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Do Editors think it is appropriate to say in the opening para that Australia "remains a Commonwealth realm"? Shouldn't the article say Australia is a "constitutional monarchy" - as that term is used in the UK article and Canada's. This is being discussed on Talk:United Kingdom. Regards. Redking7 ( talk) 11:48, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I support using the "Constitutional monarchy" description in the opening para:
I support using the Commonwealth realm" description in the opening para
Comments/Questions I need more detail in why should it be changed, whats more widely used (Commonwealth realm or Constitutional monarchy) in Australia (not just within the Commonwealth). Bidgee ( talk) 11:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Why can't both have a place in the lead? Here is a suggestion:
“ | For around 40,000 years before European settlement commenced in the late
18th century, the Australian mainland and Tasmania were inhabited by around 250 individual nations
[1] of
indigenous Australians.
[2] After sporadic visits by fishermen from the immediate north, and
European discovery by
Dutch explorers in 1606,
[3] the eastern half of Australia was claimed by the
British in 1770 and initially settled through
penal transportation to the colony of
New South Wales, founded on 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in the following years; the continent was explored, and during the 19th century another five largely
self-governing
Crown Colonies were established. On 1 January 1901, the six colonies became a
federation, and the Commonwealth of Australia was formed.
The Commonweath is a constitutional monarchy with strong liberal democratic traditions. As a Commonwealth realm, Australia's monarch is Elizabeth II. The population is just over 21.7 million, with approximately 60% concentrated in and around the mainland state capitals of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. The nation's capital city is Canberra, located in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). |
” |
It is just one possibility. - Rrius ( talk) 03:29, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
The article is currently a FA, but how come it still has [citation needed] templates in a few sections? Aaroncrick (Tassie Boy talk) 09:04, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
I think there is no more absolute consensus that Australia is a liberal democracy beacuse of strict Internet censorship. Therefore I will remove this article from category Category:Liberal democracies. — ilaiho ( talk) 17:53, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
The idea that the government's censorship regime disqualifies Australia as a liberal democracy is absurd (as much as I may detest its planned internet filter scheme). Plenty of liberal democracies have more stringent censorship than Scandinavian countries (in fact, most do). Slac speak up! 04:54, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
How can a country with the Queen as a state head be a democracy??? And liberal??? Sorry but it doesn't work together. Monarchy is not a democracy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.69.27.220 ( talk) 06:22, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Australia is a representative democracy. The head of state is the queen, represented by the govenor general. however australia remains a democracy because we elect our parliamentarians, and our executive government is formed by elected parliamentarians, and the governor general acts on the advice of our elected officials - hence, democracy. The simple "monarchy cannot be a democracy" is absurd. Perhaps you are suggesting that the UK, Canada, New Zealand are also in the list of non-democracies? Yili2943 ( talk) 07:38, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Under the demography section, the information that only 70 aboriginal languages still exist is incorrect. According to the 2005 Ethnologue, which is the most authoritative linguistics survey, there are 280 recorded aboriginal languages, 238 still spoken and 42 extinct. I don't know how to change this since the article is protected. Also, there is no source for the claim that an indigenous language is the main language for 50,000 people. Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/. Claritarejoice ( talk) 17:55, 23 March 2009 (UTC) Claritarejoice
I suggest the Link below containing Google Interactive Map of Australia . http://www.all-maps(dot)info/2009/03/australia-map.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kewaga ( talk • contribs) 14:20, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
Can you please add Australia's business address to this article. It is 1601 MASSACHUSETTS AVE NW C/O AUSTRALIAN EMBASSY WASHINGTON DC 20036 and Australis's company number is 0000805157. Source - http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-idea?CIK=0000805157&action=getcompany
Please keep in mind that Australia is also well known as the ' Down Under ' and the ' Wide Brown ' .
Lejon (
talk)
04:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
I think you're emphasising the wrong part of the poem. 'Sunburnt country' is the common rhetoric. E.g Sunbeam, Sunblest are all traditional Australian business icons. No such thing as Brownbeam toasters or Brownblest bread. Yili2943 ( talk) 07:40, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
I think it's a good idea, but maybe we should post it to America's business address. Um, what's the US' business address? The US business address is being moved to Shanghai, right?-- Merbabu ( talk) 10:35, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Maybe we should put a
here.People often make such mistake.Especially non-English native user like me.囧-- 半弯不直男 ( talk) 13:54, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
The statement: "Technologically advanced and industrialised, Australia is a prosperous multicultural country and has good results in many international comparisons of national performance such as health care, life expectancy, quality-of-life, human development, public education, economic freedom, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights." is quite misleading.
First - Australia has very poor internet network comparing to many countries in the world. Secondly, a country with slow and in some instances still not electrified trians cannot be technologically advanced. Industraliazed also is misleading - a country that is predominantly a primary producer, that doesn't manufacture even one bicycle, TV etc - cannot be called industrialized.
Multicultural? - just because there are many migrants - it doesn;t mean it is multicultural - when de facto it is an English colony which enforces English language at schools and English way of life.
Freedom with internet censorship cannot coexist. Democracy while still monarchy? Do you remember Whitlam Government??? Is this a democracy when the monarch can dissolve a government within one day????
Health care with long queues to emergecy units, and long queues for basic public health services such as dentist (usually people wait 2-3 years) is not at the top of the world.
Life expectancy - especially is local Aboriginal communities is very low.
Human development - still no bill of rights.
Public education - very low, no foreign languages at school, ranking very low in maths among other countries.
Hope you can amend this sentence and be true about Australia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.129.17.160 ( talk) 01:45, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
The following three lines are from the article:
it seems every single one needs to be reverted because of vandalism. can we get this page locked again? Rehumanist ( talk) 12:58, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
How about a section on Australia's many Sporting Achievements?
Also mention at the top of the article: Australia is a prosperous multicultural country and has excellent results in many international comparisons of national performance such as...
For such a small population they do extremely well and their culture is very sport orientated.
Esp:
Cricket (incl first team to beat England)
Olympics
Tennis (incl first to win all grand slams in one year)
Swimming
Rugby —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.16.182.28 ( talk) 22:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
Little/nothing is noted on the iology of Australia. I suggest the following be noted:- Kraft, G.T. 2007. Algae of Australia: Marine Benthic Algae of Lord Howe Island nd the Southern Great Barrier Reef, 1. Green Algae. ABRAS, Canberra, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, Australia. ISBN 9780643094421 Parameter error in {{ ISBN}}: checksum.Osborne 16:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Ethnic groups listed wrongly. latest census states 3.5% aboriginal and 11% asian. also states other groups not listed. change it or remove it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.104.142.162 ( talk) 09:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Cymruman ( talk) 07:58, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
For over a decade multicultist doctrine has came under increasing criticism from may parts of Australian society.
for example:
Andrew Robb, then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration." [4]
The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60. [5]
Plans have been brought in for a English language test.
In January 2007 the Howard Government removed the word "multicultural" from the name of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, changing its name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
Therefore, to simply state in this article that Australia is pro multicultist is completely out of date with the facts of today. I believe some mention of the changing of attitudes (including governments) to the theory must be included here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.114.32.252 ( talk) 13:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Seeing as that I cannot edit this article, I'd like to point out that at the bottom of the politics section, in the last sentence, "enrollment" is misspelled. NavJ7 ( talk) 01:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm slightly nervous about asking this after the continent debate, but if Australia is an Island Continent, why isn't Antartica? In which case, isn't Antartica a larger island? Apepper ( talk) 21:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks - that explains it; I feel a little relieved! 12:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.84.106.37 ( talk)
If Australia is an island, then why aren't the Americas or the combined landmass of Eurasia and Africa? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.84.84 ( talk) 11:15, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I think it is time to open new section about 'Racism' in Australia. We have enough of data by now and it is clear it's an important part. We should list the White Policy, Aboriginal Stolen Generations, Extermination of the Aboriginals in Tasmania, Killing of Chinese in Gold Rush time, Cronulla Beach Riots, recent Attacks on Indians etc and talk in general about the dominination of the Anglo-saxons (government) and systematic marginalization of non-Anglo-saxon migrants in Australia. What do you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homo hi ( talk • contribs) 00:29, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
The population stats in the infobox, are quite wrong. The actual number is more than 21,800,000 rather than the 21,700,000 number which is stated on the page. Australia is also ranked 53rd in the world rather than 51st as also stated.
Shows that Australia has the 53rd highest population
Shows the current estimated population of Australia
I am going to change Australia's rank from 51st to 53rd but I would recommed that the actual population is changed by someone else (besides me). De Mattia ( talk) 01:09, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm baffled as to why the mostly useful links in the navbox at the bottom are bloated by a humungous tree of links to the world's monarchies. This does not concern whether one is an Australian monarchist or not; rather, it's a matter of dilution by irrelevant material. Why, I ask you, are we speciallly linked to countries such as Kuwait, Brunei and Swaziland, just because they happen to have "monarchies" of a sort (although totally different from our constitutional monarchy). I see a link to the "Monarchies" category at the very bottom, too. Why is that not enough?
I suggest that we remove the elaborate, unnecessary navbox bloat. Any objections? Tony (talk) 12:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
I have no objections to the Royal Anthem not being in the infobox, because for 99.99% of the time it may as well not exist, so it really is undue weight. But Aussie Legend is spot on with his facts about its formal designation and how it came about. I'm surprised we all seem to have forgotten so quickly the controversy over its use at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, which the Queen attended. The games organisers decided that Advance Australia Fair and only that song would be sung (by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa). Many people including John Howard had a problem with this, as they considered it was disrespectful to the Queen given that the Royal Anthem was available and was supposed to be used for precisely this sort of occasion. In the end, a few bars of it were sung, then the music morphed into AAF - see [6]. But that was probably the last time it was sung in Australia at any kind of public event. Who knows, it might be the last ever. -- JackofOz ( talk) 03:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
A bit off the point but I never found out who Elizabeth actually was at the Commonwealth Games - was she there as the Queen of the UK , the Queen of Australia or as the Head of the Commonwealth ? If she was there as the latter then playing ' God save the Queen ' was quite a faux pas . Lejon
They are US dollars, aren't they? This needs to be said. Tony (talk) 11:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Aaronclick's recent edits: I can see only one tag that is vaguely required (compulsory voting, if the link doesn't satisfy that purpose). Tony (talk) 03:39, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not too sure who Aaronclick is.. :) Although he probably should have posted here earlier but he didn't so we'll have to move on.
I believe the citation needed are necessary as the article isn't very well referenced and I was hoping for a bit of action on fixing these issues but instead it has unfortunately caused a debate on whether the templates are needed. If you have a look through the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria the article fails 1c along with 2c. Looks at Mumbai for example, it recently was removed as a FA after a FAR partly due to citation concern. The article has just passed a GAN and is cited very well. If the article was now nominated for FAR a lot of work would have be done if it was to remain a FA. Aaroncrick (Tassie Boy talk) 11:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
I've just removed some of the lowest-value links I've ever seen ("English"?) ... Um ... we're reading it now. I see many repeat links of states and cities through the article. Why is "international comparisons of national performance" linked to somewhere else within the article—as though it's not defensive enough to even mention it in the lead? Tony (talk) 13:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Can we please update link 47 "Australia's Size Compared"? It has moved to http://www.ga.gov.au/education/geoscience-basics/dimensions/aus-size-compared.jsp. SydBrklyn ( talk) 15:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I have made some slight grammatical changes to the 'Ethnic Groups' section at the top of the page. For example, when you are referring to an ethnic group as 'White' or 'Other', you must use capital letters. If you were referring to an entity or colour as 'White' or 'Other', it would be a different story. I changed this so it would be correct. The same goes for Dollars. If you are referring to Australian Dollars or US Dollars, you use capital letters. However, if you were saying "I want twenty dollars!", you wouldn't need to do so. Again, I changed this so it would be correct. Also, in the list of ethnic groups, I have deleted unneeded commas. You do not need commas in a list. -- Billsta1 ( talk) 10:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
In the Demography section the article states "School attendance is compulsory throughout Australia". This is incorrect. Education is compulsory in Australia, however, home-schooling is accepted as Education. Also, in many rural parts of Australia, the School of the Air operates (school via CB radio), as well as Distance Education (correspondence school). Some research on Australia's education system would improve this article.
http://www.distance.vic.edu.au/about/abtover.htm
-- Gladrim ( talk) 21:20, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Should not be listed as one of Australia's strong teams.
