This four-part documentary series, inspired by Julianne Schultz’s 2022 book, investigates an intriguing if somewhat amorphous question: what is the idea of Australia? This kind of question is problematically vague; no nation can be reduced to a single unifying idea. The real (but still gargantuan) question being asked is: what concepts and values define Australian national identity, and how have they changed over time? It’s certainly a conversation-starter – best brought up at a barbecue where there’s sausages, stubbies, sunscreen, surfboards, tubs of Vegemite, dangerous animals to avoid …
These are the sorts of arguably dated images the show would like us to reassess, given we live in – as presenter/narrator Rachel Griffiths puts it – “a rapidly changing” modern world. When I first read about this series, my mind quickly went to that wonderfully egalitarian turn of phrase “a fair go”, which director Benjamin Jones broaches less than 10 minutes into the first episode (this review encompasses all four). Most intelligent considerations of this concept would first establish whether it actually exists; then, if it does, what it looks like and who it applies to.
It hardly requires a history expert to grasp that Australia’s treatment of First Nations peoples represents the very opposite of a fair go. This is perhaps why the show front-loads discussion about the absurd concept of terra nullius, rightly described by Griffiths as a “convenient fiction” that’s had “a catastrophic impact for centuries”. This section drops some interesting factoids: the person who introduced the term, for instance, was a judge and poet named Barron Field, who once rhymed “Australia” with “failure”. The topic of terra nullius alone could sustain its own series, but here it’s whizzed through.
This is a problem present in the series from go to whoa. With so much to cover, there’s no time to give any subject much space or consideration. Compounding the problem – while also providing the show’s best content – is a huge and rather excellent collection of interviewees, including Prof Marcia Langton, Bruce Pascoe, Craig Foster, Rachel Perkins, Ray Martin, Ken Henry, Grace Tame, Kerry O’Brien and many, many others; according to the press notes, the series features more than 60 interviews.
These interviewees form an intellectual Aussie powerhouse, no doubt about it. But more commentators equals less screen time per individual, and exacerbating the show’s already flittery tendencies by jumping around between them. I recently watched the feature documentary The Lost City of Melbourne – about Melbourne’s architectural evolution and its loss of grand Victorian buildings – which does the opposite, staying with a small number of interviewees and really letting them flesh out their thoughts. This also has drawbacks, perhaps swinging too far in the opposite direction, but in many ways it’s more appealing than the frenetic approach undertaken by Jones; I liked this series but felt exhausted and a little short-changed.
It certainly touches on many important topics, including – in the first two episodes alone – the country’s love of mavericks; the mythical Aussie bushranger; migration and racism; the difficulties in creating constitutional change; and progressive Australian women who were essentially written out of history. But the show’s rhythms feel intensely circular, bits and pieces whooshing around us and no ability to hold on to anything. There were times when its full-throttle editing style made me want to yell “slow down!”
I was also left cold by Griffiths’ presentation – particularly those semi-frequents cuts to her wandering along a beach looking ponderous, as if waiting for a deep thought to arrive by tide.
Moments with her sitting in a cinema, watching clips from various Australian films, fare a little better. Titles on the bill include Crocodile Dundee, The Castle and The Story of the Kelly Gang. But for me, the most memorable on-screen exploration of “the idea of Australia” is a scene in Charles Chauvel’s Forty Thousand Horsemen, in which Chips Rafferty’s character – a member of the Australian Light Horse – ponders what the Anzacs were fighting for: “The right to stand up on a soapbox in the Domain; the right to tell the boss what he can do with his job if we don’t like it; and the right to start off as a roustabout and finish up as prime minister.”
It’s understandable, however, that this moment didn’t make the cut; this ambitious series is already wrestling with a continent’s worth of ideas.
The Idea of Australia airs Wednesdays from 15 October at 7.30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand
