The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism 978-3-319-45126-8, 978-3-319-45125-1, 241-269-285-8

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THE PUBLIC LIFE OF AUSTRALIAN CULTURALISM Building a Diverse Nation

ANTHONY MORAN

The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism

Anthony Moran

The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism Building a Diverse Nation

Anthony Moran Department of Social Inquiry School of Humanities & Social Sciences La Trobe University Bundoora, Victoria, Australia

ISBN 978-3-319-45125-1 ISBN 978-3-319-45126-8 DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8

(eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957301 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Claudia and Liam, and in memory of my father.

Acknowledgments

This book had its origins in several conversations. Anthony Elliott made the initial suggestion about a book on multiculturalism, and then Dennis Altman encouraged me to write specifically about multiculturalism in Australia. So I thank both of them for setting me on the path to writing this book. David Pearson’s work on ethnicity and national identity in settler societies has stimulated my thinking in many ways, and I have also discussed the ideas of this book with him over several years, as we have shared drafts of our writing back and forth, and had occasional meetings in Australia. David also generously read and commented on Chap. 6, helping me to make it a better chapter, and I thank him especially for that advice. Thank you to my colleagues in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University for many stimulating discussions over coffee and in seminars and to my ethnically and religiously diverse undergraduate and postgraduate students, who have made me alert to the importance of the things discussed in this book. I have presented the ideas in progress for Chaps. 5 and 6 at the Annual Conference of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA), in 2010 and 2012, where I have greatly benefitted from questions and advice from colleagues. Some of the arguments for Chap. 5, and for the book more generally, were developed in my article “Multiculturalism as NationBuilding in Australia: Inclusive National Identity and the Embrace of vii

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Acknowledgments

Diversity” (Moran 2011). Though the chapter and book draw on these arguments, the content is all new and does not reproduce material from that article. I presented an early version of the argument in Chap. 7 when I was invited by Zlatko Skrbis, Robert Holton and Ian Woodward to present a paper at the Academy of the Social Sciences in the Australia International Science Linkages Workshop, “Australian and International Perspectives on the Cosmopolitan Civil Sphere,” in 2011, at Griffith University, Brisbane. Some initial ideas for Chap. 6 were presented at Word, Image, Action: A Festival of Ideas, organised by the Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural Sociology and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, at La Trobe University in 2011. Thank you also to the two anonymous reviewers of Palgrave Macmillan who provided encouragement and also good advice, especially for some additions to Chap. 5. And many thanks to the editors at Palgrave, especially Sharla Plant and Amelia Derkatsch, whose care and efficiency made this an enjoyable publication process. Finally, to Claudia and Liam, and my extended family, who I have talked with about the ideas and themes in this book over many years, thank you for listening and for helping me to think them through. Thanks are also due especially to Claudia for helping out, with her excellent proofreading skills and her keen eye for the too-long sentences.

Contents

1

Introduction

2

Multiculturalism, Australian Style: Official Multiculturalism from Whitlam to Fraser

25

Multiculturalism as Social Justice: The Hawke and Keating Governments

67

3

4

1

Enduring in Practice if Not in Name?—Official Multiculturalism During and Beyond the Howard Government

109

5

Multiculturalism and Australian National Identity

169

6

Aboriginal and Multicultural Imaginaries: Tensions, Accommodations, Reconciliation

207

ix

x

7

8

Contents

Post-Multicultural Australia? Cosmopolitanism Critique and the Future of Australian Multiculturalism

241

Conclusion

269

Index

285

1 Introduction

Multiculturalism has many critics. In the 2000s, amidst rising tensions about Islamism and homegrown terrorism, it was assailed from both left and right, sneered at in the tabloid media, seen as a virulent “ism” by political commentators and blamed for myriad societal and global woes, including terrorism (Phillips 2006; Malik 2009). On the other hand, multiculturalism has expressed the hopes of those, and not only minorities, who believe that it represents an important step beyond racism, a willingness to tolerate, embrace and even celebrate difference. In Australia and Canada it was launched in the 1970s as a vision for New World societies proud of their multi-ethnic populations. As globalisation accelerated after the 1970s, to some it seemed like the answer in designing new political arrangements for the multi-ethnic societies proliferating throughout the world, as a result of mass movements of people. Many countries adopted versions of multiculturalism, adapted to their particular social, political and cultural traditions (Kymlicka 2007). But it was always controversial, inciting critics from its earliest days. This book is about multiculturalism. It engages with multicultural debates and arguments through a case study of Australia’s experience with official multiculturalism since the early 1970s. Multiculturalism is © The Author(s) 2017 A. Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8_1

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here taken to mean approaches to public policy, including adjustments to public institutions, procedures and laws, that recognise, tolerate, honour and even promote cultural diversity and its benefits, based on the acceptance that most societies now contain multiple cultures (Crowder 2013, pp. 17–18). Since the late 1960s there have been variations of the multicultural approach, in particular harder and softer multiculturalisms, more liberal and more communal forms that take up different positions on issues such as cultural relativism, the balance between national or societal unity and separatism, and the extent to which governments should support the maintenance of cultural diversity and cultural traditions (Crowder 2013, Introduction; Delanty 2003, Ch. 5). This book argues that Australia has pursued a particular brand of liberal multiculturalism framed by democratic principles and inclusive national identity. This has proved to be too “soft” for some, too “hard” for others, too focused on (national) unity for some, but for others not focused enough on unity, and too much concerned with promoting difference and diversity, leading to separatism and division. One of the ambiguities of multiculturalism relates to the underpinning concept of the “cultural.” Thus, multiculturalism has also had pseudonyms, sometimes used interchangeably, including “multi-racial” and “multi-ethnic,” which refer to more specific identity categories than the more open-ended notion of “culture.” Within the social sciences, especially sociology and anthropology, culture has been a much used, but sometimes disputed, concept (Hannerz 1999). Broadly, it refers to the beliefs, values, attitudes, mores and practices of a group of people. It is assumed that culture influences, shapes or even directs individual and group behaviours (Parekh 2000, pp. 1–4). Multiculturalism accepts that culture is important for individuals, and includes an ethic of respect for cultures, and the assumption of the equal dignity, though not necessarily the equality, of cultures (Taylor 1994). Does culture mean particular kinds of relatively stable, bounded entities, expressing values and traditions with long histories or even, in the case of Indigenous cultures, stretching back through “time immemorial”? Or is culture deemed to be something far more fluid, open-ended, changing and with porous boundaries? When, in the constant flux of globalisation,

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cultures mix and meld with each other, is “multi” the best adjective to qualify them? How much is the individual shaped or bound by culture? The meaning of culture has been part of debates about multiculturalism, as will be evident in this book. For example, one of the most important critiques of multiculturalism is that it wrongly, and dangerously, makes use of government resources and policies to protect illiberal cultural identities that are thus artificially preserved and, according to some critiques, preserved in their worst aspects because publicly supported (i.e. patriarchal values, arranged marriages, gender inequality more generally, and practices like female circumcision and honour killings). Others have claimed that multiculturalism falsely reifies culture (see Phillips 2007 for a discussion of this issue). Anne Phillips (2007) has argued that if multiculturalism holds to such a reified view of culture as unchanging and with fixed boundaries between discrete cultures, then it is rightly condemned by its critics. Not only can it be then accused of supporting illiberal practices, values, traditions and beliefs, but it also institutes a “regime of authenticity” that denies people from minority cultures “the chance to cross cultural borders, borrow cultural influences, define and redefine themselves” (Phillips 2007, p.  14; see also Baumann 1999). Phillips argues that multiculturalism, which is aimed at addressing issues of group inequality and discrimination, should still be defended, but that it should be rid of any notion of culture as static and homogenised. Both critics and supporters of multiculturalism had been guilty of this failing, each at times operating with an over-culturalised view of the minority individual as culture-bound and culturally determined in his or her actions. This drained agency from individuals from minority cultures, and led to draconian policies such as blanket bans on any form of arranged marriage with overseas partners, as if young women were always passive victims rather than active participants in these arrangements (Phillips 2007, pp. 8–9, 132). Nevertheless, Phillips does not on the other hand argue that one should go backwards in defending a strong notion of assimilation, nor forward, as some have argued, by abandoning multiculturalism in favour of cosmopolitanism. The former was and is oppressive, while the latter is too vague to act as a strong policy approach to deal with structured inequalities, discrimination and prejudice based on race, ethnicity or cultural difference.

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While there has been careful analysis of multiculturalism as both theory and practice since its inception in the 1970s, there has also been much misinformed commentary, especially in the public sphere, including among academics. While multiculturalism involves philosophical claims, and certain presuppositions about the nature of society, nations, culture and the possibilities of cohesion in diverse communities, it pays to remember also that much of what multiculturalism is about concerns government policies, programmes and the structure and role of public institutions aimed at managing culturally diverse societies or polities. Many of the more dismissive critiques of multiculturalism fail to attend to the actual policies governments have enacted in its name, opting instead to utter warnings of impending, or already present, cultural, national or (Western) civilisational suicide influenced, for example, by Huntington’s (1996) “clash of civilisations” thesis. Australia is a society that has taken multiculturalism seriously and has made a sustained political attempt to put its principles into practice since the 1970s. Australian multiculturalism has involved an important and hopeful symbolic repudiation of race concepts of the Australian nation, and opened a space for intercultural dialogue and the expression of cultural diversity. At the same time, at the policy level it has involved a series of pragmatic steps to improve the lives of Australians from different cultural backgrounds. This is not to say that the story has been all good—it is not the purpose of this book to idealise Australia’s multiculturalism—but to say that critics of multiculturalism have too often abused it to push both reactionary and utopian political agendas. In Australia and in many other developed Western countries, multiculturalism has taken the blame for a variety of social ills, becoming a convenient scapegoat for a range of complex social phenomena. Too often, critics have provided a caricature of multiculturalism, ignoring actually existing multicultural policies, and then pronounced upon its illogicalities and failures. This book seeks to undermine this caricature. Australia has developed a distinctive brand of multiculturalism, and it is an opportune moment to look at that effort closely, including its trials, tribulations and the critiques it has faced, across time. The moment is opportune as there has been a growing consensus that multiculturalism is in retreat across the globe (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010a).

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In oft cited remarks at the turn of the twenty-first century (see Joppke 2004; Meer and Modood 2009; Levey 2009; Phillips 2007, pp. 11–12), Canadian political philosopher Will Kymlicka, who has done much to elaborate and defend a liberal-democratic accommodation with multiculturalism and minority rights, expressed the view that “multiculturalists have won the day” (Kymlicka 1999, p. 113), or at least that those arguing for the justice of minority rights had “won the day” (Kymlicka 2001, p.  32). By the mid-2000s, in the face of intellectual and public policy challenges and rejections, Kymlicka felt that he had been prematurely optimistic (Kymlicka 2005, p. 82; though, see his less pessimistic position in Kymlicka 2007).1 As Anne Phillips (2007, pp. 11–12) points out, when Kymlicka made his comments about multiculturalism winning the day, he was mainly referring to intellectual and political consensus that the difference-blind state could not always ensure justice for minorities, and that there might need to be different rules and exemptions for different types of citizens, and more positive policies to ensure non-discrimination and equal opportunity for minorities, against the impact of the cultural biases of majorities masked as cultural neutrality. Most would now agree that some form of cultural recognition was needed, he asserted. Kymlicka had predicted that future debates would in part be concerned with the possible perverse effects of specific multicultural policies, and with challenges presented by multiculturalism to social cohesion—in other words, specific dilemmas within multiculturalism, and related to minority rights (the justice of which most people accepted). In this he had, in fact, been too optimistic, as a rising tide of liberal political philosophy, and other political and sociological critiques, rejected multiculturalism and/or minority rights in toto, as attention shifted to “the perverse effects of multiculturalism on the members of minority cultural groups” (Phillips 2007, p. 12). As suggested in the title of a well-known collection of essays, Is Multiculturalism 1

Meer and Modood (2009), who discuss the Kymlicka example, argue that Kymlicka was too hasty in his retreat from optimism. Like Levey, they see much evidence of policy survival of multiculturalism, including in the UK where, they argue, the claim of retreat does not seem to stand up in the face of the multi-ethnic accommodation involved in the devolution of Scotland and Wales. They argue that we have to be attuned to different forms and understandings of multiculturalism—and some of these may have been retained at the expense of others.

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Bad for Women?, which took its title from, and included, Susan Moller Okin’s essay first published in Boston Review in 1997 (Cohen et al. 1999), the ongoing oppression of women from minority cultures in liberal states was considered one of these perverse outcomes of multiculturalism. In the mid-2000s political philosopher Christian Joppke (2004) argued that there had been a general retreat from multiculturalism in both theory and policy among liberal states. At the level of theory, prominent liberals—most potently the British theorist Brian Barry in Culture and Equality (2001)—had reasserted the concept of universalistic citizenship: the importance of the separation between the public sphere where citizens interact and the private sphere where culture, identity and difference matter and the culture- or difference-neutral state enacting policies that treat everyone in the polity as equal, regardless of their differences. At the level of practice, multicultural frontrunners like Australia and the Netherlands, and many other liberal democracies, including the UK which had previously adopted fairly extensive multicultural policies, were turning away from multiculturalism. In many Western countries, the main cause of the reaction against multiculturalism is related to increasing Muslim populations, the perceived clash between Muslim and Western, Christian and liberal-democratic values, Muslim demands for recognition and the growth of international militant Islam, including Islamist terrorism. Even Canada, seen as the world’s best model for successful multiculturalism, rejected aspects of its multiculturalism in the 2000s in the face of Muslim demands. As Levey (2009, p.  76) points out, for many years Catholics and Jews in Canada had been allowed to use their own religious tribunals as alternative avenues for dispute resolution, but after Muslims pushed to gain the same rights to use Sharia tribunals, the federal government ruled that no religions could use their tribunals for these purposes.2

2 Will Kymlicka (2007, p. 161, n) disputes this interpretation, noting that the debate about the use of Sharia law tribunals was about potential abuses in relation to divorce law, and publicly rejected on these grounds, in defence of freedom and equality. In any case Kymlicka argues that the use of tribunals was not part of Canada’s multicultural policy but a feature of its family law arbitration system, and that the use of religious tribunals had been driven by cost cutting measures, including privatisation.

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The dramatic retreat from multicultural policy in the Netherlands, which began in the mid-1990s and intensified after the street murder, by a Dutch-born Muslim extremist, of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in 2004 (Buruma 2006), is worth dwelling on in more detail. It encapsulates many of the dilemmas and conflicts expressed in other European countries, and, pertinent to Australia, negative European experiences with multiculturalism are sometimes cited, by politicians and media commentators, as reasons why Australia should abandon its own multiculturalism (i.e. Morrison 2013; Sheridan 2011). The Dutch retreat has included cuts to funding of immigrant groups for cultural maintenance programmes and for ethnic public broadcasting, the overturning of the policy of dual citizenship that had operated between 1992 and 1997, the banning of the burka in public places by act of parliament and the cessation of ethnic monitoring of immigrant labour participation (Meer and Modood 2009). In 2006 a new Civic Integration Abroad Act was passed, aimed at restricting immigration tied to family reunion, and requiring prospective residents to pass a civic integration exam testing knowledge of Dutch language and society (see Vink 2007, p. 346). Already by the mid-1990s, in the context of public fears about the creation of a parallel society of underprivileged immigrant groups who had failed to integrate into mainstream Netherlands society, partly, it was claimed due to the “ethnic minorities policy” that had been in operation since the early 1980s, a left-liberal government abandoned the approach in favour of a civic integration approach that included a strong public commitment to Dutch language acquisition and civics (600 hours of paid instruction) (Joppke 2004; see also Entzinger 2003; Vink 2007). The “ethnic minorities policy” had been built around three major themes: (1) emancipation in a multicultural society, (2) equality before the law and (3) promoting equal opportunity. According to Entzinger (2003), the policy had reflected the importance given by Dutch society to distinct cultural identities, evident since the nineteenth century in what is known as “pillarisation,” the policy whereby different religious and ideological groupings developed their own identities and institutions supported by the state and public funding. This approach had not been seen as a problem for overall identity or social cohesion in its old workings, but when it was applied to immigrant minorities it eventually came to be seen as a threat.

