WeRise · Pillar 6

Country and Culture

Changing the way we see ourselves and others.

Country and Culture asks who we are, whose stories are heard and what it means to belong in Australia. It connects First Nations, migration, the arts, LGBTQIA+ rights and the everyday experience of being recognised.

What Country and Culture covers

Country and Culture is about who we are and how we see each other: the place of First Nations peoples and their continuing cultures, who can come to Australia and who can stay, the freedom to love and live openly, the stories we tell through the arts, and whether everyone who calls this country home is treated as belonging.

It is sometimes called a soft policy area. It is not. It decides who is recognised, who is welcomed and whose stories get told.

Belonging is experienced in ordinary places: at school, at work, in a neighbourhood or on a stage. It can mean seeing your history treated seriously, being able to contribute without hiding who you are, or hearing a familiar language alongside one you are still learning. These experiences give broad principles a practical meaning.

You cannot build a fair society on selective memory.

How Australia has seen country and culture

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ continuing connections to Country, language and culture are central to Australia’s story. Colonisation brought dispossession. Federation also created new instruments of exclusion: the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 became a foundation of the White Australia policy. Understanding this history matters when asking who has been welcomed, recognised or excluded.

Change came through sustained effort. The 1967 referendum removed the constitutional exclusion of Aboriginal people from population reckoning and expanded the Commonwealth’s power to make laws for Aboriginal people in the states. It did not grant the right to vote, and Aboriginal people had been enumerated in earlier censuses. The distinction helps us recognise both the achievement and its limits.

Migration policy also changed: the final remnants of White Australia were removed in 1973. The Mabo decision in 1992 recognised native title in Australian law. These changes did not settle every question of recognition or belonging. They show that institutions can change, and that the work behind those changes deserves to be remembered.

Country and Culture in everyday life

Today the questions reach from national debates to everyday encounters. How should Australia honour its First Nations peoples? What does a fair approach to migration and asylum require? Who has the opportunity to make art, tell a story or see their life represented? How can equality be experienced in practice?

Imagine a community festival, a local library or a school production. The choices about language, access and whose work is included can make participation easier or harder. No single event resolves national policy, but these familiar settings help explain why cultural questions belong alongside questions about rights and public institutions.

A generous shared culture does not require everyone to share the same background or agree about every part of history. It requires room to listen, disagree and contribute, with equal dignity. The policy pages take these broad questions further, with evidence and reform directions for each field.

Why these policies belong together

First Nations, migration, the arts, LGBTQIA+ rights and multiculturalism are five answers to one question: who is us? Each asks whether a person is recognised for who they are, not merely tolerated.

Together they describe a generous answer: the ancient and the new, the uncomfortable and the extraordinary, the story we inherited and the one we are still writing.

Choose First Nations to begin with recognition and the continuing relationship to Country. Immigration and Asylum considers welcome and protection; Arts and Culture explores the stories we create. LGBTQIA+ Rights and Multiculturalism and Belonging ask how equality and participation are made real. Each offers a different way into the shared question, without reducing distinct communities and experiences to a single story.

The question of who we are is only worth asking if we are ready to hear the full answer.

The policies in this pillar

Five ideas, one story. Pick the one you care about.

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Last reviewed 9 October 2026 · Published by Atlas Media