In a not-to-be-missed account, ABC Washington correspondent Michael Brissenden has unpicked the Anzac Day message that is thundered relentlessly for days every year in every official media outlet in Australia. His essay and the 100 appended reader comments are well worth reading at
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-25/brissenden-should-anzac-day-inspire-more-than-just-fervour/465137

"What does it mean to be 'Australian'?"

Too easy...

It means whatever I think it means and anyone who disagrees is un-Australian.

(I defy any citizen to say they believe that statement does not apply to them)

What does it mean to be Australian?
Well, first and foremost, it means, fair go mate.
Backing and taking up the cudgels for the underdog.
It means loving what and who you love with all your heart and not by half measure, be it Kids, family and friends, this wide brown land, your fellow Australians, cricket, footy, meat pies, or Australian owned and made!
Or treating others as you would be treated, were you stood in their shoes.
It means being kind to dumb animals!
Or never ever putting just money first, or deliberately meting out unnecessary cruelty, to dumb animals!
It doesn't mean putting the brains you were born with in a locked and bolted box, and simply believing everything or anything any back-flipping, self serving politician, says or PROMISES!
It means speaking with unusual candour and telling it like it is, particularly were your mates are concerned.
Or being a real fair dinkum mate and confiscating his/her keys, if he/she's over indulged, and only returning them when he/she's sober.
It means keeping your word and honouring your promises or vows.
I was raised to keep my promises, and not to make one, if there was any possibility it couldn't be honoured.
It means helping a mate when he's in a fight, and nowhere better demonstrated, than in the mud army that turned out to help clean up the mess left by the recent floods, or those unsung fire fighters, that regularly turn out, and sometimes make the ultimate sacrifice, as they fight those fires that threaten our homes.
It's clearly unaustralian to quite deliberately light those same fires! Or seek to radicalise young Australians, by first urging them not to vote; thereby, effectively removing their only peaceful power to compel change!
And then indoctrinating them into believing their only power lies in harming innocent and vulnerable non combatant civilians/fellow citizens.
It does mean zero tolerance for intolerance, and dobbing in any of the alluded to miscreants, so we can ship them off to places or prisons, as indifferent, callous and intolerant as they are!
Rhrosty.

We must not forget those who lost everything to genuinely maintain our freedom.
At the same time we must see and remember how modern day war mongers use major media to whip up public feeling of need for war when war is actually unnecessary and absolutely stupid.
The Howard - Abbott government attack on Iraq is a classic example.

J F Aus, you have put your finger right on it.

In WW2, we lost 30,000 fighting for the British Empire. In WW2 we did fight against a global menace but ever since, we have wasted Australian blood helping the U.S. to try to dominate the world using military force.

So what are we celebrating on Anzac Day? American imperialism? Lack of Australian independence?

When is Australia going to say to the rest of the world: 'We are now an independent nation and we are no longer anyone's suckhole! We are no longer interested in being used by warmongering nations and, because we want world peace, we are neutral!'

Don,well said.