmakers, media makers from the beginning.
11:52But we've always come up against gatekeepers who deal with scarcity and say, no, we can't tell that story.
12:00We might drop the women from that story because we can only do five characters.
12:05And the fact that great stories are being discarded is a national shame.
12:11When you have a fairly monocultural group of people making choices, you'll have a body of work that sits within certain parameters.
12:20I'll give you an example.
12:22When I was at film school, all of my white peers, their biggest worry was that their story might be gazumped by someone else.
12:34Because 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.
12:43I knew that no one else was going to tell my story.
12:46In terms of gatekeeping, I don't know if that's really changed.
12:52I mean, the network execs and the bosses upstairs are still white, aren't they?
12:58I wouldn't try to throw your weight around.
13:01Finding a pathway to tell stories that truly reflect our national identity has always been challenging.
13:09And sometimes the barriers along the way have been self-imposed, led by government.
13:16Not so long ago, right through the middle of the 20th century, Australian censors banned anything that might cause offence.
13:24Their aim was to keep Australia nice.
13:28I'm watching scenes cut from imported films that were never seen by the Australian public.
13:38Thankfully, the censors had backed off by the time I hit the screens.
13:42Kind of a good thing.
13:44They might have taken out some of my most famous lines.
13:47Stick your drink up your arse, Tanya.
13:49I would rather swallow razor blades than drink with you.
13:53Like that one.
13:55The history of censorship in Australia extends well beyond films.
14:00In what's known as the censors' library in the outer suburbs of Sydney,
14:05there are around 800 boxes of books, magazines, comics and educational literature
14:11that the Australian government banned for most of the 20th century.
14:16Australia actually is one of the most censorious countries in the English-speaking world.
14:21I was looking for that word.
14:23Censorious.
14:24What made us so censorious?
14:26One answer is that it was just because we could be.
14:29Because we could draw a cordon around the nation and control imports.
14:34Most of the 20th century, we were a quarantined country that cut ourselves off and said,
14:38we are different from the rest of you.
14:41Was it sex?
14:42Was it politics?
14:43Was it about being critical of England?
14:45Like what got the ire?
14:47Yeah.
14:48Well, by far the majority of bannings were for obscenity.
14:51So you could be banned for blasphemy, obscenity and sedition.
14:54So you've got quite a selection of material here.
14:57That one.
14:58Okay, now I'm desperate to open up these brown beans in my bags.
15:01Yes.
15:02Am I allowed to touch?
15:03Yeah, I think you're allowed to.
15:04Let's see.
15:05What is it?
15:07What?
15:08Catch her in the rye.
15:09So why did we ban this classic coming of age?
15:12Because it's got some rude words in it.
15:14He uses hell and god damn on the very first page.
15:16That was enough almost for to be banned in the late 1950s.
15:19Fuck.
15:20If you ever use the F word in a book, definitely banned.
15:24Did it create a kind of a self-limiting desert in a way of how we expressed ourselves culturally?
15:31Hugely so.
15:32Particularly around swearing, the representation of sex outside marriage and homosexuality and
15:38transgender material, bisexuality.
15:41Those topics are really taboo in Australia for decades and decades, much longer than elsewhere.
15:46That must have so affected representation.
15:49Yeah, exactly.
15:50And I think really we can see that in the history in particular of the discrimination and real
15:55repression of homosexuality in Australia.
15:58The fact that it just couldn't be represented as an ordinary part of life.
16:01What have we got here?
16:03The why and how of birth control.
16:07Birth control, that's right.
16:09We don't want our ladies to be knowing how to control their own reproduction.
16:13So it was really part of a national mentality that said that populate or perish really Australians
16:19needed to have large families.
16:21It was women's responsibility to the nation and that we shouldn't be allowing women to know
16:26how to control their own reproductivity.
16:28What a story.
16:29It's an incredible lens to kind of look at our country through, isn't it?
16:33It really is.
16:34How we conceive of ourselves as a nation apart, this history of censorship shows us.
16:40Do you think we're going to be having some of these conversations again?
16:43We have these conversations all the time.
16:45At least once a year, twice a year, there's some censorship controversy of some kind.
16:50The recent one about same-sex parenting, opinions change.
16:54And of course that's how societies transform.
16:56That's how we get a sense of both liberty and safety in culture, which is what we want.
17:03This constant contest about the stories that should and shouldn't be told continues and evolves.
17:10It forms our sense of cultural identity and the very idea of Australia.
17:16G'day Charlie.
