ABSTRACT
The effective achievement of national unity, national strength of purpose and respect for national institutions requires the mythmakers and marketing managers to capture the hearts and minds of the citizenry. The historical imagination of Australians and the discourses that flow from it have, until recently, been bounded by an understanding of the land as harsh and unwelcoming, to be tamed only by the good offices of benevolent government and the honest toil of diligent yeomen labourers. The discovery, definition or creation of a ‘national identity’ has long formed the principal task of nationalist mythologizers, most particularly in times of political and economic uncertainty and perceived loss of faith in a secure collective future. The surveillance and control of corporeal entities is achieved through the utilization by the agents of the state of all the repressive apparatuses and mechanisms which that state has at its command.
