the important bit is that as well as all of these WE HAD FLAGS.

I thought you are a country "sui generis" and not Europe? Which is why you are GOING GLOBAL innit.

someone explain continents to traumatico

it's a little bit Nordic Exceptionalism. I'm fairly sure that the indian ocean/south china sea ii/was as cosmopolitan as europe ever was. I mean, even europeans went there to trade. 

arabs went there to trade, with spices. they were successful and indeed Malaysia and Indonesia were to the best of my knowledge he only countries who adopted Islam by their own volition

On the languages point it's definitely wrong.  There are over 300 languages spoke in Australia, and well over 1000 if you include dialectical variations.

good point

I am guessing it means indigenous languages but what does that even mean any more

Think Australia would still win just on indigenous.  Think ethnocentric/colonist types forget how big the place is and how many different aboriginal mobs there are.

I am shocked that the Spectator would be a bit narrow-minded and colonialist.

heh

If it had added "within such a relatively small geographical area" it may have had a point. 

Why worry about what some random half-educated tosspot wrote in the Spectator without bothering to do any fact-checking? Because lies and inaccuracies don’t matter if you are one of the chosen few?

A cursory glance at any anthropology textbook for first-year undergraduate students will tell you that there are about eight main ways to measure linguistic and ethnic and cultural diversity and that Europe is not surprisingly less diverse than areas which had less travel and integration 1,000 years ago.