Australia in the 1990s is a country of remarkable ethnic and cultural diversity, with more than 100 ethnic groups, speaking 80 immigrant languages and 150 Aboriginal languages (Castles et al. 1988: 25). More than one-quarter of its 17 million people were either born in non-English-speaking countries or the ‘second generation’ of those born in these countries (Jupp 1995). At the 1991 Census 265,459 people, or 1.6 per cent of the total population in Australia, identified themselves as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] 1994a: 5).

Australia's ethnic diversity is, however, a relatively recent pheonomenon. At the time of European settlement in 1788, the continent had been inhabited by Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years. After that the number of Australia's original inhabitants declined dramatically, from nearly one million to about 80,000 by the 1930s, largely as a result of ‘disease, conflict and the disintegration of traditional society’ (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission [HREOC] 1991: 59). By the late 1940s, almost 90 per cent of Australia's population was of British descent. This was achieved through the White Australia Policy which discriminated against the immigration of non-Europeans and provided a system of assisted passage for British immigrants. Since the abandonment of discriminatory policies in the 1970s, however, Australia's population has become increasingly culturally diverse through immigration. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, only 18 per cent of immigrants to Australia were from the United Kingdom and Ireland, compared with 46 per cent in the early 1960s.