ABSTRACT
The legitimation of the control of the modern nation state over disparate groups within its national borders is a constant primary concern of the state. Ceaseless repressive and ideological work is required to achieve and maintain the hegemony of those shared meanings of nationality and citizenship which buttress and protect the legitimacy of the state, its forms of administration and structures of power. The Australian imperative to ‘populate or perish’, current in the period immediately after 1945, was as much founded in economic ambition as it was spurred by political and racist fears of the ‘yellow peril’ to the north. The accentuation of national unity, of purpose, temperament, will, Geschlecht, is what nationalism is all about. Diversity, on the other hand, is what lies at the heart of multiculturalism: diversity of character, language, custom and tradition.