17:17You white bastard.
17:19You black bastard.
17:21We grapple with who we are.
17:25Because if you ask what is an Australian story and you do a random sample, you're going to get a hundred different answers.
17:32Well that's not the intention. We're celebrating the end of 20 years of conservative rule.
17:37I think the Australian voice is being written and rewritten all of the time.
17:42I think there was an Australian voice that sounded a certain way.
17:45You can't stick your head up a dead bear's bum.
17:47That voice has changed. I think it continues to change and is rapidly evolving.
17:52I think it's more important than ever for us to be telling Australian stories and stories that are located here.
17:59But sharing these stories has never been easy.
18:04The debate around what tale to tell has caused a lot of conflict.
18:09Because stories are powerful tools to rewrite history and shape our national identity.
18:24The idea of Australia remains unfinished business.
18:27Something we're all still grappling with.
18:30The telling of history is part of this contest.
18:33The stories we choose to shine a light on versus those we choose to live shrouded in darkness.
18:40What is the purpose of a national history?
18:43Is it to generate national pride?
18:46Or is it to generate a kind of a critical thinking and interrogation of where we come from and asking the difficult questions?
18:53Unless we find a way, we just write another chapter in humanitarian attempts to reconcile the nation.
19:03There's a sense that history should be uplifting and telling stories of progress, of national progress.
19:09And so those really awful aspects of Australian colonial history get sort of taken out of the histories.
19:18When 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.
19:25Because it's confronting all these myths.
19:27You have to look for what's not there as well as what is there.
19:31You have to read between the lines, particularly in a country which has used silence as a weapon.
19:38There have been moments when we've broken this silence and listened to what the past has to tell us.
19:45The result of the referendum on the Aboriginal question was a resounding triumph for the Aboriginal cause.
19:51During 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.
20:03A reckoning taken up by some of our leaders.
20:06We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.
20:12We committed the murders.
20:15We took the children from their mothers.
20:18We practiced discrimination and exclusion.
20:22There's a growing shift in understanding about what is the purpose of history at that time.
20:28Is it truth-telling?
20:30Or is it nation-building?
20:31Or can they be both?
20:33The Keating government lost the 1996 election to John Howard, who disagreed with that conceptualisation of Australia fundamentally.
20:43You know, we don't have anything to be ashamed of, he said famously.
20:47You know, I believe Australia has much more to be proud of than ashamed of.
20:51Reconciliation will not work if it is premised solely on a sense of national guilt and shame.
20:58And he carried on a great deal about the guilt industry.
21:01He carried on a great deal about how can our generation be held responsible for what happened so long ago.
21:08I had a long, long discussion with John, in very strange circumstances, about these very things.
21:15Now, 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.
21:30And in a way, that's true.
21:33Goal!
21:34Goal!
21:35Goal!
21:36Goal!
21:37His response to that, his repos, was to wind up again the great heroic story of the diggers.
21:44Australia came of age and was born in 1914.
21:48So we didn't have to worry about what had happened before.
21:51With John Howard as Prime Minister, a very different kind of battle ensued for the story and soul of the nation.
21:59Politicians and activists are wheeling out historians to back up their positions on key policies.
22:05The history wars were particularly damaging because they were essentially political.
22:10It was an attempt by the state to close down discussion of something that was considered to be difficult.
22:17Well, I think the history wars really, especially for the right in Australia, they saw all of a sudden the very foundations of European settlement were being brought into question.
22:30Feeling under siege, a group of historians lined up on one side to defend their view of history.
22:37In the early 19th century in Australia, there were a number of people who had vested interests in talking up the violence about the Aborigines.
22:43And a new generation of historians and commentators lined up on the other.
22:48The 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.
22:58Let me finish. Whereas those who say there weren't any masochists, he says, ah, these are the people we should believe.
23:05Geoffrey Blaney was one of those who came out strongly against the sort of history I was writing.
23:11I believe that my reading of Australian past and present is a valid one.
23:16It was he who coined the term black armband that the young historians were in mourning about class and gender and race.
23:26This black armband view of our past reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story.
23:35John 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.
23:43To take that idea of paying respect, flip it on its head and turn it into a way of criticising and trivialising, essentially 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.
24:08There's been these writers who have been telling you a pack of lies.
24:13They're trying to turn people against Australia. These people are traitors.
24:18That's the sort of rhetoric that was being espoused by the media.
24:22Ah, I've got you. You're a liar. You're a fabricator.
24:26It was terrible. I mean, I found it quite threatening.
