The Idea of Australia review: high energy history

Much like the old saying about pornography, most of us know Australia when we see it. The outback, beaches, someone mowing a lawn, some wildlife, maybe the Anzacs if you want to bring the mood down a little; we all have a pretty good idea of what Australia means. What the new SBS series The Idea of Australia asks is, maybe we don’t?

The four-part series is hosted by Rachel Griffiths and based on the book The Idea of Australia: A search for the soul of the nation by Julianne Schultz AM, who also appears. The idea behind The Idea of Australia is to do a bit of a whip around and get an update on the image we have of Australia. Partly it’s a history lesson – but because history is constantly in flux, with new facts and opinions constantly coming to the surface, it’s as much about the stories we tell ourselves as it is the touchstones of our past.

In her intro, Griffiths says her inspiration as host was coming home after two decades mostly working overseas to find that the country she’d returned to wasn’t quite the one she’d remembered. As the series goes on, it becomes clear – if it wasn’t already – that most of us, once you look beneath a handful of big cultural icons, live in very different Australias.

The Idea of Australia: from the fair go to land rights

Episode one is titled ‘Land of the Fair Go?’ and we discover very early that most Australians – at least as far as the ones hanging around the Sydney park where Federation was proclaimed – don’t have a great grasp of what Federation is or when it happened. In a more laid-back era, Australian’s lack of overt patriotism was generally considered a sign of our laid-back nature. Now, with nationalism on the rise among some of the more extremist elements in our society, ‘not giving enough of a shit,’ as one commentator puts it, about the origins of the nation isn’t good enough.

By its very nature this kind of look at Australia is going to be political. When the opening spiel syncs a voiceover saying ‘missed opportunities’ with an image of a newspaper headline with the word ‘REPUBLIC’, you have a pretty good idea where this is coming from. Considering the sea of increasingly jingoistic, right-leaning media in Australia, this series’ more inclusive take is both timely and relevant.

Future episodes include ‘Making the Nation,’ which looks back to Federation and the struggles to create an independent nation, and forward to the desire to create a new framework for a very different country. ‘Dreams of Land’ covers everything from the frontier wars and land rights to the difficulties around home ownership and climate change, and ‘Creative Nation’ looks at the interplay between culture and politics, how one shapes the other and how storytelling both then and now is a central force in shaping our views of Australia.

Energetic editing explores how we tell stories

Mixing a wide range of talking heads with various archival clips – It’s a Knockout and The Price is Right finally return to our screens, if only briefly – creates striking results. The procession to celebrate Federation travelled down Sydney’s Oxford Street, the same route Mardi Gras now takes, and juxtaposing footage from both makes a forceful point about the arc of history. Illustrating a section on a flash mob of unruly female convicts with clips from Prisoner is just as effective.

This mashing together of Australian history and pop culture gives The Idea of Australia an energy we don’t usually see in this kind of historical programming. While this often shines a light on elements of our history that have been traditionally overlooked, it also gives a new spin on the parts that have been hammered into the national psyche.

As far as the Anzac myth goes, our role in the first world war was deeply divisive at the time. Despite often massive recruitment drives, votes for conscription were defeated twice. While musician Paul Kelly calls it ‘the sacrifice that forged the Australian soul,’ those who returned were often deeply cynical about what the war was for.

For a long period – right up until then-PM John Howard decided to promote Anzac Day as a nation-building exercise that handily avoided talking about multicultural Australia or First Nations people – the idea of celebrating war was on the nose. Time and again this series makes clear that Australian history isn’t a series of indisputable facts; rather, it’s shaped by social and political forces that include or exclude facts to achieve their own goals.

Early on, Griffiths says, ‘What is the new story we want to tell about this ancient continent?’ Just as important as the story this series tells is the way it makes clear that our history is a story and it’s up to us to figure out what kind of story we want it to be.

Though as stories go, this particular one does leave one very important question unanswered. Does Rachel Griffith ever get around to eating that hot dog next to her on the bar in the opening scene?

The Idea of Australia premieres 15 October 2025 on SBS and SBS On Demand.

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