YellowMonkey ( cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
... is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the mainland, which is both the world's smallest continent and the world's largest island, the island of Tasmania, and numerous other islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the only area of land simultaneously considered a continent, a country and an island.
There's something wrong with the above. First, we're saying the mainland is a continent and an island. OK, so far. Then we're saying the whole country, including Tasmania, is a continent and an island. That's where it goes wrong. The whole country is not an island. It consists of one very large island (the mainland), one large island (Tasmania), and numerous smaller islands (Groote Eylandt, Kangaroo, Melville, Lord Howe, etc etc). Even if we changed the 2nd sentence to "It is the only area of land simultaneously considered a continent and a country", it's still not right because Australia is not just one area of land, but many areas of land, separated by water. I'm removing the offending sentence. -- JackofOz ( talk) 09:04, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Place | Continent | Island | Country |
---|---|---|---|
Tasmania (mainland) | No | Yes | No |
Tasmania (state) | No | No | No |
Mainland of Australia | Maybe(1) | Yes | No |
Australia | Maybe(1) | No | Yes |
This article is about the Commonwealth of Australia, the nation, not the island, not the Continent. The lead paragraph blurs these together, which is incorrect. The Nation (political entity) should not claim it is a continent (geography/geology), and so the paragraph should be re-written. The nation may contain the world's largest island, but is not the world's largest island, as that excludes Tasmania, etc. The 'continent' claim is debatable (see list of discussions at top of page), and so should not claim catagorically that it is a continent, as this is POV without the balancing opposite POV mentioned. The article needs to address this. The Yeti ( talk) 02:42, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Aussie Legend, I'm very curious about this entity you refer to as "Australia, the island". Just exactly where is it and what does it look like? If you're referring to the mainland, that place is a very large part of "Australia", but it is not "Australia". This is like referring to the island of Great Britain as "the United Kingdom". -- JackofOz ( talk) 13:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
No information on health care for Australia. I would be interested if someone could please add it. 118.208.198.149 ( talk) 09:15, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Always tricky on wikipedia to add figures on religious adherence..which I just did (again) on this page on Australia --quoting the census 2001 and 2006 results. If these are outdated, I would like to see more recent figures. Ruud64 ( talk) 20:33, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
This article is a dog's breakfast. Can we just delete it all and start over?-- Rehumanist ( talk) 06:25, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
This aritcle states that Australia is a continent. Forgive me for saying this, but there are only 7 continents in the world which consist of Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Antarctica, and Oceania. Therefore, Australia is not a continent and stating such in this article is false. Australia is nation within Oceania. -- Yoganate79 ( talk) 02:40, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Australia is simply a country. If Australia was a continent, would it make sense to call Fiji, Australia? Oceania represents all of the countries while Australia usually implies to the country and if you use it as a continent, the other countries are not having their fair share of representation. For example, just because China is the biggest country (population wise) in Asia, doesn't mean you call the whole continent "China". Go to Australia (continent). On the map it shows only Australia highlighted. Now, go to Oceania. All of Oceania is highligted.-- KRajaratnam1 ( talk) 21:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Past "Is Australia a continent?" and "Australia is not a continent" discussions, and related topics, may be found at:
I could have sworn it's been discussed more than that. -- AussieLegend ( talk) 09:15, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Not to mention virtually the entire Talk page here:
It really is quite sad that Australians are brainwashed and uneducated to think that their country is one of the classical continents found on earth. My question is, if Australia is considered a continent, then what continent does New Zealand belong to then? In any case, Greenland should also be classified as a continent then too. Let's classify Long Island, Cuba, Japan, and the British Isles their own continents too. -- Yoganate79 ( talk) 01:52, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Countries do not have to belong to a continent. Sorting out which continent the Maldives is located would be tricky. Furthermore, Australia is not a third world country with a tyrannical government. It terms of public brainwashing and lack of education, I'd encourage you to visit someday, and see if your comment is justified. ∗ \ / ( ⁂) 11:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
I have read the current discussions and several of the archived ones and there are may misconceptions and misunderstandings about geographic terms/nomenclature. I will only address the one referenced above.
The difference between an island and a continent are not unrelated. The criterion of size is the primary, but not the only, characteristic that determines what is an island and what is a continent.
Australia was once classified as an island ( see Lancelot and Gray; 'The Civil Service Geography: Being a Manual of Geography, General and Politcal ), but once it was classified as a continent, for reasons of size, biodiversity, geophysics, etc., it lost its status as the largest island and became the smallest continent. Greenland [Kalaallit Nunaat], which is a "continental island" of North America, acquired the title of largest island. An island is not simply a landmass completely surrounded by water, but is also a landmass smaller than a continent (see any geography text book, Davis Joyce; Why Greenland is an Island, Australia is Not- and Japan is Up for Grabs ). This has been established convention for over a century.
I am aware in common usage of describing Australia as an “island continent” , but this is a purely descriptive term and is not:
Besides, if this claim were to be upheld, thus violating established nomenclature, then Antarctica would be the largest island, not Australia. So Australia cannot be both an island and a continent and I am removing that claim in the opening paragraph. Gary Joseph ( talk) 11:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Geography is a science, so the precision and distinction between continent and island are important in order to classify and provide nomenclature. ( I noticed that you have not addressed the anomaly I noted that officially, the Australian federal government does not classify the mainland as an island. Now if you go to Greenland's government site, it lists the mainland as an island, consistent with their view.)
As for the GNBNSW, this does not constitute a geographic entity. My federal government states that an island is a piece of land completely surrounded by water that is also above sea level at high tide. That is a legal definition and consistent with the context with which that entity is dealing. It is not world-geographic in scope. This is true with the GNBNSW as continents do not fall within its scope so the distinction is irrelevant. The accurate definition is not necessary. I do not understand why we are willing to accept the geographically technical definition of "continent" but not that of "island". Mixing the two is irresponsible and reeks of sloppiness.
I should not be surprised by the responses and the reversion of my edit. I am not Australian and have no stake in how many superlatives the country can garner. It does nothing for me. Apparently it does much for many of the Aussies here. Gary Joseph ( talk) 17:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Is it really that important? There are many more things more important that could be done in the time being spent here.-- Merbabu ( talk) 12:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
I've started work on Australasia (Australia and New Zealand) as quite amazingly an article about Australasia in its most common meaning of Australia and NZ was missing. There is already a page devoted to the bilateral relationship - Australia-New Zealand relations, but none which discusses our part of the world as a cultural/political/social/economic region, which clearly it is. Help on this would be greatly appreciated - maybe pages for continents or the EU could be used as a model for different sections. -- 110.32.143.237 ( talk) 09:12, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
This is not a POV fork as it seeks to deal with Australasia as region as opposed to the Australia-NZ relations page which deals with the bilateral relationship between the two countries. There is a British Isles page and one for British-Irish relations so why can't the same be done for Australasia. Progress is well advanced towards and Australasian common market and a single external border and there is a long history of closely tied economies and substantial migration across the Tasman, both before and after the creation of Aus and NZ as sovereign nation states. The article to this point is obviously not complete hence why I put a request for people to contribute - deleting and redirecting without discussion is not helpful. Ultimately the page should have substantial sections on the combined Australasian economy and demography as it increasingly is a single economic market and already has common labour market. It can also include information about the region's culture and history. This does not seem unreasonable and is not a matter of POV. -- 110.32.143.237 ( talk) 14:19, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
The page for Australasia is not really appropriate as it also deals with other definitions of Australasia too, which have their separate pages. e.g. Australasia ecozone It really only provides short definitions of what the term means in different contexts and really it makes sense to deal with these different meanings in separate articles as is currently the case. An article on the Single Economic Market may well be useful, but that wouldn't completely cover the level of Australasian integration, which includes moves towards a common external border and largely open internal border [12], promoting both countries together as an export market and investment destination [13], common free trade deals [14], joint standards and regulatory bodies e.g. [15], joint research organisations e.g. [16] - the list goes on and on and is only getting longer. The definitions of Australasia, whilst overlapping somewhat, are too diverse to be dealt with sensibly in one article. Both Australasia as commonly defined as meaning Australia and N.Z. and the Australasian ecozone are both clearly defined and merit separate articles. 110.32.128.77 ( talk) 23:06, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
I've just changed the "ethnic_groups" field back to reflect exactly what the source says. "White" vs "white" has already been discusssed so I won't touch on that again but I've also changed "[[Australian Aborigines|Aboriginal]]" to just "aboriginal" because that's what's used by the source. While it may seem minor, the use of a capital letter can change the whole meaning. "Aboriginal" is generally taken to mean Australian Aboriginal while "aboriginal" can be a generic term for all indigenous peoples, including Torres Strait Islanders. Since we don't know how the CIA has used it here, assuming that it refers to Australian Aborigines and applying a specific term is WP:OR. -- AussieLegend ( talk) 07:23, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
These stats are very, very old and are most likely just estimates. the census sais the portion of aboriginals is 3.5 percent rather than 1 percent, and asians as 11 percent rather than 7.... so we can see its very contradicctory.....
The Article for the USA doesnt have this at the side so why should we????? especially when the source is questionable... we alreasy have a demographics section
please just remove it once and for all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.104.132.34 ( talk) 07:43, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
When Association football has been included in the list of strong sporting teams eg: "Australia has strong international teams in football, cricket, field hockey, netball, rugby league, rugby union, and performs well in cycling, rowing, and swimming." an editor who appears to be a strong cricket fan has been persistently deleting the reference to Association football. The most recent deletion uses the reason that the A League is allegedly of a low standard although how that editor is able to form such an opinion is moot. Australia's national team is currently ranked at 16 out of 203 ranked teams (ie. in the top 10%) whereas Australia's test cricket team (currently ranked at 4 out of 9) is not even in the top 33%. Reviewing that editor's contributions one finds he has made these statements in his edit summaries:
Can anyone give me a coherent reason why Association football should not be included. Silent Billy ( talk) 03:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Comparing sports is apples to oranges. The question is does Australia peform well in international competition in association football. The answer is - yes - Australia performs strongly in international football, and has done so now for 4 years consecutively. The massive improvement in FIFA and Elo rankings indicate such, but those aside, the team's results have been consistent against higher ranked opponents. MrSPIAP0 ( talk) 02:03, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Silent Billy, from your comments, you might be thinking that I am an Anglo-Saxon anti-Asian who thinks of real football as "wogball" for "immigrant sissies" etc. My parents are Asian immigrants. I think AFL is a joke and soccer is real skill, ask Aaroncrick ( talk · contribs). Still, Australia is not a football power. Only WC finals win is against Japan. In 2007 Asian Cup, lost to Iraq. Australia made it to the quarters. Even Vietnam made it to the quarters. Only wins in WC/Asian qualifiers and finals were against Asian teams, the likes of UAE, Qatar, etc. You say that only 9 countries play cricket in comparison to 200 in football and that Australia is not in the top 33% in cricket but in the top 8% in football is a joke. In football, every registered country is counted, including backyard standard teams like American Samoa (lost 31-0 to Australian players who were part-timers in the Australian league), Bhutan etc. In cricket there are about 80 registered countries but only 9 were allowed to play in the elite league "Test cricket". While Bangladesh, the worst Test country is bad, at least their best player Shakib Al Hasan would get selected in the top 3 countries, South Africa, India and Sri Lanka. Some Australians would get into the top three teams. None of the Australian footballers would get into a Spanish or Brazilian 20-25 man squad, let alone the playing 11. The cricket countries from 10-15 who are on the edge of Test standard, are more competitive than the token American Samoan teams, who would easily get bashed about 80=0 by Spain, Brazil etc. YellowMonkey ( bananabucket) 03:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
I am a one-eyed football supporter, for the little that it's worth, and I agree fully with Hesperian and YellowMonkey. We aren't a "strong national football nation"; not only are the FIFA rankings a bit of a sham (as pointed out by YellowMonkey himself), and not only is there no solid bank of references to consider our relative football ability and historical strength to be on par with that of cricket, netball etc., but the massive skill and historical disparity between Australia and the likes of Spain, Brazil, England, etc., and the relatively poor standard of the A-League and its lack of history, means that football should not be added alongside cricket etc. in the main article. Daniel ( talk) 05:45, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Those who think Australia is not now strong in soccer are either living in the past or are confusing a nation being strong and a nation dominating the world stage. Yes, Australia has until recently been better at cricket and rugby than soccer. But just as the fortunes of the national cricket and rugby teams are now fading, the national Australian football team has been rising solidly for the past six years. As a nation we might not be challenging for number one status in the world, but in a 200-strong competition, as a nation, having beaten the likes of top ten countries such as Holland and England in recent years with admirable performances against Italy, Argentina and Brazil, to be the second country on the planet to qualify for our second World Cup in a row with three games in hand, conceding just one goal and unbeaten all the way through the final qualifying stage, to be ranked 14th in the world, to call that anything but strong is simply petty and anachronistic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smoomonster ( talk • contribs) 11:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Once again I reiterate that a "strong" team cannot be decided upon with out criteria and that we should just state all national teams' international rankings & acomplishments.-- UltimateG ( talk) 01:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
This article says that 20 Aboriginal languages are not endangered. However, I recently read an article that seemed extremely scholarly in the Australian Higher Education that stated that the number of Aboriginal languages "in a healthy condition, that is, they are spoken by all age groups" is 15 rather than 20. Here are the article details:
Zuckermann, Ghilad, "Aboriginal languages deserve revival", The Australian Higher Education, August 26, 2009.
