Talk:Australia

First European to claim Australia was French

I want to make that : ( But Nickm57 said "Sorry this edit is poorly expressed or doesnt make much sense" ) , then i post here to inform you.

• After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, followed by the first European one to have demanded the sovereignty of Australia in 1772, was the French officer Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn this demand was not able to be known from the whole world of the fact that St Aloüarn died during the journey which returned him in France. Also signs of taking possession by St Aloüarn can even see itself nowadays on Dirk Hartog's island

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Aleno_de_St_Alo%C3%BCarn By Picaballo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Picaballo (talk • contribs) 10:24, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn apparently made a claim over Western Australia in March 1772, but this was two years after Cook's voyage along the East coast in April-August 1770, and his claim for Britain. One cannot argue therefore, "the first european to claim Australia was French." Anyway, today, the technicalities of which european power "claimed" or "discovered" Australia first has much less significance than they once did and the summary provided here is quite adequate. In my view the article is not improved by the text you have proposed.Nickm57 (talk) 10:56, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Youth unemployment

I've just reverted this addition to the article which cites this CNBC article to claim that "one in six" young Australians (15 24 year olds) are unemployed and that this is a serious problem. The problem with youth unemployment data is that most of the relevant share of the population is out of the labour force as they're studying (for instance, the great bulk of 15-18 year olds are at high school and a majority of people aged in their early 20s are in some form of education). As a result, the number of people in this age group who are eligible to be counted in the ABS' definition of unemployment is pretty small, and they tend to be highly disadvantaged (as they have low levels of education and tend to come from a low socioeconomic status background). To cut a long story short, the proportion of young Australians who are both out of work and not studying is pretty small (much lower than one in six) and that news story is totally wrong-headed. The fact that it directly compares Australia's youth unemployment rate with the total unemployment rate in other countries says it all really (these countries with high total unemployment rates have even higher youth unemployment rates). This OECD paper from late last year shows that the proportion of 15-19 year olds in Australia who were not in education or employment in 2008 (which is the most recent year data are available for) was actually about 6 percent and is below the OECD average (though it was a bit higher than the rates in a lot of other OECD countries). Nick-D (talk) 11:45, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Population of the Aussie Clock should be updated DAILY!!

n 5 May 2011 at 18:33:16 (Canberra time), the resident population of Australia is projected to be:

22,600,426

This is an example

IT SHOULD BE UPDATED DAILY —Preceding unsigned comment added by Macedoniarulez (talk • contribs) 08:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

If you feel this is necessary, feel free to do this if you can find a reliable source. IgnorantArmies 08:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The estimated population is updated daily at 00:00 UTC (10am EST), and has been for the past 16 months. It's 99% automatic and requires a tweak only when the rate of increase changes, which is about every three months. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It would be most annoying to have this page appearing in watchlists daily simply for an updated population figure. --Merbabu (talk) 21:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

...which is but one advantage of automatic updates. --AussieLegend (talk) 01:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

English vs Australian English as de facto language

I have recently finished editing the Australian English article so that it now very detailed includes a substantial history, phonology, regional dialects, cultural dialects, etc.

Given that English is currently listed in the table as australia's 'de facto' language, i think it obvious that the de facto language of this country is Australian English given the fact that de facto means by default. For example, British or American English would not be the de facto language of Australia.

Given that this is an article on Australia, it follows that the de facto language should be listed as the variety of english that is native to and particular to this country, just as culture links to culture of australia, specific to australia, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saruman-the-white (talk • contribs) 11:20, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

You might care to check out Talk:Australia/Archive 15#Is "Ozzie" superfluous? "Australian English" or English?, where this was most recently discussed 11 months ago. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:48, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

problem sentence

Hi, a few days ago, I added the 3rd + 2nd last sentences in the 'religion' section.. citing a survey of the Bertelsmann Foundation.. I believe my sentences express the feeling + sentiment of the last sentence, supporting it with the research of the Bertelsmann Foundation; to make the last sentence more relevant, I could do a 'Church attendance and identification with religions has fallen dramatically over the past few decades...' citing information from the article 'Australians losing the faith', which the last sentence uses as a citation. Tjpob (talk) 16:43, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

