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Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizenship, nationality and individuals associated with the country of Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Australian. Australian law does not provide for any racial or ethnic component of nationality, instead relying on citizenship as a legal status, though the Constitutional framers considered the Commonwealth to be "a home for Australians and the British race alone", as well as a "Christian Commonwealth". Since the postwar period, Australia has pursued an official policy of multiculturalism and has the world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30 percent of the population in 2019.
Between European colonisation in 1788 and the Second World War, the vast majority of settlers and immigrants came from the British Isles (principally England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland), although there was significant immigration from China and Germany during the 19th century. Many early settlements were initially penal colonies to house transported convicts. Immigration increased steadily, with an explosion of population in the 1850s following a series of gold rushes.
In the decades immediately following the Second World War, Australia received a large wave of immigration from across Europe, with many more immigrants arriving from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe than in previous decades. Since the late 1970s, following the end of the White Australia policy in 1973, a large and continuing wave of immigration to Australia from around the world has continued into the 21st century, with Asia now being the largest source of immigrants. A smaller proportion of Australians are descended from indigenous people, comprising Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.
The development of a distinctive Australian identity and national character began in the 19th century. The primary language is Australian English. Australia is home to a diversity of cultures, a result of its history of immigration. Since 1788, Australian culture has primarily been a Western culture strongly influenced by early Anglo-Celtic settlers. The cultural divergence and evolution that has occurred over the centuries since European settlement has resulted in a distinctive Australian culture.
As the Asian Australian population continues to expand and flourish as a result of changes in the demographic makeup of immigrants and as there has been increased economic and cultural intercourse with Asian nations, Australia has observed the gradual emergence of a "Eurasian society" within its major urban hubs, blending both European and Asian material and popular culture within a distinctly Australian context. Other influences include Australian Aboriginal culture, the traditions brought to the country by waves of immigration from around the world, and the culture of the United States.
The predominance of the English language, the existence of a parliamentary system of government drawing upon the Westminster system, constitutional monarchy, American constitutionalist and federalism traditions, Christianity as the dominant religion, and the popularity of sports including cricket, rugby football and tennis are evidence of a significant Anglo-Celtic heritage derived from the descendants of early settlers who form an ancestral group known as Anglo-Celtic Australians. As a result of many shared linguistic, historical, cultural and geographic characteristics, Australians have often identified closely with New Zealanders in particular. Australian citizenship prior to 1949 was a social, moral, and political concept. Prior to the introduction of Australian citizenship, Australians had the status of ""."Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell when he proclaimed in his speech to parliament announcing the 1948 Nationality and Citizenship Act that 'to say one is an Australian is, of course, to indicate beyond all doubt that one is British'." – A. Haebich, Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950–1970, 2008, p. 67 The High Court of Australia in Potter v Minahan (1908) stated that "Although there is no Australian nationality as distinguished from British nationality, there is an Australian species of British nationality."
The largest statistical grouping of European Australians are Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians whose ancestors originate wholly or partially in the British Isles. This includes English Australians, Irish Australians, Scottish Australians and Welsh Australians. Anglo-Celtic Australians have been highly influential in shaping the nation's character. By the mid-1840s, the numbers of freeborn settlers had overtaken the convict population. Although some observers stress Australia's convict history, the vast majority of early settlers came of their own free will. Far more Australians are descended from assisted immigrants than from convicts, the majority of Colonial Era settlers being British and Irish.J. Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration, 2007, p. 16 About 20 percent of Australians are descendants of convicts. Most of the first Australian settlers came from London, the Midlands and the Northern England, and Ireland.J. Jupp, The English in Australia, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 27R. Watts, P. Trudgill, Alternative Histories of the English Language, Routledge, 2002, p. 70B. Kachru, Y. Kachru, C. Nelson, The Handbook of World Englishes, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p. 295
Settlers that arrived throughout the 19th century were from all parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland, a significant proportion of settlers came from the Southwest and Southeast of England, from Ireland and from Scotland.C. Meierkord, Interactions across Englishes: Linguistic Choices in Local and International Contact Situations (Studies in English Language), Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 37 In 1888, 60 percent of the Australian population had been born in Australia, and almost all had British ancestral origins. Out of the remaining 40 percent, 34 percent had been born in the British Isles, and 6 percent were of European origin, mainly from Germany and Scandinavia. (2025). 9780774816595, UBC Press. ISBN 9780774816595 The census of 1901 showed that 98 percent of Australians had Anglo-Celtic ancestral origins. (1991). 9781863730174, Allen & Unwin. ISBN 9781863730174 In 1939 and 1945, still 98 percent of Australians had Anglo-Celtic ancestral origins. (2025). 9789812347992, APA Insight Guides. ISBN 9789812347992 Until 1947, the vast majority of the population were of British origin. (1999). 9780868406657, UNSW Press. ISBN 9780868406657
Germans formed the largest non-British Isles ancestry for most of the 19th century.G. Leitner, Australia's Many Voices: Australian English—The National Language, 2004, p. 79 Between 1901 and 1940, 140,000 non-British European immigrants arrived in Australia (about 16 percent of the total intake).V. Colic-Peisker, Migration, Class and Transnational Identities: Croatians in Australia and America (Studies of World Migrations), 2008, p. 72 Before World War II, 13.6 percent were born overseas, and 80 percent of those were British.J. Abowd, R. Freeman, Immigration, Trade, and the Labor Market, 2007, p. 386 Following the Second World War, large numbers of continental Europeans immigrated to Australia, with Italian Australians and Greek Australians being among the largest immigrant groups during the post-war era. During the 1950s, Australia was the destination of 30 per cent of Dutch people emigrants and the Netherlands-born became numerically the second largest non-British group in Australia. In 1971, 70 percent of the foreign born were of European origin.
Italian Australians are Australians of Italian ancestry, and comprise the largest non Anglo-Celtic European ethnic group in Australia, with the 2021 census finding 4.4% of the population claiming ancestry from Italy be they migrants to Australia or their descendants born in Australia of Italian heritage. Australia's long-history of Italian immigration has given rise to an Italo-Australian dialect of the Italian language. German Australians are Australians of German ancestry. The German community constitutes the second largest non-Anglo Celtic European ethnic group in Australia, amounting to 4% of respondents in the 2021 Census. Germans formed the largest non-English-speaking group in Australia up to the 20th century.G. Leitner, Australia's Many Voices: Australian English – The National Language, 2004, p. 181 Although a few individuals had emigrated earlier, the first large group of Germans arrived in South Australia 1838, not long after the British colonisation of South Australia.
Chinese Australians are Australians of Chinese ancestry, forming the single largest non Anglo-Celtic ancestry in the country, constituting 5.5% of those nominating their ancestry at the 2021 census. Chinese Australians are one of the largest groups of Overseas Chinese people, forming the largest Overseas Chinese community in Oceania, and are the largest Asian-Australian community. Per capita, Australia has Overseas Chinese than any country outside Asia. Many Chinese Australians have immigrated from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan as well as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Chinese Filipino, while many are descendants of such immigrants. The very early history of Chinese Australians involved significant immigration from villages of the Pearl River Delta in Southern China.
More recent Chinese migrants include those from Mandarin Chinese and other Chinese dialects or forms. Less well-known are the kinds of society Chinese Australians came from, the families they left behind and what their intentions were in migrating. Gold rushes lured many Chinese to the Australian colonies. From the mid-19th century, Chinese dubbed Australia the New Gold Mountain after the Gold Mountain of California in North America. They typically sent money to their families in the villages, regularly visited their families, and retired to their home villages after many years working as Market gardening, or Cabinetry. As with many overseas Chinese groups the world over, early Chinese immigrants to Australia established several in major cities, such as Sydney (Chinatown, Sydney), Melbourne (Chinatown, Melbourne, since the 1850s) and Brisbane (Chinatown, Brisbane), Perth (Chinatown, Perth), as well as in regional towns associated with the goldfields such as Cairns (Cairns Chinatown).
Indian Australians are Australians of Indian people ancestry, and are the second-largest Asian Australian ancestry, comprising 3.1% of the total population. Indian Australians are one of the largest groups within the Indian diaspora. Indians are the youngest average age (34 years) and the fastest growing community both in terms of absolute numbers and percentages in Australia. Migration of Indians to Australia followed the pattern of "from 18th-century and (soldiers and sailors) aboard visiting European ships, through 19th-century migrant labourers and the 20th century's hostile policies to the new generation of skilled professional migrants of the 21st century... India became the largest source of skilled migrants in the 21st century." The story of the Indian diaspora in Australia and New Zealand is 250 years old , qz.com, 30 October 2018.
Dispersing across the Australian continent over time, the population expanded and differentiated into hundreds of distinct groups, each with its own language and culture.Harry Lourandos 1997">Lourandos, Harry (1997) "New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory", Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom. . More than 400 distinct Australian Aboriginal peoples have been identified across the continent, distinguished by unique names designating their Ancestor languages, dialects, or distinctive speech patterns.Horton, David (1994) , Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra. .
In 1770, fearing he had been pre-empted by the French, James Cook changed a hilltop signal-drill on Possession Island in Torres Strait, into a possession ceremony, fabricating Britain's claim of Australia's east coast. (2025). 9780648043966, Rosenberg. ISBN 9780648043966 Eighteen years later, the east coast was occupied by Britain and later the west coast was also settled by Britain. At that time, the indigenous population was estimated to have been between 315,000 and 750,000.
At the 2021 census, 3.2% of the Australian population identified as being Indigenous — Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. Indigenous Australians experience higher than average rates of imprisonment and unemployment, lower levels of education, and life expectancies for males and females that are, respectively, 11 and 17 years lower than those of non-indigenous Australians. Some remote Indigenous communities have been described as having "failed state"-like conditions.
| Total Australia | 18,235,690 |
| Total foreign-born | 7,502,450 |
| England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland | 967,390 |
| India | 710,380 |
| China | 595,630 |
| New Zealand | 559,980 |
| Philippines | 310,620 |
| Vietnam | 268,170 |
| South Africa | 201,930 |
| Malaysia | 172,250 |
| Italy | 171,520 |
| Sri Lanka | 145,790 |
| Scotland | 130,060 |
| Nepal | 129,870 |
| United States | 109,450 |
| Germany | 107,940 |
| South Korea | 106,560 |
| Hong Kong | 104,990 |
| Greece | 100,650 |
At the 2021 census, English was the only language spoken in the home for 72% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home are Mandarin Chinese (2.7%), Arabic language (1.4%), Vietnamese (1.3%), Cantonese (1.2%) and Punjabi language (0.9%). Over 250 Indigenous Australian languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact, of which fewer than twenty are still in daily use by all age groups. About 110 others are spoken exclusively by older people. At the time of the 2006 census, 52,000 Indigenous Australians, representing 12% of the Indigenous population, reported that they spoke an Indigenous language at home. Australia has a sign language known as Auslan, which is the main language of about 10,112 deaf people who reported that they use Auslan language at home in the 2016 census.
In 2021, just under 8,000 people declared an affiliation with traditional Aboriginal religions. According to Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral spirit beings formed Creation myth. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land.Flood, Josephine (2019). pp. 163-69
| Crown colonies (Pre-Federation) | |||
| 1788 | 859 | 1848 | 332,328 |
| 1798 | 4,588 | 1858 | 1,050,828 |
| 1808 | 10,263 | 1868 | 1,539,552 |
| 1818 | 25,859 | 1878 | 2,092,164 |
| 1828 | 58,197 | 1888 | 2,981,677 |
| 1838 | 151,868 | 1898 | 3,664,715 |
| 1901 | 3,788,123 | – |
| 1906 | 4,059,083 | 7.2 |
| 1911 | 4,489,545 | 10.6 |
| 1916 | 4,943,173 | 10.1 |
| 1921 | 5,455,136 | 10.4 |
| 1926 | 6,056,360 | 11.0 |
| 1931 | 6,526,485 | 7.8 |
| 1936 | 6,778,372 | 3.4 |
| 1941 | 7,109,898 | 4.9 |
| 1946 | 7,465,157 | 5.0 |
| 1951 | 8,421,775 | 12.8 |
| 1956 | 9,425,563 | 11.9 |
| 1961 | 10,548,267 | 11.9 |
| 1966 | 11,599,498 | 10.0 |
| 1971 | 13,067,265 | 12.7 |
| 1976 | 14,033,083 | 7.4 |
| 1981 | 14,923,260 | 6.3 |
| 1986 | 16,018,350 | 7.3 |
| 1991 | 17,284,036 | 12.8 |
| 1996 | 18,310,714 | 5.9 |
| 2001 | 19,413,240 | 6.0 |
| 2006 | 20,848,760 | 7.4 |
| 2011 | 21,507,717 | 3.2 |
| 2014 (estimate) | 23,500,000 | 9.3 |
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