Please revise.
Aborig ( talk) 10:42, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone see a problem or room for improvement with the following passage from the "Culture" section? In particular, the second of the two sentences...
regards -- Merbabu ( talk) 22:32, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
The section heading says it all. What gives? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bugsplatterspickspick ( talk • contribs) 16:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Good question. I noticed that there is an "AUSTRALIA SUCKS BALLS!!!" at the end of the "Demography" section and I couldn't remove it as the page is locked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.6.139.118 ( talk) 19:55, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
In reading the Australia page in the education section I noticed that someone has defaced the articial.... look at the end of the last sentence in the education section
"The ratio of international to local students in tertiary education in Australia is the highest in the OECD countries.[107] AUSTRALIA SUCKS BALLS!!!"
just thought someone might want to do something about that! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.112.34.53 ( talk) 00:20, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
"Following the 1967 referendum, the Federal government gained the power to implement policies and make laws with respect to Aborigines."
That is, gained the power to make racist laws, and hence have racist policies. Previously this was limited to the states. The Commonwealth could only make laws about the Chinese etc. But was that the main intention? I would have thought that it would be less misleading to say: "removed the special treatment/exclusion of Aborigines from the constitution". or "no longer excluded Aborigines from electoral counts"
On a technical note, no new powers were added to the constitution: it's just the exclusions were dropped. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.162.148 ( talk) 08:29, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Government website says that English is the national language.
http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/overview.html
"Although English is the official language in Australia, more than 3 million Australians speak a language other than English at home (2007)." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Culling66 ( talk • contribs) 05:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Are the blue textures of these two flags the same or are they supposed to be different? The blues of these two flags in Wikipedia are slightly different and I am not sure if this is correct or not. Thanks, Miguel.mateo ( talk) 02:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
This should be clarified. Currently, this article states the pronounciation "aw-STRAY-lee-ə" as the formal version, but this is just the standard British English pronounciation. 84.92.117.93 ( talk) 21:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I would like to contribute to this page with a particular file which relates Australia to the world at large. Thanks -- Camilo Sanchez ( talk) 06:03, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
An actual picture of Australia as seen from outa space is required for the Australia article page.
Possibly something like this below or perhaps as a part of the planet.
What are your thoughts on this? ( Racism Watch Australia ( talk) 10:05, 15 November 2009 (UTC))
21.2 million is the population —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.229.87.127 ( talk) 21:34, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, English is not my native language, but you folks should know better. As it stands, the following lead sentence does not make quite sense:
Australia does not have the smallest continental mainland in the world; maybe Equatorial Guinea has. The intention was, obviously, to say that the continent of Australia is the smallest, but the parenthesis does not point to "continent" but to "mainland". Either the first should be changed to "continent of Australia" or the parenthesis removed, but they cannot be combined in this way. No such user ( talk) 16:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Australia is NOT a member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/nato_countries.htm
Please change this.
Cjk1000 ( talk) 10:33, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
THANKS! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjk1000 ( talk • contribs) 07:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
There's a deletion discussion here that is relevant to the city of Sydney, input would be greatly appreciated. — what a crazy random happenstance 02:52, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Why do we need this table? All those details are in the text - where they should be. It's not like it must be expressed graphically for comprehension - written sentences can describe what is a basic idea quite satisfactorily. Or, shall we make this a precedent and repeat everything in the prose in table form? I removed it from the article, but it was reinstated with an edit summary I don't understand.
-- Merbabu ( talk) 02:51, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
A while ago, Bowei Huang added a formula to automatically calculate the estimated population based on the official population clock. While the initial implementation was executed poorly, the formula does work. He tried, unnecessarily in my opinion, to update it today and the whole formula was subsequently deleted by another editor, apparently because it was 1,000 people out. According to the population clock, one person is added to the population every 71 seconds, which equates to 1,216.9 people per day so, unless the figure is manually updated at least twice every day the figure is always going to be a lot more than 1,000 people out. The formula updates the figure every day at 00:00 UTC removing the need to update the estimate regularly. It only needs changing when the rate of increase changes, which I think is only twice a year. Because of this, and because there was no consensus to remove the population estimate, I've restored the formula to restore the population estimate, adding better precision and removing the rounding. -- AussieLegend ( talk) 07:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
If it's updating itself daily (rolls eyes), does that mean it will appear in my watchlist, um, everyday? -- Merbabu ( talk) 11:44, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't mind this being used, but I take issue with the way the citation implies that the value was retrieved from the website today. This is false. When the website makes a second order correction to the clock, our formula will continue on its merry way until someone notices the discrepancy. We are not obtaining daily updates from that website, and we should not be pretending that we are. Hesperian 12:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
|accessdate=
to "Retrieved on" not "Last updated" as was used in the original citation. I've changed the accessdate to the date the data was actually retrieved and added a note, which should address some concerns.
[20] --
AussieLegend (
talk)
13:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)AussieLegend - I didn't object to the previous estimate because I wasn't paying attention to the article until recently. The more I think about what you're doing, the more I see it as using a technological tool simply because you can, not because it delivers any significant benefit. All my (longish) life I've been happy to read a couple of formal census figures for a place and draw my own conclusions about what the population is likely to be or was at another time. What is gained by using a formula that's really just another estimate, but pretends to be accurate to 8 significant digits, when really it can be nothing of the kind. Over to you. Exactly what is the benefit in using the formula? (And I don't mean in comparison to what was in the article before. I want to hear an absolute benefit.) HiLo48 ( talk) 15:47, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
My preference? No "current" figure being there at all. The reference we already have that links to the ABS will give any readers interested in more detail a place to look. HiLo48 ( talk) 11:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I've refined the formula used to calculate the population estimate in order to make it easier to update it on the odd occasion that this will be necessary. The population clock provides the current estimated population and the increase rate, expressed as "one person every x minute and y seconds". As it was, the formula required that this be converted to "z people every day", which is not an overly complicated task, but one that could be made far simpler. The new version of the formula is:
{{formatnum:{{#expr: a + (86400 / b) * {{Age in days|2010|1|3}} round 0}}}}
Where:
Using the above figures the resultant formula will be:
{{formatnum:{{#expr: 22101244 + (86400 / 71) * {{Age in days|2010|1|3}} round 0}}}}
It's also necessary to ensure that both {{
Age in days}} in the formula, and "|accessdate=
" in the citation that follows the formula, be updated when the formula is updated. Such updates should be necessary twice a year at the most. However, this really depends on when the ABS updates its formula and when somebody notices a significant discrepancy between the displayed estimate and the population clock. --
AussieLegend (
talk)
13:02, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
The current articule reads:
The first recorded use of the word Australia in English was in 1625, in "A note of Australia del Espíritu Santo, written by Master Hakluyt", published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus.
However, the term "Austrialia (sic) del Espíritu Santo" was coined by the Luso-Spanish explorator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós. It is accepted that he did not discover mainland Australia, but In May 1606 he reached the islands later called the New Hebrides (now the independent nation of Vanuatu), landed on a large island which he took to be part of the southern continent, and named it La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo (The Austrian Land of the Holy Spirit), as an homage to christianism and to King Philip III, who was a Habsburg (the Habsburg dinasty is known in Spanish history as "los Austria", or the "Austria" dinasty). That island is still called Espiritu Santo.
So something is not quite right here, I think.
Any comments?
-- Enriquep ( talk) 15:40, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
"Since Federation, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democratic political system"
Australia has had a decade of Conservative rule under John Howard. Even the Liberal Party leans more conservative than progressive. Now if it was meant to say "a democratic political system" than that is agreeable. But the statement above injecting the word "Liberal" makes it sound one-sided as though there's never been any Conservative thought or rule in Australia. This violates Wikipedia's neutral point of view.
Firejack007 ( talk) 18:54, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
I have reverted moves of Terra Australis Incognita and Terra incognita to Terra Australis Ignota and Terra ignota respectively. These moves were completely undiscussed, and without prima facie merit. In any case, the talkpages should not have been redirected: they should be kept in place, for discussion of such moves and of the redirect itself. I have also made Terra Australis redirect to Terra Australis Incognita. Editors might like to watchlist those pages, since they affect at least one important link from the present article.
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 08:02, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks to Vsmith and Dougweller for fixing the mess I found, which I unfortunately made worse by in trying to fix it. The articles involved are these:
I have replaced the lead of Terra Australis with the following summation, including a link to comprehensive history of terms at Australia:
Terra Australis (or Terra Australis Ignota and Terra Australis Incognita; Latin: "the unknown land of the South") was a hypothetical continent appearing on European maps from the 15th to the 18th century. Other names for the continent include Magallanica or Magellanica ("the land of Magellan"), La Australia del Espíritu Santo (Spanish: "the southern land of the Holy Spirit"), and La grande isle de Java (French: "the great island of Java"). Terra Australis was one of several names applied to the actual continent of Australia, after its European discovery; and it is the inspiration for the continent's modern name (see also Etymology, at Australia).
As things stand, there are links and redirects among those pages. These may need discussion and rectifying, along with suitable changes to the pages themselves. In particular the talkpages are problematic: if a talkpage is moved (and then possibly re-moved), redirected, etc., it can become unclear precisely which page is under discussion, or which is referred to in templated page-headers.
Ignota and incognita mean roughly the same in Latin, but are perhaps distinguishable: ignota "unknown, ignored, overlooked [whence also, forgiven]"; incognita "unrecognised, undiscovered, un-learned-about". Non-English-speaking speakers, especially Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, appear to favour ignota over incognita. I suspect there are two reasons for this:
But in the literature (surveyed through properly conducted searches in Googlebooks and other sources), Terra [Australis] Incognita is overwhelming more common: even in old sources, and especially in English-language sources.
I strongly advise that centralised discussion be conducted here at Talk:Australia, and briefly noted at affected pages, to keep all of this in good order. I have placed this discussion there as well.
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 23:03, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
I would like to call on editors familiar with vector graphics editing to complete the unfinished Australian SVG coat of arms uploaded to commons by QWerk. The six divisions of the shield itself (bar Victoria) can be taken from the existing vector state flag files, and the shield bearers, shrubbery, etc., just need some minor stylistic fixing up to conform to actual usage. — what a crazy random happenstance 10:13, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
A picky query I'll admit but the word 'developed' is spelt incorrectly in the Education section. Which is ironic
TragicVision ( talk) 14:46, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
This term "terra nullius" was explained in brackets as "no ones land" followed by the further explanation of "effectively 'empty land'". This latter I have removed as being an unnecessary and inaccurate reinterpretation. The legality, in the British eyes, was not whether the land was inhabited, (it was clearly inhabited), but whether it was owned.
In British law it was clear that the land belonged to noone. There were no signs (to the British eye) of ownership. No boundaries, no markers. A more knowing eye would have perceived the Cumberland grasslands as being a sign of extensive land management. But to the British, the Aboriginal people were like Gypsies camping on a Common.
Amandajm ( talk) 23:39, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
A request for comment related to this article has been opened here. Any thoughts are appreciated. Cptnono ( talk) 03:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi,
The Economist worldwide Quality-of-Life Index for 2010 is published and Australia ranks second. (Please see "Economy" section in the article.)
