ABSTRACT
In the 1998 Australian federal elections, 10 per cent of Australians voted for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, which defends assimilation, calls for reduction in Asian immigration, and opposes as ‘reverse racism’ 1 the present government’s affirmative action programmes for Indigenous Australians. 2 In February 1999 some indigenous activists ceremonially burned the Australian flag and denounced the present government as ‘racist scum’. In between these two positions, the voice of a civic nationalism, which might reject both ethnocultural assimilation and multiculturalist affirmative action, remains remarkably muted. The result is that ‘race’ has become the most contentious issue in contemporary politics, with public discussions of Australia’s national identity dominated by mutual accusations of racism.
