'This essay will examine the fiction of D. H. Lawrence, Elliot Perlman, and Christos Tsiolkas with regard to their representation of Australian society, particularly in comparison to the European past and present. Its guiding dynamic will be the opposition between the egalitarian 'mateship' that D. H. lawrence found, and was discomfited by, in 1922 and the economic neoliberalism and concomitant sense of 'distinction' (to use Pierre Bourdieu's term) that Perlman and Tsiolkas see in today's Australia and to the world in which Australia manifests itself.'