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By 2000, leading Dutch publicist and Labour Party figure Paul Scheffer claimed in “The Multicultural Tragedy,” an article published in the leading newspaper NRC Handelsblad, that Dutch multiculturalism had failed, resulting in segregated ethnic groups with little or no attachment to Dutch culture and society, who had little desire, or were unable, to integrate, and who were highly dependent on welfare. Illiberal values, he asserted, were widespread among the Netherlands’ immigrant Muslim population. He claimed that this situation would undermine social cohesion and the liberal-democratic state. Multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism of the elites had led to complacency and cultural relativism that now threatened liberal democracy (Entzinger 2007). Entzinger cites this moment, and the opposition and debate it generated, as another turning point away from multiculturalism (Entzinger 2007, p. 184). It was quickly followed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York’s twin towers, and the meteoric rise of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim politician Pym Fortuyn, a previously marginal academic and columnist. He and his party List Pim Fortuyn helped shift the political mainstream in the Netherlands to a more fervent nationalism, a less generous approach to immigration and asylum seekers, and far more stringent, compulsory and costly (to immigrants) integration requirements (Entzinger 2007). Fortuyn’s influence lived on after his assassination in May 2002 by an animal rights activist. Entzinger notes that surveys conducted regularly by the Social and Cultural Planning Office of the Netherlands “indicate a decline in acceptance of multiculturalism among the Dutch population,” and that “[m] ore than before, immigrant integration appears to be defined in terms of their loyalty to and identification with ‘Dutch values and norms’, rather than in terms of their social and institutional participation” (Entzinger 2007, p.  186). From a previously strong multiculturalist position, the Netherlands had “turned into one of the most assimilative countries of Europe” (Entzinger 2007, p. 187). However, Entzinger also pointed out that while in the new millennium multiculturalism “almost completely disappeared from the Dutch political agenda” (Entzinger 2007, p. 187), at the level of integration policies multiculturalism was still in evidence, both nationally and locally. He concluded that:

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… multiculturalism has lost some of its appeal, but in a number of fields it certainly has not disappeared altogether. Today’s assimilative rhetoric, particularly at the national level, disguises the perpetuation of certain multicultural practices. Many of these find their roots in pillarization, others in a pragmatism which is based on the view that ethnic diversity has become a characteristic of Dutch society that cannot be ruled out altogether, even if one might wish to do so. (Entzinger 2007, pp. 190–191)

Since the 1960s the UK, without having an explicit national multicultural policy, had introduced multicultural policies through its “Race Relations” approach to immigration and ethnic relations (Favell 2001), but multiculturalism was losing favour by the late 1990s (Bhattacharyya 1998). Anti-racist intellectual and social commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (2000) wrote a searing critique of British multicultural policies that, she claimed, promoted superficial recognition of culture (“Saris, Samosas and steel drums”) while reproducing separatist ghettos for ethnic and immigrant “others.” Alibhai-Brown argued for the need to move beyond multiculturalism to a policy that emphasised a diverse Britain with a diverse British identity. The publication in 2000 of the Runnymede Trust report “The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain,” co-authored by prominent intellectual figures including Bhikhu Parekh, Tariq Modood and Stuart Hall, contained a controversial attempt to define a new multicultural British identity which sparked further debate about multiculturalism and its relationship to British nationality (Commission on the Future of MultiEthnic Britain 2000). After the street rioting in its northern cities in May 2001 and other controversies there was a retreat from multiculturalism in the UK and a rethinking of national policies around notions of community cohesion and national citizenship (Joppke 2004). Major critiques of multiculturalism from both left and right were produced in the UK after 2001, and with even greater intensity in the aftermath of the 7/7 London Underground bombings in 2005, linking problems of terrorism with failure to integrate of second-generation immigrants, and pointing to state multicultural policies as contributing to lack of immigrant, especially Muslim, integration. It was argued by such critics that multicultural policies allowed for separate development of peoples, and promoted a dangerous political rhetoric of cultural relativism. The state, therefore, should be

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more assertive and unequivocal in its defence of mainstream culture and linked political values, as a way of countering such destructive trends (for a summary of these positions, and critique, see Kundnani 2007, Ch. 8; see also Modood 2007, Ch. 1). Other European states and the USA, to the extent that they adopted multicultural policies at all, have also retreated. Rogers Brubaker (2001), using case studies of the USA, France and Germany, has argued that there has been a return of assimilation as a primary mode of immigrant integration in both theory and practice, albeit in a modified and less culturally coercive form than in the past. This, he argues, has replaced the “massive differentialist turn” of the previous three decades. Anne Phillips argues that the new emphasis on citizenship training, articulating the core values of nations, cultural cohesion and integration in Europe, indicates a disturbing retreat from multiculturalism: Where previous policy pronouncements had stressed respect for cultural diversity (implying, though not always stating, a degree of mutual adjustment between majority and minority groups), talk of integration or cohesion conjures up a pre-existing set of values that distinguishes each host society, and urges people from minority cultural groups to adapt themselves more actively to this. (Phillips 2007, p. 22)

And, she argues, it is typically assumed that immigrants come from societies where democratic and liberal principles of equality and tolerance are less familiar; her complaint is that such approaches suggest false dichotomies between liberal and illiberal, traditional and modern, West and the rest that “replays monoculturalism in a more political guise” (Phillips 2007, p. 23). As noted above, Phillips defends a multiculturalism that is free of reified views of culture. She defends multiculturalism partly for political reasons, because she sees its values, such as cultural tolerance and egalitarianism, and its willingness to accept contributions of many cultures to national identity, currently under attack with requests for migrants to abide by an already established way of life: This is not, in my view, the moment for sounding the retreat from everything that multiculturalism implies. Rather, it is a time for elaborating a version of multiculturalism that dispenses with reified notions of culture,

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engages more ruthlessly with cultural stereotypes, and refuses to subordinate the rights and interests of women to the supposed traditions of their culture. (Phillips 2007, p. 72)

Joppke’s (2004) third example (apart from the Netherlands and Britain) was Australia, though here it was more a case of downscaling rather than retreat of multiculturalism. Nevertheless, this is significant as Australia, with Canada, had been one of the frontrunners of official multiculturalism since the 1970s. It is well known that after the 1960s, Australia had publically moved away from the assertion of white Australian identity (based on British origins), under which, since the beginning of the twentieth century, immigration had favoured “whites,” excluded “non-white” immigrants and discriminated against resident “non-whites.” Multiculturalism became the policy approach of governments since the 1970s, beginning, as I explain in Chap. 2, with Whitlam’s Labor government (1972–1975), and expanding under Fraser’s conservative Liberal-Country government (1975–1983). And as I explain in Chap. 3, the Hawke (1983–1991) and Keating (1991–1996) Labor governments continued the multicultural tradition, extolled the social, cultural and economic benefits of diversity and championed engagement and enmeshment with Asia. Since the 1970s, Australia has officially depicted itself as a multicultural society (or more ambiguously, sometimes as a multicultural nation) that proudly celebrated its multicultural and racial diversity, including its Indigenous people as the “oldest living culture” in the world and the “first Australians” (Keating 1993; Moran 2005, Ch. 3; Jupp 2007, Chs. 5 and 6). Many critics and supporters of multiculturalism see the period of the conservative Howard government (1996–2007) as ushering in a postmulticultural era, initiated by that government’s mirroring of European developments by its reemphasis on citizenship (including the introduction of a citizenship test for immigrants), a more traditional Australian nationalism, common values and community cohesion, an approach largely continued under the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments (2007–2013). I will address this claim in detail in Chap. 4. Counterintuitively, Joppke traces multiculturalism’s downscaling to the actions of the earlier Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, political

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leaders who, unlike well-known critic of multiculturalism John Howard, explicitly supported the policy. Citing government reports and policy documents mainly from the 1980s, Joppke notes a weakening of commitment to multiculturalism, including as a core constituent of national identity, and a coinciding reemphasis of a “core” Australian culture, based on its British origins. As I will show in Chap. 3, while Joppke’s argument has some merit, he largely ignores important developments during the 1980s like the Hawke government’s launching of the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia in 1989, which Joppke mentions mainly in terms of its emphasis on economic efficiency which “weakened” the emphasis of multiculturalism as an “identity option” (Joppke 2004, p. 247), and Keating’s championing of a diverse, cosmopolitan Australia in the 1990s, as part of his “Big Picture” politics, which Joppke does not mention at all. One of the purposes of this book is to challenge this image of retreat in the case of Australian multiculturalism. Others have challenged the validity of this narrative on a world-scale, pointing to the continuing significance of multicultural policies and practices (Kymlicka 2010; Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010b). Australian scholar Geoffrey Brahm Levey notes that while there is a definite world-wide backlash against multiculturalism, the claim should be tempered by the fact that most of those countries supposedly in retreat from multiculturalism have nevertheless retained many of their most significant multicultural policies, even if they have changed the political language, guided by the belief that “multiculturalism” sends the wrong message of cultural relativism to ethnic minorities and immigrants (Levey 2009). In his essay on the retreat of multiculturalism among liberal states, Joppke also recognised that it had been much easier to throw off multicultural policy in Europe than it had been in settler societies like Australia and Canada, where multiculturalism has sunk deeper roots: … multiculturalism in settler societies (like Australia) is entangled with problems of national self-definition, which sets it apart from its counterparts in Europe and is also separate from the minority rights agenda of multiculturalism theorists. Most importantly, the national-identity dimension of settler-society multiculturalisms has helped shield them from their challengers. (Joppke 2004, p. 244)

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It is worth briefly exploring the possible reasons for the tenacity of multiculturalism in countries like Australia and Canada. In a lecture delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 2004, Kymlicka argued that while Canada’s multicultural policies do not represent a unique model in the world, and are broadly similar to such policies adopted by many Western democracies during the last 30 years, multiculturalism has sunk deeper roots there: What is true, however, is that these policies are often more successful in Canada than in other countries. Policies for accommodating diversity may be similar across many Western democracies, but they have worked more smoothly in Canada, with less of a backlash, higher levels of public support (or at least public acquiescence), and higher levels of comfort and security on the part of minority groups. If part of the goal of these policies is to encourage citizens to feel more comfortable with diversity in their personal and public lives, then there is strong evidence that these policies have indeed been more successful in Canada than most other Western democracies, and have therefore taken deeper root. (Kymlicka 2004)

Indeed, national polling in Canada suggests growing support for multiculturalism and immigration since the late 1960s (apart from a dip in the early 1990s when critics popularised the idea that multiculturalism meant accepting the illiberal practices of non-Western ethnic groups), including continuing rises in public enthusiasm for the benefits of multiculturalism in the 2000s (Adams 2007; Kymlicka 2004). In citing the reasons for this public popularity, success and deep rootedness of multiculturalism in Canada, Kymlicka mentions its deep and broad institutional reach, and the fact that a generation had grown up with the idea that multiculturalism was a part of their Canadian national identity, acting as bulwarks against rejection of multiculturalism when more contentious issues of cultural relativism and the limits of tolerance appeared on the scene 20 or more years after its original adoption. By then, multiculturalism meant too many other things to Canadians for them to jettison it because of relatively new dilemmas and criticisms that did not really touch on those other things.

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Explaining the adoption, stability and success of multiculturalism in Canada, Kymlicka highlights a series of contingent facts and advantages, including political circumstances, timing, geography and geopolitics. The Quebecois question loomed large, with rising Quebecois nationalism and separatism in the 1960s leading to the adopting of accommodative bilingual policies, and the flow-on effect of more truly multicultural policies to accommodate Canada’s other, largely white ethnic groups of Ukrainians, Poles, Finns, Germans, Dutch and Jews, who were fearful that they would be left out: The white ethnics insisted that the accommodation of Quebec not be done at their expense, and that any strengthening of linguistic duality therefore be accompanied by recognition of ethnic diversity. The formula which gradually emerged—namely, multiculturalism within a bilingual framework—was essentially a bargain to ensure white ethnic support for the more urgent task of accommodating Quebec. (And indeed it has proven to be a very stable bargain). (Kymlicka 2004)

The fact that it was “white ethnics” being accommodated by multicultural policy made it less threatening to most Canadians because the differences were not associated with “civilisation differences,” for example, between “Western” Judeo-Christian and non-Western Islamic civilisations; and nor were there fears about the accommodation of alien, illiberal cultural practices like female genital mutilation, honour killings and forced arranged marriages—the issues that animated debates and conflicts over multiculturalism later in Europe. Those white ethnic groups envisaged as belonging within a multicultural Canada were also familiar and integrated, with migrations dating back generations, and many having proved their loyalty by fighting as Canadians in the Second World War (Kymlicka 2004). Geography meant that Canada did not have a problem with illegal immigration, which was at the heart of the rejection of multiculturalism in many other countries, especially in contemporary Europe. Immigration was legal and controlled, and drew on a diverse range of people, with no ethnic groups making up more than 15 per cent of the immigrant intake. This meant that immigrants were more likely to integrate into

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mainstream Canadian society and make use of mainstream institutions, and adopt the national languages, French and English, to pursue their claims. Canada did not draw large numbers of immigrants from nearby countries with whom there had been a history of tension or conflict, and thus native Canadians were free of such tensions and fears of “hostile” immigrants. There was no significant problem of asylum seekers. And Canada did not have large, poor, racially stereotyped populations of illegal immigrants who Canadians could be stirred against by critics of multicultural policies. The most important group stimulating angst over immigrants and multiculturalism in Europe—Muslims—formed a very small percentage of the yearly immigrant intake, and represented less than 2 per cent of the Canadian population (Kymlicka 2004). Though Kymlicka suggests that multiculturalism had shallower roots in Australia, some of his explanation for the rise and success of multiculturalism in Canada has parallels with what occurred in Australia. As in Canada, multiculturalism emerged as a policy in Australia at a time when non-white ethnic groups hardly registered on the public radar, and was thus primarily thought about as a policy for white ethnics and immigrants who shared broad religious, cultural and physical similarities with majority British descended Australians. Australia’s ethnic diversification up until the early 1970s was the result of predominantly European immigration. This included more than 170,000  post-Second World War non-British “Displaced Persons,” Europeans deliberately chosen for their “whiteness,” youth, good health and capacity to assimilate into white Australia between 1947 and 1953. As the programme of “populate or perish” continued in the three decades after the Second World War, Australia’s population was built on immigration from countries including Italy, Germany, Yugoslavia, Greece, the Netherlands and Turkey, actively sought through government-subsidised schemes, with a strong emphasis also on assisting British immigration (Jupp 2007). Asian immigration was heavily restricted up to the 1960s, and in that decade small numbers of “qualified” Asians were allowed to immigrate to Australia (Tavan 2005); but it was not until the late 1970s that Australia experienced large waves of Asian immigrants, mainly refugees from the Indochinese wars (Viviani 1996). Australia’s non-discriminatory immigration policy draws upon multiple sources, so that apart from those of British origin, no ethnic group

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makes up a major proportion of the population. People of British/Irish ancestry still dominate Australia’s ethnic make-up (between 60 and 70 per cent). In Australia’s 2011 Census, people were asked to pick up “two ancestries with which they most closely identify.” The most commonly reported were English (36 per cent) and Australian (35 per cent). Another six of the ten leading ancestries reported were European, with the other two being Chinese (4 per cent) and Indian (2 per cent). Almost a third (32 per cent) reported two ancestries. There were over 300 ancestries identified (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012). Reflecting high rates of intermarriage, at least 60 per cent of Australian people were estimated to be of mixed ethnic ancestry by the late 1990s (Price 1999). In part because of the diverse source countries for immigrants, and small numbers typically entering from any one country under Australia’s planned migration programme, unlike countries such as the UK and the USA, Australia does not experience strong ethnic concentrations of population in its cities or rural areas. While Australian cities do have areas of concentration of foreign-born immigrants, these areas are typically themselves very ethnically diverse (Jupp 2007; Markus et al. 2009, Ch. 5). Australia is still predominantly Christian, but recent immigration from Asia and the Middle East has contributed to increasing numbers of Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012; Bouma 2006, Ch. 3). While Australia’s Muslim population grew in the 1970s during the Lebanese Civil War (Batrouney 2001) and after the first Gulf War and has recently included immigrants from Africa, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and many other Middle Eastern countries, Muslims only make up 2.2 per cent of Australia’s population according to the 2011 Census (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012); and Australia’s Muslim population is ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse, with almost 38 per cent Australian born (Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2009; Hassan 2015). As an island continent with no land borders, Australia does not have a significant problem with illegal immigration. Nor does it have large concentrations of disadvantaged immigrants. The lack of large numbers of illegal immigrants, and the emphasis on skilled migration since the 1980s has reduced this possibility. The children of immigrants, the so-called second generation, are typically well integrated in Australian society,

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achieving high levels of school and tertiary education and good employment outcomes and intergenerational social mobility (Birrell 1996; Khoo et  al. 2002). Over time, refugees and their descendants have made a strong contribution to Australia’s social, cultural and economic life (Hugo 2011). There are issues of welfare dependency among recent refugee communities, but again the numbers are not large enough to provide critics of multiculturalism with ammunition; as I show in later chapters, this has not prevented media campaigning about “ethnic gangs,” crime and welfare dependency. In recent years there has been considerable political debate, and public angst, about asylum seekers arriving without visas by boat, but the numbers are actually small by world standards. These only reached about 4000 per year in the period 1999–2001, before dropping away in the 2000s, then climbing again since 2009, reaching around 6500 in 2010 and 4500 in 2011 (Phillips and Spinks 2011). Numbers of boats and asylum seekers spiked dramatically during 2012 and 2013, but by the end of 2013 the numbers were again falling. There are of course also important differences between Australia and Canada, like the absence of a national separatist movement, or ideas of bi-national foundations, Australia having been overwhelmingly British in population and make-up until well after the Second World War. In 1945, for example, 97 per cent of Australia’s population identified as British (Batrouney and Goldlust 2005, p. 18). And this means that multiculturalism is experienced differently in Australia, with much less emphasis on the rights of minority groups and cultures. As I argue in Chap. 5, Australians have, like Canadians, come to see multiculturalism and diversity as aspects of their national identity. The public support for some aspects of multiculturalism and immigration in Australia is also apparent in recent times. Multiculturalism’s entanglement with questions of national identity in Australia is one of this book’s central themes. I will be arguing that the link between multiculturalism and national identity was at least implicit, and often explicit, from the first introduction of a national multicultural policy in 1973 through to the present day. This has been an at times politically controversial entanglement, tied, I will argue, to the vacuum left in national self-understanding once the White Australia Policy had been rejected by political and intellectual elites, and as the British underpinnings of Australian national identity

