Flanagan grew up in an Australia where the humanities flourish at good universities, which has a decent local publishing industry thanks to modest industry measures saving it from being merely a collection of multinational branch offices, and where tiny amounts of taxpayer funds give writers like him time and space to survive and create. Does the Australia that was the context for Richard Flanagan's life and creative growth still exist? Or is it endangered or, already in material senses, going or gone?

Writer and cultural strategist Julianne Schultz told the 2nd Australian Studies in China Conference in Beijing last month that Australia's history is now "deep enough and rich enough" to answer important questions "by looking inwards as well as out". The questions she zeroes in on are what is our identity, arguing that success depends on being clear about what it is, and what is our culture?

The short hand we've used in the past no longer reflects the reality of being a 21^st century Australian, Schultz says: "Sadly the public domain for the last decade has been characterised by a lot of shouting, quite a bit of self-congratulation, but very little critical, open-minded self-examination where the answer was not pre-determined."

Fear about the answer – that we've changed for the worse – is one possible explanation for fainting from the task of updating our self-perceptions. Given this month's "shirtfronting" and "girlie man" sledges on the national stage, with Australia's political culture seeming to slide into a deep frat house-style hole, it's hard not to blanch at the task. Schultz is made of sterner stuff though. It's time to "jettison both the cultural cringe and the cultural strut", she told the Beijing audience, and get on with pinning down the values and attributes that make Australians, in all our rich differences, collectively who we are today.

Not that she underestimates the task. Culture is complex, Schultz acknowledges: "It is everything – language, heritage, art, social relations, education, and identity – and at the same time, it is annoyingly intangible. It is the glue that binds us, it enriches and informs our lives every day, it is something we make…"

Getting this national recalibration right is important for individuals, for communities and for the country as a whole, Schultz says, but, notwithstanding the work of excellent historians, we're not good enough at public history in Australia for it to be easy. "We have forgotten to remember," she argues, "failed to keep telling our stories, only too willing to live in a permanent present and squabble about some details and interpretation."

Nor will any single or binary answer to these questions suffice. "The temptation to impose one correct view is dangerous," Schultz says, casting an implicit eye back over the 20^th century. "States that have adopted exclusionary definitions of culture have not generally prevailed, or been noted for their openness, resilience and innovation." That's an understatement.

However, Schultz sees signs that people do again want to make sense of what it means to be Australian. Economic success has been important but turned out not to be sufficient. "Most Australians enjoy the spoils of our good fortune, but we want to do more than just sell stuff," she says. "My feeling is that we are at one of those inflection points that will set the tone and agenda for the coming decades."

Confronting the "limits of myth, of reducing life on this continent to a few iconic moments" is intrinsic to the task, according to Schultz, who believes there are richer and more complex narratives to emerge –  stories that in the retelling can reveal "new truths".

Crucially, Schultz warns that wise governments enrich and facilitate the expression of national culture but do not and should not themselves create it. Paul Keating's famous observation that when you change the government you change the nation comes to mind as a counterpoint, but one knows what Schultz means.

"My concern is that if we don't do this in a serious way, we risk losing our moorings, forgetting about the values and attributes that mark us – of drowning in the global tsunami of people, ideas, entertainment and commerce," Schultz says.

It's serious homework for us all.