Australia and Buddhism (Introduction)

Australia is officially the Commonwealth country; it is in the Southern hemisphere. Australia has six states included New South Wales (NSW), Queensland (QLD), South Australia (SA), Victoria (VIC), Western Australia (WA) and Tasmania (TMA) and there are two major mainland territories one is the Northern Territory (NT) and the other is Australian Capital Territory (ACT) which is often call Canberra.

The total population of Australia proximately 22 million peoples, almost 90% of the populations are of European descent. For generations, the vast majority of both colonial are settlers and post-Federation immigrants came almost exclusively from the British Isles and the people of Australia are still mainly either of British or Irish ethnic origin. Australia’s population has increased four times since the end of World War I and World War II. In 2001, the five largest groups with 23% of Australians who were bore overseas were from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Italy, Vietnam and China. Compare to the migrant people the Indigenous population of Australia experience higher than average rates of imprisonment and unemployment, lower levels of education, and lower life expectancies for males and females.

Australia is a developed country, with a prosperous multicultural and multi religious society. It does not accord the status of state religion to any religion. According to the 2006 census, 64% of Australians were listed as Christian. 19% of the population was listed as “No Religion” which included humanism, atheism, agnosticism, and rationalism. The second largest religion in Australia is Buddhism (2.1%), follow by Islam (1.7 %) and Hinduism (0.8%). Overall less than 6% of Australians identify with nonChristian. As Australian constitution does not recognize any religion as state religion, religion does not play a central role in the lives of a large portion of the population^[1] .