Just who are Australians anyway?

As the Australian Senate ponders national identity, what lessons might there be for us in New Zealand?

What is Australia? We can all agree that it’s a desert island that lies just off the southeastern tip of the Eurasian landmass, populated by kangaroos, koalas, and (unfortunately) cockatoos.

Start talking about its human inhabitants, and that’s where the trouble begins.

In a place where more than a quarter of the people were born overseas, it’s amazing that we even speak the same language. Sometimes we don’t.

But when we do, the language is English, which happens to be the language of a much wetter island that lies just off the northeastern tip of the Eurasian landmass. Go figure.

For multiculturalists, the dominance of English institutions in Australia is a problem. For some advocates of Aboriginal sovereignty, it’s an invasion.

Republicans want to keep the language, but ditch the monarchy. Rugby fans wish the English would just go away, but then cricket fans would miss beating them.

What you think of Australia’s English heritage probably depends a lot on what you think the Australian community is.

For some, Australia is a country, and welcome to it. For others, it’s a living patchwork of many peoples, a veritable United Nations of the southern seas.

Or if you’re old-fashioned, it’s a federation of states that trace their origins back to Merrie Olde England, Magna Carta, and maybe (if you squint) the Romans. What have the Romans ever done for us?

The Australian Senate is asking that very question. Its legal and constitutional affairs committee is conducting an inquiry into ‘‘nationhood, national identity and democracy’’ to settle the question. In its discussion paper, the committee points out that Australia’s identity is indigenous, multicultural, and British, and asks what that means for democracy.

Indigenous Australia imagines Australia as country, a territory that was ‘‘theirs’’ before anyone else came to occupy it. Multicultural Australia embraces an Australia of many nations, each with a right to its own ethnic identity.

And British Australia is a state whose institutions developed organically out of the English practice of parliamentary government.

Of course, today’s Australia combines all three traditions in a (mostly) harmonious civic community. But when it comes to Australia’s democracy, that’s all English. Even the Scots are left out in the cold. Canberra is the child of Westminster, not of Holyrood, and certainly not of the red earth of our island home.

The Romans gave us the idea of a senate, but we have the English to blame for Parliament.

If you caught the roundtables of the legal and constitutional affairs committee, thank King Arthur. He invented the round table. Wait – wasn’t he Welsh? Order, order! – Sydney Morning Herald