Anne and I have noticed that a lot of things in Australia are a bit backwards. The West Australians seem to be the most backwards, and seem proud of the fact - resenting the rest of Australia for being so advanced, and resenting the federal taxes they pay. (That said, we didn't go to Tassie, which may be even more backwards!)
Oz is certainly 20 years behind the UK in Government, since they seem to have an imitation Thatcher Government here. Having said that, John Howard doesn't have the strong personality of Margaret Thatcher - he's a bit of a non-entity. The "Liberal" government got in in 1996 mainly, it seems, due to its strong stance on immigration - a hot topic here. At the time, Pauline Hanson's One Nation party was polarising opinion here, and Howard capitaised on that.
Despite many Aussies being open minded, intelligent and very friendly, society as a whole seems to be quite racist, and many Aussies resent non-white immigrants. The "White Australia" policy is no more, but its spirit lives on.
The Aboriginal issue is a difficult one. When asked, most Aussies will tell you that the Aboriginals have been hard done by and have suffered greatly. However, in day to day life they're seen as a problem. Many Aboriginals are begging on the street, drunk and in the paper for crime and domestic violence. It's a horrible state of affairs - the race seems to have been almost destroyed by the policies of 150 years of European governments. There's a crisis for parents who have no knowledge of how to deal with kids because they themselves were removed from their parents as kids. Most Aboriginals aren't violent, swearing drunks, of course, but it's the minority who are visible. There are plenty of campaigning Aboriginals who are trying to implement solutions and reduce the crime rates. It gets more and more depressing to read about - there are Aboriginal kids suffering from diseases which only exist in third world countries, and should be easily curable. The life expectancy of an Aboriginal is well below that of a non-Aboriginal in Australia.
Political correctness seems to be lagging a bit here too. An Aboriginal campaigner recently succeeded in getting the word "Ni**er" removed from the name of two creeks here. This is 2003!! Can you believe it's taken this long? And that it's taken a campaign?? The same guy has been trying to get the name of a brand of cheese change from "Coon"! He's failed so far, and a newspaper article I read said his campaign was "political correctness gone mad". This country is bizarre. Anne and I are constantly shocked to see this cheese in the supermarket. (Admittedly, Coon was the surname of the guy who started the company, but I can't imagine that this would be allowed to continue in the UK.)
Greeks are called "Wogs" here. It seems to be an affectionate term, and the Greeks don't seem to mind. That took us a while to get used to.
All that said, I haven't heard about race riots here, which we have in the UK every now and then.