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emarks, so was the threatening industriousness of such as the ethnic-Chinese capitalists. And
yet the Australian commitment to mining and its repercussions has led down a social, cultural
and economic path of no return:
The old commitments to egalitarianism have disappeared; pluralism has
produced not a more tolerant society, but a more unequal one. A new
economic orthodoxy is beginning to operate in favour of export industries; no
end is offered to high unemployment; welfare is cut and education and the
taxation system are restructured to favour the haves over the have-nots. The
future is tied, not to pastoral, or agricultural, or manufacturing industry, but to
mining, a sector of the economy which, because it is capital-intensive and
largely foreign-controlled, promises only to exacerbate the inequalities. It is
tied, not to the cities, but to the outback, not to the south-east, but to the north
and west. (White, 171)
2.11. The Backlash
And so once again, just when it seems like there is hope of pinning it down once and for
all, the developing sense of an Australian identity, like the Cheshire Cat, evaporates. The
inevitable backlash, exemplified in the reactionary political movements of the 1990s,
represents an attempt by white Australians to wrest control of what they still see as their just
and proper domain. Alison Broinowski sees no difference between the ‘One Australia’ slogan
which came out of the bicentenary celebrations in 1988 and the ‘room for only one’ slogan of
1888. Yet, she faults those who find in all Asians ‘undifferentiated incarnation of their worst
fears’ equally with those who have ‘idealized Japanese industriousness and artistry, Chinese
civilisation and Indian philosophy’ for their similarly selective use of information. Those who
‘offered wiser counsel’, she laments, have generally been ‘shouted down’ (Broinowski, 1992,
17).
Frank Dunn has written an impressive satirical argument against the perverse directions
of multi-culturalism, which he calls ‘a sort of new religion’ in Australia. Dunn points out, as
his title makes clear, that, according to the tenants of multi-culturalism, it seems as though all
cultures are good, but Australia’s own culture is somehow an exception to the rule. Among
those principles of multi-culturalism, Dunn notes, ‘there is no Australian identity, and no
Australian culture’, and in fact no ‘Australians’ unless one is willing to talk about ‘the whole
mass of the residents’ (Dunn, 40-41). Dunn is calling for a new sense of reason in the domains
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