Mr HiKey ( talk) 09:35, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
On the origin of the name Australia, you can read http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5662057/La-Austrialia-del-Espiritu-Santo.html, which explains it to be connected with Austrialia, the name given originally to the whole area in 1606. Cheers. Josep M Casas —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.42.98.46 ( talk) 18:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
should we change the population of Australia into 22,172,036 as today? Japol1 —Preceding undated comment added 07:25, 2 March 2010 (UTC).
what a great task —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.218.215.10 ( talk) 16:31, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I believe that all images need to have alt text. Please see the MOS on this matter. Is someone willing to add these texts? It is a requirement for FAs. Tony (talk) 13:42, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Can someone confirm that SA does not have compulsory voting? South Australian Election 2010 says that it does... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Roborobby ( talk • contribs) 23:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
The article says that the official state name is the "Commonwealth of Australia". An official document published by the Government of Canada expressly says that "Australia" is the official name and that the "Commonwealth of Australia" is not. So what is the official name (by reference to legal sources in Australia). This is the Canadian publication I mentioned [23]
If you read that Canadian reference closely, you’ll see that it’s about the official names as used by the United Nations. These differ in many respects from the official names as decreed by the countries themselves. (see List of United Nations member states).
For example:
On the other hand, the UN uses the full official titles for:
Why the UN follows some countries’ own formal designations, but uses the shorter name for most countries, I have no idea. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 00:51, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Following a request for copy editing in the language section, I have completed this task. I need to clarify this statement: An indigenous language remains the main language for about 50,000 (0.25%) people. - Is this suppose to say "One indigenous language..."? If so, what is this language called? If not, what is this sentence trying to say? Thanks. -- S Masters ( talk) 08:49, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
I'll jot some notes here. I was going to just go ref hunting when I realised there was some content I am querying: Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:06, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Both of the source pages for the demonym list Ozzie and Aussie as slang for person from Australia (listed after Australian). Both pages list Ozzie first, despite the fact that it would be second if listed alphabetically, as is generally the case for items of equal importance. Excluding Ozzie because it does not fit someone's predetermined calculus of relevance/triviality, apparently based on idiosyncratic factors that do not comport with those used by the source pages, does not make much sense. If alternative and suitably authoritative source pages can be found that argue against including "Ozzie" they should be cited. However, even if such pages exist it seems at the very least culturally biased to exclude well known and widely used demonyms because one person or one source deems them trivial. In addition, the term Ozzie comports with the relatively common use of "Oz" to refer to Australia in many English dialects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moretz ( talk • contribs) 12:16, 19 April 2010 (UTC) Moretz ( talk) 12:21, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Ozzie Pronunciation of Ozzie // (say 'ozee) adjective, noun → Aussie.
Added citations from The Oxford English Dictionary and The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, which is more readily available online. The Oxford English Dictionary includes examples of usage from publications in Sydney, New York, Melbourne, and London, among others. Some sources list "Ozzie" as the pronunciation of "Aussie," but those I have found that so list it are not reliable, so I have left it as a separate entry per the OED.
I'm not sure I see the issue here. A simple search for "ozzie" and "australia" in Google News shows numerous reliable sources within and without Australia using "Ozzie" to mean "Australian", both as a demonym and an adjective. - Rrius ( talk) 18:35, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Tobby72 has just added information, from what should be a reliable source (Times of India), which talks about "Australian born families", and then "Australians", becoming a minority. I find that language troubling.
It makes sense to talk about where individuals were born, but not where families were born. One obvious characteristic of Australia has been the high level of intermarriage between people of different demographic backgrounds.
Australia has also been successful over the years in getting new arrivals to take up Australian citizenship, thus becoming Australian. That makes it highly unlikely that Australians will ever become a minority.
I think that source, and that addition to the article, is garbage, and probably racist garbage. It is more a reference on the racism of others than on the demography of Australia.
HiLo48 ( talk) 22:32, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
The Times of India - just as any other foreigners - make a distinction between the Australians (white anglo saxon) and Australians that are of not white anglo saxon background. And this is what they mean. The white anglo saxon Australians (Aussies) will become a minority, while Australians of other races who rarely have any say in the politics, military or economy, and you rarely see them on TV or hear them on the radio - will become a majority, hopely be more noticable, have some say and be more like white anglo Australian citizens - rather than the secong class citizens. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.50.48.2 ( talk) 05:23, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
> Ranked third in the Index of Economic Freedom (2010),[144] Australia's per capita GDP is slightly higher than that of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
I think CIA world book would be a better guide to GDP. Puts Australia rather lower, around 23rd. Regards, Ben Aveling 05:40, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Any help finding sources for the article Australia–Barbados relations would be appreciated. -- Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) ( talk) 21:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
We need more info on the Aboriginals. Why Australia is run still by the Anglo- Australians - the British servants? Why the land is not returned to the Aboriginals? Why are they still the most disadvantaged part of the Australian society. So far this article totally ignores them and makes look Australia like a rightful part of the British Empire. Are there any pro-independence organizations in Australia who advocate the freedom for the Aboriginals? Are they legal? Can they be legalized? Why is the police and army mostly Anglo? Why they all swear to the English queen? Why the politicians in Australia only pray in Anglican church? The article must be more objective and honest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.50.48.2 ( talk) 04:23, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
I believe that a reference to Gavin Menzies' theory should be included in the History part:
http://www.1421.tv/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.57.255.244 ( talk) 14:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
No mention of the two official national animals or the other third. No mention of the green and gold colors. No mention of the new OZ flag debate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.84.86.213 ( talk) 02:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
There are early reports that Julia Gillard has replaced Kevin Rudd as PM. As soon as this can be verified, this page should be updated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.71.137 ( talk) 12:26, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Rudd didn't resign. He was challenged to a ballot by Julia and lost. I'm not sure what you call that, but it definitely does NOT fit the definition of resignation. If you're kicked out of your job against your will, that's called being fired, the exact opposite of resigning. I don't care what the The Sydney Morning Sun says, only the ABC is a reliable news source in Australia. And quite frankly I'd like to know why any newspaper is treated as a reliable source for an encylopaedia? AN encyclopaedia! Not a friggin gossip magazine, a god damn encyclopaedia! We all know that they print fabrications, yet we're willing to use them to write our encyclopaedia's! I can't help but laugh at the naivety of humans sometimes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.106.216.138 ( talk) 02:49, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
It is actually compulsory to stay in school until the age of 17 or eighteen. you MUST go to year 11 and 12 now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.68.105.213 ( talk) 06:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
I know what is meant by " Australian English has a unique accent", but I don't think that's the accurate way to say it, since Australian English obviously has more than one accent. The Australian English article mentions "three main varieties" for a start. Any bright ideas for a reword? Kahuroa ( talk) 02:52, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
under demonym in the table at the top right, it already says AUSSIE, so why does it also need to say OZZIE, a spelling very rarely used
also under de facto language in the same table, it says english but links to australian english, so why dont we just make it say australian english there as this is what it links to... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.31.62.157 ( talk) 02:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
At the beginning of the Article it mentions that Australia is a multicultural society. We know its now very hip for a country to call itself multicultural in the now global village BUT Australia IS MULTICULTRAL in relation to what and whom???...the U.S? Canada? Australia still has tons of race relation issues and its 2010
Some western western european countries seem more multicultural than Australia
whit and white and white does not make multiculturalism!!! "In the 2006 Australian census, the most commonly nominated ancestry was Australian (37.13%),[184] followed by English (31.65%), Irish (9.08%), Scottish (7.56%), Italian (4.29%), German (4.09%), Chinese (3.37%), and Greek (1.84%).[18"
It's interesting to note that Aboriginals arent even mentioned in this summation...tsk , tsk, tsk..... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.165.140.202 ( talk) 17:59, 2 July 2010
I've changed the Info box from Queen to Monarch again. Although AussieLegend correctly points out that the Constitution says "Queen", Clause 2 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act says The provisions of this Act referring to the Queen shall extend to Her Majesty's heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. I am not a constitutional lawyer, but I think that means we can safely assume that the head of state is the "monarch" in general. According to Brodie's Our Constitution, p10: "The Constitution specified that the Commonwealth of Australia would have the Queen or King of Great Britain as its Head of State." Presumably this refers to Clause 2 of the act, because the Constitution itself does not appear to mention the King at all. Mitch Ames ( talk) 09:39, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Australia/Archive 15 | |
---|---|
Government | |
Queen Elizabeth II |
AussieLegend and GenericBob make compelling arguments for the case that leader_title1 should be "Queen", because that is her correct title. However I still feel that the end result (as displayed in the article) is somehow "wrong". Perhaps the infobox itself is "wrong", in that it should refer to the role (which would be monarch or head of state) rather than the title. Or perhaps it should be the title of the position, not the title of the person? Hence my earlier suggestion of leader_title1 = Head of State, leader_name1 = QE II. While I acknowledge that the constitution explicitly says Queen, I still believe that the role of the monarch is more important than the title of the Queen, as evidenced by Clause 2 of the Constitution Act which states that "Queen" is effectively a placeholder for "ruling monarch". And again I point out that the Constitution did not change when Victoria died and we had a series of Kings for 50 years. Surely no-one doubts that the King was our "leader1" during that time. Mitch Ames ( talk) 12:34, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
You need to take into account the preamble of the Constitution, as it sets the stage for the document. It states: "2. The provisions of this Act referring to the Queen shall extend to Her Majesty’s heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom." Therefore, Monarch would be more appropriate, as the title of "Queen" will change if and when appropriate. - S Masters ( talk) 02:19, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
AussieLegend, you say there's no serious debate about who the head of state is. Maybe you ought to read these:
From Government of Australia#Head of state:
From Monarchy of Australia#Constitutional role:
Sir David Smith, in his book “Head of State”, argues passionately that our head of state is the governor-general, and one might think he ought to know, having been the Official Secretary to 5 of them. I happen to disagree with him, as you presumably would. But that disagreement does not remove the existence of the debate. It actually acknowledges it, otherwise there’d be no position to disagree with. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 12:37, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
It makes sense to say Monarch there, rather than Queen. This is in line with United Kingdom and Canada, i do not see a problem with it. No point changing Monarch to Queen. BritishWatcher ( talk) 13:24, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
The listing of Monarch and Governor-General is appropriate. On a different page, I made some comments on the matter. New Zealand's constitution explicitly defines the monarch as the head of state. Australia's makes no such statement, nor is there any definitive legal instrument to rely upon. It is interesting to see the ABC and various other media outlets refer to Quentin Bryce as "Australia's first female head of state" [28] - as opposed to Queen Victoria! The best we can say is that opinions both official and general differ. -- Pete ( talk) 15:38, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
I know I am coming into this a bit late but I think it is important that we use the most reliable sources available, not the writings of partisans in the monarchy debate (ie David Smith) or the ramblings of journalists, who unfortunately rarely know exactly what they are talking about. In this case I refer you to the Australian Government website, and in particular this document which clearly states "Australia’s head of state is Queen Elizabeth II" and "The Governor-General performs the ceremonial functions of head of state on behalf of the Queen" That is what the article needs to explain. -- Michael Johnson ( talk) 00:20, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
If we had some legal document, stating the identity of the Australian head of state, that would be great. But unfortunately, the only two legal references I can find are rather obscure and contradictory. In one, the High Court describes the Governor-General as the "Constitutional head of the Commonwealth" [29], and in the other, the Governor-General is not listed in a schedule to a law as an International Protected Person, including heads of state, requiring Commonwealth security when visiting. [30] Calling opinions contrary to your own as partisan or "ramblings" is not helpful, especialy when your own sources are wobbly. Relying on departmental websites where the content providers are unlisted is a step up from using Wikipedia as a source, but not a big one.There is no definitive answer, and it is clear that community opinion is divided. -- Pete ( talk) 18:50, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
Guys, I opened up this side thread, not in order for us all to now have a debate about who the HOS is, but to shine a light on the fact that there has been debate about it for a number of years, without coming to universal agreement - all because there is no document that would settle it indisputably. As the above amply shows. It's not good enough to damn one side as partisan and then cherry pick our own favourite sources supporting the other side. That might do for a debate at a pub, but we're writing an encyclopedia here and we need to remain balanced. If we're going to quote an Australian government source that says it's the Queen, we cannot just ignore Rudd's statement of 2009 that says it's the Governor-General. If he wasn't talking on behalf of the Australian Government when he authorised those words, what was he on about? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 07:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | ← | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 | → | Archive 20 |
Do Editors think it is appropriate to say in the opening para that Australia "remains a Commonwealth realm"? Shouldn't the article say Australia is a "constitutional monarchy" - as that term is used in the UK article and Canada's. This is being discussed on Talk:United Kingdom. Regards. Redking7 ( talk) 11:48, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I support using the "Constitutional monarchy" description in the opening para:
I support using the Commonwealth realm" description in the opening para
Comments/Questions I need more detail in why should it be changed, whats more widely used (Commonwealth realm or Constitutional monarchy) in Australia (not just within the Commonwealth). Bidgee ( talk) 11:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Why can't both have a place in the lead? Here is a suggestion:
“ | For around 40,000 years before European settlement commenced in the late
18th century, the Australian mainland and Tasmania were inhabited by around 250 individual nations
[1] of
indigenous Australians.