As stated above, the statement, 'Religion does not play an important role in the lives of m... population.', is clearly a POV. Providing the statistics of less numbers in attendance at religious services and identification with Christian denominations, as provided in the original citation, is higher quality. Open to discuss.. Tjpob (talk) 15:28, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a difficult area. The massive discrepancy between Christian church attendance and what people say on the five-yearly census means that any analysis of our own will be a perfect demonstration of a breach of WIkipedia's ban on original research. We need excellent sources to tell us what's happening. Is the Bertelsmann Foundation an excellent source? (Innocent question. I don't know. If it is, maybe some evidence can be presented.) I do see a seeming contradiction in that part of the article now though. Your added material seems to be telling us that 16% attend religious services, while the preceding paragraph seems to say 7.5%. A big difference. Can that be cleared up? HiLo48 (talk) 20:05, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Good good pick up on 16 vs 7.5. The 16% figure is monthly, 7.5% weekly. I have added this info now. Tjpob (talk) 18:08, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

The Bertelsmann survey is published in a report by the Agence France-Presse in July 2008. As I can't find when the survey was done, or published (requires subscription to the foundation), is it okay to assume it was published in 2008, or should I cite the AFP article + date in the sentence (which is a bit clunky)? Tjpob (talk) 18:26, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Population Statistics in Table

Why does the 'non-indigenous population' heading end at 1850 (in the population table under 'demographics')? The populations of Aboriginal Australians were unmeasured (estimated) until 1971. (See ABS 2005 yearbook (time-line)) Or are the official estimates included in the 1900-1960 statistics..? I can check with the creator of the source Population statistics. It seems semi-reliable. Though he has a page of sources used Sources, he doesn't say on the Australian page what source he used. - census data much better imo. Tjpob (talk) 14:51, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

As it says in the citation, "19th century figures do not include the indigenous population." Apparently the 20th century figures do. This is based on the source,[c] which says "Data for the 19th century do not include the number of Aborigines." There is no data between 1850 and 1900 because the 19th century data is in 50 year increments. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:16, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I know it's based on [1], I'm wondering what his source is.. Tjpob (talk) 15:30, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

He doesn't state it, hence, I think it's important to check with him on j.lahmeyer@populstat.info, or use census data instead. Tjpob (talk) 15:35, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

census data is the better all the same Tjpob (talk) 15:37, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Can you find census data for 1788-1900? --AussieLegend (talk) 15:49, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Good point. did the colonies take censuses? If so, they're probably on line, at ABS website maybe? I don't understand, in this document 1911 Non-European races Census data Aboriginals are included (albeit in the non-european section).. though the female figures look dodgy Tjpob (talk) 16:19, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Colonial censuses are on line at http://hccda.anu.edu.au/. 1911 Non-Europeans only included 'half-caste' Aborigines - the few 'full-bloods' enumerated were shown in a separate section in accordance with s.127 of the Constitution. See main article on census in Australia.Phantomnubian (talk) 12:19, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

And 52 000 seems an incredibly low figure. Compared with 500 000 pre-British colonisation + now. Tjpob (talk) 16:21, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Point is, that, although being in a table + all that, it looks very nice in increments of 10 years + with percentage changes... the fact is that it is based on fairly low quality sources/no sources at all. To state that the figures are estimates would be a start, at the moment it would be easy to think that they're official figures. It's not about aesthetics, reliability is a much more important quality for an, albeit free, encyclopaedia. Tjpob (talk) 16:26, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

i say put 'estimated' next to the heading before searching for sourced data. Tjpob (talk) 16:34, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Accuracy of estimates

When examining the estimates ('20, '30, '40, '50, '60) in relation to census data, they look pretty good actually. 1920 estimate ('000): 5 411, 1921 Census data ('000): 5 435; 1930 6 501, 1933 6 629; 1940 7078, 1947 7 579; 1950 8 307, 1954 8 986; 1960 10 392, 1961 10 508 Tjpob (talk) 17:17, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

total population or non-indigenous?

Seeing as the figures are fairly accurate, I assume they're based on the census data. Hence, they don't include the Indigenous population, and should state that. Tjpob (talk) 17:26, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe the owner of the source, at the website, knows that Aboriginal numbers were included post 1900, as per the notation. Tjpob (talk) 17:34, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

ASIAN AUSTRALIAN In the article about "Asian Australians" there have been clearly vandalism with the percentage of Asians living in Sidney and Melbourne.--83.39.3.6 (talk) 12:46, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

 Fixed IgnorantArmies^?! 12:51, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Chinese exploration of Australia

Can someone add in information on Chinese exploration and links with Australia through 1250-1420 This page only mentions European exploration. Like not mentioning Viking exploration of North America.

