No longer content to be just the lucky country, Australia must become the clever country.
To realise that vision I am announcing bold new initiatives today to build on our substantial achievements in education and scientific research – to unleash the skills and talents of our people. From Bob Hawke's Election Speech Delivered at Brisbane, Qld, March 8th, 1990
How clever have we become?
Surprisingly, an estimated 1 million migrants cannot speak English, a huge number in a country of only around 20 million people, and some 3 million residents (around 15 per cent of the population) speak a language other than English at home.
Sydney is Australia’s most multicultural city (closely followed by Melbourne), where four out of six people in some suburbs speak a language other than English at home (overall some 30 per cent of the population of Sydney doesn’t speak English at home). Sydney and Melbourne are home to around 65 per cent of all non-English speaking migrants, who together speak a total of some 240 foreign languages. https://www.justlanded.com/english/Australia/Australia-Guide/Language/Language
