Nathan Lentern

I’ve often heard it asked, β€œIs Australia a racist country?” only for the question to be railroaded by a series of semantics: β€œWhat does that even mean?”; β€œHow can a country have a collective mindset?”; and β€œYou can’t confer a universal attitude onto a population of 24 million, surely?”

Politicians and commentators tell us there are such things as Australian values. The same quibbling arguments about whether Australia is collectively racist apply to so-called national values.