History of Australia Since 1945 - 1960s and 1970s: The "Australian New Wave"

1960s and 1970s: The "Australian New Wave"

From the mid 1960s, evidence of a new and more independent sense of national pride and identity began to emerge in Australia. In the early 1960s, the National Trust of Australia began to be active in preserving Australia’s natural, cultural and historic heritage. Australian TV, while always dependent on US and British imports, saw locally made dramas and comedies appear, and programs such as Homicide developed strong local loyalty while Skippy the Bush Kangaroo became a global phenomenon. Liberal Prime Minister John Gorton, a battle scarred former fighter pilot, described himself as "Australian to the bootheels" and his Gorton Government established the Australian Council for the Arts, the Australian Film Development Corporation and the National Film and Television Training School.

The late 1960s and early 1970s are often associated with a flowering of Australian culture. Indigenous Australians achieved greater rights, immigration restrictions and censorship laws were swept aside, theatre and opera companies were established across the country, and Australian rock music blossomed. The 1971 Springbok rugby tour was influential in raising awareness of Aboriginal injustice in Australia and also led Australia to become the first Western nation to cut sporting ties with South Africa. In a significant move against South Africa's apartheid regime, many Australians (including Wallabies) demonstrated against tours by the racially selected South African team. The Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer altered the traditionalist ethos of the game of cricket in the 1970s, inventing World Series Cricket from which have evolved many aspects of the various modern international forms of the game.

The iconic Sydney Opera House finally opened in 1973 after numerous delays. In the same year, Patrick White became the first Australian to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. Australian History had begun to appear on school curriculums by the 1970s and from the early 1970s, the Australian cinema began to produce the Australian New Wave of feature films based on uniquely Australian themes. Film funding began under the Gorton government, but it was the South Australian Film Corporation that took the lead in supporting filmmaking and among their great successes were quintessential Australian films Sunday Too Far Away(1974) Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Breaker Morant (1980) and Gallipoli (1981). The national funding body, the Australian Film Commission, was established in 1975.

Significant changes also occurred to Australia’s censorship laws after the new Liberal Minister for Customs and Excise, Don Chipp, was appointed in 1969. In 1968, Barry Humphries and Nicholas Garland’s cartoon book featuring the larrikin character Barry McKenzie was banned. Yet only a few years later, the book had been made as a film, partly with the support of government funding. Anne Pender suggests that the Barry Mckenzie character both celebrated and parodied Australian nationalism. Historian Richard White also argues that “while many of the plays, novels and films produced in the 1970s were intensely critical of aspects of Australian life, they were absorbed by the ‘new nationalism’ and applauded for their Australianness.”