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declined in significance. The demographic and associated social and cultural changes caused by Australia’s mass immigration programme after the Second World War, as well as Indigenous protests and greater public visibility from the 1960s onward, challenged the myth of British origins of the Australian nation. This challenge was, and continues to be, contentious, with Britishness “de-accentuated” rather than expunged from Australian national identity (McGregor 2006, p.  508). I return to this question at various points in the book, but address it at length in Chap. 5. The relationship between Australia’s Indigenous peoples and multiculturalism has been fraught, with Indigenous people generally resisting incorporation within multicultural debates and agendas, asserting instead distinct Indigenous rights and claims in relation to the Australian settler state. Here again there are parallels with the Canadian experience, and also with New Zealand, as I explain in Chap. 6. Australia’s multicultural policy discourse has been mainly focused on Australia’s immigrant diversity, but it has also attempted to draw Indigenous people into its broader framework. The decade-long official Aboriginal Reconciliation process of the 1990s represented an attempt to broaden the understanding of nation and heritage to accommodate Indigenous demands, and to an extent this involved an expanded notion of multiculturalism that recognised the unique position of Indigenous people vis-à-vis the rest of Australia’s multi-ethnic settler population. Has Australia now entered a post-multicultural era? Has the multicultural agenda run its course? And if it has now run its course, what is a policy approach more suited to contemporary Australia? As I will show in Chap. 7, there have been different arguments advanced about the future of multiculturalism in Australia. Tapping into the “cosmopolitan turn” of the social sciences since the 1990s, some have advocated a cosmopolitan stance, and policy approach, that would, its proponents argue, overcome the limitations of multiculturalism and multicultural policy. As I will show, this involves a partial misreading of official multiculturalism, and has thus far failed to produce practical alternative policies. In the Conclusion I return to the question of the retreat of multiculturalism by stressing that, despite robust criticism from both the left and the right, official multiculturalism has survived in Australia since

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the early 1970s. I argue that Australians display a pragmatic acceptance of cultural difference and multiculturalism. This was evident in the submissions and public hearings of the Gillard government’s parliamentary inquiry into multiculturalism. I discuss the recommendations of the report from the inquiry, and suggest some of the challenges for contemporary Australian multiculturalism, including combating an anti-Islamic strain in Australian society. In the book’s course I will rehearse the history of multiculturalism in Australia, and highlight what is unique to Australia about its reception, style and policy approach, as well as where it is similar and different to approaches in other countries. The story of the introduction of multiculturalism as a new policy and new way of understanding the nature of Australia’s polity has been told by many writers, including historians, sociologists and political scientists. In 2000, Mark Lopez published The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945–1975, a thorough and definitive account of the main players—academics, policy makers, politicians and activists—who contributed to its introduction in 1973 (Lopez 2000). In doing so he surveyed the period 1945–1975, emphasising both the movement towards multiculturalism over a longer period of time, but also the small number of players involved. Lopez argued that this was a policy introduced largely behind the backs of an excluded and complacent public, by governments with some eye on external events and issues, including Australia’s perceived image in the region, and in the world. Among the book’s many qualities are its thoroughness and attention to historical detail, and its careful elucidation of the most significant policy networks and the major events and movements of thought paving the way for multiculturalism. It is not my purpose in this book to go over ground already sufficiently covered by others, like Lopez, though I will draw upon his pioneering work as well as that of many others. What is of central concern in this book is the continuing development of multiculturalism as policy and practice by governments in Australia, but also as an ethic of understanding between people living within a diverse society. Both aspects have been there from the beginning in mainstream conceptions of the meaning of multiculturalism. Liberal-Country Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (1981), in his speech to the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs

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in 1981, made this clear, when he noted that policies could only do so much in terms of creating a truly multicultural society; the rest was up to people going about their daily lives, mixing with neighbours, workmates and friends and making everyday decisions to open themselves to the cultural diversity, the different traditions and heritages amidst which they lived.

References Adams, M. 2007. Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism. Toronto: Viking Books. Alibhai-Brown, Y. 2000. After Multiculturalism. London: The Foreign Policy Centre. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2012. 2071.0—Reflecting a Nation: Stories from the 2011 Census, 2012–2013. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@. nsf/Lookup/2071.0main+features902012-2013. Accessed 3 July 2016. Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Citizenship. 2009. Muslims in Australia—A Snap Shot. Canberra: Australian Government. Barry, B. 2001. Culture and Equality. Cambridge: Polity Press. Batrouney, T. 2001. Lebanese Community Life in Melbourne. In The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins, ed. J. Jupp, 567–569. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Batrouney, T., and J. Goldlust. 2005. Unravelling Identity: Immigrants, Identity and Citizenship in Australia. Altona, VIC: Common Ground. Baumann, G. 1999. The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic and Religious Identities. New York and London: Routledge. Bhattacharyya, G. 1998. Riding Multiculturalism. In Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity, ed. D.  Bennett, 252–266. London and New York: Routledge. Birrell, B. 1996. Our Nation: The Vision and Practice of Multiculturalism Under Labor. People and Place 4(1): 19–27. Bouma, G. 2006. Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brubaker, R. 2001. The Return of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives on Immigration and Its Sequels in France, Germany and the United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies 24(4): 531–548.

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Buruma, I. 2006. Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gough and the Limits of Tolerance. New York: Penguin. Cohen, J., M. Howard, and M.C. Nussbaum. 1999. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Susan Moller Okin With Respondents. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. 2000. The Future of MultiEthnic Britain. London: Profile Books. Crowder, G. 2013. Theories of Multiculturalism: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity. Delanty, G. 2003. Community. London: Routledge. Entzinger, H. 2003. The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism in the Netherlands. In Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation States, ed. C. Joppke, and E. Morawska, 59–86. London: Palgrave. ———. 2007. The Parallel Decline of Multiculturalism and the Welfare State in the Netherlands. In Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies, ed. K. Banting, and W. Kymlicka, 177–201. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Favell, A. 2001. Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain. Rev. ed. New York: St Martin’s Press. Fraser, M. 1981. The Inaugural Address on Multiculturalism to the Institute of Multicultural Affairs. The Malcolm Fraser Collection at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, November 30. http://www.unimelb.edu.au/malcolmfraser/speeches/nonparliamentary/multiculturalism.html/. Accessed 29 Jan 2015. Hannerz, U. 1999. Reflections on Varieties of Culture Speak. European Journal of Cultural Studies 2(3): 393–407. Hassan, R. 2015. Australian Muslims: A Demographic, Social and Economic Profile of Muslims in Australia. International Centre for Muslim and NonMuslim Understanding, University of South Australia, Adelaide. https:// www.unisa.edu.au/Global/EASS/MnM/Publications/Australian_Muslims_ Report_2015.pdf. Accessed 3 July 2016. Hugo, G. 2011. Economic, Social and Civic Contributions of First and Second Generation Humanitarian Entrants. Final Report to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, May 2011. http://www.immi.gov.au/media/ publications/research/_pdf/economic-social-civic-contributions-about-theresearch2011.pdf. Accessed 14 Jan 2015. Huntington, S.P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster.

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Joppke, C. 2004. The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy. The British Journal of Sociology 55(2): 237–257. Jupp, J.  2007. From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Keating, P. 1993. Redfern Park Speech of December 10 1992. Aboriginal Law Bulletin 61: 4–5. Khoo, S.-E., P. McDonald, D. Giorgas, and B. Birrell. 2002. Second Generation Australians: Report for the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. Canberra: DIMIA. Kundnani, A. 2007. The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain. London: Pluto Press. Kymlicka, W. 1999. Comments on Shachar and Spinner-Halev: An Update from the Multiculturalism Wars. In Multicultural Questions, ed. C. Joppke, and S. Lukes, 112–129. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2001. Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2004. The Canadian Model of Diversity in a Comparative Perspective. Eighteenth Standard Life Visiting Lecture, University of Edinburgh, April 29. http://www.cst.ed.ac.uk/documents/Kymlickalecture.rtf. Accessed 22 Apr 2009. ———. 2005. The Uncertain Futures of Multiculturalism. Canadian Diversity 4(1): 82–85. ———. 2007. Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism? New Debates on Inclusion and Accommodation in Diverse Societies. Oxford: UNESCO/Blackwell Publishing. Levey, G.B. 2009. What Is Living and What Is Dead in Multiculturalism? Ethnicities 9(1): 75–93. Lopez, M. 2000. The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945–1975. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press. Malik, K. 2009. From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy. London: Atlantic Books. Markus, A., J. Jupp, and P. McDonald. 2009. Australia’s Immigration Revolution. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. McGregor, R. 2006. The Necessity of Britishness: Ethno-Cultural Roots of Australian Nationalism. Nations and Nationalism 12(3): 493–511.

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Meer, N., and T.  Modood. 2009. Muslims, “Multiculture” and the Civic Rebalancing of British Multiculturalism. Political Studies 57(3): 473–497. Modood, T. 2007. Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea. Cambridge: Polity Press. Moran, A. 2005. Australia: Nation, Belonging and Globalization. New  York: Routledge. Morrison, S. 2013. Australia, the Land of Our Adoption. Speech, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College, London, January 24. http:// australianpolitics.com/2013/01/24/scott-morrison-australia-land-of-ouradoption.html. Accessed 24 Jan 2014. Parekh, B. 2000. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Phillips, M. 2006. Londonistan: How Britain Is Creating a Terror State Within. London: Gibson Square Books. Phillips, A. 2007. Multiculturalism Without Culture. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Phillips, J., and H.  Spinks. 2011. Boat Arrivals in Australia Since 1976. Parliamentary Library, Canberra. http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/ Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/ BoatArrivals. Accessed 13 Jan 2015. Price, C. 1999. Australian Population: Ethnic Origins. People and Place 7(4): 12–16. Sheridan, G. 2011. How I Lost Faith in Multiculturalism. The Australian, April http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/how-i-lost-faith-in-2. multiculturalism/story-fn59niix-1226031793805?nk=356361f2496d54a75 8f1d2384ea5b2b7. Accessed 28 Oct 2014. Tavan, G. 2005. The Long, Slow Death of White Australia. Carlton North, VIC: Scribe. Taylor, C. 1994. The Politics of Recognition. In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. A.  Gutmann, 25–73. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vertovec, S., and S.  Wessendorf, eds. 2010a. The Multiculturalism Backlash: European Discourses, Policies and Practices. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis. Vertovec, S., and S. Wessendorf. 2010b. Introduction: Assessing the Backlash Against Multiculturalism in Europe. In The Multiculturalism Backlash: European DIscourses, Policies and Practices, ed. S. Vertovec and S. Wessendorf, 1–31. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. Vink, M.P. 2007. Multiculturalism Beyond the Pillarisation Myth. Political Studies Review 5(3): 337–350. Viviani, N. 1996. The Indochinese in Australia 1975–1995: From Burnt Boats to Barbecues. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

2 Multiculturalism, Australian Style: Official Multiculturalism from Whitlam to Fraser

Immigration expert James Jupp (2007) argues that Australian multiculturalism has always been a settlement and integration policy, and never advocated the separate development of ethno-cultural groups. As I show in this chapter, and in the following two chapters, the integration emphasis is evident in federal government reports, statements, agendas and commitments on multiculturalism from the 1970s to the present. And yet, many right wing and conservative critics since the 1970s have attacked the “separatism” of the policy (Chipman 1980a, b; Knopfelmacher 1982; Blainey 1984; Sheehan 1998). Eminent Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey (1988) claimed that it was creating a “nation of tribes.” If multiculturalism had separatist readings and meanings among intellectuals and interest groups, these were never part of Australia’s official multiculturalism.1 Its creators’ revisioning of a culturally diverse but cohesive 1

Levey (2008a, p. 20) laments that it is unfortunate that the historiography of the shift to multiculturalism has obscured its integration role. Historians have typically written of multiculturalism as a policy phase following and replacing a brief period of “integration policy” in the 1960s, which had itself replaced assimilation policy. Rather, we should see multicultural policy as a continuation of integration policy, albeit a policy phase where the terms of integration into mainstream society are fairer and more prudent than under either assimilation or integration.

© The Author(s) 2017 A. Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8_2

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society was, nevertheless, audacious, overturning powerful, long-standing assumptions about the relationships between ethno-cultural homogeneity, nation and political and social stability. Jupp’s other point about multiculturalism being a “settlement policy” is true historically, and partially true in the present. Multiculturalism retains a strong emphasis on settlement and accommodation of immigrants, but also extends beyond this in its symbolism and policy. Like assimilation policy in relation to immigrants, multiculturalism was at first mainly concerned with the settlement of immigrants from non-British, non-English speaking backgrounds.2 By the 1960s Australia’s ethnic diversification resulting from mass immigration stimulated debate about the need for new policies beyond assimilation. Briefly, the federal government shifted to an “integration” policy in the late 1960s. As Castles et al. (1988, p. 52) explain, this policy involved the recognition that: the nature of the migration process itself implied that the first generation might find complete assimilation impossible and that some of the difficulties experienced by them might best be alleviated by working through the now-legitimate “national group.” The basic goal remained the same, however, and that goal was eventual complete assimilation to an “Australian” mainstream culture.

Multiculturalism did not see ethnic languages, traditions, cultures and communities as temporary adaptive phenomena and mechanisms, to become less important for the immigrant as adjustment to Australian society advanced over time. Instead, it saw these continuing into the future, enriching the broader society and making it more diverse and dynamic. At the same time, a multicultural Australian society would maintain social cohesion and national unity. Those different ethnic experiences and communities would not result in separate enclaves, but a cultural mixing within mainstream Australian society. There are different forms of multiculturalism. Communitarian multiculturalism emphasises the preservation of the cultural integrity and ways of life of ethno-cultural groups, enabled through public forms 2 Markus et al. (2009, p. 95) note that for all but 9 years since the 1970s, multiculturalism has been the responsibility of the Federal Immigration Department.

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of recognition (Ivison 2010, p.  3). It regards ethno-cultural groups as discrete cultural communities, arranged as a mosaic under the umbrella of state institutions that recognise their cultural integrity and forms of self-organisation (Maclure 2010, p. 40). Liberal multiculturalism, on the other hand, focuses on the individual rather than the cultural group, and strives to extend the liberal agendas of respect for the individual and individual equality and autonomy, through recognition of the importance of individuals’ cultural backgrounds for individuals’ goals, freedom and life chances in society. One of its main aims is the removal of forms of discrimination that an individual may face because of that cultural background in a society that is organised by a different, dominant culture (Ivison 2010, p. 3; Levey 2010; Kymlicka 2007). Official Australian multiculturalism has always been primarily liberal rather than communitarian, and to the extent that it has had public support in Australia, it has rested on this liberal understanding. In this respect, Australia is in keeping with many other liberal democracies that have adopted multiculturalism (Kymlicka (2007, p. 108). Australian multiculturalism has exhibited a strong tendency to emphasise individuals rather than groups as carriers of cultural identity and difference (Brett and Moran 2011; Levey 2008a). And indeed, this has been the source of criticism from supporters of a more radical multiculturalism with a greater emphasis on collective cultural rights and the recognition of groups (see Castles 1997, p.  11; Jayasuriya 1997). Unlike in Canada, cultural maintenance has not been a major emphasis of Australian multiculturalism (Markus et al. 2009, p. 95). To contrast Australian multiculturalism with other European examples of multiculturalism, it has also not been like the multiculturalism modelled on “pillarisation” adopted by the Netherlands in the 1980s. Pillarisation, a form of communitarianism, began with the public recognition of the two distinct religious communities of Protestantism and Catholicism, later adding a “social democratic” pillar, with state support for the setting up of elaborate institutional expressions of these different communities, for example, in the areas of education, health, social welfare, political organisation and civil society more generally (media outlets, clubs and associations etc.), thus adopting a strong pluralist model, and a society arranged like a series of separate pillars with unity secured

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through elite dialogue and cooperation at the top (Entzinger 2003). Pillarisation was being dismantled by the 1970s under the influence of secularisation, individualisation, education and generational change but commentators have argued that Dutch multiculturalism, expressed through “minorities policy” and new state efforts to integrate large immigrant, especially Muslim populations (e.g. from Turkey and Morocco), followed the pillarisation tradition of separate cultural, social and political organisation (Entzinger 2003, 2007, pp.  180–181; Delanty 2003, pp. 97–98). Though other authors have cast doubt on the influence of pillarisation in shaping Dutch multiculturalism, arguing that it was more liberal and integrationist in character (see Vink 2007), Australian multiculturalism was nevertheless fundamentally different to the classic pillarisation model. In this chapter, I discuss the main features of official multiculturalism in Australia from its emergence in the early 1970s through to the early 1980s. I illustrate the basic liberal consistency of the Australian approach. I also provide a brief account of the main developments in multicultural policy under the federal governments of Whitlam (1972–1975) and Fraser (1975–1983). Finally, I explain influential right-wing and left-wing critiques of multiculturalism that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the two subsequent chapters, I will discuss developments of multiculturalism during the Hawke (1983–1991) and Keating (1991–1996) periods of government, and then from the Howard government (1996–2007) to the Gillard government (2010–2013).