24:30One historian in particular found himself in the crosshairs of attacks.
24:35Manning Clark has been described as Australia's most famous historian.
24:41But his work became a target for conservatives who condemned his interpretation of the past.
24:48Your father's work really was celebrated by a generation who were looking to look at our history from a non-Anglophile kind of point of view.
25:01His 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.
25:15How 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 ourselves?
25:24My father's intention was certainly not to make people feel bad about themselves.
25:28History is an exploration of life. To understand more about not just where we are now but where we've come from and why we are what we're like now.
25:38And that's what Dad was trying to do. He would have been deeply hurt at the accusation that he was somehow or another a traitor to his own country.
25:47The article that is published in the Korea Mail says, what about your father? What are the key claims?
25:55The key claims was that he was a communist spy and that was then moderated to an agent of influence.
26:03And 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 of the Soviet Union.
26:12It is an accusation of treason.
26:15It is an accusation of treason. You're absolutely right. The story was completely wrong. It was just fatuous nonsense.
26:24They published the eight pages. There was huge reaction. Ultimately, because they provided no evidence and the evidence against it was so overwhelming, the press council said the Courier Mail should withdraw the story, but the paper never did.
26:41The desperate need of my father's critics to not just attack him, but to delegitimize him, a character assassination, but to cancel my father and cancel his history of Australia.
26:58Do you think you can read Manning-Clark, agree with Manning-Clark and still be proud of this country?
27:05Of course I do, yeah. His relationship with Australia was very complex. He sometimes was very, very grief-stricken about Australia, disappointed in Australia, critical of Australia, of course he was, but he loved Australia.
27:19If you do understand Australia better, well that love is a deeper and truer love because it's based on truth.
27:30Disputes over our history still rage today.
27:33Vandals have defaced several monuments in a popular park.
27:36Scrawled across the statue of Captain James Cook in Hyde Park changed the date and no pride in genocide.
27:44The debate continues over how necessary or valuable it is to look back in order to move forward.
27:52I think the history wars show how political Australian history is and that the importance of history to the nation and what stories we tell about ourselves and where do we want Australia to be and who do we want Australia to be.
28:05We've got to get rid of the three cheers view of Australian history and we've got to get rid of the black armband view of Australian history.
28:12These are caricatures, they're ideological fixations, they don't help.
28:18We end up being a divided country today.
28:21It's no big deal, it's simply recognising what happened and moving on.
28:25Canadians do it and New Zealanders have done it.
28:28They simply say, terrible thing happened, we understand we're trying to make better, but we don't.
28:35Newspapers and media have always helped tell and shape the idea of Australia.
28:44In the late 19th century, we were among the most well-read people on earth.
28:49Australia had a really high proportion of people reading and buying newspapers.
28:54So we were always known as a very literate, very interested in news and current affairs sort of population.
29:00So every little town, every little settlement had its own newspaper.
29:08So people coming to the colonies in the late 1890s described it as a land of newspapers.
29:13There were so many newspapers.
29:14So how did the land of newspapers become so dominated by one man?
29:20When Rupert Murdoch started out with his first newspaper in Adelaide and then Sydney and then created the Australian newspaper,
29:27I don't think his ambition was anything like the way it plays out now.
29:32Rupert Murdoch's been probably the most powerful player, I think, in Australian politics for the last 50 plus years.
29:38Somehow he manages to know what buttons to press for ordinary people in Australia or in Britain or in America.
29:45He has a common touch.
29:46It's a genius. It's a real genius in terms of message.
29:49And he loves to use the power that he's got.
29:52There are powerful forces in this country that own significant monopolies of the press that control the narrative to the detriment, not only our people, but to democracy in this country.
30:08They can influence Australians with just an editorial.
30:13A newspaper can create great controversies, can throw light on injustices, just as it can do the opposite.
30:20It can hide things and be a great power for evil.
30:23I think the important thing is that there'll be plenty of newspapers with plenty of different people controlling them,
30:30so that there's a variety of viewpoints and that there's a choice for the public.
30:34I think that Rupert Murdoch's power today gives him the scope to shut down debate if he wants to,
30:40to distort debate if he wants to, to incite fear in politicians if it suits his purpose.
30:46Those on the margins argue they've increasingly become victim to attacks from sections of the media.
30:53Fairfax papers report the Jewel Brownlow medallist is now considering immediate retirement.
30:59As long as you play the part and you fit in squarely into a certain box of what you're expected to say and do,
31:08then you can participate.