First European to claim Australia was French

I want to make that : ( But Nickm57 said "Sorry this edit is poorly expressed or doesnt make much sense" ) , then i post here to inform you.

• After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, followed by the first European one to have demanded the sovereignty of Australia in 1772, was the French officer Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn this demand was not able to be known from the whole world of the fact that St Aloüarn died during the journey which returned him in France. Also signs of taking possession by St Aloüarn can even see itself nowadays on Dirk Hartog's island

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Aleno_de_St_Alo%C3%BCarn By Picaballo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Picaballo (talk • contribs) 10:24, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn apparently made a claim over Western Australia in March 1772, but this was two years after Cook's voyage along the East coast in April-August 1770, and his claim for Britain. One cannot argue therefore, "the first european to claim Australia was French." Anyway, today, the technicalities of which european power "claimed" or "discovered" Australia first has much less significance than they once did and the summary provided here is quite adequate. In my view the article is not improved by the text you have proposed.Nickm57 (talk) 10:56, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Youth unemployment

I've just reverted this addition to the article which cites this CNBC article to claim that "one in six" young Australians (15 24 year olds) are unemployed and that this is a serious problem. The problem with youth unemployment data is that most of the relevant share of the population is out of the labour force as they're studying (for instance, the great bulk of 15-18 year olds are at high school and a majority of people aged in their early 20s are in some form of education). As a result, the number of people in this age group who are eligible to be counted in the ABS' definition of unemployment is pretty small, and they tend to be highly disadvantaged (as they have low levels of education and tend to come from a low socioeconomic status background). To cut a long story short, the proportion of young Australians who are both out of work and not studying is pretty small (much lower than one in six) and that news story is totally wrong-headed. The fact that it directly compares Australia's youth unemployment rate with the total unemployment rate in other countries says it all really (these countries with high total unemployment rates have even higher youth unemployment rates). This OECD paper from late last year shows that the proportion of 15-19 year olds in Australia who were not in education or employment in 2008 (which is the most recent year data are available for) was actually about 6 percent and is below the OECD average (though it was a bit higher than the rates in a lot of other OECD countries). Nick-D (talk) 11:45, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Population of the Aussie Clock should be updated DAILY!!

n 5 May 2011 at 18:33:16 (Canberra time), the resident population of Australia is projected to be:

22,600,426

This is an example

IT SHOULD BE UPDATED DAILY —Preceding unsigned comment added by Macedoniarulez (talk • contribs) 08:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

If you feel this is necessary, feel free to do this if you can find a reliable source. IgnorantArmies 08:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The estimated population is updated daily at 00:00 UTC (10am EST), and has been for the past 16 months. It's 99% automatic and requires a tweak only when the rate of increase changes, which is about every three months. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It would be most annoying to have this page appearing in watchlists daily simply for an updated population figure. --Merbabu (talk) 21:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

...which is but one advantage of automatic updates. --AussieLegend (talk) 01:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

English vs Australian English as de facto language

I have recently finished editing the Australian English article so that it now very detailed includes a substantial history, phonology, regional dialects, cultural dialects, etc.

Given that English is currently listed in the table as australia's 'de facto' language, i think it obvious that the de facto language of this country is Australian English given the fact that de facto means by default. For example, British or American English would not be the de facto language of Australia.

Given that this is an article on Australia, it follows that the de facto language should be listed as the variety of english that is native to and particular to this country, just as culture links to culture of australia, specific to australia, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saruman-the-white (talk • contribs) 11:20, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

You might care to check out Talk:Australia/Archive 15#Is "Ozzie" superfluous? "Australian English" or English?, where this was most recently discussed 11 months ago. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:48, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

problem sentence

Hi, a few days ago, I added the 3rd + 2nd last sentences in the 'religion' section.. citing a survey of the Bertelsmann Foundation.. I believe my sentences express the feeling + sentiment of the last sentence, supporting it with the research of the Bertelsmann Foundation; to make the last sentence more relevant, I could do a 'Church attendance and identification with religions has fallen dramatically over the past few decades...' citing information from the article 'Australians losing the faith', which the last sentence uses as a citation. Tjpob (talk) 16:43, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

