What makes an Australian?

There was a interesting incident yesterday in Brisbane ahead of the opening test match between Australia and Pakistan. Usman Khawaja, one of Australia's (in fact the world's) best batsman was mistaken for a Pakistani player and directed to their changing room. Obviously Khawaja looks Pakistani, both his parents are from Islamabad, he was born there moving to Australia before his fifth birthday, yet he is one of Australia's current national treasures having scored centuries in his past three matches. Khawaja has played on and off for Australia since 2011. He talks like an Australian, walks like an Australian and he looks like a Pakistani. Does that make him any less Australian?

The very definition of what counts as an Australian appears to be not as simple as it should be to answer. It has changed many times over the years, so let's cast our minds back 75,000 years when, according to Australian Geographic research, the first migrants left Africa and made their way through South East Asia and eventually to Australia sometime around 45,000 years ago. For the first time the land mass 24 million of us now call home had it's first Australians and there should be no argument there, there was no one else! 

For the next 43,000 years (give or take) these first people were pretty much exclusively Australian. According to genome research published in Science magazine back in 2011 whilst there is some similarity with Asian DNA, aboriginal DNA is different enough to indicate genetic isolation for that period. The closest relatives are in PNG who would have broken off about the same time of the very first settlement.

The Dutch landed in Australia in the 1600's but never settled. Moving forward to 1787 we have the second settlement when the British arrived and this is when the first people were named Australian Aboriginals. For the most part this is when all hell broke loose for the first peoples. There is no way of knowing for sure what the first people population was at that time but it has been estimated as being up to 750,000 divided into 500 distinct tribes, many with their own language. Most of those languages are now dead and the current Aboriginal population is possibly less now than 250 years ago.

Australia, as the country we now know it, came into existence in 1901, with the British allowing federation. The population was around 3.8 million and largely made up of people of British decent. With the creation of a new country (and the destruction of the first people) came the White Australia policy in the guise of the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act. Ironically a country now made up almost entirely of immigrants decided that immigrants were not welcome, unless of course if you were both white and British. So what it meant to be Australian in 1901 had changed a good deal from what it meant to be Australian in 1786. Different colour, different religion, different language, pretty much anything that could change was changed.

The White Australia policy was in place in one form or another for the best part of the last century, only finally being put to rest in 1973. At this point there are about 14 million Australians, still mostly from British decent but we now see a smattering of other cultures coming in from places like Italy, Greece, Germany and other countries badly affected by World War 2. Even though the White Australia policy was dead, full integration was not always high on anyone's mind. This led to cultural enclaves setting up many of which still exist today albeit in a more inclusive manner.

The demographic make up of Australia today differs in a number of areas. We are now seeing more people than ever having both parents who were born in Australia, in fact 54%. Oddly only 35.5% of people say they are of Australian heritage which means nearly one in five people who were born in Australia of parents who were born in Australia still don't see themselves as Australian.

We are fast approaching a population of nearly 25 million and nearly 10% of Australians are non-white. That is a far cry from White Australia Policy days before 1973. What this might mean for Australia is a people who may look more like me over time, a mix of different peoples brought together to make one.

Neither of my parents were born in Australia and nor was I yet, despite being half Indian quarter Scottish quarter Irish, I see myself as an Australian. I live here because I chose to and, like Khawaja, I respect the country I now call home. Regardless of colour or ancestry or religion or country of birth, can't we all be equal under the one flag?