31:10And if you have divergent views or divergent thoughts, then you will be labelled and criticised.
31:18So the willingness to target young women is really something that is a new low in terms of the use of that corporate power
31:27against people whose views may be slightly different to what that corporation holds.
31:33All this does is make Grace look like a child in an adult's world because indeed that's exactly what she was behaving like.
31:42The press have this image that they've very insidiously crafted over a long period of time that I'm this dilettante airhead.
31:51They're not just in isolation, you know, it's not just like one little horrible headline trying to discredit.
31:57It's the cumulative effect of all of these things is to condition people to have a certain view.
32:03But we've now entered a very different era. How news and information is disseminated and consumed is changing rapidly.
32:13And with it comes new players and new power brokers who shape the story of Australia.
32:20It was fake. What we've learned about fake over the last little while. Fake news.
32:26Meanwhile, a major announcement this morning from Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
32:33We're going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms.
32:37It means we're going to catch less bad stuff.
32:39The level of misinformation is about to skyrocket.
32:42There'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.
32:56Most people are completely unaware that they're victims of a cyber war.
33:00Major conglomerates essentially having all this influence over the content and news that we watch, read, consume.
33:08We've got the creation of these massively wealthy companies that are almost like sovereign nations in themselves.
33:13They've been making up their own rules as they've gone along.
33:16They are a kind of corporation that I don't think we've seen before.
33:20And to a significant degree, they have been beyond the width and beyond the power of sovereign governments
33:25to actually determine how they should function in countries like Australia.
33:29I think we need to address media ownership, social media and how disinformation and political acts
33:37through how the algorithms are designed.
33:40Otherwise, we're not going to be the great country that we all love
33:44and we're not going to progress to where many of us want to be.
33:47Part of our democracy is really threatened by not having as many voices.
33:51And I think social media has freed that up and made it possible to hear it, a thousand voices,
33:55but that's almost a thousand uncontrolled voices.
33:58So we're worse off than we were, I think, 50 years ago in terms of getting out information from our media.
34:04The media is a fundamental pillar of a liberal democracy.
34:08Without a strong independent media, you cannot expect to have a strong democracy.
34:14You just can't.
34:16So the weaker our media is in Australia, the weaker our democracy almost certainly is.
34:21And so in this world where technology is king and information is weaponised,
34:28how can Australia's many and diverse storytellers continue to challenge us,
34:33illuminating not just our past and our present, but also our future?
34:39National institutions are part of the story we tell ourselves about Australia.
34:49The ones we celebrate, the ones we revere and the ones we don't have.
34:55All help define who we are and what we value as a nation.
35:01Well, we are lucky in Australia that we do fund significant national institutions.
35:07National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia.
35:11You know, we invest in institutions because we care about them.
35:15The funding of our and the resourcing of our collecting institutions is absolutely vital.
35:21This is the sort of basic brickwork of our historical inquiry.
35:26The National Cultural Institutions really are the memory bank of the nation.
35:30I find it particularly telling that there are no national museums
35:35that are devoted solely to the Indigenous story of Australia,
35:39that there is no national museum of colonisation
35:42and that there's no national museum of migration.
35:46One of our great institutions is perhaps venerated above all others,
35:52an extraordinary honouring to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
35:56Telling the story that has so often shaped our national narrative.
36:01I spent most of my life working in Parliament House every day.
36:07I'd look down Anzac Parade and I'd see the War Memorial.
36:11And the War Memorial captured the spirit and duty and soul of Australia.
36:17We have probably the best military museum in the world.
36:21The War Memorial in Canberra is magnificent.
36:24So we look at every scrap from the Sudan right through to Afghanistan today.
36:30We've covered them all except we don't cover this great race war that we had in Australia.
36:35A particular kind of war is being memorialised at the Australian War Memorial.
36:41Not the Australian wars.
36:44Not the wars that first Australians fought on our soil, on our shores,
36:50for their land, for their freedom to exist.
36:54They should not be honoured in the War Memorial.
36:58That is not the brief.
37:00That is not the purpose of the War Memorial.
37:02There should be, in Canberra, at a prized location, a new memorial constructed to the frontier wars.
37:13So the half billion dollars that was recently given to the War Memorial,
37:18which blows every other budget of any other cultural or collecting institution out of the water,
37:25is not going to the service of truth-telling about the wars that went on in Australia.
37:31And so a military history becomes one that then is prioritised.
37:34A military history is one that is reproduced digitally,
37:37because part of this huge funding is going to the digital reproduction of many of these documents.
37:41And, of course, you can see that that is then prioritised as areas of study.
37:45So it feeds through to students and what students will then choose to look at.
37:50The Australian War Memorial has heard the criticism,
37:54and will recognise the Australian wars as part of its multi-million dollar redevelopment.
38:01Other institutions and forms of storytelling reveal alternative versions of our national story.
38:09Art has always done this.
38:12From paintings dating back thousands of years, to contemporary works,
38:17including Vincent Namajira's Australia in Colour at our National Gallery.
38:23With Outwards, Vincent's portraits tell our story in such a fresh way.
38:30They critique wealth, power and influence, and put First Nations people back in the picture.
38:37It's all done in a style that just, it makes you smile.
38:42And for many years, places like this barely showed any black faces.
38:47And standing in front of Vincent's work, you just think,
38:50God, it wasn't that hard, was it?
38:56First Nations storytelling, in all its richness and diversity,
38:59now takes centre stage in Australia.
39:04The creatives of today telling a new story by drawing on inspiration from the past.
39:12Long, long time ago,
39:14ten of us men went on the swamp
39:17to hunt the eggs of kumang, the magpie goose.
39:22I think that explosion in Aboriginal storytelling,
39:25it happened because Aboriginal people are culturally natural storytellers.
39:31So this old fella tell him a story.
39:35A story before a long time ago.
39:39There's some unbelievable stories.
39:41And they're hilarious, some of them, right?
39:43And some are tragic, and some are obsessive, and some are,
39:46you know, who's going to listen to a boring story?
39:48You know, you've got to pass it on for millennia.
39:51You want to tell it around the fires?
39:53It's full of lust and lewd stuff and funny stuff,
39:57as stories should be, and so that you have a lot of willing listeners.
40:00Won't you come over, darling,
40:03cos I'm feeling blue
40:06and horny too
40:09And now we're seeing so much richness,
40:12so much delight,
40:14so much beauty,
40:15with new writers telling old, old, old stories.
40:19And it's very inspiring,
40:21and it's going to change the country.
40:23We have a challenge in our country in that first people are only about 3.5% of the population, right?
40:36So filmmaking is a way that we can reach millions of people,
40:41and hopefully we can open their hearts and inform them
40:46so that they can walk in our footsteps for a moment.
40:50Because most Australians didn't learn anything at school
40:54about Aboriginal past, history, culture, technology.
40:58When you look behind, you'll see the future in your footprints.
41:02Your identity is always ahead of you.
41:05So, you know, this idea of who are we?
41:07Well, we're not there yet.
41:10We don't know.
41:12It seems looking back to move forward
41:15also means embracing the ever-changing face of Australia
41:19and giving voice and presence to those who have been silenced.
41:24Less than 3% of statues in Australia are of historical women.
41:30There are more statues of animals than of women.
41:32Who we see on the pedestals around us tells us who we are as a nation.
41:38It's this idea of if you can see it, you can be it.
41:41And the only reason I started writing and performing poetry
41:44is because I saw an Arab Muslim woman in a video performing her poetry.
41:50That, for me, was the impetus to start writing and performing my own poetry.
41:54And I don't think that if I had watched that video
41:56that I would have ever thought that I was capable of doing it myself.
42:00When people ask me where I'm from, I tell them punchbowl.
42:05More often than not, they smile and reply,
42:08no, where are you from?
42:11I sigh, roll my eyes in an explanatory tone and say,
42:15punchbowl, you know, it's near Bankstown.
42:19I worked on a show called The Family Law.
42:21You wouldn't know what it's like to slay your gatha for this family.
42:24They talk, they tear.
42:26We took a Chinese family, very dysfunctional, very fucked up,
42:31and very normal, relatable, and funny,
42:35and we put them in people's living rooms.
42:37And what was relatable was not their Chinese-ness.
42:40It was actually being in a family.
42:43Thank goodness someone took the initiative
42:45to seek outside help for this family.
42:48And I think that that is valuable.
42:50I think that that's one of the things that having other cultures represented can do.
42:56So the stories we now tell because of the freedoms of today
42:59are about the life of gay people or the life of women
43:01or the life of Chinese here or Muslims in Australia and so on.
43:05So it's all there before us.
43:07That's something that's really beautiful that art does,
43:09is it brings us together and it makes us see that we are so similar
43:15and it makes us see the humanity in ourselves and in others.
43:19It makes us see the difference.