The Beginnings of Official Multiculturalism: The Whitlam Government Whitlam government Immigration Minister Al Grassby’s famous speech to the Cairnmillar Institute’s Symposium Strategy 2000: Australia for Tomorrow, held in Melbourne on 11 August 1973, “A Multi-cultural Society for the Future,” is seen as launching multiculturalism as Australia’s official policy. Though it went unreported in the mainstream media at the time, it has an iconic status in accounts of Australian multiculturalism. In the following discussion, I will give my own reading of the main

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themes of the speech, but rely also on Lopez’s (2000) definitive account of the key players, ideas and events surrounding its emergence and public reception. Since the late 1960s, multicultural ideas had been circulating among immigration and ethnic affairs activists and intellectuals, and were promoted by Victorian-based organisations such as Co As It (representing the Italian community), the Australian Greek Welfare Society and the Fitzroy Ecumenical Centre (1973). In the lead up to Grassby’s speech, various policy councils (i.e. the Immigration Advisory Council’s Committee on Community Relations and Committee on Social Patterns; some of the state-based Migrant Task Force Committees), policy advisors and activists (like Walter Lippmann and Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki) had been encouraging Grassby to replace the policy of integration with multiculturalism, and several government reports on migrant settlement and welfare issues to the minister had contained multicultural ideas and arguments (Lopez 2000, pp. 208–220, Chap. 7). There had been considerable agitation and movement among intellectuals and activists to find a new way beyond assimilation to think about the “migrant presence” (Martin 1978), and this was feeding into important policy advisory committees. Government reports in the late 1960s, especially those examining the reasons for immigrants leaving Australia and returning to their former countries, raised concerns about the inhospitable nature of Australia’s assimilation policies and of expected cultural conformity (Martin 1978, p. 31). The citizenship conventions held in Canberra during the 1960s also highlighted the need to both attract and retain immigrants, and speakers at those conventions occasionally referred to unrealistic expectations of migrant cultural conformity to Anglo Australia (Australian Citizenship Convention n.d.).3 3

The citizenship conventions were held annually in Canberra from 1950 to 1965, and then biannually from 1966 to 1970. They brought together political leaders, government officials, academics and other experts, and members of the Good Neighbour Councils and of the general public to discuss issues related to immigration. At the 16th Convention held in 1966 several speakers spoke of a preference for integration rather than assimilation. Summing up general discussion, Justice Eggleston noted that speakers had said that migrants “should be told that we did not expect migrants to discard their own cultures and to conform to Australian patterns” (Australian Citizenship Convention n.d., p. 38). At the 17th Convention in 1968 Liberal MP Bill Snedden emphasised the international competition for skilled migrants, and noted a 1967 report that showed that between 9 and 16 per cent of the settler intake left Australia again, and felt that something had to be done to prevent this, like improved services, and the broader community being

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Some intellectuals and policy activists in Australia were aware of the multicultural developments in Canada of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which set a precedent for change. The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism had concluded in 1969, and the Canadian government had accepted the recommendations in Book IV of the Report, becoming the first country to adopt an official multicultural approach (Lopez 2000, p. 164; Pearson 2001). Canadian Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s formula of multiculturalism in a bilingual framework, and the 1971 statement on multiculturalism, inspired Australian thinkers and activists who were grappling with new ways of thinking about ethno-cultural diversity. However, Canada’s situation  was different to Australia’s, with the issues of bilingualism and biculturalism, and the tensions between French and Anglo Canada, and this meant that the Australian approach had to be different (Lopez 2000, pp. 164–165; see also p. 71).4 As Lopez (2000, pp.  243–245) has explained, Grassby’s speech was written by public servant Jim Houston, the National Groups Officer in the Integration Branch of the Department of Immigration and a committed multiculturalist, influenced by intellectuals including Jean Martin, Jerzy Zubrzycki, Walter Lippmann and ethnic rights activist Des Storer. Though replete with multicultural themes and arguments, it is often forgotten that the term multicultural was not used in the speech itself, only in its title, and thus never clearly defined and explained. The speech referred instead to a “diverse” society, “ethnic groups” and “ethnic communities,” suggesting that both ethnic groups and communities already existed in a pluralistic Australian society. Another term used in the speech to describe the ethnic diversification of Australia’s national fabric was “cosmopolitan.” Australia was depicted as “now one of the most cosmopolitan societies on earth” (Grassby 1973, p. 3). This was seen in a positive light, as stimulating new artistic and cultural developments and freeing Australia of any pretension it previously had to homogeneity. more welcoming of migrants and responsive to their needs (Australian Citizenship Convention n.d., p. 14). At the 18th Convention, held in 1970, Labor opposition leader Gough Whitlam critiqued the social conditions faced by migrants, including in the areas of housing, health and education, and argued that government must deal with this to improve the migrant lot, and make it desirable for them to stay, in a context where Australia was falling behind the social conditions of source countries (Australian Citizenship Convention n.d., pp. 8–11). 4 Lopez felt that multiculturalism’s “adoption in Canada during 1971 paralleled developments in Australia, but had negligible impact as a catalyst or source of ideology” (Lopez 2000, p. 37).

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Lopez, who interviewed Houston, explains that Houston avoided “multicultural” in the body of the speech in order to get the draft past his superiors who may have been alarmed by the term. Instead, he adopted Grassby’s own favoured metaphor “the family of the nation” to describe the complex relationships and identities of an ethnically plural society: In a family the overall attachment to the common good need not impose a sameness on the outlook or activity of each member, nor need these members deny their individuality and distinctiveness in order to seek a superficial and unnatural conformity. The important thing is that all are committed to the good of all. (Grassby 1973, p. 3)

This metaphor was not popular among other advocates of multiculturalism, as it played down racial prejudice in Australia, suggested too much harmony and was socially conservative; according to Lopez none of the important multiculturalists of the time adopted it, and nor did Grassby’s own political party, despite his active proselytising (Lopez 2000, pp. 226–227). Nevertheless, the speech was important for proclaiming the need to break from a notion of assimilation as “Anglo-conformity,” the expectation that ethnically different newcomers to Australia would simply drop their histories, identities, cultures and traditions and adopt a “superior” Anglo culture and Australian identity. This notion of “assimilation” was no longer tenable for the vastly different and diverse society created out of mass immigration since World War Two: the increasing diversity of Australian society has gradually eroded and finally rendered untenable any prospects there might have been twenty years ago of fully assimilating newcomers into the ‘Australian way of life’, to use a phrase common at that time. (Grassby 1973, p. 3)

Grassby’s speech was dominated by the theme of “cultural pluralism,” emphasising ethno-cultural survival and the need for Australia to be more open to cultural difference. “In the interests of Australians of the year 2000,” Grassby said, “we need to appreciate, embrace and preserve all of those diverse elements which find a place in the nation today” (Grassby 1973, p. 9).

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Lopez has argued that “cultural pluralism” was only one of four distinguishable, competing though sometimes interrelated and over-lapping, strands of multiculturalism evident at the time, the others being “welfare multiculturalism,” “ethnic structural pluralism,” and “ethnic rights” multiculturalism. Each of these varieties had been articulated and proselytised by academics, activists, politicians and policy makers. “Cultural pluralism,” for example, was strongly associated with the work of Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, and with the Melbourne activist Walter Lippmann. Ethnic structural pluralism had been identified and promoted by Professor Jean Martin. Welfare multiculturalism was championed by people concerned with the social services, such as the Australian Council of Social Services’ Reverend David Cox, and those working with the Henderson Commission of Inquiry into Poverty during the late 1960s and early 1970s. And ethnic rights multiculturalism was championed by the ethnic rights movement, with key definers Des Storer, Arthur Faulkner and Alan Matheson and activists such as George Papadopoulos and Spiro Moraitis of the Australian Greek Welfare Society in Melbourne (Lopez 2000, pp. 5–8). While “cultural pluralism” tended to emphasise the equal legitimacy of cultural forms and their importance to individuals, and that the main thrust of multicultural policy should be to recognise this, welfare multiculturalism was more concerned with the disadvantaged position of migrants, and the need for the social services to respond to them. Ethnic structural pluralism suggested the existence of relatively distinct ethnic groups side by side in Australian society, and that government policy had some role in supporting this reality, by providing resources for ethnic groups to organise themselves and promote their own needs, and for example, in bringing “ethnic leaders” to the seat in institutional, including government, settings. Finally, ethnic rights multiculturalism (frequently influenced by Marxism) emphasised the working class and disadvantaged nature of the migrant population, and stressed the need to challenge institutional racism and the inequality promoted by the capitalist division of labour (Lopez 2000, pp. 446–448, and passim).5 5

Lopez (2000, p. 244) explains that while speechwriter Jim Houston, as well as ethnic rights activist Des Storer, who he phoned for advice while drafting the speech, both favoured an “ethnic rights”

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Jayasuriya (1997) has suggested that, from its early days, Australian multiculturalism has exhibited an unresolved tension between “cultural pluralism” and “structural pluralism.” The extent to which “cultural pluralism” depends upon structural pluralism has been debated, and questions raised about how far governments should be or are willing to go to encourage and support structural pluralism (Martin 1978, 1981). In Grassby’s speech, structural pluralism was deemed to already exist and, it was argued, would become even more pronounced if the broader society made no effort to accommodate cultural difference, as this fostered inequality and would lead ethnic communities to set up their own alternative “micro-societies,” leading to “a consistent increase in ethnic consciousness” (Grassby 1973, p.  9). Here in Grassby’s speech, therefore, “structural pluralism” was seen in a somewhat negative light, as a defensive ethnic posture. The implication was that it should, and could be avoided. Many scholars of immigration and multicultural policies have shown that “multiculturalism” was more political rhetoric than substantial policy during the remaining 2 years of the Whitlam Labor government after Grassby’s 1973 speech, and that the major multicultural policies first emerged under the conservative Fraser government, especially after the Galbally Report of 1978 (see Castles et al. 1988, Chap. 4; Jupp 1998, 2007, Chap. 3). Even in its rhetoric the Whitlam government was not very active in promoting multiculturalism. As Foster and Stockley (1984, p. 56) point out “one would be very hard pressed to find an articulated conception of multiculturalism by any except Grassby within the ranks of the Labor government”; and it released no other official statement on multiculturalism (Lopez 2000, pp. 250–254). In fact, it was the Liberal Party in opposition that was the first major political party to produce a multicultural policy on immigration, drafted by shadow immigration minister Malcolm Fraser, and appearing in the 1974 election policy statement The Way Ahead (Lopez 2000, p. 259). Labor did not introduce multiculturalism into its platform until 1979, though it had the opportunity to do so as early as 1975 at its National Conference while Whitlam was still in power (Lopez 2000, p. 375). approach, Houston played this emphasis down in favour of cultural pluralism which they believed was more likely to get past his departmental seniors.

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Whitlam as prime minister emphatically repudiated the White Australia Policy, having earlier played an important role in getting it removed from the Labor Party platform in 1965. He was strongly committed to the idea that all people were equal, regardless of race, colour or creed, and as prime minister he took important steps to repudiate all forms of racial discrimination (see Whitlam 1985; Curran 2006, Chap. 2). He publically stated that Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous peoples had been a disgrace, and declared that Australia could never hold its head up as a nation until it saw fit to deal decently with them (Whitlam 1985, p.  466). He also championed a more independent, self-assured Australia proud of its own cultural expression, often referred to as the “new nationalism,” a term Whitlam himself used to explain his position (Curran 2006, p. 104). But he did not champion multiculturalism as an idea, or as an expression of a new Australian national identity. The Whitlam government’s record on immigration and multiculturalism was ambivalent. On the one hand, it removed any last vestiges of racial discrimination from Australia’s immigration policies. In 1973, it introduced the Structured Selection Assessment system, a version of the Canadian Points system, for immigrant selection (Hawkins 1991, pp. 105–106). It extended assisted passages to “all races,” simplified citizenship to remove the vestiges of British privilege with the Australian Citizenship Act of 1973, abolished racial discrimination in trans-Tasman travel, reduced naturalisation from 5 to 3 years, and abolished all race statistics, and special records on non-European immigration (Foster and Stockley 1984, p. 55 and Chap. 3; Hawkins 1991, p. 107). On the other hand, concerns within Labor Party ranks and among the public about the rise in non-European immigration through the shift towards nondiscrimination in immigration, and the final dismantling of the White Australia Policy were alleviated by progressive reductions in immigration, from almost 140,000 in 1972–1973 to 50,000 in 1975 (Hawkins 1991, p. 100). Hawkins (1991, Chap. 3) argues that this was a deliberate political strategy, evident in comments by Whitlam before and after the 1972 election, defending the Labor Party against Liberal Party claims that Labor’s proposed immigration policies would lead to huge increases in non-European immigration. Other factors contributing to the reduction in immigration levels, especially in the later years of the Whitlam

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government, were Australia’s deteriorating economic conditions and rising unemployment. Whitlam also resisted taking in refugees from Vietnam (Jupp 1998, pp. 119–120), though here his motive seems to have been related to concerns about inviting in large numbers of potential antiLabor voters fleeing communism, rather than the ethnicity of the refugees (Viviani 1996, p. 8; Menadue 1999, pp. 136–137). The Whitlam government dismembered the Department of Immigration, merging it with the Department of Labour in 1974 to form the Department of Labour and Immigration, and devolved many of its programmes and services, including migrant accommodation, English training, education, welfare and community services to other government departments. But this was not a rejection of immigration or multiculturalism. Whitlam had always been suspicious of the Immigration Department for its connection with the White Australia Policy, describing it in an interview as “racist, sexist, narrow and hidebound.” He also criticised it for its failure to contribute to the settlement and welfare needs of migrants (Hawkins 1991, Chap. 3; Whitlam quoted at p. 101; see also Whitlam 1985, pp. 503–504).6 There were important Whitlam government initiatives that laid the groundwork for later developments in multicultural policy. Perhaps most important of all was the passing, in 1975, by both houses of parliament and with the support of all political parties, of the Racial Discrimination Act (1975), which outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, descent or nationality. Al Grassby was appointed as its first “Commissioner for Community Relations” to oversee the working of the act (Foster and Stockley 1984, pp. 59–60), and up until the end of his contract (in 1982) this office was to play a central role in the development of race relations and multicultural policies (Jupp 2007, p. 37). Though the initial Racial Discrimination Bill of 1973 was aimed mainly at preventing racial 6 Castles et  al. (1988) were more critical of the oft proclaimed non-discriminatory character of Whitlam government reforms to immigration. They argued that major sections of the Labor Party, and of the Australian population, were still committed to European immigration and against nonEuropean immigration. Grassby’s emphasis on “chain migration” they see as a ploy to restrict nonEuropean immigration, as there were small numbers of non-Europeans in Australia at the time and chain migration’s reliance on existing family and community networks would maintain the same character of immigration flows. Also, “much stricter criteria continued to be applied to non-European applicants compared to Europeans in a systematic effort to ensure that non-European immigration was restricted in number and class background.” They argue that the Whitlam government policies on immigration remained racially discriminatory, despite the changes in legislation (Castles et al. 1988, p. 58).

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discrimination against Aborigines, the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 included references to immigrant Australians and became one of the key foundations underpinning the later development of Australian multiculturalism (Lopez 2000, pp.  272–273). Launching the Office of the Commissioner for Community Relations on 31 October 1975, Prime Minister Whitlam said “The new Act writes it firmly into our laws that Australia is in reality a multicultural nation, in which the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Aboriginal people and of peoples from all parts of the world can find an honoured place” (Whitlam 1985, p. 506). In the absence of a national multicultural act or charter (which, for example, Canada has) it is considered as a de facto multicultural foundation document. The Whitlam government also expanded some post-arrival migrant services, including providing more grants-in-aid to voluntary organisations providing services to migrants, greater funding to the Good Neighbour Councils (aiding immigrant settlement), and extending the Telephone Interpreter Service, established in 1972 by the previous McMahon government, to all of the states (Hawkins 1991, p. 107). It passed legislation that created ethnic radio stations, the important beginnings of ethnic broadcasting that was later enshrined in the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), a public flagship for multiculturalism. In the last 2 years of Labor government, several working parties and committees, including the Migrant Taskforce Committees of the states, worked at formulating new policies in the areas of immigration, ethnic affairs and social welfare to reflect a multicultural vision for Australia; and research from leading multiculturalists began to be cited in debates about legislation on citizenship and migrant education. Grassby, in the lead up to the 1974 election where he lost his seat, promoted an “Ethnic Heritage Program” policy with a strong multiculturalist message of government funding to ethnic communities to preserve parts of their heritage. And after the 1974 election the Labor government, through Minister of Social Security Bill Hayden, introduced the first important, unequivocally multiculturalist programme, “The Welfare Rights Officers Program,” which would use grants to appoint welfare rights officers to work with ethnic organisations (Lopez 2000, pp. 268–269, 274).

