Australia

Australian literature grew slowly in the decades following European settlement though Indigenous oral traditions, many of which have since been recorded in writing, are much older. What these values mean, and whether Australians uphold them, has been debated since before Federation.  neosurf casino prepaid australia  of Australian culture since British colonisation has given rise to distinctive cultural traits. Education is Australia's third-largest export, after iron ore and coal, and contributed more than $28 billion to the economy in the 2016–17 financial year.N 12 Australia has the highest ratio of international students per head of population in the world by a large margin, with 812,000 international students enrolled in the nation's universities and vocational institutions in 2019.
38% of Australia's population has attained a higher education qualification, which is among the highest percentages in the world. About 58% of Australians aged from 25 to 64 have vocational or tertiary qualifications and the tertiary graduation rate of 49% is the highest among OECD countries. There is a state-based system of vocational training, known as TAFE, and many trades conduct apprenticeships for training new tradespeople. The OECD places Australia among the most expensive nations to attend university. Australia has 37 government-funded universities and three private universities, as well as a number of other specialist institutions that provide approved courses at the higher education level.
In Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The Creation. In 2021, just under 8,000 people declared an affiliation with traditional Aboriginal religions. The largest Christian denominations are the Catholic Church (20% of the population) and the Anglican Church of Australia (9.8%). Australia has no state religion; section 116 of the Australian Constitution prohibits federal legislation that would establish any religion, impose any religious observance, or prohibit the free exercise of any religion.
According to the 2022 PISA evaluations, Australian 15-year-olds ranked ninth in the OECD for reading and science and tenth for maths. Since 2014, a national curriculum developed by the Commonwealth has been implemented by the states and territories. Following a period in which access to the scheme was restricted, the scheme became universal once more in 1981 under the name of Medicare. Ranked second in preventable causes is hypertension at 7.6%, with obesity third at 7.5%. It has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, while cigarette smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease, responsible for 7.8% of the total mortality and disease. Australia's life expectancy of 83 years (81 years for males and 85 years for females) is the fifth-highest in the world.
After World War I, Hollywood monopolised the industry, and by the 1960s, Australian film production had effectively ceased. The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the world's first feature-length narrative film, spurred a boom in Australian cinema during the silent film era. At the beginning of the 20th century, Nellie Melba was one of the world's leading opera singers, and later popular music acts such as the Bee Gees, AC/DC, INXS and Kylie Minogue achieved international recognition. In the performing arts, Aboriginal peoples have traditions of religious and secular song, dance and rhythmic music often performed in corroborees.
Also during the colonial period, Chinese migrants paved the way for a distinctive Australian Chinese cuisine. This influence is seen in dishes such as fish and chips, and in the Australian meat pie, which is related to the British steak pie. Most Indigenous Australian groups subsisted on a diet of native fauna and flora, otherwise called bush tucker. Each major city has at least one daily newspaper, and there are two national daily newspapers, The Australian and The Australian Financial Review.
Australian public intellectuals have also written seminal works in their respective fields, including feminist Germaine Greer and philosopher Peter Singer. Australian Booker Prize winners include Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan. Miles Franklin is the namesake of Australia's most prestigious literary prize, awarded annually to the best novel about Australian life. Their works are still popular; Paterson's bush poem "Waltzing Matilda" (1895) is regarded as Australia's unofficial national anthem. In the 19th century, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson captured the experience  of the bush using a distinctive Australian vocabulary.