ABSTRACT
The title of this chapter is taken from the 1987 REM song that catalogues a litany of contemporary problems with the world. The chapter considers aspects of Australian patriotism and asks whether the 'end of the world as we know it', in terms of a world fragmented by national borders of variable and arbitrary porousness which act to separate, differentiate and exclude, might not be a bad thing. It is structured in three parts, considering the past, which has generated a certain sense of identity and approach to immigration; the present, which notes some of the ways in which Australian political leadership has withdrawn from multiculturalism and illuminates the arbitrariness and discrimination of current immigration policy; and the future, which discusses research on Australians' engagement with the idea of borderlessness as an aspect of cosmopolitan thinking. The chapter calls for academics to be more vocal in influencing policy and thinking in regards to the nation and the postnational.