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The Commonwealth Schools Commission (founded in 1973), apart from other education initiatives, developed a concept of multicultural education (an important, and controversial, area of multicultural policy). This included the teaching and inculcating of multicultural values in schools (still important today), and experiments in bilingual education (pioneered by academics at La Trobe University in Melbourne). It strove through its welfare approach to overcome disadvantage, especially in schools that had high migrant student levels, through higher levels of federal funding (Foster and Stockley 1984, p. 56; Lopez 2000, pp. 230–231; Martin 1978, Chap. 4; for a critique of its “cultural pluralist” underpinnings, see Kalantzis and Cope 1984). As Jean Martin (1978, pp.  50–52) explained, the Whitlam government’s Australian Assistance Plan (AAP) became an important vehicle for addressing the welfare needs of migrants, who had by this stage been constructed in the political and public imagination as a “disadvantaged group.” She notes that although AAP “largely ignored migrants,” it was implemented through the Regional Councils for Social Development, and where these were in areas with high concentrations of migrants, some began to set up “ethnic committees of various kinds” and some AAP officers became conversant with migrant welfare issues (Martin 1978, p. 50). The AAP was also the catalyst for the development of the Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Victoria (1974), South Australia (1974) and NSW (1975), which became important collective avenues for the expression of migrant aspirations and needs, and for political participation (Martin 1978, pp. 52–53).

The Fraser Government: The Expansion of Multiculturalism Multicultural policies and programmes were significantly developed and expanded by the Fraser government (1975–1983).7 It returned immigration to higher levels than in the last years of the Whitlam government, 7

Lopez argues that Fraser became a multiculturalist through the influence of radical members of Melbourne’s Australian Greek Welfare Society, George Papadopoulos and Spiro Moraitis, who he

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believing that this would aid Australia’s economic recovery from the mid-1970s recession. It immediately established a new Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, the addition of the term “ethnic affairs” signalling the commitment to ethnic cultures. Fraser also established an Ethnic Affairs Unit in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to oversee and advise this departmental policy area. This was headed by one of Fraser’s key advisors (and later Liberal senator) Petro Georgiou, and was closely associated with Frank Galbally and his review of migrant services and programmes (discussed below). The establishment of this unit also sent a strong symbolic message to ethnic communities—and to the rest of Australian society—that the Fraser government was serious about ethnic welfare and concerns (Foster and Stockley 1984, pp. 68–70). The Fraser government emphasised the importance of multicultural education “an umbrella term encompassing the teaching of English, community languages and ethnic and intercultural studies” and provided financial aid to ethnic schools (Foster and Stockley 1988, p. 14). It was also during the early years of the Fraser government that multiculturalism was for the first time officially defined and explained in detail when, in August 1977, the recently formed Australian Ethnic Affairs Council (chaired by Zubrzycki) made its submission to the minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, titled Australia as a Multicultural Society, in response to the Australian Population and Immigration Council’s Green Paper Immigration Policies and Australia’s Population. According to this submission, multiculturalism meant that what “Australia should be working towards is not a oneness, but a unity, not a similarity, but a composite, not a melting pot, but a voluntary bond of dissimilar people sharing a common political and institutional structure…” (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p. 17), thus proclaiming a civic notion of national belonging, or even suggesting a post-national form of unity and belonging. This submission drew up a “charter for Australian multiculturalism,” emphasising three key social principles essential for a successful met in the early 1970s when shadow immigration minister, and that they remained important figures for advice for Fraser in later years (Lopez 2000, pp. 256–260). However, Fraser had already adopted a multiculturalist approach in the late 1960s, evident in a speech to the State Zionist Council of NSW on 16 November 1969 where he was perhaps the first politician to use the word “multiculturalism” (Fraser and Simons 2010, pp. 165–166; p. 761, footnote 6).

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multicultural society: (1) social cohesion, (2) cultural identity and (3) equality of opportunity and access. These social principles, the submission pointed out, had been raised in the Green Paper as key social issues confronting Australia as a result of ethnic diversification brought about by post-war mass immigration (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p.  3). The definition of multiculturalism contained in this submission proved foundational. As Jupp comments, it “was handed down through committees and reports for the next twenty years, amended but never repudiated” (Jupp 2007, p. 83). Australia as a Multicultural Society emphasised the personal and group significance of ethnic cultural identity, seeing it as inextricably linked with “equality,” in the sense that people can be prevented from experiencing equality if their cultural identity impedes their advancement because of its interactions with the structures of that society (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p. 3). Ethnic identity and belonging were also seen as having particular benefits in mass, urban societies: One of man’s basic needs is a sense of belonging. The more secure we feel in one particular social context, the more free we are to explore our identity beyond it. Ethnic pluralism can help us overcome or prevent the insecurity, homogenisation and loss of personal identity in mass society. (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p. 14)

Ethnic communities were seen as benefiting immigrants by providing them with a sense of belonging when they might otherwise feel disoriented and alienated in a new society. In a lecture delivered at La Trobe University after Australia as a Multicultural Society had been presented to the government, Zubrzycki explained this justification of multicultural policy: Supporting the maintenance and dissemination of cultural traditions, including those of Australian origin, have their primary justification in the strength of primordial ties that we all cherish as something extremely basic in man’s life, as something that makes us persons, individuals. Much of what is evil in the human condition as well as much of what is supremely good follows from man’s primal sense of belonging to something that makes him a somebody. (Zubrzycki 1978, p. 8)

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This was a consistent claim of those multiculturalists supporting “cultural pluralism.” Walter Lippman made similar comments at the Australian Institute of Political Science Summer School, in 1971, defending ethnic groups for their multiple roles in supporting integration of immigrants into Australian society, and enabling them to “identify themselves in the face of the threatening chaos of the large, impersonal society” (Lippman in Wilkes 1971, p. 115). This was also a direct challenge to previous assumptions about the relationship between racial/cultural homogeneity and national unity so central to the imagined white nation supported previously by the White Australia Policy. According to Australia as a Multicultural Society, ethnic belonging did not detract from a broader commitment to a common national identity. On the contrary, it was asserted that “in a cohesive multicultural society, national loyalties are built on ethnic loyalties” (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p. 14). Intriguing though this claim was, it was not argued for or justified. The implications of multiculturalism for Australian national identity were not directly addressed. There was also ambiguity surrounding the relationship between flourishing ethnic cultures and “national culture”—the latter was not mentioned or discussed. Jan Pakulski (2014, pp. 27–28) has argued that these claims about the role of ethnic belonging in modern societies reflected the influence on Zubrzycki of the arguments of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. In complex modern societies, cohesion came through complementarity of persons and groups (organic solidarity), rather than through sameness or homogeneity (mechanical solidarity). Thus, multicultural identities, and even multiplying values, were not threats to cohesion, but were instead the building blocks for that cohesion, through interdependence and complementarity. Similarly, these were no threat to national unity. Ethnic communities and associations were the “intermediate bodies” that people needed to adapt to complex societies (Pakulski 2014, p. 27). Australia as a Multicultural Society clarified what multiculturalism meant in the Australian context, and compared it with developments elsewhere. “Multiculturalism,” it was argued “exists where one society embraces groups of people with different cultural identities” (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, pp. 3–4). There are different forms of mul-

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ticulturalism that existed historically and in the present in different parts of the world, including types where stratification was clearly linked to cultural identity (as in slave or caste societies), and others where societies were clearly divided into regions where one culture predominated (as in Switzerland). But Australia’s multiculturalism was an example of “[d]ifferentiation by cultural communities,” whereby “[e]thnic communities are the carriers of different cultures, but these communities do not form distinct regions nor distinct socioeconomic strata” (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p. 4). Historically, Australian society had exhibited three multicultural tendencies. The first is where “[c]ulture equals folk art,” where society only recognises and accepts the more “pleasant” aspects of cultural differentiation. This was the only form of multiculturalism acceptable in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, and, in the opinion of the authors, “still the only safe kind in the eyes of many Australians,” but which many “ethnics” experienced as “degrading and dehumanising.” The second was where cultural differentiation and expression were confined largely to the “private, invisible world of the family and personal relations.” This kind of multiculturalism had always existed in Australia, and even with ethnic diversification of the population cultural diversity was largely invisible to Anglo Australians unless they experienced it through intermarriage, work or socialising. Because Australia was a society with a strong respect for the private sphere, and where the state was reluctant to interfere at this level, cultural diversity had proliferated in private, passed down through generations without any help from government. In this kind of multicultural experience, cultural identity is private and irrelevant when people come to operate within and interact with a common set of societal institutions. Third, multiculturalism could involve institutionalisation of cultural differentiation, which occurs when different, separate economic, religious, educational and welfare institutions serve cultural communities. This was characteristic of where multiculturalism involved cultural stratification or there was differentiation by cultural regions, and involved “structural pluralism” where the state and its institutions, at least to some extent, recognise and support the distinct survival, reproduction and autonomy of ethnic groups. Though government policy in the 1950s and 1960s was aimed exactly at preventing this type of multiculturalism

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arising, in fact, on the ground, there had been a large degree of “structural pluralism” in Australia, achieved mainly through the efforts of ethnic communities themselves without government support, in the setting up of ethnic welfare organisations, schools, kindergartens, churches and newspapers. But there had been great variation between ethnic communities in the extent of institutionalisation (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, pp. 4–5). The submission explained that three alternative types of policy could be adopted by governments that furthered or delimited the institutionalisation of ethnic communities. First, the state can behave in an ethnically neutral way, and allow for no participation in institutions as members of ethnic communities, and in fact may not even recognise the existence of different ethnic communities. “Ethnics” only participate as individuals. This can be exclusionary if there are aspects of ethnic cultural identity that lead to lower levels of participation—a kind of exclusion by neglect, in the sense that the state makes no effort to improve participation. This also discourages the institutionalisation of ethnic communities. The second policy is where established institutions may incorporate ethnicbased units into themselves, one example being the Catholic church in the USA that allowed both territorial and ethnic parishes (see also Martin 1971, p. 127). The third policy approach is where established institutions may operate through ethnic communities, and therefore stimulate ethnic communities to institutionalise themselves. The main example that they proffer for Australia was the use by government since the late 1960s of special grants, like the Grants to Community Agencies scheme, to employ social workers and welfare officers to service specific migrant and ethnic communities, which encourages ethnic groups to organise themselves in order to be eligible for support from such schemes. The second part of Australia as a Multicultural Society makes it clear that the Australian Ethnic Affairs Council favoured the third policy approach. It outlined recommendations for policy in the areas of settlement, education of adults and children of non-English speaking origin, community consultation and ethnic media. The general tenor of these recommendations favoured greater government recognition of ethnic identities, and better use of ethnic community institutions in order to better engage with those populations. For example, in terms of government

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consultations, the authors argued that “it is essential that people of nonEnglish speaking background have the opportunity to take part in community consultation as both individuals and members of ethnic groups” (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p.  11). Through such direct engagement, greater social cohesion would occur—ethnic communities would not feel that they, and their needs and concerns, were ignored by government. In summing up their position, and in agreement with the statement adopted by UNESCO at their “Cultural Pluralism and National Identity Meeting” at Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in 1977, they called for the recognition of ethnic identity and support for the maintenance and ongoing development of these identities, but within the one, unified Australian society: our goal in Australia should be to create a society in which people of non-AngloAustralian origin are given the opportunity, as individuals or groups, to choose to preserve and develop their culture—their languages, traditions and arts— so that these can become living elements in the diverse culture of the total society, while at the same time they enjoy effective and respected places within one Australian society, with equal access to the rights and opportunities that society provides and accepting responsibilities towards it. (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p. 14; italics in original)

Ethnic groups could legitimately operate alongside other kinds of groups in society like trade unions, employers, the established churches and the Australian Medical Association, with their spokespersons seeking the ear of government, and contributing to community debate: “Multiculturalism means ethnic communities getting ‘into the act’” (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p. 14; italics in original). Finally, the statement also made it clear that while in a multicultural society “government and established institutions acknowledge the validity of ethnic cultures and respond in terms of ethnic beliefs, values and customs,” this was not the same as adopting a position of cultural relativism. Because some traditions and beliefs might be “totally inconsistent with fundamental values of the dominant Australian culture (e.g. the norm that the family takes the law into its own hands to redress

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a wrong done to one of its members), it would be nonsense to say that multiculturalism means that every culture is equally valued and equally legitimate” (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p. 14). It should be stressed that this argument against strong cultural relativism has always been a feature of official Australian multiculturalism. While Australia as a Multicultural Society provided the most intellectually coherent official explanation of multiculturalism to that date, Migrant Services and Programs: Report of the Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services for Migrants, known as the Galbally Report, was far more influential in the development of multicultural policy in Australia (Migrant Services and Programs 1978). Frank Galbally, a prominent Melbourne lawyer and formerly associated with the ALP (see Galbally 1989), was appointed by the Fraser government in September 1977 to lead a fourperson Review Group to review and advise on post-arrival programmes and services for migrants. The Galbally Report was presented to Prime Minister Fraser in May 1978. In his Inaugural speech to the Institute of Multicultural Affairs in 1981, Fraser stated that the Galbally Enquiry and Report was the real turning point for his government in terms of establishing extensive multicultural policies. His government “warmly welcomed the report, accepted its recommendations in toto and moved rapidly across a broad front to mount initiatives and programs designed to overcome the years of neglect and ad hoc responses” (Fraser 1981). At a time when the government was engaged in austerity measures in other major areas of government, it devoted over 50 million dollars to implement reforms in the 3 years following the report (Fraser and Simons 2010, p. 435). Although it did not contain an elaborate definition of multiculturalism, the Galbally Report was firmly committed to the concept and policy, devoting a separate chapter to multiculturalism (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, Chap. 9, pp.  104–110). The opening sentence of its “Summary of Themes and Recommendations” stated that “We believe Australia is at a critical stage in the development of a cohesive, united, multicultural nation” (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, p. 3), and the report called for the Commonwealth government “to take further steps to encourage multiculturalism” (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, p. 4).

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The Galbally Report adopted the cultural pluralism approach advocated in Australia as a Multicultural Society, while also attending to the practical issues of equal access for all to society’s resources (combining mainstream and ethnic-specific programmes and services), as stressed in its four guiding principles: (a) all members of our society must have equal opportunity to realise their full potential and must have equal access to programs and services; (b) every person should be able to maintain his or her culture without prejudice or disadvantage and should be encouraged to understand and embrace other cultures; (c) needs of migrants should, in general, be met by programs and services available to the whole community but special services and programs are necessary at present to ensure the equality of access and provision; (d) services and programs should be designed and operated in full consultation with clients, and self-help should be encouraged as much as possible with a view to helping migrants to become self-reliant quickly (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, p. 4). And like the other official documents discussed in this chapter, the Galbally Report also contained a clear statement that respect for ethnic cultures was framed and limited by overall commitment to Australia, with the expectation that ethnic diversity was ultimately embraced in order to benefit the whole society: We are convinced that migrants have the right to maintain their cultural and racial identity and that it is clearly in the best interests of our nation that they should be encouraged and assisted to do so if they wish. Provided that ethnic identity is not stressed at the expense of society at large, but is interwoven into the fabric of our nationhood by the process of multicultural interaction, then the community as a whole will benefit substantially and its democratic nature will be reinforced. (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, p. 104)

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As the above quote suggests, while the Galbally Report was ostensibly reviewing programmes and services for migrants, it also recommended broader changes for the whole society in order to address the “problems and the advantages to the nation” presented by “the extensive cultural and racial diversity existing in Australia” (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, p.  104). One of the key areas was education, viewed not only as education for migrants, but also of “community education” for the whole society about the histories, strengths and values of other cultures. Australia had the unique chance, denied to most other countries (because, it was claimed, they repress cultural diversity through assimilation) of truly benefiting culturally from the strengths and knowledge of its many different migrant cultures (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, p. 105). Education about other cultures would occur through formal education in schools and universities (especially in professional courses) (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, pp.  106–108), but also through less formal methods such as the gathering of cultural heritage resources at local libraries (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, p. 110). This also served the purpose of cultural maintenance, as children would learn their own cultural heritages in a context where these were honoured rather than mocked and denigrated. (The Galbally enquiry had found a significant problem of a “cultural gap” between children and their parents because the former rejected their languages, cultures and traditions because of societal pressures and prejudices, Migrant Services and Programs 1978, p. 105). The proposed Institute of Multicultural Affairs would also play an extensive educational role about all aspects of multiculturalism and migrant issues for governments, non-government organisations and “the community as a whole” (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, p. 109). The Galbally Report became the blueprint for the major multicultural policy developments of the late 1970s and the early 1980s. One of its main emphases was finding ways to ensure that migrant and ethnic voices were heard and influential in designing policies to answer their needs. On Galbally’s advice (Migrant Services and Programs 1978, pp. 73–80), the Good Neighbour Council, dominated by Anglo non-migrants and deemed lacking in relevance and legitimacy among those it was meant to serve, lost its Commonwealth funding, which was then diverted to ethnic communities’ councils and the establishment of a national network of

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migrant resource centres (two such centres had already been established in Melbourne in 1977) (see Jupp 2007, p.  39). The peak body of the ethnic communities’ councils, the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA), was formed in 1979, receiving federal government funding, and became the preeminent national representative of ethnic views with access to government (Jupp 1998, p. 140). To improve access to public services, in March 1978, ethnic liaison officers were appointed in all Commonwealth Public Service Departments to ensure that all personnel and programmes were responsive to the needs of migrants (Kalantzis 2003, p. 315). The Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (AIMA), a public centre for research into immigration and multicultural issues and policies, was established in 1979, with Galbally as Chair and Petro Georgiou as Director. AIMA was expected to play a major role in inculcating multicultural values in Australia’s institutions, and in the Australian public, as indicated by its founding objectives as set out in the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs Act 1979 (Sect. 5): 5. The objectives of the establishment of the Institute are(a) to develop among the members of the Australian communityi. an awareness of the diverse cultures within that community that have arisen as a result of the migration of people to Australia; and ii. an appreciation of the contributions of those cultures to the enrichment of that community; (b) to promote tolerance, understanding, harmonious relations and mutual esteem among the different cultural groups and ethnic communities in Australia; (c) to promote a cohesive Australian society by assisting members of the Australian community to share with one another their diverse cultures within the legal and political structures of that society; and (d) to assist in promoting an environment that affords the members of the different cultural groups and ethnic communities in Australia the opportunity to participate fully in Australian society and achieve their own potential.

