Saddened and galled. That's how I felt when I read this week's news about Australians' attitudes to racial and cultural minorities, their prejudices against Muslims, Jews, Asians, and, most ludicrously of all, the original inhabitants of this country, the Aboriginal people. I wasn't even consoled by the fact that anti-British, Italian and Christian sentiments across Australia were recorded at less than 10 per cent. With so many different cultures and nationalities being distrusted, who was there left to detest? And who were all these ''Australians'' doing the detesting?

I was so dispirited with the University of Western Sydney's findings on racism that I had to read the results for myself. But when I went to the university's website, an unexpectedly heartening picture emerged.

The findings weren't all bad. In fact, read another way, they could be seen as a tribute to the decency and humanity of Australians.

The university found that ''Australians are largely tolerant people who are accepting and welcoming of other cultures. The survey data indicates that a large majority of Australians are positive about living in a multicultural society. Most Australians feel secure and comfortable with cultural difference''. (My emphases.)

When asked ''is it a good thing for a society to be made up of people from different cultures?'', 86.8 per cent of Australians agreed it was (in Victoria, 89.5 per cent agreed). When asked ''do you feel secure when you are with people of different ethnic backgrounds?'', 78.1 per cent of Australians said they did. (In Victoria, 81.4 per cent responded positively.)