43:21Storytelling holds up a mirror and reflects who we are.
43:25But it can also help change who we are.
43:28One of the things that diverse representation can do is humanise other lives.
43:36The best example of this I think is actually gay and lesbian representation on screen.
43:45God's sake Bev I thought you knew otherwise I'd have told you sooner.
43:48That would have made it different I suppose.
43:49Yes it would.
43:50I think there was a long time you didn't see any gays and then suddenly they were everywhere.
43:55Did you have a boyfriend?
43:56No boyfriends.
43:57By doing that it took the fear away from it.
44:00Everyone should be treated equally.
44:02I'm doing it for my brother.
44:04So that when we came to gay marriage you look at the statistics of how many people were against it
44:10to how many people were for it in a relatively short period of time.
44:14And I do think that television was part of that.
44:20What a day for love, for equality, for respect.
44:24Australia has done it.
44:26This extraordinary place and its people have been shaped by collective creative brilliance.
44:33But we can't rely on our storytellers alone.
44:36What else must we do to move forward and create our idea of Australia?
44:46At least 65,000 years of history.
44:50Home to people who have arrived from almost 200 different countries
44:55and the only nation on earth that is also a continent.
44:59So, what's your idea of Australia?
45:02A place, a people or a state of mind?
45:05And can we learn from the boldest moments of our past
45:09as well as our missed opportunities to imagine something even greater?
45:13To write ourselves an even better story.
45:16There's a lot of listening has to happen, you know.
45:26The phrase is truth telling but really truth listening is far more important.
45:35And how might we build a nation that provides a voice and opportunity for all?
45:40Equality and the fair go.
45:44We've got to have a pretty open and frank debate about intergenerational inequality in this country.
45:52It's difficult to come to grips with answers because what we're talking about here is a redistribution.
45:58And 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.
46:11My idea of Australia at its best is when we are listening to those who deserve to be listened to.
46:21Listening to the marginalised and really actively listening.
46:25I'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.
46:33We can't afford to do everything we want, but we can literally afford to do anything we want if we prioritise it.
46:40I think we can make not just our country a better place, I think we can contribute to making the world a much better place.
46:46And could Australia embrace its extraordinary and unique migration story to become a trailblazer for the world?
46:54My idea of Australia is that everybody who's here feels like they belong.
47:01I hope that my daughter won't have to endure the small aggressions that I had to endure.
47:08I hope that people ask how to pronounce her name.
47:12I hope that people don't typecast her because of her background and her faith.
47:20I hope a young 18-year-old girl who might be Indian says, I want to be an actress.
47:26She just turns up and auditions.
47:28She doesn't have to have someone say, sorry, we've already cast our one brown person.
47:33My idea of Australia is an ideal that this could become the most successfully multicultural country in the world.
47:42We've got a long way to go.
47:44But I really do believe that Australia could become a global exemplar on that front.
47:48Perhaps it is by facing our fears and taking inspiration from our great achievements that we can truly become the best version of ourselves.
47:59I'm very positive.
48:00We've got the essence.
48:01We've got the foundations for something fantastic.
48:04I'd love to be here in Australia for 100 years time.
48:07I tell my grandchildren that the opportunities they've got in front of them now.
48:11But we need to have a go.
48:14We just need to be brave.
48:15We need to push the boundaries.
48:17Push the envelope a bit.
48:18To fix things.
48:19Because most of our problems are fixable if we've only got the courage to do it.
48:23My idea of Australia is that we build upon that great tradition of radical reform.
48:29In the early 20th century, Australia was the most democratic, the most successful society in the world.
48:40Australians at times have promised so much.
48:42We have done things for which we can always be proud.
48:45We've done things ahead of the rest of the world.
48:47We've shone a light on any number of occasions.
48:50But we are this land of contradictions.
48:53And the two biggest contradictions to me are our fear and our courage.
48:58My idea of the Australia that I want to see is an Australia that is able to conquer its fears and pursue its hopes.
49:07I 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.
49:20And the great potential of this country is investing and caring about this extraordinary set of advantages we have.
49:26I have huge ambition for a nation that should we choose to care about it is unstoppable.
49:31It seems that if we can somehow confront and draw upon the past, galvanize the best of who we are in the present, that we will have a remarkable story to tell ourselves and the world.
49:48in the future.
50:02An Australia built on fairness and inclusion, a generosity of spirit and possibility for all.
50:09Now that is an idea.
50:39Same shows, same times, always free.
50:42Stream now on SBS On Demand.
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