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The Fraser government had, in November 1977, reorganised “ethnic radio” under a new body, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) (Foster and Stockley 1988, p. 167). The Galbally Report supported this approach, and recommended the setting up of ethnic television broadcasting. In 1979, the Fraser government expanded the role of SBS to cover both radio and television, with the latter originally operating as Channel 0 (Foster and Stockley 1988, p.  170). Now known as SBS, this television station is broadcast nationally (including in rural areas) and is widely recognised for its symbolic role in promoting multiculturalism, and in countering the monoculturalism of Australian media (on the latter, see Soutphommasane 2012, pp. 122–126). The Human Rights Commission, another important institution with a role in the area of multiculturalism, was established by the Fraser government in December 1981; it became responsible for administration of the Racial Discrimination Act (Hawkins 1991, p. 104). The Fraser government was also active in dismantling remnants of the old White Australia Policy. It ensured that immigration selection was truly non-discriminatory by increasing immigration infrastructure in non-white and non-English speaking countries. As former Fraser government head of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (1980–1983) John Menadue explains in his memoirs, in the late 1970s it was still far easier to apply for immigration in Britain than in Asia. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Fraser government increased the presence of officers in many other countries, and was more active in campaigning for immigrants in Asia, to ensure that there was greater balance and fairness in immigration selection. This had the practical outcome of contributing to changing immigration flows, with decreased proportions coming from Britain and Europe, and increased proportions coming from the Asia-Pacific. Menadue points out that in 1976/1977, 15 per cent of settlers were from Asia, but by the time he had left the department, in 1983/1984, 38 per cent were from Asia (Menadue 1999, p. 216). The Fraser government also took steps to remove other forms of British immigrant preferential treatment, such as voting rights for British immigrants who were not Australian citizens (Menadue 1999, pp. 211–216). In opening Australia to Indochinese refugees fleeing in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the Fraser government clearly signalled that

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immigration policy and programmes would no longer exclude Asians. This began with granting visas and social security benefits to the first Indochinese boat arrivals in April 1976. Next, after initially being ungenerous in taking in Vietnamese refugees between 1975 and 1977 (Viviani 1982, pp. 1–2, 1996, p. 8), the Fraser government made the significant decision to politically manage the huge increase in boat arrivals in the late 1970s by actively taking in large numbers of Indochinese refugees from camps in Thailand and Malaysia (Viviani 1982), with the numbers increasing further through family reunion provisions. By the end of the Fraser government (in March 1983), about 70,000 Indochinese refugees had been admitted to Australia (Fraser and Simons 2010, pp. 416–421). This was the first large-scale immigration of Asians since the gold rushes of the 1850s, which dramatically changed the Australian social landscape, and further contributed to the rethinking of Australian multiculturalism. Through these actions, the Fraser government created the conditions under which Australia received over 185,000 Indochinese refugees (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 2000, pp. 181–182). Less positively, critics have claimed that the Fraser government failed to provide sufficient support services to manage the settlement of these large numbers of Indochinese refugees, resulting in high levels of unemployment, poverty, and leading to the development of youth gangs, high levels of crime, including drug trafficking, in inner city areas, most notoriously Cabramatta in Sydney, and making a farce of claims that Australia was a vibrant multicultural society (Jayasuriya 1997, pp. 62–63; Jakubowicz interview, SBS 2012). This neglect, including failure by government to proactively promote acceptance of these refugees, and to prepare Australian society for their integration (Jakubowicz interviewed on SBS 2012, Part 1), extending after the election of the Hawke government in 1983, was also part of the context for the race debates about the “Asianisation” of Australia in the 1980s and 1990s (discussed in the next two chapters). Although the policy statements discussed above had referred to Australia as a multicultural society, implying that multiculturalism was relevant to all Australians, not just migrants, this was made more explicit when, in late April 1982, the Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs (chaired by Zubrzycki), released

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its policy statement Multiculturalism for All Australians: Our Developing Nationhood (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982). This statement was the end product of an extensive consultation process from 1980 onwards, including seminars and public meetings, discussions with community groups, local government bodies, academics and other important opinion makers, and over 300 written submissions from individuals and community groups (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. ix). Zubrzycki, in his introduction to the report National Consultations on Multiculturalism and Citizenship, saw it as a turning point for multiculturalism, in that it emphatically shifted the emphasis from migrant services and issues, and non-Anglo ethnic groups, to consider its relevance for all Australians, including Aborigines. The statement was “not a survey of current arrangements, but a model to be worked towards—a vision of the future.” It was about “the creation of a truly multicultural society embracing all Australians” (Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 1). Multiculturalism for All Australians began with the claim that all Australians were “ethnic” according to the Greek term “ethnos” and, apart from Aboriginal Australians, all were migrants; therefore, multicultural policy, or “ethnic affairs policies” concerned all Australians, not just minority groups, and all should be encouraged to take responsibility for its ongoing success (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, pp.  1–3). It argued that multiculturalism was not only a policy for handling diversity, but was also of great significance to Australia’s developing national identity. To say that Australia was a multicultural society, as previous reports and statements had sometimes claimed, was not the same thing as saying that the national identity was multicultural. The previously discussed reports and official statements had been, for the most part, silent on the implications of multiculturalism for Australian national identity. Multiculturalism for All Australians devoted its first chapter to “Our National Identity” and returned to the theme in the final Chap. 4, “The Future Nation.” Australia’s immigration history was posited as a key underpinning story for Australia’s national identity:

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For almost two hundred years, migrants have been coming to Australia and putting down their roots. They and their children were the pioneers who battled drought and flood, died at Gallipoli and the Kokoda Trail, pushed roads and railways across the continent, and laid the foundations of Australia’s strength.

The more negative experiences of non-white immigrants were underplayed in this narrative, but it was recognised that for “Aboriginal people, however, the impact of white settlement was catastrophic—equivalent to invasion” (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p.  4). The migration narrative implied that no particular “ethnic” group was central to Australian national identity, even if it was recognised that migrants to Australia had “come mainly from the British Isles,” and that “many of our institutions are derived from British origins.” But while the Taskforce appeared to be asserting that the national identity was now multicultural, at the same time it was reluctant to define what it meant to be an Australian, as this would be “different for different people and will change with time.” However, there were a number of typical features of “the Australian scene,” including the particular landscape, flora and fauna, the cities and beaches; “a unique mix of people” drawn from all over the world, as well as Australia’s Aborigines; Australian English and humour; popular culture, the arts and scientific and sporting prowess, inventiveness and achievements; “an open society, capable of accommodating within itself many different groups, and a resultant blend of cultures”; an egalitarian attitude and pragmatism rather than ideological positions or abstractions; the propensity to criticise but also to be able to accept criticism, masculine mateship and a commitment to a “fair go” for all (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, pp. 4–5). In terms of the meaning of multiculturalism, it reiterated the three key principles from earlier reports—social cohesion, “the freedom to maintain one’s own cultural identity” and equality of opportunity—and added a fourth “equal responsibility for, commitment to and participation in society” (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 12).

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Multiculturalism for All Australians was also significant for the way that it attempted to confront uncertainties and criticisms about cultural pluralism, by stressing that all (with the partial exception of Aborigines) were united under the same single Australian law and core Australian institutions (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 15). The Taskforce was clear in denying that separatism or cultural relativism had any place when considering important matters of the central institutional features of the society: The Council wishes to emphasise that, in the public arena, as distinct from the essentially private domain of the family and religious belief, there can be only one recognised legal code and one set of political and economic institutions. To allow each cultural group freedom to develop its own legal codes, political institutions and practices would threaten the existence of Australia as a cohesive nation. (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 16)

This statement came at the end of the Fraser government’s tenure in office, and as we will see in the next chapter, multiculturalism moved forwards in new ways under the succeeding Hawke and Keating Labor governments. To set the scene for that discussion of the development of multiculturalism in the 1980s and 1990s, it is necessary at this point to shift gear, and consider the early critiques of multiculturalism as they had developed up until the early 1980s.

The Emerging Critiques of Multiculturalism, from the Late 1970s to the Early 1980s While  official multiculturalism attracted little critical attention in the early 1970s, this changed in the late 1970s, especially as the Fraser government began to put flesh onto the ideal, as multicultural policy began to gain prominence within educational circles, and with conferences on multiculturalism being held at universities and institutes. Right wing critiques of multiculturalism began to appear in the late 1970s in the leading conservative journal Quadrant. One of the first

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was Lauchlan Chipman’s (1978) article “Multi-Cultural Myth,” where he argued that, despite what politicians and other advocates were then saying, a multicultural society had not emerged in Australia as a result of mass post-war immigration. Instead, Australia remained a broadly assimilatory culture, remarkably conformist and with little evidence of cultural diversity. Most of the children of migrants quickly learned English and imbibed mainstream ways of living in Australian society. Australia was also a society of intermarriage, especially since it allowed civil unions which weakened religious barriers. In another paper on the state, discrimination and anti-discrimination law, and affirmative action, Chipman (1980a) pointed to the dangers of attaching rights to groups and engaging in forms of reverse racism and discrimination (see also Ranstead 1980; Krygier 1980). In a far more hostile article, titled “The Multi-Cultural Menace” (1980b), Chipman admitted that he had initially seen multiculturalism as a relatively harmless myth. In this later article, also published in Quadrant, the tone shifted dramatically. The context was the conservative Fraser government’s proposal to set up and fund the “Independent and Multicultural Broadcasting Corporation,” and also what Chipman saw as a growing strain of intolerance of opposing views in debates about multiculturalism, and derision of Anglo culture on the part of multicultural advocates. Here Chipman (1980b) characterised many of the cultures honoured by multiculturalism as oppressive peasant and pre-industrial cultures, particularly oppressive of women and children. He claimed that discourse about multiculturalism in Australia had become more and more about “hard multi-culturalism,” that implied structural pluralism and separate development and rights for minority cultures. He saw this as a dangerous movement that was being promoted by Marxists and other left-wingers, and also naively supported by liberals (“gulliberals”), who did not understand or appreciate the full implications of what they supported under the multicultural banner. A dangerous cultural relativism underpinned multiculturalism as social philosophy, implying support for the right of ethnic groups to impose norms of behaviour, some of which were barbaric, over their members. Besides these worrying aspects, Chipman argued that multiculturalism was an irrational government- funding

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racket, involving the promotion of the teaching of minority, and largely irrelevant, “community languages” in schools, government supported agencies of multiculturalism sought after by Marxists where they could promote their ideologies, and lack of fiscal restraint. Multicultural policy, including special government spending, was building up resentment in the community and would ultimately destroy the social harmony it was said to be promoting. He concluded that “It is difficult to see how multiculturalism can be stopped, but it is imperative that it should be. Week after week, public money is wasted on its distorted priorities” (1980b, p. 6). As part of an essay on the “crisis” of education published in Robert Manne’s edited collection The New Conservatism in Australia, Chipman adopted the same angry approach, this time dismissing multiculturalism as vacuous and highlighting its pernicious infiltration into the school and broader education system, where it contributed to the collapse of authority, values and morality in Australian society (Chipman 1982). The tone of later conservative hostility to multiculturalism was by now set. In his essay “The Case Against Multi-culturalism,” also published in The New Conservatism in Australia, anti-communist intellectual Frank Knopfelmacher argued that Australia was and remained an “anglomorph” society rather than a multicultural society: “that is, its political, social and cultural institutions, its language and its spirit, both religious and secular, are all derived initially by direct population transfer from the British Isles” (Knopfelmacher 1982, p. 41). Anglomorphy was not a biological or racial concept, “but a spiritual entity, incarnated in specific customs and traditions” (Knopfelmacher 1982, p. 46). He saw “multi-culturalism” as both a muddled, but also a more pernicious idea promoting a disastrous social and political programme. Knopfelmacher also expressed these views on SBS television’s Issues programme in a debate with Labor MP Andrew Theophanous and anthropologist Marie de Lepervanche in 1985 (Theophanous 1995, pp. 41–45). Knopfelmacher accepted some ideas standing behind the multiculturalism promoted by prominent and politically influential proponents such as Zubrzycki, who, as shown above, had done much to shape initial government pronouncements on multiculturalism since the late 1960s. Zubrzycki had argued that in an anglomorph society many from non-Anglo ethnic backgrounds found it difficult to assimilate into

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mainstream culture, and were also impeded by forms of professional and other discrimination, the result being an impeded structural assimilation. If “multi-culturalism” meant getting rid of structural impediments and forms of discrimination, Knopfelmacher could accept it. But he claimed that there was another, far more dangerous strand of multicultural thinking that, because of ethnic diversity, called for the fragmentation of Australia’s political unity on ethnic lines. Though he admitted that political separatism had not been demanded thus far, there had been calls for cultural autonomy or cultural pluralism. “Such demands” he argued “lead invariably to separatism, divided loyalties, the emergence of rancorous minorities and, eventually, to the disruption of the state by irredenta and civil war” (Knopfelmacher 1982, p. 48). Here, as his examples illustrated, Knopfelmacher was reflecting on his own traumatic experiences in pre- and wartime Czechoslovakia, where calls for cultural autonomy by “Sudeten” Germans ended with incorporation in the Third Reich. As he put it “Mismanaged ethnicity, rather than class war, is the major curse of this century. Ethnic incompatibilities have structured the major areas of conflict and rivalry which brought the world powers into two world wars” (Knopfelmacher 1982, p. 48). However, there was also the whiff of a conspiracy theory in other elements of his critique of multiculturalism in Australia, reflecting his Cold War anti-communism. Apart from criticising the growth of a multicultural industry whose employees acted more out of a desire to protect their jobs than because of an overwhelming ideological conviction, he also suggested that there might be others who promoted multiculturalism for other political purposes. The aim of some, for example, was to disrupt the socio-political unity of Australia as an anglomorph society, because they had a “vested interest” in the social disintegration of Australian society (Knopfelmacher 1982, p. 49). He did not directly name these people, but one might suspect, given his anti-communism, that he was referring to communists in Australia who might see such disintegration as a preface to a social revolution. Knopfelmacher believed that Australia’s continuing cultural homogeneity was the greatest bulwark against the genocidal disasters of the twentieth century. It is important to emphasise that this was not a racist argument—in fact, Knopfelmacher could see no argument against

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expanding the refugee intake from South East Asia; and he clearly and emphatically stated that Australia’s anglomorph society had to battle racism and end all forms of discrimination that impeded the full participation of non-anglomorph immigrants: there should be complete equality of opportunity for individuals. But the best option was to pursue vigorous policies of assimilation rather than multicultural policies which he saw as either acts of bad faith on the part of protagonists, or worse, active policies aimed at the destruction of Australian society. He argued that one important method of assimilation was marriage into the anglomorph culture, therefore preserving it as a majority. It was preferable to have male ethnics marrying female anglomorphs, he argued, as mothers were the greatest socialisers of children. As Knopfelmacher (1982, pp. 52–53) stated the position: It is essential to state with complete frankness why the conjugal structure of ethnics is crucial for our position. We favour the assimilation of ethnics into a hegemonial Australian culture which is anglomorph, that is, historically English. The objective is not to fuel a melting pot brewing a nondescript Australian of the future, but to dissolve and transform non-anglomorph kinship lines in such a way that their issue will be anglomorph. Thus one assigns to the English political and social culture of the Australian nation a privileged, hegemonial position into which the ethnic elements must be dissolved. The object is relatively painless anglification of non-anglomorph Australians. For all alternatives to this object are either unrealistic or very much more painful. In one way or another the practical alternatives to assimilation are ghettoization, apartheid, with all its attendant misfortunes of ethnically fixed systems of disprivilege, and eventually civil war.

