The Paper and the Nation: 50 Years of the Australian

Abstract

The launch of The Australian in 1964 now appears prescient: it coincided with and contributed to the rise in national political consciousness inaugurated in the 1960s that has continued ever since. Integral to this process has been a far more powerful sense of the nation and a weakening in state consciousness. History suggests that the culture and the technology were ready for a national newspaper. This article examines several critical political events or themes, how The Australian saw them and the extent to which it shaped or failed to shape the nation's mood. This involves an assessment of how both the nation and the paper changed over half a century.