Australia has a unique history that has shaped the diversity of its people, cultures and lifestyles today. The three main factors that contribute to Australia's demographic makeup are a diverse indigenous population, a British colonial past, and extensive immigration from many different countries and cultures. Many Australians enjoy a high standard of living with sufficient social and economic security to have a reasonably optimistic view of the freedom and possibilities that surround them. Today, Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are recognized to have the oldest continuous culture on Earth.
Australians have largely embraced the cultural diversity that immigrants bring, and the country is constantly drawing on these influences to build its own developing national character. Immigrants and foreigners are often surprised at how quickly Australians begin to lay the foundations for this companionship in an open and rapid way. Since the colonization of Australia, mass immigration has dramatically changed the social demography of the population and established a dominant cultural current in Western Europe. The cultural tendency to dismiss uncomfortable facts from Australian history has particularly harmful implications for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
The company is limited by a large number of practical regulations that strictly control the behavior of the Australian public. We encourage readers to visit the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander course to learn more about Australia's indigenous cultural diversity. For example, it is known that people reject national awards because of the alienation they could generate among their fellow Australian citizens. Preference is given to identity documents that show the full name, address and a photo, and to documents issued by Australian institutions.
In fact, many Australians feel that these rules are too cautious or that the police enforce them too strictly. However, the Cultural Atlas recognizes that modern Australia was founded on the basis of the dispossession of First Nations peoples. Australia is the sixth largest country in the world, but its population is relatively small, with only about 24 million people. Many of the statistics on Australian public attitudes come from the Cultural Competence Program.