Knopfelmacher also mounted a form of critique of multiculturalism that might have been more acceptable to the left. “Superficial” multicultural policies, like the provision of ethnic television and radio, might actually deflect attention away from the real problems faced by non-anglomorph Australians: their lack of access to good, mainstream education and other forms of hindrance to their upward social mobility. In other words, he argued that ethnic issues were ghettoised by politicians who could point to specific services as evidence that they were doing something to

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help ethnics (Knopfelmacher 1982, pp. 53–56). One of the worst (then current) suggested policies he claimed “most protagonists of ‘multiculturalism’” advocate is the “option of consolidating ethnic subcultures without adopting policies likely to remove barriers to ‘structural assimilation’…” This would most likely “result in an ethnically stratified pool of pariahs, a drain on our social system, and potential fodder for civil strife of a most destructive kind” (Knopfelmacher 1982, p. 58). Despite the conservative claim that multiculturalism was (at least in part) a left-wing ideology and an attack on the contemporary politicosocial structure of Australian society, in the late 1970s and early 1980s there was also a strong left-wing critique of multiculturalism. Some of the early critics from the left in Australia were more astute than others in seeing the continuities between integration and multiculturalism, but saw this as a major reason to criticise the latter, especially as it was expanded and elaborated during the years of the conservative Fraser government. Foster and Stockley (1984), for example, saw integration as a driving force of the Fraser government’s policy, and argued that, despite its rhetoric about cultural diversity, it assumed that Australia was still a monocultural society into which diverse immigrants needed to be carefully integrated (Foster and Stockley 1984, pp. 67–72). A more radical approach, they appeared to suggest, would emphasise already existent multicultural diversity and address the need for the society at large, including its mainstream values and institutions, to change to adapt to this reality. It would include the acceptance of the survival and expansion of separate cultures, of “structural ethnic pluralism” as championed (unsuccessfully) by Jean Martin (1981), and recognise the importance of class and inequality when accounting for ethnicity (Foster and Stockley 1984, pp. 67 and 70). As the critique suggests, this was definitely not what official multiculturalism had been about, either in rhetoric or practice. One of the most prominent left-wing critics was the sociologist Andrew Jakubowicz who, in a series of articles and chapters, criticised multiculturalism as a conservative ideology. As Lopez (2000, p. 10) has pointed out, Jakubowicz had himself made a significant contribution to the early development of multiculturalism, by serving on the NSW Migrant Task Force in the early 1970s. In the main, he was critiquing the “cultural pluralism,” advocated by Zubrzycki, that had risen to predominance as the

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main form of multiculturalism, at the expense of other forms including his favoured “ethnic rights” multiculturalism. Jakubowicz was part of a movement of thinkers that included Marxist Jock Collins and the Sydney anthropologist Marie de Lepervanche, who pursued class analysis and critique of capitalism in migration and ethnicity studies in Australia. The edited collection Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Australia (Bottomley and de Lepervanche 1984) to which Jakubowicz also contributed a chapter, ranged over a number of topic areas under the broad umbrella of a critique of multiculturalism from the left (see also Jakubowicz et al. 1984). In the 1980s, Jakubowicz articulated a Marxist critique of multicultural policy as a strategy used by the ruling class (and its representatives in the conservative government) to siphon off the energy of a large, multiethnic social movement, including the working class, and to destroy solidarity by promoting ethnic pluralism. He argued that through multicultural policy and ideology the ethnic and immigrant petite bourgeoisie was incorporated by the state and separated off from the working class. Jakubowicz made this claim in a rejoinder to Chipman’s 1980 Quadrant article (Jakubowicz 1981a), and he made it at length in an article “State and Ethnicity: Multiculturalism as Ideology” published in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (Jakubowicz 1981b). This argument was an explicitly Marxist critique, viewing the emergence of multiculturalism as a policy under the Fraser government through the lens of class analysis, and in relation to the role of the state in reproducing the capitalist system: An understanding of “multiculturalism” and of the politics of ethnicity in Australia demands a very clear analysis of the role of the state in contemporary Australian capitalist society and its participation in the reproduction of social relations and ideology. (Jakubowicz 1981b, p. 5)

All governments in capitalist society (including in Australia Conservative and Labor governments) had to engage in the process of social reproduction of exploitative capitalist relations. “Ethnicity” was largely a category that had been stripped of its historical dimensions, and most importantly, of the way that it was fundamentally shaped by class, and then imposed as an explana-

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tion for social experience, including the experience of social disadvantage. Australian governments had used the category of ethnicity rather than class through all of their policy phases responding to immigrants: It is the invalidation of the class history of ethnic Australians and the reconstruction of their experience and histories in their countries of origin and in Australia as totally cultural (that is, specifically non-political, non-class based and in that sense ahistorical) that is the effective outcome of multiculturalism as ideology. The state in Australia has engaged in such a task, be it under the terminology of assimilation, integration or multiculturalism. Fundamentally these “policies” represent successive stages of reconstructing Australian class relations to maintain hegemony and class domination, though each stage has its specific historic dimension that frames a particular ideological package as the appropriate formulation at a particular time. (Jakubowicz 1981b, p. 6)

Versions of this argument about the ideological uses of “ethnicity” were produced by other left critics including de Lepervanche (1984), and later Castles et al. (1988) in their well-known book Mistaken Identity. Jakubowicz argued that multiculturalism replaced assimilation as government policy in the early 1970s because assimilation had failed ideologically and institutionally to guarantee equal opportunity of migrants in Australian society. Importantly, migrant workers were volatile and protesting about their specific struggles within Australian society and economy, and conservative leaders and thinkers were becoming aware of this in the early years of the Whitlam Labor government. Some of these “ethnic” workers were part of a labour aristocracy of “skilled workers, foremen and supervisors” who had only an instrumental rather than a political allegiance to the union movement, and could be attracted to conservative causes to form a more unified political bloc with the ethnic petite bourgeoisie (Jakubowicz 1981b, p. 8). And it was this latter group in particular, whose hopes had been raised then dashed by the Whitlam Labor government, that became a new constituency, a key part of the “ethnic communities” that were courted and co-opted first by the conservative opposition and then by the conservative Fraser government:

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The ethnic petty bourgeoisie were the people who most felt the cultural rejection of their class peers, for whom social status was most important … and who most strongly demanded social recognition. They could find this recognition in their asserted ethnicity, in the “thing” that made them different. (Jakubowicz 1981b, p. 8)

And it was these leaders who were cultivated, in a politics of patron-client relations between political and “ethnic community” leaders. Jakubowicz glossed over the Whitlam period except to comment that it involved a more libertarian multicultural ethos promoted by the flamboyant immigration minister Al Grassby, and then after Grassby’s political demise in 1974, a refocusing of Labor upon key issues of cross ethnicity disadvantage. Most of his account involved critique of the way that multiculturalism and multicultural programmes developed under conservative governments, concerned to maintain bourgeois hegemony in the context of a threat to Anglo-Celtic bourgeois hegemony. The focus was thus predominantly on the proposals coming out of the Galbally Report, and the key institutions set up by the state to manage multiculturalism as a force of “social control”: the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, the Independent and Multicultural Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (see also the strong critique of the latter in Jakubowicz 1984). By contrast, the “ethnic rights” movement, that emerged in the 15 years prior to 1970, was a more challenging form of critique and agitation than the multiculturalism that largely replaced it. This was because it at least partly recognised the importance of class, and advocated in some instances on issues of cross-cultural class disadvantage (Jakubowicz 1981b, p. 12). The essay finished on a note that is nowhere developed (though readers were referred to another essay) that suggests that “multiculturalism” initially had a more liberatory potential, before it became an ideology: The realization of the early potential of multiculturalism as a liberating process can only occur when it is integrated into a struggle for cultural liberation of all working class Australians, whatever their ethnic background or international histories, and with recognition of this cultural diversity. (Jakubowicz 1981b, p. 12)

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This suggestion of a more truly liberatory form of multiculturalism has stood behind later left critiques of multiculturalism, while remaining similarly vague. de Lepervanche (1984) argued, like Jakubowicz, that multiculturalism, especially of the dominant “cultural pluralism” variety advocated by Zubrzycki, had been a conservative ideology that adopted a simplistic, ahistorical view of culture, falsely conceived of society as predominantly structured by ethno-cultural differences (rather than by class), and favoured displays of culture over recognising and supporting structural pluralism. Class and gender were far more important than a poorly theorised “ethnicity” in determining people’s lives and experiences of disadvantage. Cultural pluralism underplayed the ongoing importance of power, including Anglo-Saxon dominance, and systematically obscured the ethnic stratification of the class system. She criticised multiculturalism for the way that it relied upon and cemented the dominance of predominantly male, relatively privileged spokesmen for ethnic communities, and funded a “thriving industry” that rivalled the British “race relations industry” (de Lepervanche 1984, pp. 188–189; quote at p. 184). This claim about multiculturalism being the playground for unrepresentative ethnic elites was a common left critique; interestingly, this form of critique also became a staple of the neo-conservative critique of multiculturalism in the 1980s and 1990s. Apart from a rather grudging recognition that some of the bureaucracies set up under multiculturalism might have helped to answer some social needs in immigrant communities, and also contributed to more acceptance of non-Anglo immigrants (de Lepervanche 1984, p. 171), her strong critique left the impression that there was very little to recommend in the development of Australian multicultural policy or doctrine. *** When the Fraser government faced the Hawke Labor opposition in the 1983 election, both sides of politics officially supported multiculturalism. But in the aftermath of Fraser’s defeat, and under the influence of a groundswell of conservative critique of multiculturalism, this bipartisanship was sorely tested. I turn in the next chapter to the fate of multiculturalism under the Hawke and Keating governments.

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References Australian Citizenship Convention. n.d. Digest: Report of the Australian Citizenship Convention. Braddon, ACT: Department of Immigration. Australian Ethnic Affairs Council. 1977. Australia as a Multicultural Society— Submission to the Australian Population and Immigration Council on the Green Paper, Immigration Policies and Australia’s Population. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Blainey, G. 1984. All For Australia. North Ryde: Methuen Haynes. ———. 1988. Hawke the Leader of a Nation of Tribes. Weekend Australian, December 3. Brett, J., and A.  Moran. 2011. Cosmopolitan Nationalism: Ordinary People Making Sense of Diversity. Nations and Nationalism 17(1): 188–206. Castles, S. 1997. Multicultural Citizenship: A Response to the Dilemma of Globalisation and National Identity? Journal of Intercultural Studies 18(1): 5–22. Castles, S., M. Kalantzis, B. Cope, and M. Morrissey. 1988. Mistaken Identity. Multiculturalism and the Demise of Australian Nationalism. Sydney: Pluto Press. Chipman, L. 1978. Multi-Cultural Myth. Quadrant 22(3): 50–55. ———. 1980a. Equality Before (and After) the Law. Quadrant 24(3): 46–51. ———. 1980b. The Menace of Multiculturalism. Quadrant 24(10): 3–6. ———. 1982. The Children of Cynicism. In The New Conservatism in Australia, ed. R. Manne, 17–39. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Curran, J.  2006. The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press. de Lepervanche, M. 1984. Immigrants and Ethnic Groups. In Australian Society: Introductory Essays, eds. S Encel and L Bryson, 4th ed., 170–228. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. Delanty, G. 2003. Community. London: Routledge. Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. 1982. National Consultations on Multiculturalism and Citizenship—Report. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Entzinger, H. 2003. The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism in the Netherlands. In Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation States, eds. C. Joppke and E. Morawska, 59–86. London: Palgrave. ———. 2007. The Parallel Decline of Multiculturalism and the Welfare State in the Netherlands. In Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and

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Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies, eds. K. Banting and W. Kymlicka, 177–201. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs. 1982. Multiculturalism for All Australians: Our Developing Nationhood. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Fitzroy Ecumenical Centre. 1973. Ethnic Action Movement—Draft Policies and Principles and Ethnic Rights—Recommendations for a Multicultural Australia. Melbourne: Fitzroy Ecumenical Centre. Foster, L., and D.  Stockley. 1984. Multiculturalism: The Changing Australian Paradigm. Clevedon, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. ———. 1988. Australian Multiculturalism: A Documentary History and Critique. Clevedon, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Fraser, M. 1981. The Inaugural Address on Multiculturalism to the Institute of Multicultural Affairs. The Malcolm Fraser Collection at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, November 30. http://www.unimelb.edu.au/malcolmfraser/speeches/nonparliamentary/multiculturalism.html/. Accessed 29 Jan 2015. Fraser, M., and M.  Simons. 2010. Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs. Carlton: The Miegunyah Press. Galbally, F. 1989. Galbally!: The Autobiography of Australia’s Leading Criminal Lawyer. Hawthorn: Penguin Books Australia. Grassby, A. 1973. A Multi-Cultural Society for the Future. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Hawkins, F. 1991. Critical Years in Immigration: Canada and Australia Compared. 2nd ed. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. Ivison, D. 2010. Introduction: Multiculturalism as a Public Ideal. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism, ed. D.  Ivison, 1–18. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Jakubowicz, A. 1981a. The Myth of the Menace of Multiculturalism: A Reply to Lauchlan Chipman. Quadrant 25(1–2): 85–87. ———. 1981b. State and Ethnicity: Multiculturalism as Ideology. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 17(3): 4–13. ———. 1984. Ethnicity, Multiculturalism and Neo-Conservatism. In Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Australia, eds. G.  Bottomley and M. de Lepervanche, 28–48. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin. Jakubowicz, A., M. Morrissey, and J. Plaser, eds. 1984. Ethnicity, Class and Social Policy in Australia. Social Welfare Centre Research Reports and Proceedings, No. 46, Kensington, UNSW.

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Jayasuriya, L. 1997. Immigration and Multiculturalism in Australia: Selected Essays. Nedlands, WA: School of Social Work and Social Administration, the University of Western Australia. Jupp, J. 1998. Immigration. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. ———. 2007. From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Kalantzis, M. 2003. Immigration, Multiculturalism and Racism. In The Hawke Government: A Critical Retrospective, eds. S. Ryan and T. Bramston, 311–324. North Melbourne: Pluto Press Australia. Kalantzis, M., and B. Cope. 1984. Multiculturalism and Education Policy. In Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Australia, eds. G.  Bottomley and M.  De Lepervanche, 82–97. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin. Knopfelmacher, F. 1982. The Case Against Multi-Culturalism. In The New Conservatism in Australia, ed. R.  Manne, 40–64. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Krygier, M. 1980. Discrimination and Anti-Discrimination: Law, Affirmative Action and Human Rights. Quadrant 24(9): 4–10. Kymlicka, W. 2007. Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levey, G.B. 2008a. Multicultural Political Thought in Australian Perspective. In Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism, ed. G.B.  Levey, 1–26. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. ———. 2010. Liberal Multiculturalism. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism, ed. D. Ivison, 19–38. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Lopez, M. 2000. The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945–1975. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press. Maclure, J.  2010. Multiculturalism and Political Morality. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism, ed. D.  Ivison, 39–56. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Markus, A., J. Jupp, and P. McDonald. 2009. Australia’s Immigration Revolution. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Martin, J.  1971. Migration and Social Pluralism. In How Many Australians? Immigration and Growth, ed. J. Wilkes, 97–129. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. ———. 1978. The Migrant Presence: Australian Responses 1947–1977. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin. ———. 1981. Ethnic Pluralism and Identity. In The Ethnic Dimension: Papers on Ethnicity and Pluralism by Jean Martin, ed. S. Encel, 141–155. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin.

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Menadue, J. 1999. Things You Learn Along the Way. Melbourne: David Lovell Publishing. Migrant Services and Programs. 1978. Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services for Migrants. Galbally Report. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Pakulski, J.  2014. Confusions About Multiculturalism. Journal of Sociology 50(1): 23–36. Pearson, D. 2001. The Politics of Ethnicity in Settler Societies: States of Unease. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Ranstead, D.D. 1980. Ethnic Confusions in Australia. Quadrant 24(1–2): 44–47. SBS. 2012. Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta, Episodes 1 to 3. Sydney: Special Broadcasting Corporation. Sheehan, P. 1998. Among the Barbarians: The Dividing of Australia. Milsons Point, NSW: Random House Australia. Soutphommasane, T. 2012. Don’t Go Back to Where You Came From: Why Multiculturalism Works. Sydney: NewSouth Press. Theophanous, A. 1995. Understanding Australian Multiculturalism and Australian Identity. Melbourne: Elikea Books. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2000. The State of the World’s Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vink, M.P. 2007. Multiculturalism Beyond the Pillarisation Myth. Political Studies Review 5(3): 337–350. Viviani, N. 1982. Australian Government Policy on the Entry of Vietnamese Refugees 1975 to 1982: Record and Responsibility. Research Paper No. 7, Griffith University, School of Modern Asian Studies, Centre for the Study of Australian-Asian Relations, Brisbane. ———. 1996. The Indochinese in Australia 1975–1995: From Burnt Boats to Barbecues. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Whitlam, G. 1985. The Whitlam Government 1972–1975. Melbourne: Penguin Books. Wilkes, J., ed. 1971. How Many Australians? Immigration and Growth. Sydney: Angus & Roberston. Zubrzycki, J. 1978. Immigration and the Family in a Multicultural Australia. Meredith Memorial Lectures 1978, Australia’s Multicultural Society, 1–12. La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC.