[2] After sporadic visits by fishermen from the immediate north, and
European discovery by
Dutch explorers in 1606,
[3] the eastern half of Australia was claimed by the
British in 1770 and initially settled through
penal transportation to the colony of
New South Wales, founded on 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in the following years; the continent was explored, and during the 19th century another five largely
self-governing
Crown Colonies were established. On 1 January 1901, the six colonies became a
federation, and the Commonwealth of Australia was formed.
The Commonweath is a constitutional monarchy with strong liberal democratic traditions. As a Commonwealth realm, Australia's monarch is Elizabeth II. The population is just over 21.7 million, with approximately 60% concentrated in and around the mainland state capitals of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. The nation's capital city is Canberra, located in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). |
” |
It is just one possibility. - Rrius ( talk) 03:29, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
The article is currently a FA, but how come it still has [citation needed] templates in a few sections? Aaroncrick (Tassie Boy talk) 09:04, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
I think there is no more absolute consensus that Australia is a liberal democracy beacuse of strict Internet censorship. Therefore I will remove this article from category Category:Liberal democracies. — ilaiho ( talk) 17:53, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
The idea that the government's censorship regime disqualifies Australia as a liberal democracy is absurd (as much as I may detest its planned internet filter scheme). Plenty of liberal democracies have more stringent censorship than Scandinavian countries (in fact, most do). Slac speak up! 04:54, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
How can a country with the Queen as a state head be a democracy??? And liberal??? Sorry but it doesn't work together. Monarchy is not a democracy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.69.27.220 ( talk) 06:22, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Australia is a representative democracy. The head of state is the queen, represented by the govenor general. however australia remains a democracy because we elect our parliamentarians, and our executive government is formed by elected parliamentarians, and the governor general acts on the advice of our elected officials - hence, democracy. The simple "monarchy cannot be a democracy" is absurd. Perhaps you are suggesting that the UK, Canada, New Zealand are also in the list of non-democracies? Yili2943 ( talk) 07:38, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Under the demography section, the information that only 70 aboriginal languages still exist is incorrect. According to the 2005 Ethnologue, which is the most authoritative linguistics survey, there are 280 recorded aboriginal languages, 238 still spoken and 42 extinct. I don't know how to change this since the article is protected. Also, there is no source for the claim that an indigenous language is the main language for 50,000 people. Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/. Claritarejoice ( talk) 17:55, 23 March 2009 (UTC) Claritarejoice
I suggest the Link below containing Google Interactive Map of Australia . http://www.all-maps(dot)info/2009/03/australia-map.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kewaga ( talk • contribs) 14:20, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
Can you please add Australia's business address to this article. It is 1601 MASSACHUSETTS AVE NW C/O AUSTRALIAN EMBASSY WASHINGTON DC 20036 and Australis's company number is 0000805157. Source - http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-idea?CIK=0000805157&action=getcompany
Please keep in mind that Australia is also well known as the ' Down Under ' and the ' Wide Brown ' .
Lejon (
talk)
04:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
I think you're emphasising the wrong part of the poem. 'Sunburnt country' is the common rhetoric. E.g Sunbeam, Sunblest are all traditional Australian business icons. No such thing as Brownbeam toasters or Brownblest bread. Yili2943 ( talk) 07:40, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
I think it's a good idea, but maybe we should post it to America's business address. Um, what's the US' business address? The US business address is being moved to Shanghai, right?-- Merbabu ( talk) 10:35, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Maybe we should put a
here.People often make such mistake.Especially non-English native user like me.囧-- 半弯不直男 ( talk) 13:54, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
The statement: "Technologically advanced and industrialised, Australia is a prosperous multicultural country and has good results in many international comparisons of national performance such as health care, life expectancy, quality-of-life, human development, public education, economic freedom, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights." is quite misleading.
First - Australia has very poor internet network comparing to many countries in the world. Secondly, a country with slow and in some instances still not electrified trians cannot be technologically advanced. Industraliazed also is misleading - a country that is predominantly a primary producer, that doesn't manufacture even one bicycle, TV etc - cannot be called industrialized.
Multicultural? - just because there are many migrants - it doesn;t mean it is multicultural - when de facto it is an English colony which enforces English language at schools and English way of life.
Freedom with internet censorship cannot coexist. Democracy while still monarchy? Do you remember Whitlam Government??? Is this a democracy when the monarch can dissolve a government within one day????
Health care with long queues to emergecy units, and long queues for basic public health services such as dentist (usually people wait 2-3 years) is not at the top of the world.
Life expectancy - especially is local Aboriginal communities is very low.
Human development - still no bill of rights.
Public education - very low, no foreign languages at school, ranking very low in maths among other countries.
Hope you can amend this sentence and be true about Australia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.129.17.160 ( talk) 01:45, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
The following three lines are from the article:
it seems every single one needs to be reverted because of vandalism. can we get this page locked again? Rehumanist ( talk) 12:58, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
How about a section on Australia's many Sporting Achievements?
Also mention at the top of the article: Australia is a prosperous multicultural country and has excellent results in many international comparisons of national performance such as...
For such a small population they do extremely well and their culture is very sport orientated.
Esp:
Cricket (incl first team to beat England)
Olympics
Tennis (incl first to win all grand slams in one year)
Swimming
Rugby —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.16.182.28 ( talk) 22:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
Little/nothing is noted on the iology of Australia. I suggest the following be noted:- Kraft, G.T. 2007. Algae of Australia: Marine Benthic Algae of Lord Howe Island nd the Southern Great Barrier Reef, 1. Green Algae. ABRAS, Canberra, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, Australia. ISBN 9780643094421 Parameter error in {{ ISBN}}: checksum.Osborne 16:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Ethnic groups listed wrongly. latest census states 3.5% aboriginal and 11% asian. also states other groups not listed. change it or remove it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.104.142.162 ( talk) 09:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Cymruman ( talk) 07:58, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
For over a decade multicultist doctrine has came under increasing criticism from may parts of Australian society.
for example:
Andrew Robb, then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration." [4]
The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60. [5]
Plans have been brought in for a English language test.
In January 2007 the Howard Government removed the word "multicultural" from the name of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, changing its name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
Therefore, to simply state in this article that Australia is pro multicultist is completely out of date with the facts of today. I believe some mention of the changing of attitudes (including governments) to the theory must be included here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.114.32.252 ( talk) 13:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Seeing as that I cannot edit this article, I'd like to point out that at the bottom of the politics section, in the last sentence, "enrollment" is misspelled. NavJ7 ( talk) 01:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm slightly nervous about asking this after the continent debate, but if Australia is an Island Continent, why isn't Antartica? In which case, isn't Antartica a larger island? Apepper ( talk) 21:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks - that explains it; I feel a little relieved! 12:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.84.106.37 ( talk)
If Australia is an island, then why aren't the Americas or the combined landmass of Eurasia and Africa? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.84.84 ( talk) 11:15, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I think it is time to open new section about 'Racism' in Australia. We have enough of data by now and it is clear it's an important part. We should list the White Policy, Aboriginal Stolen Generations, Extermination of the Aboriginals in Tasmania, Killing of Chinese in Gold Rush time, Cronulla Beach Riots, recent Attacks on Indians etc and talk in general about the dominination of the Anglo-saxons (government) and systematic marginalization of non-Anglo-saxon migrants in Australia. What do you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homo hi ( talk • contribs) 00:29, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
The population stats in the infobox, are quite wrong. The actual number is more than 21,800,000 rather than the 21,700,000 number which is stated on the page. Australia is also ranked 53rd in the world rather than 51st as also stated.
Shows that Australia has the 53rd highest population
Shows the current estimated population of Australia
I am going to change Australia's rank from 51st to 53rd but I would recommed that the actual population is changed by someone else (besides me). De Mattia ( talk) 01:09, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm baffled as to why the mostly useful links in the navbox at the bottom are bloated by a humungous tree of links to the world's monarchies. This does not concern whether one is an Australian monarchist or not; rather, it's a matter of dilution by irrelevant material. Why, I ask you, are we speciallly linked to countries such as Kuwait, Brunei and Swaziland, just because they happen to have "monarchies" of a sort (although totally different from our constitutional monarchy). I see a link to the "Monarchies" category at the very bottom, too. Why is that not enough?
I suggest that we remove the elaborate, unnecessary navbox bloat. Any objections? Tony (talk) 12:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
I have no objections to the Royal Anthem not being in the infobox, because for 99.99% of the time it may as well not exist, so it really is undue weight. But Aussie Legend is spot on with his facts about its formal designation and how it came about. I'm surprised we all seem to have forgotten so quickly the controversy over its use at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, which the Queen attended. The games organisers decided that Advance Australia Fair and only that song would be sung (by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa). Many people including John Howard had a problem with this, as they considered it was disrespectful to the Queen given that the Royal Anthem was available and was supposed to be used for precisely this sort of occasion. In the end, a few bars of it were sung, then the music morphed into AAF - see [6]. But that was probably the last time it was sung in Australia at any kind of public event. Who knows, it might be the last ever. -- JackofOz ( talk) 03:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
A bit off the point but I never found out who Elizabeth actually was at the Commonwealth Games - was she there as the Queen of the UK , the Queen of Australia or as the Head of the Commonwealth ? If she was there as the latter then playing ' God save the Queen ' was quite a faux pas . Lejon
They are US dollars, aren't they? This needs to be said. Tony (talk) 11:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Aaronclick's recent edits: I can see only one tag that is vaguely required (compulsory voting, if the link doesn't satisfy that purpose). Tony (talk) 03:39, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not too sure who Aaronclick is.. :) Although he probably should have posted here earlier but he didn't so we'll have to move on.
I believe the citation needed are necessary as the article isn't very well referenced and I was hoping for a bit of action on fixing these issues but instead it has unfortunately caused a debate on whether the templates are needed. If you have a look through the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria the article fails 1c along with 2c. Looks at Mumbai for example, it recently was removed as a FA after a FAR partly due to citation concern. The article has just passed a GAN and is cited very well. If the article was now nominated for FAR a lot of work would have be done if it was to remain a FA. Aaroncrick (Tassie Boy talk) 11:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
I've just removed some of the lowest-value links I've ever seen ("English"?) ... Um ... we're reading it now. I see many repeat links of states and cities through the article. Why is "international comparisons of national performance" linked to somewhere else within the article—as though it's not defensive enough to even mention it in the lead? Tony (talk) 13:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Can we please update link 47 "Australia's Size Compared"? It has moved to http://www.ga.gov.au/education/geoscience-basics/dimensions/aus-size-compared.jsp. SydBrklyn ( talk) 15:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I have made some slight grammatical changes to the 'Ethnic Groups' section at the top of the page. For example, when you are referring to an ethnic group as 'White' or 'Other', you must use capital letters. If you were referring to an entity or colour as 'White' or 'Other', it would be a different story. I changed this so it would be correct. The same goes for Dollars. If you are referring to Australian Dollars or US Dollars, you use capital letters. However, if you were saying "I want twenty dollars!", you wouldn't need to do so. Again, I changed this so it would be correct. Also, in the list of ethnic groups, I have deleted unneeded commas. You do not need commas in a list. -- Billsta1 ( talk) 10:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
In the Demography section the article states "School attendance is compulsory throughout Australia". This is incorrect. Education is compulsory in Australia, however, home-schooling is accepted as Education. Also, in many rural parts of Australia, the School of the Air operates (school via CB radio), as well as Distance Education (correspondence school). Some research on Australia's education system would improve this article.
http://www.distance.vic.edu.au/about/abtover.htm
-- Gladrim ( talk) 21:20, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Should not be listed as one of Australia's strong teams.
