We may like to snipe at Germaine et al, but we don't revile most expats

The news that Australia's most famous expatriate, Rupert Murdoch, is moving News Corp's headquarters to the United States has prompted new mutterings about the old issue of expatriates and their commitment to this country.

If you were to judge from the noise generated by commentators and talkback callers on this question, Australians don't like their expatriates one bit.

Every now and again, prominent expats will poke their heads above the parapet and promptly have them shot off for their trouble. For example, several months ago Germaine Greer's (admittedly banal) article about Australian culture generated general outrage.

Murdoch and Greer are only two such culprits, however. In 2000, a feeding frenzy occurred around the broken body of international art critic Robert Hughes. Any adverse attention he might have received for his BBC documentary on Australia and his comments during a Western Australian court case was compounded by his sin of residing overseas. One commentator told us that Hughes's peers "have spent so much of their lives elsewhere that maybe we should stop calling them 'expatriates' and just see them as ignorant foreigners".

Other expats have received similar criticisms in recent times, raising the question of whether we are seeing a significant shift in Australian attitudes. Has the cultural pendulum, stuck for so long in the position of excessive regard for the opinion of outsiders, now swung the other way entirely? Are we in the grip of a new and more virulent strain of the tall-poppy syndrome, our traditional suspicion of high-flyers and big-noters? Are we suffering from "foreign poppy syndrome"?

As it happens, the answer is no. As part of a study of the policy implications of the Australian diaspora, the Lowy Institute commissioned UMR Research to conduct a telephone survey of Australians' attitudes to their expatriates.

Australia's offshore citizens represent a valuable resource: a market, a sales force, a constituency.

The results are striking.

It turns out that Australians are far more sanguine than we might have expected about their non-resident countrymen and women. Ninety-one per cent of the 1000 respondents agreed with the statement that expats are "adventurous people prepared to try their luck and have a go overseas", and only 6 per cent disagreed. Most respondents also believed that expats are successful: 75 per cent agreed they "are doing well for themselves away from home", and only 6 per cent disagreed.

By contrast, only 10 per cent of respondents believed that expats "have let us down by leaving Australia". On the issue of long-distance lectures, only 14 per cent of people agreed that expats "too often delight in running Australia down from offshore".

Far from sniping at expats, then, most of us support them.

There is a second insight from the survey: the existence of a generational shift, whereby younger people are more positively inclined than older people towards expatriates.

For example, we asked about Australians who "have been overseas for many years and have no plans to return home". Sixty-two per cent of all respondents identified these people as "real" Australians. However, the responses varied substantially depending on age: whereas 73 per cent of respondents under 30 said they thought of these long-term expats as "real" Australians, only 38 per cent of respondents over 65 agreed.

These are significant results, and they indicate that the community may have a better grasp of the realities of globalisation than some of our opinion leaders. To focus on the Germaines of this world is to miss the real story about Australian expats - and it's a good story.

Australia's diaspora is big - nearly 1 million strong. To put it another way, there are nearly as many Australians living offshore as there are in Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the ACT put together. It's no surprise that Australians are positive about the diaspora - almost all of us know someone who's a member of it.

The community is geographically diverse: while many Australians still cluster in Britain, there are also significant numbers in Europe, North America and Asia.

Our expatriates are relatively young, which helps explain the generational shift in the polling results. They are also relatively prosperous. Many are located in interesting and influential positions - so much so that one particular international official refers to "the axis of ocker".

In contrast to Germaine's era, the diaspora is dynamic - rather than turning their backs on Australia once and for all, expats these days are more likely to move back and forward between Australia and other countries as opportunities present. Importantly, expatriates are overwhelmingly well disposed to Australia and keen to help. They live somewhere else, but they remain engaged in Australia's national life.

Australia's offshore citizens represent a valuable resource: a market, a sales force, an ambassadorial corps and a constituency. Most Australians understand this. We should hope that our opinion leaders and policymakers will catch on soon, and craft policies to encourage Australian institutions to harness this great national asset.