07 July 1993 | OP45

The notion of the Australian cultural cringe is one of the myths that undermine the vigour of our social and intellectual life. According to legend, Australian colonials were ‘inert, deferential and passive’ before the overseas powers, especially Britain, but this dismal state of affairs changed for the better during the 1960s and early 1970s. The late L.J. Hume’s painstaking analysis…