Recipe for a Healthy Country?

I've never fit the stereotype Aussie image that was was usual when I was in school and at university - I hated football, both the Rugby version which was the norm and the newfangled soccer version which was for whimps too scared to play real football. Worse, I loved reading, learning and had a habit of enjoying mathematics after school. On the other hand, whilst a fondness for Chinese food wasn't ocker, it was at least becoming common even in my youth. I was pleased to see in a BBC News Magazine  story that Australia is moving in what seems to me a positive direction, with its economic performance being not the least sign of national health.

In "The changing face of the average Aussie", Nick Bryant reports that the most recent census data on Australian citizens shows the average to be more female than male, middle-aged, definitely not rural, with fully a quarter born overseas and almost half born of parents at least one of whom immigrated to Australia (2013).

I'm proud to say that my mother was one of the trend-setters in the move to female liberation and their rise to equality in Australia against the traditional culture of male dominance, although I'm not sure that this was through any intellectual commitment on her part: it's more that she enjoyed playing golf and the freedom that came from being a working woman in the 1950s before she married my father. On marriage, she decided from the very beginning that she was not going to give up her own interests, or follow the usual custom becoming known to their banks as "Mrs. Keith Filicietti", which was usual at the time. It seems strange now that such a custom could ever have been accepted, but it was, and I remember my mother's forcefully expressed annoyance with the regressive local bankers who sought to follow the traditional ways of their ancestors: she had and used a very rich vocabulary, decidedly not academic, and very much not what was expected of well brought up women at the time. She was sometimes an embarrassment, but looking back, that was my own fault for caring excessively about largely worthless customs and cultural traditions. But mother has won: my prime minister and governor general are both women today, as is the richest Australian. So much have things changed since my primary school days that I'm not sure those archaic titles Miss and Mrs are even used today, except by perhaps by mother's generation.

More surprising, and even better I thought, is that Australia is such an ethnically diverse nation, having long welcomed new citizens from around the world. In my youth, this was mainly European immigrants, although my own family had already been Australian for three generations when I came along, my great-grandparents having moved from Italy and opened up what was then unsettled bushland in northern New South Wales. As I was growing up, increasing numbers of Asian people were moving to settle in Australia, despite complaints about an "Asian invasion" from the older, white group of traditionalists. Thankfully, the Australian government did what was right, not what was popular, and ignored the ugly, racist views and irrational, false beliefs of the anti-immigration element, and continued to welcome in large numbers of new citizens from overseas. These new Aussies have not taken all the land, have not reduced job opportunities and have not undermined Australian culture; on the contrary, they have created wealth, more jobs and a more vibrant culture, helping to make Australia not only great place to live, but an economically successful and continually growing nation for decades. Had we given into ugly xenophobic fears of non-Australians and not let them in, Australia would not be the great country it is today, nor, I am sure, would the US be what it is had it not long welcomed new US citizens from around the world. It's the xenophobically fearful, closed nations (or just their repressive and despotic rulers?) who really do seem to do less well economically as well as socially and morally.

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Reference

Bryant, N. (2013, April 23). The changing face of the average Aussie. BBC News Magazine. Retrieved April 24, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22213218