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Australian language is contradictory: it combines a mocking disrespect for established authority, particularly if it is pompous or out of touch with reality, with a distinctive upside-down sense of humour. For instance, Australians take delight in dubbing a tall man "Shorty", a silent one "Rowdy" a bald man "Curly", and a redhead, of course, is "Blue".

Although Australia has scarcely more than two persons per square kilometer of total land area, this raw figure is highly misleading: most of the continent is desert or semi-desert and of no agricultural value. In consequence, Australia is one of the world's most urbanized countries: less than 15% of the population live in rural areas.

Australia is unusual because the animal population evolved largely out of contact with the other continents. A very high percentage of Australian animals are endemic (found nowhere else) including about 70% of its birds and 95% of its mammals. Over time, marsupials filled most of the ecological niches that are occupied by placental mammals in most other parts of the world.

While Australia has ubiquitous media coverage, the longest established part of that media is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the Federal Government funded organisation offering national TV and radio coverage. The ABC, like the BBC in Britain, is a non-commercial public service broadcaster, showing many BBC or ITV productions from Britain.

Many Perth residents consider their city to be egalitarian and relaxed, with a relatively large middle class and a suburban lifestyle; however, as with all large cities, Perth does have pockets of extreme wealth and poverty. The population is easy-going and friendly, but can be parochial, especially towards the "Eastern States" which are often viewed with deep, but usually jocular, suspicion. This attitude can be attributed mainly to isolation — reflected in the widely-held belief that Perth is "the world's most isolated capital city".

Since the end of World War II, the population of Australia has more than doubled; non-European immigration, mostly from the Middle East and Asia, has increased significantly since 1945 through an extensive, planned immigration program. From 1945 through 1996, nearly 5.5 million immigrants settled in Australia, and about 80% have remained; nearly one of every four Australians is foreign-born. Britain and Ireland have been the largest sources of post-war immigrants, followed by Italy, Greece, New Zealand, and the former Yugoslavia.

Debate about the role of the ABC continues, as many assign it a marginal role, and claim that American-influenced commercial TV and radio stations are far more popular choices. These critics claim that Australian children grow up watching Sesame Street and The Simpsons, eating fries at McDonalds, wearing baseball caps, speaking American slang, and some have never heard of Blinky Bill or the Magic Pudding. Television ratings are cited as backing this view, but it is less clear that these ratings tell the whole view. Certainly there have been many local television shows that have been successful, such as Skippy (in the late 1960s), Number 96 and The Box in the 1970s, Prisoner in the 1980s, and Neighbours and Home and Away (in the 1980s and 1990s), which have sometimes been even more successful abroad.

Australian television channels include two government owned national networks, three major commercial capital city networks, several regional commercial networks and independent stations that are generally affiliates of the major networks, and a handful of community stations.