There are many features of a society that can undermine its cohesiveness. These include the distribution of income, wealth, employment and opportunity, as well as access to services, voting rights or citizenship among various segments of the population. This book is, however, concerned with one principal question: how can Australia, with its considerable cultural diversity and continuing high (permanent and temporary) immigrant intake, remain socially cohesive? The volume is by no means encyclopaedic. But it covers, with contributions by 16 authors, an important series of aspects of several of the perceived indicators of social cohesiveness in Australia.

Part I surveys the historical quest for harmony in Australia, and the conditions and possible means of measuring social cohesion, as well as current federal government initiatives to attain it. The chapters in Part II consider the landmark of Cronulla; ethnically based youth groups; religious resurgence and diversity; Indigenous Australia, and aspects of cultural fragility; and educational attainment and inter-ethnic marriage. Part III covers unions and the workplace; education; the media; sport; terrorism and politics; and human rights.

The book concentrates on immigration, which has been a central part of Australia's history since first European settlement in 1788. It has been at the heart of the creation of a dynamic society and has helped economic growth. Much of immigration's success has depended on the absence of marked social conflict and division through the arrival from overseas, in peaks and troughs, of so many millions of people from extremely diverse backgrounds.

The geographic area in which government settlements and church missions for Aborigines are found today has been variously called remote, traditional and ‘colonial’ Australia. All three adjectives seem appropriate. This vast area of the country is remote, being beyond the fringes of settlement, and isolated from major population centres and economic activity. It is also traditional, since the majority of Aboriginal residents in the region are of full descent and appear less divorced from the social, cultural and kinship systems of their forefathers than those Aborigines in more settled or urban areas. Finally, Rowley's (1971b) expression ‘colonial’ is apposite as well, alluding as it does to the pluralistic features of society in this part of Australia. But while each adjective is in its own way appropriate, the term used in this chapter is ‘remote’.

Geographically, remote Australia comprises half the continent.

What socio-economic differences are there between the Aboriginal population as a group and the remainder of Australian society? While most people in Australia could probably give some suggestion as to these differences, it is unlikely that there is any simple source to which someone interested in the question could turn to find a reasonable summary of the information necessary to make a useful comment. In this chapter, therefore, a synthesis is given of the available material on various aggregate socio-economic indicators. These assist a comparison of the standard of living of Aborigines as a group with that of the rest of the Australian population.

For this synthesis, it is not ‘primary’ material that has been collected: only the available ‘secondary’ information has been drawn together; and Aborigines as a general, internally undifferentiated group are discussed. In this grouping, the analysis is based upon an examination of the aggregate ‘Aboriginal population’ of Australia as at present ‘officially’ defined.

This chapter aims to highlight some of the economic issues raised in previous parts of the book. In discussing the implications of the economic status of Aborigines, a qualification made in the preface bears repeating, namely the value-laden assumption that economic growth and development may be desirable, or at least worth discussing. Some authors, especially in affluent societies, have condemned an ‘obsession’ with economic growth because of its aesthetic and ecological implications. On the other hand, as W. A. Lewis (1955, pp. 420–1) has argued, ‘the advantage of economic growth is … that it increases the range of economic choice … the case for economic growth is that it gives man greater control over his environment, and thereby increases his freedom’.