Contrary to the view that  Australian national  culture  has disappeared as a side-effect of globalisation a common idea of Australia  retains its power. This is the view of national  identity in that Australians being-in-the-world see  the world as threatening and irrational,  interpersonal relations as fraught with danger, individuals are the passive victims of their social and institutional environments and that we trapped  in the middle of a beautiful but alien wilderness, full of strange noises and impervious to penetration, conquering or settlement. 

It is a garrison or fortress mentality with its  strong sense of isolation,  impotence and claustrophobia.  Australians  maintain a fundamental distinction between “society” and “wilderness”--- the vast alien desert  or scary outback.  We sit huddled  together on the coast with  a negative sense of the frontier compelled to  construct real and symbolic buffers against the terror evoked by an unconquered nature.  Closed rather than open.

Another powerful current is that Australians also  maintain a fundamental distinctions between   "Australianness” and “otherness”, a distinction underpinned by the duality of whiteness and  colour and where white supremists feel empowered to be able to attack others on the basis of race. White people are  becoming a minority and the pro-multicultural sympathisers in Government are to blame. The emaphsis is on borders, boundaries, edges, and margins and containment. The key image  of Australia  culture has been to reiterate over and over, in ever more elaborate versions, the image of the fort in the threatening, dangerous  world teeming with otherness.     Closed rather than open.