AustLit

'The Australian mind seems to be obsessed with the invocation of its 'un-national' apart from newspaper headlines, advertisements on television, or in signs tacked to lamp-posts in suburban Sydney, even the Macquarie Dictionary shows a preoccupation with the 'un-Australian'. Having introduced the lemma only as recently as 2001 in their Federation edition, the lexicographers already updated it in the subsequent 2005 edition by adding a fourth entry to account for the increased use of the word in the popular domain:' violating a pattern of conduct, behaviour, etc., which, it is implied by the user of the term, is one embraced by Australians'. Despite this zeal for determining the' un-national', little attention has been paid to its positive counterpart, thus making it easier to exclude people on grounds of their 'un-Australianness' than to welcome a national diversity.' (Author's introduction)