At the core are more than 300,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples - the first peoples, with an unbroken cultural association with the land and waters going back at least 50,000 years. Much more recently, other people have arrived from all over the globe. Australia s diversity is drawn from some 150 cultures around the world in addition to the distinctive indigenous cultures. When this happens you have a healthy society and a strong society. However, when racism is allowed to flourish, as it has been recently, the society becomes sick and dysfunctional.
Racism pits one group against another, causing bitterness and hatred.
It festers and pollutes like an untreated sore. It saps the country s strength and leaves it weak. It is not hard to identify a combination of economic and social factors which might be seen as catalysts of discontent. High levels of unemployment, the privatisation of public services, the debates over republicanism and native title, the rate of rural suicide and the withdrawal of services in rural communities are just some of the factors which have cumulatively, over time, eroded security and reduced our society s threshold of tolerance. Australians are not impervious to anxiety, insecurity and fear and it is understandable that many Australians feel disenfranchised by social and economic forces beyond their control.