Michael Clyne is well placed to inform on linguistic and cultural diversity in Australia. Both he and his Language and Society Centre at Monash University have played a key role in the research which has kept track of developments in this area and helped policy formation. Michael Clyne's paper provides an up-to-date view of how multilingual and multicultural policy is developing in Australia and gives the results of some recent research. The other papers in the book are comments on the Australian situation and Professor Clyne's interpretation of it. They were written by British academics from a variety of disciplines (language, education and sociology) who came together for a day to meet Professor Clyne and discuss the issues he raised in his overview of the Australian situation