As stated above, the statement, 'Religion does not play an important role in the lives of m... population.', is clearly a POV. Providing the statistics of less numbers in attendance at religious services and identification with Christian denominations, as provided in the original citation, is higher quality. Open to discuss.. Tjpob (talk) 15:28, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a difficult area. The massive discrepancy between Christian church attendance and what people say on the five-yearly census means that any analysis of our own will be a perfect demonstration of a breach of WIkipedia's ban on original research. We need excellent sources to tell us what's happening. Is the Bertelsmann Foundation an excellent source? (Innocent question. I don't know. If it is, maybe some evidence can be presented.) I do see a seeming contradiction in that part of the article now though. Your added material seems to be telling us that 16% attend religious services, while the preceding paragraph seems to say 7.5%. A big difference. Can that be cleared up? HiLo48 (talk) 20:05, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Good good pick up on 16 vs 7.5. The 16% figure is monthly, 7.5% weekly. I have added this info now. Tjpob (talk) 18:08, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

The Bertelsmann survey is published in a report by the Agence France-Presse in July 2008. As I can't find when the survey was done, or published (requires subscription to the foundation), is it okay to assume it was published in 2008, or should I cite the AFP article + date in the sentence (which is a bit clunky)? Tjpob (talk) 18:26, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Population Statistics in Table

Why does the 'non-indigenous population' heading end at 1850 (in the population table under 'demographics')? The populations of Aboriginal Australians were unmeasured (estimated) until 1971. (See ABS 2005 yearbook (time-line)) Or are the official estimates included in the 1900-1960 statistics..? I can check with the creator of the source Population statistics. It seems semi-reliable. Though he has a page of sources used Sources, he doesn't say on the Australian page what source he used. - census data much better imo. Tjpob (talk) 14:51, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

As it says in the citation, "19th century figures do not include the indigenous population." Apparently the 20th century figures do. This is based on the source,[c] which says "Data for the 19th century do not include the number of Aborigines." There is no data between 1850 and 1900 because the 19th century data is in 50 year increments. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:16, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I know it's based on [2], I'm wondering what his source is.. Tjpob (talk) 15:30, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

He doesn't state it, hence, I think it's important to check with him on j.lahmeyer@populstat.info, or use census data instead. Tjpob (talk) 15:35, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

census data is the better all the same Tjpob (talk) 15:37, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Can you find census data for 1788-1900? --AussieLegend (talk) 15:49, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Good point. did the colonies take censuses? If so, they're probably on line, at ABS website maybe? I don't understand, in this document 1911 Non-European races Census data Aboriginals are included (albeit in the non-european section).. though the female figures look dodgy Tjpob (talk) 16:19, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Colonial censuses are on line at http://hccda.anu.edu.au/. 1911 Non-Europeans only included 'half-caste' Aborigines - the few 'full-bloods' enumerated were shown in a separate section in accordance with s.127 of the Constitution. See main article on census in Australia.Phantomnubian (talk) 12:19, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

And 52 000 seems an incredibly low figure. Compared with 500 000 pre-British colonisation + now. Tjpob (talk) 16:21, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Point is, that, although being in a table + all that, it looks very nice in increments of 10 years + with percentage changes... the fact is that it is based on fairly low quality sources/no sources at all. To state that the figures are estimates would be a start, at the moment it would be easy to think that they're official figures. It's not about aesthetics, reliability is a much more important quality for an, albeit free, encyclopaedia. Tjpob (talk) 16:26, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

i say put 'estimated' next to the heading before searching for sourced data. Tjpob (talk) 16:34, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Accuracy of estimates

When examining the estimates ('20, '30, '40, '50, '60) in relation to census data, they look pretty good actually. 1920 estimate ('000): 5 411, 1921 Census data ('000): 5 435; 1930 6 501, 1933 6 629; 1940 7078, 1947 7 579; 1950 8 307, 1954 8 986; 1960 10 392, 1961 10 508 Tjpob (talk) 17:17, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

total population or non-indigenous?

Seeing as the figures are fairly accurate, I assume they're based on the census data. Hence, they don't include the Indigenous population, and should state that. Tjpob (talk) 17:26, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe the owner of the source, at the website, knows that Aboriginal numbers were included post 1900, as per the notation. Tjpob (talk) 17:34, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

ASIAN AUSTRALIAN In the article about "Asian Australians" there have been clearly vandalism with the percentage of Asians living in Sidney and Melbourne.--83.39.3.6 (talk) 12:46, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

 Fixed IgnorantArmies^?! 12:51, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Chinese exploration of Australia

Can someone add in information on Chinese exploration and links with Australia through 1250-1420 This page only mentions European exploration. Like not mentioning Viking exploration of North America.