Ливанцы в Австралии: История и современность.

People of Lebanese descent resident in Australia

Lebanese Australians (اللبنانيون الأستراليون) refers to citizens or permanent residents of Australia of Lebanese ancestry. The population is diverse, having a large Christian religious base, being mostly Maronite Catholics, while also having a large Muslim group of Sunni and Shia branches. Lebanon, in both its modern day form as the Lebanese state (declared 1920; independent 1943), and its historical form as the region of the Lebanon, has been a source of migrants to Australia since the 1870s. 248,430 Australians (about 1% of the total population) claimed some Lebanese ancestry in 2021. The 2021 census reported 87,343 Lebanese born people in Australia, with nearly 66,000 of those resident in Greater Sydney.

As part of a large scale emigration in the 1870s, numerous Lebanese (specifically Lebanese Christians fleeing Ottoman persecution) migrated in great numbers out of Lebanon to various destinations. Most emigrated to the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina and other Latin American nations, particularly Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. Many also went to the United States, Canada and others to Australia, primarily to the eastern states, and most to New South Wales in particular. In the 1890s, there were increasing numbers of Lebanese immigrants to Australia, part of the mass emigration from the area of Lebanon that would become the modern Lebanese state, and also from the Anti Lebanon Mountains region of what would become Syria. Prior to 1918, Lebanese immigrants to Australia were not habitually distinguished from Turks because the area of modern Lebanon was a province of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Administration then passed to the French Mandate for several decades, which ruled it together with what would become Syria, its neighbour. Hence, for that period, the Lebanese were not distinguished from Syrians. From 1920, people from Lebanon (and Syria) were granted access to Australian citizenship as the Nationality Act 1920 removed the racial disqualification from the naturalisation laws. almost all Christian.

The Lebanese born population numbered 5,000 in 1971. Following the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975–1990, this wave of migrants were often poor and for the first time, over half of them were Muslim. Between 1975–1990, more than 30,000 civil war refugees arrived in Australia. Community concern and divisiveness continued in the wake of the 2005 Cronulla riots in Sydney, in which an altercation between some youths of Middle Eastern appearance and local surf livesavers blew up into a full blown racially motivated riot the following weekend, helped along by tabloid journalism and shock jocks. In November 2016, Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton said that it was a mistake of a previous Liberal administration to have brought out Lebanese Muslim immigrants. Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop said Dutton was making a specific point about those charged with terrorism offences, but Dutton was criticised for his comments in the media by politicians, terrorism experts and others.

Lebanese Australians have a moderate rate of return migration to Lebanon. In December 2001, the Department of Foreign Affairs estimated that there were 30,000 Australian citizen residents in Lebanon. During the 2006 Israel Lebanon conflict, the Australian Government organised mass evacuations of Australian residents in Lebanon.

Worldwide, most people of Lebanese ancestry today live outside Lebanon, and are known as the Lebanese diaspora which numbers from 8 to possibly 14 million.

In New South Wales, most Lebanese Australians were reported to reside in the Western Sydney council areas of City of Bankstown, with City of Holroyd, City of Canterbury and City of Parramatta (all pre 2016 council areas). The area included suburbs such as Lakemba, Greenacre and Punchbowl. In Victoria, like most Middle Easterners, Lebanese Australians are mostly found in the Northern Melbourne council areas such as the City of Merri bek and the City of Hume, particularly in neighbourhoods such as Broadmeadows, Coburg and Altona North.

According to the , 48.2% of Australians with Lebanese ancestry were Catholics, 9.9% were Eastern Orthodox, 3.4% were Protestant, 35.1% were Muslims, and 3.4% followed secular or no religious beliefs.

Lebanese in Sydney have followed a distinctive occupational pattern characterised by high levels of self employment, particularly in petty commercial activities such as hawking and shopkeeping. In 1901, '80 per cent of Lebanese in NSW were concentrated in commercial occupations' – in 1947, little had changed, as 60 per cent of Lebanese were 'either employers or self employed'. The Lebanese in Melbourne have opened restaurants and groceries and Middle Eastern shops and Lebanese bars on Sydney Road which is sometimes called "Little Lebanon". The peak business body is the Australian Lebanese Chamber of Commerce, with associations in both Sydney and Melbourne.

In 2014, a series of documentaries on Lebanese Australians was presented by SBS under the title Once Upon a Time in Punchbowl. The Lebanese Film Festival was launched in Sydney in 2012. Every year since then, it has showcases films which are either filmed or based in Lebanon, or made by Lebanese film makers throughout the world. The organisation is based in Bankstown, but the film festival travels to cinemas in Newcastle and Bowral in NSW, as well as Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane from August to November each year. In 2017–8, two seasons of the sitcom Here Come the Habibs, featuring a Lebanese Australian family who win the lottery and move to the posh eastern suburbs of Sydney, aired on Channel 9. Michael Mohammed Ahmad's 2018 comic novel The Lebs was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award. He had previously written an essay entitled "Lebs and Punchbowl Prison", the prison referring to his alma mater, Punchbowl Boys' High School. At his school, the term "Lebs" did not refer just to boys from Lebanese family, but to anyone whose family came from the Middle East, and even included boys with African and Indonesian backgrounds. The term "Leb" or "Lebo" has been used as a derogatory term, mostly in Sydney, and gained more widespread use after the 2005 Cronulla Riots. It is listed in the Collins English Dictionary as "Australian (offensive, slang), a person from Lebanon or of Lebanese origin". Ahmad wishes to help reclaim the word through his writing.