YellowMonkey ( cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
... is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the mainland, which is both the world's smallest continent and the world's largest island, the island of Tasmania, and numerous other islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the only area of land simultaneously considered a continent, a country and an island.
There's something wrong with the above. First, we're saying the mainland is a continent and an island. OK, so far. Then we're saying the whole country, including Tasmania, is a continent and an island. That's where it goes wrong. The whole country is not an island. It consists of one very large island (the mainland), one large island (Tasmania), and numerous smaller islands (Groote Eylandt, Kangaroo, Melville, Lord Howe, etc etc). Even if we changed the 2nd sentence to "It is the only area of land simultaneously considered a continent and a country", it's still not right because Australia is not just one area of land, but many areas of land, separated by water. I'm removing the offending sentence. -- JackofOz ( talk) 09:04, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Place | Continent | Island | Country |
---|---|---|---|
Tasmania (mainland) | No | Yes | No |
Tasmania (state) | No | No | No |
Mainland of Australia | Maybe(1) | Yes | No |
Australia | Maybe(1) | No | Yes |
This article is about the Commonwealth of Australia, the nation, not the island, not the Continent. The lead paragraph blurs these together, which is incorrect. The Nation (political entity) should not claim it is a continent (geography/geology), and so the paragraph should be re-written. The nation may contain the world's largest island, but is not the world's largest island, as that excludes Tasmania, etc. The 'continent' claim is debatable (see list of discussions at top of page), and so should not claim catagorically that it is a continent, as this is POV without the balancing opposite POV mentioned. The article needs to address this. The Yeti ( talk) 02:42, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Aussie Legend, I'm very curious about this entity you refer to as "Australia, the island". Just exactly where is it and what does it look like? If you're referring to the mainland, that place is a very large part of "Australia", but it is not "Australia". This is like referring to the island of Great Britain as "the United Kingdom". -- JackofOz ( talk) 13:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
No information on health care for Australia. I would be interested if someone could please add it. 118.208.198.149 ( talk) 09:15, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Always tricky on wikipedia to add figures on religious adherence..which I just did (again) on this page on Australia --quoting the census 2001 and 2006 results. If these are outdated, I would like to see more recent figures. Ruud64 ( talk) 20:33, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
This article is a dog's breakfast. Can we just delete it all and start over?-- Rehumanist ( talk) 06:25, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
This aritcle states that Australia is a continent. Forgive me for saying this, but there are only 7 continents in the world which consist of Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Antarctica, and Oceania. Therefore, Australia is not a continent and stating such in this article is false. Australia is nation within Oceania. -- Yoganate79 ( talk) 02:40, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Australia is simply a country. If Australia was a continent, would it make sense to call Fiji, Australia? Oceania represents all of the countries while Australia usually implies to the country and if you use it as a continent, the other countries are not having their fair share of representation. For example, just because China is the biggest country (population wise) in Asia, doesn't mean you call the whole continent "China". Go to Australia (continent). On the map it shows only Australia highlighted. Now, go to Oceania. All of Oceania is highligted.-- KRajaratnam1 ( talk) 21:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Past "Is Australia a continent?" and "Australia is not a continent" discussions, and related topics, may be found at:
I could have sworn it's been discussed more than that. -- AussieLegend ( talk) 09:15, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Not to mention virtually the entire Talk page here:
It really is quite sad that Australians are brainwashed and uneducated to think that their country is one of the classical continents found on earth. My question is, if Australia is considered a continent, then what continent does New Zealand belong to then? In any case, Greenland should also be classified as a continent then too. Let's classify Long Island, Cuba, Japan, and the British Isles their own continents too. -- Yoganate79 ( talk) 01:52, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Countries do not have to belong to a continent. Sorting out which continent the Maldives is located would be tricky. Furthermore, Australia is not a third world country with a tyrannical government. It terms of public brainwashing and lack of education, I'd encourage you to visit someday, and see if your comment is justified. ∗ \ / ( ⁂) 11:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
I have read the current discussions and several of the archived ones and there are may misconceptions and misunderstandings about geographic terms/nomenclature. I will only address the one referenced above.
The difference between an island and a continent are not unrelated. The criterion of size is the primary, but not the only, characteristic that determines what is an island and what is a continent.
Australia was once classified as an island ( see Lancelot and Gray; 'The Civil Service Geography: Being a Manual of Geography, General and Politcal ), but once it was classified as a continent, for reasons of size, biodiversity, geophysics, etc., it lost its status as the largest island and became the smallest continent. Greenland [Kalaallit Nunaat], which is a "continental island" of North America, acquired the title of largest island. An island is not simply a landmass completely surrounded by water, but is also a landmass smaller than a continent (see any geography text book, Davis Joyce; Why Greenland is an Island, Australia is Not- and Japan is Up for Grabs ). This has been established convention for over a century.
I am aware in common usage of describing Australia as an “island continent” , but this is a purely descriptive term and is not:
Besides, if this claim were to be upheld, thus violating established nomenclature, then Antarctica would be the largest island, not Australia. So Australia cannot be both an island and a continent and I am removing that claim in the opening paragraph. Gary Joseph ( talk) 11:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Geography is a science, so the precision and distinction between continent and island are important in order to classify and provide nomenclature. ( I noticed that you have not addressed the anomaly I noted that officially, the Australian federal government does not classify the mainland as an island. Now if you go to Greenland's government site, it lists the mainland as an island, consistent with their view.)
As for the GNBNSW, this does not constitute a geographic entity. My federal government states that an island is a piece of land completely surrounded by water that is also above sea level at high tide. That is a legal definition and consistent with the context with which that entity is dealing. It is not world-geographic in scope. This is true with the GNBNSW as continents do not fall within its scope so the distinction is irrelevant. The accurate definition is not necessary. I do not understand why we are willing to accept the geographically technical definition of "continent" but not that of "island". Mixing the two is irresponsible and reeks of sloppiness.
I should not be surprised by the responses and the reversion of my edit. I am not Australian and have no stake in how many superlatives the country can garner. It does nothing for me. Apparently it does much for many of the Aussies here. Gary Joseph ( talk) 17:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Is it really that important? There are many more things more important that could be done in the time being spent here.-- Merbabu ( talk) 12:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
I've started work on Australasia (Australia and New Zealand) as quite amazingly an article about Australasia in its most common meaning of Australia and NZ was missing. There is already a page devoted to the bilateral relationship - Australia-New Zealand relations, but none which discusses our part of the world as a cultural/political/social/economic region, which clearly it is. Help on this would be greatly appreciated - maybe pages for continents or the EU could be used as a model for different sections. -- 110.32.143.237 ( talk) 09:12, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
This is not a POV fork as it seeks to deal with Australasia as region as opposed to the Australia-NZ relations page which deals with the bilateral relationship between the two countries. There is a British Isles page and one for British-Irish relations so why can't the same be done for Australasia. Progress is well advanced towards and Australasian common market and a single external border and there is a long history of closely tied economies and substantial migration across the Tasman, both before and after the creation of Aus and NZ as sovereign nation states. The article to this point is obviously not complete hence why I put a request for people to contribute - deleting and redirecting without discussion is not helpful. Ultimately the page should have substantial sections on the combined Australasian economy and demography as it increasingly is a single economic market and already has common labour market. It can also include information about the region's culture and history. This does not seem unreasonable and is not a matter of POV. -- 110.32.143.237 ( talk) 14:19, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
The page for Australasia is not really appropriate as it also deals with other definitions of Australasia too, which have their separate pages. e.g. Australasia ecozone It really only provides short definitions of what the term means in different contexts and really it makes sense to deal with these different meanings in separate articles as is currently the case. An article on the Single Economic Market may well be useful, but that wouldn't completely cover the level of Australasian integration, which includes moves towards a common external border and largely open internal border [12], promoting both countries together as an export market and investment destination [13], common free trade deals [14], joint standards and regulatory bodies e.g. [15], joint research organisations e.g. [16] - the list goes on and on and is only getting longer. The definitions of Australasia, whilst overlapping somewhat, are too diverse to be dealt with sensibly in one article. Both Australasia as commonly defined as meaning Australia and N.Z. and the Australasian ecozone are both clearly defined and merit separate articles. 110.32.128.77 ( talk) 23:06, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
I've just changed the "ethnic_groups" field back to reflect exactly what the source says. "White" vs "white" has already been discusssed so I won't touch on that again but I've also changed "[[Australian Aborigines|Aboriginal]]" to just "aboriginal" because that's what's used by the source. While it may seem minor, the use of a capital letter can change the whole meaning. "Aboriginal" is generally taken to mean Australian Aboriginal while "aboriginal" can be a generic term for all indigenous peoples, including Torres Strait Islanders. Since we don't know how the CIA has used it here, assuming that it refers to Australian Aborigines and applying a specific term is WP:OR. -- AussieLegend ( talk) 07:23, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
These stats are very, very old and are most likely just estimates. the census sais the portion of aboriginals is 3.5 percent rather than 1 percent, and asians as 11 percent rather than 7.... so we can see its very contradicctory.....
The Article for the USA doesnt have this at the side so why should we????? especially when the source is questionable... we alreasy have a demographics section
please just remove it once and for all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.104.132.34 ( talk) 07:43, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
When Association football has been included in the list of strong sporting teams eg: "Australia has strong international teams in football, cricket, field hockey, netball, rugby league, rugby union, and performs well in cycling, rowing, and swimming." an editor who appears to be a strong cricket fan has been persistently deleting the reference to Association football. The most recent deletion uses the reason that the A League is allegedly of a low standard although how that editor is able to form such an opinion is moot. Australia's national team is currently ranked at 16 out of 203 ranked teams (ie. in the top 10%) whereas Australia's test cricket team (currently ranked at 4 out of 9) is not even in the top 33%. Reviewing that editor's contributions one finds he has made these statements in his edit summaries:
Can anyone give me a coherent reason why Association football should not be included. Silent Billy ( talk) 03:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Comparing sports is apples to oranges. The question is does Australia peform well in international competition in association football. The answer is - yes - Australia performs strongly in international football, and has done so now for 4 years consecutively. The massive improvement in FIFA and Elo rankings indicate such, but those aside, the team's results have been consistent against higher ranked opponents. MrSPIAP0 ( talk) 02:03, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Silent Billy, from your comments, you might be thinking that I am an Anglo-Saxon anti-Asian who thinks of real football as "wogball" for "immigrant sissies" etc. My parents are Asian immigrants. I think AFL is a joke and soccer is real skill, ask Aaroncrick ( talk · contribs). Still, Australia is not a football power. Only WC finals win is against Japan. In 2007 Asian Cup, lost to Iraq. Australia made it to the quarters. Even Vietnam made it to the quarters. Only wins in WC/Asian qualifiers and finals were against Asian teams, the likes of UAE, Qatar, etc. You say that only 9 countries play cricket in comparison to 200 in football and that Australia is not in the top 33% in cricket but in the top 8% in football is a joke. In football, every registered country is counted, including backyard standard teams like American Samoa (lost 31-0 to Australian players who were part-timers in the Australian league), Bhutan etc. In cricket there are about 80 registered countries but only 9 were allowed to play in the elite league "Test cricket". While Bangladesh, the worst Test country is bad, at least their best player Shakib Al Hasan would get selected in the top 3 countries, South Africa, India and Sri Lanka. Some Australians would get into the top three teams. None of the Australian footballers would get into a Spanish or Brazilian 20-25 man squad, let alone the playing 11. The cricket countries from 10-15 who are on the edge of Test standard, are more competitive than the token American Samoan teams, who would easily get bashed about 80=0 by Spain, Brazil etc. YellowMonkey ( bananabucket) 03:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
I am a one-eyed football supporter, for the little that it's worth, and I agree fully with Hesperian and YellowMonkey. We aren't a "strong national football nation"; not only are the FIFA rankings a bit of a sham (as pointed out by YellowMonkey himself), and not only is there no solid bank of references to consider our relative football ability and historical strength to be on par with that of cricket, netball etc., but the massive skill and historical disparity between Australia and the likes of Spain, Brazil, England, etc., and the relatively poor standard of the A-League and its lack of history, means that football should not be added alongside cricket etc. in the main article. Daniel ( talk) 05:45, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Those who think Australia is not now strong in soccer are either living in the past or are confusing a nation being strong and a nation dominating the world stage. Yes, Australia has until recently been better at cricket and rugby than soccer. But just as the fortunes of the national cricket and rugby teams are now fading, the national Australian football team has been rising solidly for the past six years. As a nation we might not be challenging for number one status in the world, but in a 200-strong competition, as a nation, having beaten the likes of top ten countries such as Holland and England in recent years with admirable performances against Italy, Argentina and Brazil, to be the second country on the planet to qualify for our second World Cup in a row with three games in hand, conceding just one goal and unbeaten all the way through the final qualifying stage, to be ranked 14th in the world, to call that anything but strong is simply petty and anachronistic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smoomonster ( talk • contribs) 11:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Once again I reiterate that a "strong" team cannot be decided upon with out criteria and that we should just state all national teams' international rankings & acomplishments.-- UltimateG ( talk) 01:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
This article says that 20 Aboriginal languages are not endangered. However, I recently read an article that seemed extremely scholarly in the Australian Higher Education that stated that the number of Aboriginal languages "in a healthy condition, that is, they are spoken by all age groups" is 15 rather than 20. Here are the article details:
Zuckermann, Ghilad, "Aboriginal languages deserve revival", The Australian Higher Education, August 26, 2009.
