Australia has always been multicultural, demographically speaking. Four in 10 Australians are migrants, or the children of migrants; one in four Australians was born overseas (7 per cent in the UK and Ireland); nearly 14 per cent of Australians were born overseas in non-English speaking countries.
Today, Australia is inhabited by people from over 160 countries. Despite this reality, one which has required a significant degree of tolerance and respect for diversity, the issues of race and racism have always been contentious and problematic - not least between Australia's Aboriginal peoples and the non-indigenous majority population.
After centuries of denying Australian Aborigines the most basic of rights - including the right of citizenship in their own land - it seemed Australians had finally come to terms with coexistence alongside the original inhabitants. However, this has proved illusory, as recent events over Australia's "lost generations" and the issue of native land title have shown in the past few months. The issue even threatens the present government and might lead to a "race" election which few want and many fear. In April 1997, a National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their parents submitted its report to the government. For a great many Australians, the report was shocking - it described in graphic terms the impact of government and church policy on those Aboriginal peoples forcefully separated from their parents and communities in a policy of assimilation.
One in every 10 Aboriginal people over 25 years of age in 1994 had been removed from their families and placed in institutions or among settler families. In these settings they were subjected to physical, sexual and economic abuse. They were forced to reject their Aboriginality and accept western values. The report documented this policy, which began at the turn of the century and continued, in some cases, until the 1970s. The report made distressing reading - so much so that the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Kim Beazley, broke down while reading it in Parliament. The inquiry made a number of recommendations. These included reparation; acknowledgement by the government of what had been done, along with an apology; guarantees against a repetition; restitution of land, culture and language, and monetary compensation. To date, few of these recommendations have been acknowledged, let alone acted upon.
The condition of Aboriginal peoples relative to non-indigenous Australians has many interesting parallels to that of travellers and the settled community in Ireland.
The most recent debate has been sparked by the government's plan to extinguish native land rights on the remaining 42 per cent of land considered to be subject to native title.
Despite the very obvious presence of Aborigines, prior to 1992, the Australian continent was legally regarded as terra nullius - an empty, uninhabited land - and was progressively taken by colonisers without negotiation with indigenous Australians.
A 1992 High Court case - the Mabo decision - acknowledged for the first time that the laws and customs of Aboriginal peoples, which it described as "native title", were recognised as part of common law in Australia. The High Court also acknowledged native title had been effectively extinguished on land when, in the past, governments sold or leased land for houses, farms, factories, hospitals or schools. However, areas covered by pastoral leases (which allowed settlers to use land for pastoral purposes) were considered subject to native title - thus recognising what had existed de facto for more than a century - the coexistence of Aboriginal and settler land use. Native title rights vary from place to place, depending on how the land was used traditionally. However, native title includes rights such as the right to live on or travel over land; to hunt, fish and collect food; to collect items such as ochre, timber, shell and resin; to conduct ceremonies and decide who may come onto the land. The Mabo decision did not redistribute land, but for many non-indigenous people it represented an unacceptable shift towards the rights of Aboriginal peoples.
A 1996 High Court case - the Wik case - held that native title might still exist on 42 per cent of land subject to pastoral leases. The rights of pastoralists existed side by side with native title rights, but where such rights came into conflict, the rights of the pastoralists took precedence over those of native title.
For the current government, this situation creates a climate of economic uncertainty detrimental to Australian economic development. For others, principally Aboriginal people but also environmental, church and justice groups, the government's position is directly related to the interests of already powerful individuals and companies such as those in mining, and has little to do with smallholders' interests.
The past months have witnessed widespread debate over these issues with massive public protests over the government's plans. Supporters of the government's view have even called for Australians to boycott Mass because of the stand of the Catholic Church. For Aborigines, representatives of the world's oldest culture, the reality could not be starker - having taken away the children, the government now proposes to take away the land.
Colm Regan is co-ordinator of 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World, an independent de- velopment education organisation