Loretta Baldassar

The 120,000 expatriate Italians living in Australia, all of them newly entitled to vote in the recent election, contributed significantly to the knife-edge defeat of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in April 2006. Before the counting of all such votes in the four electoral regions into which his own government had divided the world, Berlusconi looked to have a one-seat majority. Then the votes of emigrant Italians swung the outcome the other way. For the first time, their say elected six expatriate senators and twelve deputies, including one of each from the Australia/Asia/Africa region – both of whom happen to live in Melbourne.

Cresciani’s very readable revised edition of The Italians is particularly informative on the early history of Italo-Australia. First published in 1985 with ABC Enterprises, based on the excellent television series of the same name, this new edition promises to provide ‘the definitive account’ of Italian life in Australia ‘into the twenty-first century’. Cresciani’s treatment of certain aspects of Italian migration to Australia is worthy of such a bold claim. He is especially good at weaving together the histories of both countries to provide an instructive account of how the vicissitudes of one indelibly affected the other. His treatment of contemporary immigrant life, however, is rather dated.