Please revise.
Aborig ( talk) 10:42, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone see a problem or room for improvement with the following passage from the "Culture" section? In particular, the second of the two sentences...
regards -- Merbabu ( talk) 22:32, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
The section heading says it all. What gives? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bugsplatterspickspick ( talk • contribs) 16:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Good question. I noticed that there is an "AUSTRALIA SUCKS BALLS!!!" at the end of the "Demography" section and I couldn't remove it as the page is locked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.6.139.118 ( talk) 19:55, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
In reading the Australia page in the education section I noticed that someone has defaced the articial.... look at the end of the last sentence in the education section
"The ratio of international to local students in tertiary education in Australia is the highest in the OECD countries.[107] AUSTRALIA SUCKS BALLS!!!"
just thought someone might want to do something about that! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.112.34.53 ( talk) 00:20, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
"Following the 1967 referendum, the Federal government gained the power to implement policies and make laws with respect to Aborigines."
That is, gained the power to make racist laws, and hence have racist policies. Previously this was limited to the states. The Commonwealth could only make laws about the Chinese etc. But was that the main intention? I would have thought that it would be less misleading to say: "removed the special treatment/exclusion of Aborigines from the constitution". or "no longer excluded Aborigines from electoral counts"
On a technical note, no new powers were added to the constitution: it's just the exclusions were dropped. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.162.148 ( talk) 08:29, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Government website says that English is the national language.
http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/overview.html
"Although English is the official language in Australia, more than 3 million Australians speak a language other than English at home (2007)." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Culling66 ( talk • contribs) 05:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Are the blue textures of these two flags the same or are they supposed to be different? The blues of these two flags in Wikipedia are slightly different and I am not sure if this is correct or not. Thanks, Miguel.mateo ( talk) 02:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
This should be clarified. Currently, this article states the pronounciation "aw-STRAY-lee-ə" as the formal version, but this is just the standard British English pronounciation. 84.92.117.93 ( talk) 21:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi, I would like to contribute to this page with a particular file which relates Australia to the world at large. Thanks -- Camilo Sanchez ( talk) 06:03, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
An actual picture of Australia as seen from outa space is required for the Australia article page.
Possibly something like this below or perhaps as a part of the planet.
What are your thoughts on this? ( Racism Watch Australia ( talk) 10:05, 15 November 2009 (UTC))
21.2 million is the population —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.229.87.127 ( talk) 21:34, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, English is not my native language, but you folks should know better. As it stands, the following lead sentence does not make quite sense:
Australia does not have the smallest continental mainland in the world; maybe Equatorial Guinea has. The intention was, obviously, to say that the continent of Australia is the smallest, but the parenthesis does not point to "continent" but to "mainland". Either the first should be changed to "continent of Australia" or the parenthesis removed, but they cannot be combined in this way. No such user ( talk) 16:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Australia is NOT a member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/nato_countries.htm
Please change this.
Cjk1000 ( talk) 10:33, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
THANKS! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjk1000 ( talk • contribs) 07:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
There's a deletion discussion here that is relevant to the city of Sydney, input would be greatly appreciated. — what a crazy random happenstance 02:52, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Why do we need this table? All those details are in the text - where they should be. It's not like it must be expressed graphically for comprehension - written sentences can describe what is a basic idea quite satisfactorily. Or, shall we make this a precedent and repeat everything in the prose in table form? I removed it from the article, but it was reinstated with an edit summary I don't understand.
-- Merbabu ( talk) 02:51, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
A while ago, Bowei Huang added a formula to automatically calculate the estimated population based on the official population clock. While the initial implementation was executed poorly, the formula does work. He tried, unnecessarily in my opinion, to update it today and the whole formula was subsequently deleted by another editor, apparently because it was 1,000 people out. According to the population clock, one person is added to the population every 71 seconds, which equates to 1,216.9 people per day so, unless the figure is manually updated at least twice every day the figure is always going to be a lot more than 1,000 people out. The formula updates the figure every day at 00:00 UTC removing the need to update the estimate regularly. It only needs changing when the rate of increase changes, which I think is only twice a year. Because of this, and because there was no consensus to remove the population estimate, I've restored the formula to restore the population estimate, adding better precision and removing the rounding. -- AussieLegend ( talk) 07:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
If it's updating itself daily (rolls eyes), does that mean it will appear in my watchlist, um, everyday? -- Merbabu ( talk) 11:44, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't mind this being used, but I take issue with the way the citation implies that the value was retrieved from the website today. This is false. When the website makes a second order correction to the clock, our formula will continue on its merry way until someone notices the discrepancy. We are not obtaining daily updates from that website, and we should not be pretending that we are. Hesperian 12:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
|accessdate=
to "Retrieved on" not "Last updated" as was used in the original citation. I've changed the accessdate to the date the data was actually retrieved and added a note, which should address some concerns.
[20] --
AussieLegend (
talk)
13:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)AussieLegend - I didn't object to the previous estimate because I wasn't paying attention to the article until recently. The more I think about what you're doing, the more I see it as using a technological tool simply because you can, not because it delivers any significant benefit. All my (longish) life I've been happy to read a couple of formal census figures for a place and draw my own conclusions about what the population is likely to be or was at another time. What is gained by using a formula that's really just another estimate, but pretends to be accurate to 8 significant digits, when really it can be nothing of the kind. Over to you. Exactly what is the benefit in using the formula? (And I don't mean in comparison to what was in the article before. I want to hear an absolute benefit.) HiLo48 ( talk) 15:47, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
My preference? No "current" figure being there at all. The reference we already have that links to the ABS will give any readers interested in more detail a place to look. HiLo48 ( talk) 11:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I've refined the formula used to calculate the population estimate in order to make it easier to update it on the odd occasion that this will be necessary. The population clock provides the current estimated population and the increase rate, expressed as "one person every x minute and y seconds". As it was, the formula required that this be converted to "z people every day", which is not an overly complicated task, but one that could be made far simpler. The new version of the formula is:
{{formatnum:{{#expr: a + (86400 / b) * {{Age in days|2010|1|3}} round 0}}}}
Where:
Using the above figures the resultant formula will be:
{{formatnum:{{#expr: 22101244 + (86400 / 71) * {{Age in days|2010|1|3}} round 0}}}}
It's also necessary to ensure that both {{
Age in days}} in the formula, and "|accessdate=
" in the citation that follows the formula, be updated when the formula is updated. Such updates should be necessary twice a year at the most. However, this really depends on when the ABS updates its formula and when somebody notices a significant discrepancy between the displayed estimate and the population clock. --
AussieLegend (
talk)
13:02, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
The current articule reads:
The first recorded use of the word Australia in English was in 1625, in "A note of Australia del Espíritu Santo, written by Master Hakluyt", published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus.
However, the term "Austrialia (sic) del Espíritu Santo" was coined by the Luso-Spanish explorator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós. It is accepted that he did not discover mainland Australia, but In May 1606 he reached the islands later called the New Hebrides (now the independent nation of Vanuatu), landed on a large island which he took to be part of the southern continent, and named it La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo (The Austrian Land of the Holy Spirit), as an homage to christianism and to King Philip III, who was a Habsburg (the Habsburg dinasty is known in Spanish history as "los Austria", or the "Austria" dinasty). That island is still called Espiritu Santo.
So something is not quite right here, I think.
Any comments?
-- Enriquep ( talk) 15:40, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
"Since Federation, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democratic political system"
Australia has had a decade of Conservative rule under John Howard. Even the Liberal Party leans more conservative than progressive. Now if it was meant to say "a democratic political system" than that is agreeable. But the statement above injecting the word "Liberal" makes it sound one-sided as though there's never been any Conservative thought or rule in Australia. This violates Wikipedia's neutral point of view.
Firejack007 ( talk) 18:54, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
I have reverted moves of Terra Australis Incognita and Terra incognita to Terra Australis Ignota and Terra ignota respectively. These moves were completely undiscussed, and without prima facie merit. In any case, the talkpages should not have been redirected: they should be kept in place, for discussion of such moves and of the redirect itself. I have also made Terra Australis redirect to Terra Australis Incognita. Editors might like to watchlist those pages, since they affect at least one important link from the present article.
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 08:02, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks to Vsmith and Dougweller for fixing the mess I found, which I unfortunately made worse by in trying to fix it. The articles involved are these:
I have replaced the lead of Terra Australis with the following summation, including a link to comprehensive history of terms at Australia:
Terra Australis (or Terra Australis Ignota and Terra Australis Incognita; Latin: "the unknown land of the South") was a hypothetical continent appearing on European maps from the 15th to the 18th century. Other names for the continent include Magallanica or Magellanica ("the land of Magellan"), La Australia del Espíritu Santo (Spanish: "the southern land of the Holy Spirit"), and La grande isle de Java (French: "the great island of Java"). Terra Australis was one of several names applied to the actual continent of Australia, after its European discovery; and it is the inspiration for the continent's modern name (see also Etymology, at Australia).
As things stand, there are links and redirects among those pages. These may need discussion and rectifying, along with suitable changes to the pages themselves. In particular the talkpages are problematic: if a talkpage is moved (and then possibly re-moved), redirected, etc., it can become unclear precisely which page is under discussion, or which is referred to in templated page-headers.
Ignota and incognita mean roughly the same in Latin, but are perhaps distinguishable: ignota "unknown, ignored, overlooked [whence also, forgiven]"; incognita "unrecognised, undiscovered, un-learned-about". Non-English-speaking speakers, especially Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, appear to favour ignota over incognita. I suspect there are two reasons for this:
But in the literature (surveyed through properly conducted searches in Googlebooks and other sources), Terra [Australis] Incognita is overwhelming more common: even in old sources, and especially in English-language sources.
I strongly advise that centralised discussion be conducted here at Talk:Australia, and briefly noted at affected pages, to keep all of this in good order. I have placed this discussion there as well.
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 23:03, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
I would like to call on editors familiar with vector graphics editing to complete the unfinished Australian SVG coat of arms uploaded to commons by QWerk. The six divisions of the shield itself (bar Victoria) can be taken from the existing vector state flag files, and the shield bearers, shrubbery, etc., just need some minor stylistic fixing up to conform to actual usage. — what a crazy random happenstance 10:13, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
A picky query I'll admit but the word 'developed' is spelt incorrectly in the Education section. Which is ironic
TragicVision ( talk) 14:46, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
This term "terra nullius" was explained in brackets as "no ones land" followed by the further explanation of "effectively 'empty land'". This latter I have removed as being an unnecessary and inaccurate reinterpretation. The legality, in the British eyes, was not whether the land was inhabited, (it was clearly inhabited), but whether it was owned.
In British law it was clear that the land belonged to noone. There were no signs (to the British eye) of ownership. No boundaries, no markers. A more knowing eye would have perceived the Cumberland grasslands as being a sign of extensive land management. But to the British, the Aboriginal people were like Gypsies camping on a Common.
Amandajm ( talk) 23:39, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
A request for comment related to this article has been opened here. Any thoughts are appreciated. Cptnono ( talk) 03:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi,
The Economist worldwide Quality-of-Life Index for 2010 is published and Australia ranks second. (Please see "Economy" section in the article.)
