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.