how do you have a national identity and be able to call it that when you've got people who are disenfranchised people who disillusioned people who are living in pain the Aussie battler is more than the traditional Aussie battler that we once would have sight spoken about you know there were the people who were trying to buy a house and trying to pay their bills and doing those things the Aussie battler today looks pretty different [Music] there is no single and fixed national identity for Australia or perhaps for any country but particularly not for Australia I think there's actually a disconnect between who we really are now today and who we might have imagined ourselves to be or who our parents might have imagined themselves to be part of in the past the famous refrain of the song I am you are we are Australian that's all about identity isn't it I think the most important factor in working or reworking depending on way you look at Australia's identity is working towards some sort of semblance of truth because our history is significant lie national identity such as as as it is is an unfurling and becoming type of identity it's shaped by what has come before how that's been incorporated it's shaped by the profile of who makes us up now compared to what it was then and it's also made up of the sort of decisions we make that idea of identity which has been very helpful to us in lots of ways because among other things that helps us to accommodate the idea that we can come from diverse origins and can find a sense of ourselves in the eyes of others at the turn of the century the Australian flag was very important to people but it was something that you put on a flagpole and you saluted now increasingly if you've noticed the flag is something that you wear you put on a t-shirt and so it becomes part of you and it can of course have an ugly side if I'm wearing the flag can be gesturing towards other people who we think are not stray lien as we are [Music] the average Australian these days as a person of the city in the suburbs there was a time I think in the post-war period when the suburbs - we were placed for pioneers we built our own houses that's less and less true I think that the Australian baths are now is likely to be somebody who's working in tech so the connection between the virtues we celebrate and the way we actually live I think has become much more tenuous so this notion of as about laughs I mean he's an Aussie battler the new Aziz the new people who were welcomed into Australia and given their citizenship every year there are naazy battler if we're gonna use that term we're all Ozzy battlers some of us are battling pretty tough over some issues and you know the notion of Ozzy battler as I remember growing up was we help each other out or maybe we're not that anymore maybe we've lost some of that notion alongside the notion of the Ozzy battle oh came the notion of mate ship and helping I think and that's something where I think we're struggling national identity or national character it's a really problematic thing as a wonderful historian Tim rouse who once described national characters being like in Australia as being like an empty box and in different ages different politicians or activists have put different things into that box depending on their ideologies and their politics and and their purposes and so it's deeply problematic because almost anything can end up in that box and can then be used to make almost any political argument from the Indigenous Australians arriving here 60,000 plus years ago to Europeans coming here 200 years plus and then all the waves of migrants since we're a fusion nation so talking about a single national identity or national character just doesn't work because we're this wonderful complex rich each of those groups of migrants brought very different cultural impact into Australia and added to the combined culture and their combined identity of who we've made up today there's this wonderful contradiction in Australia that we present ourselves as this welcoming tolerant generous society and yet historically we have always been deeply resistant to the other and to others coming to our shores who don't look like what we perceive as to be I do admit that Australia has done a great amount of work to welcome newcomers but every now and then regardless of our welcome you feel you're reminded that you're different no matter how much you've contributed no matter how much you have sacrificed that you are the other you are different you can never be Australian we don't need legal documents to tell us who we are as a nation the Australian Constitution sets up the framework of government doesn't embody statements of national values or statements of national identity it's a legal document designed to govern the framework of how government and state institutions operate in Australia and no more we do have this sense of what it is to be Australian we do have this sense that we are all Australian what it is that makes them makes us think that we are all Australian is a really complex issue and perhaps it doesn't necessarily need to be fully articulated perhaps the idea that we do view our view each other as being fellow Australians is sufficient I think there's something about our history as this sort of European Enclave in the Asia Pacific from the late 18th century and how we then have to manage that tension both in terms of our indigenous original indigenous inhabitants but also in terms of that wants to come here when we look at the symbols that people celebrate today - like a celebrated type of nationhood like Australia Day that's another imagined falsehood so on the so called Australia day of 26th of January we are celebrating the occupation of our territories around Australia our collective territories which is an insult and that's why that date doesn't need to change are we really that invested in the date itself can we not pick a different day as a day of celebration for who we are as a country all of us utilise the date of January 26 to acknowledge the struggle in knowledge that not everybody has come along in that same journey of achievement and that it's come at a cost we can move forward together but where we kind of are at the moment is just sort of treading water in a place of pain and we need our country our leaders of the country are our government our politicians to actually take us on a journey that takes us through this into a place of healing I think it's important what children are taught because it reflects this this this desire about who we want to be we can see a shift in curriculum towards Asia towards indigenous perspectives and so on which suggests that we're starting to recognize a different place in the world for ourselves clearly you know there are sections of our society who want to claim still Australia for white people and we'd call them neo-fascists or something so that there's an ideology there that remains that what it means to be Australia is to be why lots of people say to me why don't every general people just get over these things why doesn't non-indigenous Australia just get over it and actually start to do the thing that they can do which is acknowledge us and help us all move on together I think it's quite important to have something that we also read together we've got to have something that everybody can put everything else aside and say today we're gonna do it together I think the shish kebab is becoming as much a part of the Australian fabric as a barbecue on on yeah a VB my children's children will look back on some of those debates and say what are you so worried about what was all the angst over you know why we're so worried about some of these issues you know we sorted it out 30 years ago or 40 years ago and it just seems like it's part of the natural composition of Australia now so we're gonna look back on some of the debates that we're having now and just think that they're incredibly either shallow or foolish or miss misaligned or misunderstanding what people are asking for one day we will Advance Australia Fair we're not quite there yet that's why the Australian identity is such a moving thing and it should be the product of us being willing to start anew and being willing to think about the new decisions we should make in the way we can shape ourselves if you spend too long thinking that this is who we were and we should be that always then you are crushing them in spirit frankly [Music]