Mr HiKey ( talk) 09:35, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
On the origin of the name Australia, you can read http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5662057/La-Austrialia-del-Espiritu-Santo.html, which explains it to be connected with Austrialia, the name given originally to the whole area in 1606. Cheers. Josep M Casas —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.42.98.46 ( talk) 18:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
should we change the population of Australia into 22,172,036 as today? Japol1 —Preceding undated comment added 07:25, 2 March 2010 (UTC).
what a great task —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.218.215.10 ( talk) 16:31, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I believe that all images need to have alt text. Please see the MOS on this matter. Is someone willing to add these texts? It is a requirement for FAs. Tony (talk) 13:42, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Can someone confirm that SA does not have compulsory voting? South Australian Election 2010 says that it does... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Roborobby ( talk • contribs) 23:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
The article says that the official state name is the "Commonwealth of Australia". An official document published by the Government of Canada expressly says that "Australia" is the official name and that the "Commonwealth of Australia" is not. So what is the official name (by reference to legal sources in Australia). This is the Canadian publication I mentioned [23]
If you read that Canadian reference closely, you’ll see that it’s about the official names as used by the United Nations. These differ in many respects from the official names as decreed by the countries themselves. (see List of United Nations member states).
For example:
On the other hand, the UN uses the full official titles for:
Why the UN follows some countries’ own formal designations, but uses the shorter name for most countries, I have no idea. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 00:51, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Following a request for copy editing in the language section, I have completed this task. I need to clarify this statement: An indigenous language remains the main language for about 50,000 (0.25%) people. - Is this suppose to say "One indigenous language..."? If so, what is this language called? If not, what is this sentence trying to say? Thanks. -- S Masters ( talk) 08:49, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
I'll jot some notes here. I was going to just go ref hunting when I realised there was some content I am querying: Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:06, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Both of the source pages for the demonym list Ozzie and Aussie as slang for person from Australia (listed after Australian). Both pages list Ozzie first, despite the fact that it would be second if listed alphabetically, as is generally the case for items of equal importance. Excluding Ozzie because it does not fit someone's predetermined calculus of relevance/triviality, apparently based on idiosyncratic factors that do not comport with those used by the source pages, does not make much sense. If alternative and suitably authoritative source pages can be found that argue against including "Ozzie" they should be cited. However, even if such pages exist it seems at the very least culturally biased to exclude well known and widely used demonyms because one person or one source deems them trivial. In addition, the term Ozzie comports with the relatively common use of "Oz" to refer to Australia in many English dialects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moretz ( talk • contribs) 12:16, 19 April 2010 (UTC) Moretz ( talk) 12:21, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Ozzie Pronunciation of Ozzie // (say 'ozee) adjective, noun → Aussie.
Added citations from The Oxford English Dictionary and The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, which is more readily available online. The Oxford English Dictionary includes examples of usage from publications in Sydney, New York, Melbourne, and London, among others. Some sources list "Ozzie" as the pronunciation of "Aussie," but those I have found that so list it are not reliable, so I have left it as a separate entry per the OED.
I'm not sure I see the issue here. A simple search for "ozzie" and "australia" in Google News shows numerous reliable sources within and without Australia using "Ozzie" to mean "Australian", both as a demonym and an adjective. - Rrius ( talk) 18:35, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Tobby72 has just added information, from what should be a reliable source (Times of India), which talks about "Australian born families", and then "Australians", becoming a minority. I find that language troubling.
It makes sense to talk about where individuals were born, but not where families were born. One obvious characteristic of Australia has been the high level of intermarriage between people of different demographic backgrounds.
Australia has also been successful over the years in getting new arrivals to take up Australian citizenship, thus becoming Australian. That makes it highly unlikely that Australians will ever become a minority.
I think that source, and that addition to the article, is garbage, and probably racist garbage. It is more a reference on the racism of others than on the demography of Australia.
HiLo48 ( talk) 22:32, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
The Times of India - just as any other foreigners - make a distinction between the Australians (white anglo saxon) and Australians that are of not white anglo saxon background. And this is what they mean. The white anglo saxon Australians (Aussies) will become a minority, while Australians of other races who rarely have any say in the politics, military or economy, and you rarely see them on TV or hear them on the radio - will become a majority, hopely be more noticable, have some say and be more like white anglo Australian citizens - rather than the secong class citizens. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.50.48.2 ( talk) 05:23, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
> Ranked third in the Index of Economic Freedom (2010),[144] Australia's per capita GDP is slightly higher than that of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
I think CIA world book would be a better guide to GDP. Puts Australia rather lower, around 23rd. Regards, Ben Aveling 05:40, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Any help finding sources for the article Australia–Barbados relations would be appreciated. -- Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) ( talk) 21:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
We need more info on the Aboriginals. Why Australia is run still by the Anglo- Australians - the British servants? Why the land is not returned to the Aboriginals? Why are they still the most disadvantaged part of the Australian society. So far this article totally ignores them and makes look Australia like a rightful part of the British Empire. Are there any pro-independence organizations in Australia who advocate the freedom for the Aboriginals? Are they legal? Can they be legalized? Why is the police and army mostly Anglo? Why they all swear to the English queen? Why the politicians in Australia only pray in Anglican church? The article must be more objective and honest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.50.48.2 ( talk) 04:23, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
I believe that a reference to Gavin Menzies' theory should be included in the History part:
http://www.1421.tv/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.57.255.244 ( talk) 14:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
No mention of the two official national animals or the other third. No mention of the green and gold colors. No mention of the new OZ flag debate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.84.86.213 ( talk) 02:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
There are early reports that Julia Gillard has replaced Kevin Rudd as PM. As soon as this can be verified, this page should be updated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.71.137 ( talk) 12:26, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Rudd didn't resign. He was challenged to a ballot by Julia and lost. I'm not sure what you call that, but it definitely does NOT fit the definition of resignation. If you're kicked out of your job against your will, that's called being fired, the exact opposite of resigning. I don't care what the The Sydney Morning Sun says, only the ABC is a reliable news source in Australia. And quite frankly I'd like to know why any newspaper is treated as a reliable source for an encylopaedia? AN encyclopaedia! Not a friggin gossip magazine, a god damn encyclopaedia! We all know that they print fabrications, yet we're willing to use them to write our encyclopaedia's! I can't help but laugh at the naivety of humans sometimes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.106.216.138 ( talk) 02:49, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
It is actually compulsory to stay in school until the age of 17 or eighteen. you MUST go to year 11 and 12 now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.68.105.213 ( talk) 06:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
I know what is meant by " Australian English has a unique accent", but I don't think that's the accurate way to say it, since Australian English obviously has more than one accent. The Australian English article mentions "three main varieties" for a start. Any bright ideas for a reword? Kahuroa ( talk) 02:52, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
under demonym in the table at the top right, it already says AUSSIE, so why does it also need to say OZZIE, a spelling very rarely used
also under de facto language in the same table, it says english but links to australian english, so why dont we just make it say australian english there as this is what it links to... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.31.62.157 ( talk) 02:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
At the beginning of the Article it mentions that Australia is a multicultural society. We know its now very hip for a country to call itself multicultural in the now global village BUT Australia IS MULTICULTRAL in relation to what and whom???...the U.S? Canada? Australia still has tons of race relation issues and its 2010
Some western western european countries seem more multicultural than Australia
whit and white and white does not make multiculturalism!!! "In the 2006 Australian census, the most commonly nominated ancestry was Australian (37.13%),[184] followed by English (31.65%), Irish (9.08%), Scottish (7.56%), Italian (4.29%), German (4.09%), Chinese (3.37%), and Greek (1.84%).[18"
It's interesting to note that Aboriginals arent even mentioned in this summation...tsk , tsk, tsk..... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.165.140.202 ( talk) 17:59, 2 July 2010
I've changed the Info box from Queen to Monarch again. Although AussieLegend correctly points out that the Constitution says "Queen", Clause 2 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act says The provisions of this Act referring to the Queen shall extend to Her Majesty's heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. I am not a constitutional lawyer, but I think that means we can safely assume that the head of state is the "monarch" in general. According to Brodie's Our Constitution, p10: "The Constitution specified that the Commonwealth of Australia would have the Queen or King of Great Britain as its Head of State." Presumably this refers to Clause 2 of the act, because the Constitution itself does not appear to mention the King at all. Mitch Ames ( talk) 09:39, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Australia/Archive 15 | |
---|---|
Government | |
Queen Elizabeth II |
AussieLegend and GenericBob make compelling arguments for the case that leader_title1 should be "Queen", because that is her correct title. However I still feel that the end result (as displayed in the article) is somehow "wrong". Perhaps the infobox itself is "wrong", in that it should refer to the role (which would be monarch or head of state) rather than the title. Or perhaps it should be the title of the position, not the title of the person? Hence my earlier suggestion of leader_title1 = Head of State, leader_name1 = QE II. While I acknowledge that the constitution explicitly says Queen, I still believe that the role of the monarch is more important than the title of the Queen, as evidenced by Clause 2 of the Constitution Act which states that "Queen" is effectively a placeholder for "ruling monarch". And again I point out that the Constitution did not change when Victoria died and we had a series of Kings for 50 years. Surely no-one doubts that the King was our "leader1" during that time. Mitch Ames ( talk) 12:34, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
You need to take into account the preamble of the Constitution, as it sets the stage for the document. It states: "2. The provisions of this Act referring to the Queen shall extend to Her Majesty’s heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom." Therefore, Monarch would be more appropriate, as the title of "Queen" will change if and when appropriate. - S Masters ( talk) 02:19, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
AussieLegend, you say there's no serious debate about who the head of state is. Maybe you ought to read these:
From Government of Australia#Head of state:
From Monarchy of Australia#Constitutional role:
Sir David Smith, in his book “Head of State”, argues passionately that our head of state is the governor-general, and one might think he ought to know, having been the Official Secretary to 5 of them. I happen to disagree with him, as you presumably would. But that disagreement does not remove the existence of the debate. It actually acknowledges it, otherwise there’d be no position to disagree with. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 12:37, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
It makes sense to say Monarch there, rather than Queen. This is in line with United Kingdom and Canada, i do not see a problem with it. No point changing Monarch to Queen. BritishWatcher ( talk) 13:24, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
The listing of Monarch and Governor-General is appropriate. On a different page, I made some comments on the matter. New Zealand's constitution explicitly defines the monarch as the head of state. Australia's makes no such statement, nor is there any definitive legal instrument to rely upon. It is interesting to see the ABC and various other media outlets refer to Quentin Bryce as "Australia's first female head of state" [28] - as opposed to Queen Victoria! The best we can say is that opinions both official and general differ. -- Pete ( talk) 15:38, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
I know I am coming into this a bit late but I think it is important that we use the most reliable sources available, not the writings of partisans in the monarchy debate (ie David Smith) or the ramblings of journalists, who unfortunately rarely know exactly what they are talking about. In this case I refer you to the Australian Government website, and in particular this document which clearly states "Australia’s head of state is Queen Elizabeth II" and "The Governor-General performs the ceremonial functions of head of state on behalf of the Queen" That is what the article needs to explain. -- Michael Johnson ( talk) 00:20, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
If we had some legal document, stating the identity of the Australian head of state, that would be great. But unfortunately, the only two legal references I can find are rather obscure and contradictory. In one, the High Court describes the Governor-General as the "Constitutional head of the Commonwealth" [29], and in the other, the Governor-General is not listed in a schedule to a law as an International Protected Person, including heads of state, requiring Commonwealth security when visiting. [30] Calling opinions contrary to your own as partisan or "ramblings" is not helpful, especialy when your own sources are wobbly. Relying on departmental websites where the content providers are unlisted is a step up from using Wikipedia as a source, but not a big one.There is no definitive answer, and it is clear that community opinion is divided. -- Pete ( talk) 18:50, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
Guys, I opened up this side thread, not in order for us all to now have a debate about who the HOS is, but to shine a light on the fact that there has been debate about it for a number of years, without coming to universal agreement - all because there is no document that would settle it indisputably. As the above amply shows. It's not good enough to damn one side as partisan and then cherry pick our own favourite sources supporting the other side. That might do for a debate at a pub, but we're writing an encyclopedia here and we need to remain balanced. If we're going to quote an Australian government source that says it's the Queen, we cannot just ignore Rudd's statement of 2009 that says it's the Governor-General. If he wasn't talking on behalf of the Australian Government when he authorised those words, what was he on about? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 07:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)