Squeers, Poirot,
This White Australian past you regard with such shame was the same as the White Australian present, there has never been a universally accepted definition of who can be a White Australian, the argument has probably raged since the first White child was born here and there have always been people like you and people like me.
The "Convict stain" has just been replaced by the "Invader stain", people like you have always thought yourselves the betters of people like me, the derogatory term "Larrikin" was replaced by "Ocker", then "Bogan" and now the American slang "Redneck".

Yet here we are, on your side ashamed White people running from their identity, where my side is proud and comfortable with our past, now is a person who can't reconcile himself with his own past and who backs and even amplifies every real or imagined criticism of his people in the hope of atonement a fit and proper person to be engaged in reconciliation or engagement with other groups? Most sane people would say no.
This discussion is tapped out so let's change tack.
Do Squeers and Poirot regard White Australians as being part of multicultural Australia?
Instead of constantly bagging and denigrating White people shouldn't you really be trying to integrate us into your propositional Rainbow Nation as a distinct ethnic group?
Maybe the growing pains of Multiculturalism might have been dulled if the people running the show had displayed just an ounce of respect for the Native born White Australian?
As it is most of us regard your social experiments as something that's being done to us to punish us for being born White and to wipe us away so that you don't have to feel guilty or embarrassed anymore.

I am guilty of asking the question, while also being aware of the sensitivities which are at stake in asking it.
I generally take a punt as to whether the recipient of the question will be able to take it in the way it is intended - as a means of conversing about culture and history. The results range from the banal to the spectacular. Ultimately I benefit from a better understanding of the cultural weave of this place which we call Australia.
The thing is because of my 'paler' complexion I receive the question less frequently than someone would whose origins are in the subcontinent or even East Asia. Never mind the fact that their ancestral history may in fact have longer roots in the region or in Australia in particular.
Then again, when people hear my name then I often get the quiz.
I cannot resist asking the asker where they come from them.
Generally it is a healthy negotiation of status and terms, ideally reaching a level playing field in our shared imaginations.

Ramesh,

It is disappointing that you find such a question offensive.

Australians also ask this of Europeans, British and Americans, especially if the accent is unfamiliar.

When traveling I have found such a question from others an 'ice-breaker. Indeed, when a person doesn't ask it, it could be seen as utter disinterest.

Language/accent/dialect/patois more than ethnicity identifies us - at least as a starting point. I'm sure that others have found that one is more conscious of accent, than ethnicity. Accent indicates that the speaker has a different social history and experience, which can be fascinating,to the hearer.

I have Asian and Middle Eastern friends who were born here; they speak with an identical accent to myself. When with them, I am not at all conscious of any differing 'ethnicity'. I am sure many Aussies also experience this.

We see the same occurring with Australian-born children of Greek and Italian migrants. Home-grown Aussies - we are not conscious of difference. Their parents who retain accents are immediately recognised as having a different history.

Ramesh,

Have you never been interested in the origins of another?

I sympathize with Ranesh. His skin colour and facial features are probably not yet normalised in the mindscape of some Aussies. The Chinese are largely okay on that score now, though not with the more recent arrivals who do not measure up on speaking the lingo. Still, Chinese Australians are expected to know their place, not to speak up against any aspect of our society or polity however acculturated one might be. The online comments in the main dailies which censured Charlie Teo's critique of the remains of our racist heritage were a telling sign of that.
Ranesh could be a little over sensitive. In my experience most questioners, particularly the better educated ones, would have been prompted by curiosity or wanting to engage with me. In the first decade or two questioners used to respond, oh, you speak English so well! That has not happened in the last 30 years. But one can get sick of that same question, particularly if one has been sensitised to social-political upheavals like the “We decide who comes into this country, …” political opportunism of 2001, and the history/cultural wars which seemed to have been waged to morph, with nostalgia, “White Australia” into an “Anglo-acculturated nation”. Remember how John Howard set up an Inquiry to get the National Museum to tell the story of our nation, properly? Well the Chinese is still shown as grateful minions and cultural curiosities in its Landmarks gallery.
It will take a generation before the remains of White Australia would be worn off in our national psyche. Had we admitted that White Australia was a bad idea, and gave it a proper burial and a decent wake, before we launched into multiculturalism, we might have achieved a lot more in weaning ourselves from the need to feel superior to the “other” or to fear the pestilence that the other would bring - the Yellow Peril pre-federation, the Vietnamese refugees with their cooking smells that Geoffrey Blainey told us all about in 1984, the boat people with all those values offensive to our Anglo heritage

I don't really mind the question, but I can appreciate Ramesh's point. Sometimes our differences are irrelevant. In an ideal world it shouldn't matter where we come from.

An example can be seen last weekend, where the Australian Football League declared it to be 'Multicultural Round'. Most people ignored it or were just scratching their heads thinking what is all this about? We thought we'd come to watch the football, not take part in some exercise in social engineering. We don't care you come from. We care about marks and tackles and kicking the ball through the sticks.

The AFL trotted out statements from some of their stars such Harry O'Brian who has a South American background, or Dermott Brereton with his Irish background. But what was the point? It was looking for a problem when there isn't one.