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WeRise · Pillar 6

Country & Culture

Changing the way we see ourselves and others.

Who are we? It sounds like a simple question. It isn't.

What Country & Culture covers

Country & 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.

You cannot build a fair society on selective memory.

How Australia has seen country and culture

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have cared for this continent for at least 65,000 years, the oldest continuous living cultures on Earth. Colonisation brought dispossession, and among the first laws of the new Commonwealth in 1901 was the Immigration Restriction Act, the foundation of the White Australia policy.

The century that followed slowly changed course. A great post-war migration program began in 1945. In 1967 Australians voted overwhelmingly to count Aboriginal people in the census and let the Commonwealth make laws for them. The last of White Australia was removed by 1973. The High Court recognised native title in the Mabo decision of 1992, the nation apologised to the Stolen Generations in 2008, and marriage equality became law in 2017.

Each change was resisted, and each widened the answer to the question of who belongs.

How it is seen now

Today these questions remain open and often heated. In 2023 Australians voted against a constitutional Voice to Parliament. Migration levels and asylum policy are argued over at every election. Artists and cultural workers describe careers built on insecure, short-term funding.

At the same time, Australia is one of the most culturally diverse nations on Earth, home to families whose stories begin in almost every country, and to peoples whose story here began long before 1788.

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.

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