3 Multiculturalism as Social Justice: The Hawke and Keating Governments

The first 2 years of the Hawke Labor government, elected in March 1983 on a platform of national reconciliation, consensus and an end to divisiveness, saw a continuation of the multicultural approach, and many of the multicultural programmes, of the Fraser government. While maintaining the main Galbally Report inspired programmes (Foster and Stockley 1988, p. 35), the Hawke government was also developing programmes more in tune with traditional Labor emphases on addressing general disadvantage, of which ethnic disadvantage became a subset, as in the Commonwealth Department of Education’s Participation and Equity Program which ran alongside the older Multicultural Education Program. But multiculturalism was not high on the agenda, and Hawke at first said little about it (Foster and Stockley 1988, pp. 34–35; Kalantzis 2003, p. 315). The exception to this occurred during the “race debate” of 1984, which stirred the Hawke government to defend its immigration and multicultural policies and to repudiate racism. The race debate was sparked by historian Geoffrey Blainey who suggested in a speech in March 1984 at a Rotary Club in Warrnambool, Victoria, that increased Asian migration threatened Australian social cohesion, a claim he followed up in interviews, newspaper articles and © The Author(s) 2017 A. Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8_3

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in a book critiquing immigration and multicultural policies, All for Australia (Blainey 1984). The Opposition, led by Andrew Peacock, raised questions about the “racial balance” of the Hawke government’s immigration intake. During a debate on immigration policy in the federal parliament (8 May 1984), Peacock and Immigration Shadow Minister Michael Hodgman implied that the Hawke government was discriminating against British and north European immigrants (Campbell and Uhlman 1995, pp.  29–30). Prominent “wet” Liberal MPs like Ian Macphee strongly dissented from this Coalition position (see Kelly 1992, pp. 128–132). Ironically, given his later comments on Asian immigration in 1988 (discussed below), John Howard at this time defended Asian immigration and called for greater toleration of Asians (Kelly 1992, pp. 133–134; Henderson 1995, p. 45). Outside parliament, critics linked immigration to multiculturalism, with Blainey suggesting that a multicultural agenda was driving the Hawke government to deliberately transform Australian society into a multi-ethnic nation. The Coalition at first tried to exploit Blainey’s argument and address community concerns in a revamped immigration policy, but eventually rejected this approach in July 1984, returning to the major principles of immigration policy of the Fraser government (Kelly 1992, pp. 132–133). Hawke made his first major speech on multiculturalism to the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) in April 1984, where he defended his government’s immigration and multicultural policies against attacks like those of Blainey, explaining that the immigration policy was non-discriminatory and that increases in Asian immigration occurred for other reasons, including declines in sponsorships from more traditional immigrant source countries (see Hawke 1984; also Curran 2006, pp. 232–233). Hawke stressed the centrality of “equality of opportunity” in a common, national society, to his understanding of multiculturalism: “Multicultural” is more than a descriptive term to designate a society made up of different ethnic groups. It is also an approach to policy formulation and resource allocation which seeks to provide for equality of access and opportunity. It designates a society which supports a common group of institutions, legal rights and obligations, while leaving individuals free to

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maintain their religion, language and cultural customs. A multicultural society is a vital and tolerant and progressive community in which all groups, be they aboriginal, Anglo-Celtic, European, Asian, Latin American, or Middle Eastern, or from any other of the ethnic groupings we find in our society today, make an important contribution to the richness, the depth and traditions of our nation. (Hawke 1984)

Hawke’s Immigration Minister Stewart West explained and defended the government’s immigration policies in parliament, in a ministerial statement made on 30 May 1984 directly addressing the criticisms from the Coalition Opposition and from commentators in the media (Australian Foreign Affairs Record, 1984, quoted in Foster and Stockley 1988, pp. 17–18). Nevertheless, some critics then, and later, believed that the Hawke government was not really committed to multiculturalism (Foster and Stockley 1984) and was only later forced into using multicultural rhetoric by political circumstances, including a potential ethnic communities’ voter backlash (Castles et al. 1988, pp. 71–79). Several examples of Hawke government actions are cited as evidence. In 1983 the Hawke government closed down the Ethnic Liaison Officers programme. This programme had been reviewed critically by AIMA in 1982 in its “Evaluation of Post Arrivals and Programs,” though AIMA had recommended reforming it and giving it a stronger policy role. In closing the programme, the Hawke government introduced new measures to ensure that all departments had processes in place to address the needs of immigrants and to monitor their effectiveness in assuring equitable access (see Australia. Committee of Review of Migrant and Multicultural Programs and Services 1986, p. 159). Another early initiative was to review AIMA, seen by its supporters as a major multicultural institution. The Committee of Review, chaired by former Labor Minister Moss Cass, argued that AIMA was of limited value as a policy advice centre and was too Melbourne centric (Committee of Review of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1983). It did not recommend that AIMA be abolished, but rather called for its thorough restructuring and renaming, including a larger and more explicit role in promoting the rights and interests of all immigrants and

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in monitoring the impact on those interests of government legislation, policies, programmes and services, and its relocation to Canberra (see Australia. Committee of Review of Migrant and Multicultural Programs and Services 1986, pp.  161–162; Sheldrake 1987, p.  276). The wider political context pressuring for its closure included the enhanced political influence of Melbourne-based ethnic rights activists associated with the ALP that had recently achieved government in Victoria and federally (Jupp 2007, p.  105), who saw AIMA as a politically conservative institution, too closely tied to the Fraser government’s cultural pluralism (Castles et al. 1988, p. 72). An alternative view offered by former senior member of staff of AIMA Peter Sheldrake (1987) is that its statutory status made it unpopular with the Hawke government and with government departments, especially the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. AIMA survived until 1986 when the Hawke government announced its closure in the context of the spending cuts of the 1986 budget. At the same time, the Hawke government made a commitment to create a new “office of Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs within the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs” and Hawke reiterated in parliament that his government was not backing away from multiculturalism, and was committed “unequivocally to enhancing multicultural values” (Hawke 1986). The 1986 austerity budget dismantled other Galbally initiatives, such as the Multicultural Education Program, and drastically cut spending on the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) programme (Theophanous 1995, pp. 69–70). The government announced its intention to merge SBS with the ABC, a decision it later reversed after much public opposition including from ethnic communities’ representatives (Theophanous 1995, pp.  63–69). Budget cuts also meant the scaling down or closure of regional offices of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (Castles et al. 1988, pp. 75–76; Foster and Stockley 1988, p. 36; Theophanous 1995, pp. 61–76). The Hawke government also announced that it would shelve its Bill of Rights legislation that it had previously introduced in parliament. The bill had been passed by the House of Representatives in 1985, but had been blocked in the Senate (Bradbury 2003, pp. 384–385). The Human Rights Commission, established by the Fraser government in 1981, was closed.

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These changes and policy reversals were seen by some at the time to indicate that the Hawke government was dismantling multiculturalism (Foster and Stockley 1988). Viewed retrospectively, Mary Kalantzis (2003, pp. 317–318) argues that we can now see that the first few years were a time of review as the Hawke government rethought its position beyond the Fraser government approach, and that the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s saw much creativity in immigration and multicultural policy development. The Hawke government became much more active in these policy areas in the second half of the 1980s, instituting important reforms in multicultural policy, some based on the recommendations of James Jupp’s report on migrant and multicultural programmes and services, Don’t Settle For Less, released in August 1986 (Australia. Committee of Review of Migrant and Multicultural Programs and Services 1986). One important development was the greater emphasis on “social justice,” supported mainly by the Hawke government’s new “access and equity” strategy, first introduced formally in 1985 to improve access to government services and programmes for people from non-English speaking backgrounds (Theophanous 1995). As noted in Chap. 2, the Galbally Report had stressed the importance of migrants’ access to public services and programmes—ethnic-specific services where necessary, but preferably mainstream services available to everybody. This aspect of multiculturalism became an important policy concern of the Hawke (and later Keating) governments, which developed strategies to implement it. In 1986 Commonwealth agencies were directed to produce plans to ensure access and equity for people of different ethnic backgrounds (Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs 1988, p.  43), and in 1987 the Hawke government established a specific agency, the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, to monitor progress in this area (see Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p. 40). The setting up of OMA had been one of the recommendations of Jupp’s Don’t Settle for Less report, which also emphasised the need to expand and improve on the “access and equity strategy” (Australia. Committee of Review of Migrant and Multicultural Programs and Services 1986). The Hawke government was initially going to place the Office in the

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Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (as noted above, see Hawke 1986), but changed its mind after sustained lobbying from representatives of ethnic communities. Situating OMA in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet rather than in a Department of Immigration was seen as symbolically important, because it indicated that multiculturalism was for all Australians, not just for “ethnics” or immigrants. OMA was responsible for giving advice on multicultural affairs to the prime minister and the minister for immigration and ethnic affairs and assisting the Australian Council of Multicultural Affairs (Jakubowicz n.d.) It played a role with the latter in drafting the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (discussed below). The Hawke government created a second important multicultural institution in 1989—the Bureau of Immigration Research. The 1988 Fitzgerald Inquiry into Australia’s immigration policies (discussed below) had recommended the creation of an independent research organisation to provide expert information on immigration. The Bureau was mainly based in Melbourne, with a smaller branch within the Department of Immigration in Canberra. It was generously funded (5 million dollars annually) and became a central agency funding university academics and others to conduct research on immigration and multicultural issues. It was seen by its supporters as providing timely and relevant information of a high, peer-reviewed academic standard that could counter the sorts of distortions and evidence-free claims made during the rancorous race debates of the 1980s (see Fincher 2001, pp. 31–32). It produced a large amount of published research and also ran every 2 years a National Outlook Conference reviewing progress and outcomes of immigration, attended by hundreds including senior politicians. It organised many other smaller conferences with invited national and international speakers. In 1994 it became the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research (BIMPR) when its mandate was also significantly broadened (Fincher 2001). There were other significant developments in these years, including the establishment in 1986 of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (in place of the Human Rights Commission); the provision of 1.7 million dollars to implement legislation related to multiculturalism, including a community education programme (Australia.

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Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p.  9); the adoption in 1987 of a National Policy on Languages which included a commitment to English language acquisition for all Australians, as well as the opportunity for all of learning another language, and a commitment to maintain and develop Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, and “provision of widespread and equitable services in languages other than English” (see Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, p. 42; Clyne 1997); and the adoption in 1991 of the Aboriginal Reconciliation process, under the guidance of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. The major development of multiculturalism during the Hawke and Keating years was shaped by the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989) which became the basis for multicultural policy for the next decade and a half, though in modified form during the Howard years. On 13 March 1987, the Hawke government formed the Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs, chaired by Sir James Gobbo. Together with OMA, one of its major tasks was to assist in the preparation of the National Agenda. In September 1988, the Council released a long discussion paper “Towards a National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia” and called for public comment and discussion (Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs 1988). The discussion paper began by defending Australia’s 15-year-old multicultural policy tradition, especially against allegations of ethnic favouritism or special privileges, that it was underpinned by cultural relativism or that it promoted separatism. Rather, it argued that multiculturalism had always been about unity and social cohesion, and had always been underpinned by an ultimate, overriding commitment and loyalty to Australia, which had been reiterated by Prime Minister Hawke. Nor was immigration policy designed to build a multicultural society—it was simply non-discriminatory and did not seek to actively produce proportions of ethnic groups in Australia. Multiculturalism was a domestic-focused policy, dealing with the current population and the fact of diversity, underpinned by a commitment to equity, social justice and equal opportunity for all. The discussion paper recognised that culturally multiculturalism meant that “all Australians should be free to develop, adapt and express elements of their individual cultural heritage, within the unifying framework of a commitment to Australia, its laws and institutions” (Advisory

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Council on Multicultural Affairs 1988, p. 5). It is clear from the discussion paper that the Hawke government already viewed its multicultural policy as having the three dimensions of “respect for cultural difference,” “social justice” and “economic efficiency,” which came to underpin the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia. The discussion paper was structured around eight goals and principles that it argued should form the basis of the government’s multicultural policies and detailed possible strategies related to pursuing them (Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs 1988, pp. 9–10): 1. All Australians should have a commitment to Australia and share responsibility for furthering our national interests. 2. All Australians should be able to enjoy the basic right of freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or culture. 3. All Australians should enjoy equal life chances and have equitable access to and an equitable share of the resources which governments manage on behalf of the community. 4. All Australians should have the opportunity fully to participate in society and in the decisions which directly affect them. 5. All Australians should be able to develop and make use of their potential for Australia’s economic and social development. 6. All Australians should have the opportunity to acquire and develop proficiency in English, languages other than English, and to develop cross-cultural understanding. 7. All Australians should, if they choose, be able to develop and share their cultural heritage. 8. All Australian institutions should acknowledge, reflect and respond to the cultural diversity of the Australian community. At this time, the political bipartisanship surrounding multiculturalism was fracturing under John Howard’s leadership of the Opposition Liberal Party. Two important contributing factors were debates about the Australian nation and history stimulated by the Bicentenary of British settlement of Australia (Jupp 2007, p.  106) and the release of the Fitzgerald Report on Australia’s immigration policy (Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies 1988).

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The Hawke government’s approach to the Bicentenary was strongly criticised by prominent conservatives who argued that it was not celebratory enough of the nation’s achievements and too weighed down by guilt about Aboriginal treatment and dispossession, “political correctness” and a multiculturalism that downplayed, and even denigrated, the British influence (Blainey 1985). The Fitzgerald Report, released in June 1988, was primarily concerned with reorienting Australia’s immigration policy to ensure that it contributed to Australia’s economic development and retained the support of the Australian population. It recommended increased migration, but also shifting the emphasis of the programme towards English speaking, young, entrepreneurial and skilled migrants, and away from family reunion. But its most controversial aspect, picked up and popularised in the media, was the claim that multiculturalism was widely unpopular among large sections of the Australian community (see Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies 1988, Ch. 2). While it did not recommend the rejection of multicultural policies, its message was that multiculturalism should be deemphasised, including in discussion of immigration policy. From its community consultations, the Committee concluded that “old Australians” felt that multiculturalism was driving a government immigration policy aimed at perpetuating separate ethnic communities and at racially diversifying Australia. Thus, “multiculturalism” was undermining Australians’ commitment to immigration (Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies 1988, pp.  58–59; Birrell and Betts 1988, p.  262). It argued that government should stress the Australian identity rather than multiculturalism, because this was what Australians identified with (Recommendation 73, in Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies 1988, p.  119). In media interviews at the time of the release of the report, Committee Chairman Dr Stephen Fitzgerald indicated that he preferred the use of the term “cosmopolitanism” rather than “multiculturalism” (Jennett 1988, p.  375). In terms of public policy framing, however, Fitzgerald was to lose the debate over terminology and concepts to the head of OMA, Peter Shergold, who successfully argued for the retention of multiculturalism, gaining the crucial support of Hawke (Jakubowicz 2009, pp. 120–123, 2011).

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After returning from a trip overseas where he had held discussions with conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Howard made two important interventions. In late June 1988, responding to the Fitzgerald Report’s claims that multiculturalism was a source of division and confusion among Australians, Howard told the Canberra Press Club “there are profound weaknesses in the policy of multiculturalism. I think it is a rather aimless, divisive policy and I think it ought to be changed” (quoted and discussed in Jupp 2007, pp. 106–107). The word “divisive” referred to the claim that multicultural policy, especially as it had developed under the Hawke Labor government, meant that the emphasis had been placed on the things that divided Australians rather than on those key values, commonalities and commitments that united them as a nation. The Coalition Opposition would replace multiculturalism with a “One Australia” policy, according to which, while acknowledging the reality of cultural diversity, all Australians should place their loyalty to Australia and its values above all other national or ethnic loyalties and values. Howard made this policy announcement while the Coalition parties were still considering their position in relation to The Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs’ deliberations on a multicultural agenda, and this caused considerable tension and debate within the Liberal Party (Walsh 1988). The second intervention was Howard’s infamous suggestion, when interviewed on ABC radio’s PM programme in August 1988, that “Asian immigration” might be slowed down in the service of social cohesion, sparking another political race debate and giving ammunition to those who were against Asian immigration. In doing this Howard drew upon Blainey’s earlier claim that high levels of Asian immigration threatened Australian cohesion. Howard was strongly criticised by some political commentators (see Walsh 1988) and by members of his own political party during 1988, including Steele Hall, Ian Macphee and NSW Premier Nick Greiner (Steketee 1988; Burrell and Boylen 1988). The first Asian-Australian elected to parliament, Chinese-born Liberal member of the NSW State Upper House Helen Sham-Ho, who faced hostile right extremist National Action demonstrators outside a function to honour her in December 1988, said that they had been given encouragement by Howard’s comments (Pakula 1988). Howard refused to back down,

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as members of the Coalition (including Deputy Leader Andrew Peacock) tried in late August 1988 to reformulate his claims in a more acceptable way that suggested that a new Coalition immigration policy might result in changes to the ethnic make-up of the immigration programme, but that this would not involve racial discrimination (Burrell and Reid 1988). Howard’s proposed replacement for multiculturalism, the “One Australia” policy on ethnic affairs and immigration, was officially adopted by the Opposition parties after Howard’s speech to the Esperance Conference of the Western Australian Liberal Party on 30 June 1988 and was later incorporated as the centrepiece of the Howard-led coalition’s Future Directions policy manifesto, released in early December 1988 (Jupp 2007, p. 106; Tate 2009, pp. 108–109). Future Directions: It’s Time for Plain Thinking devoted a chapter to “Building One Australia” (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, pp. 88–100) that contained the central themes that would later re-emerge in the Howard government’s emphasis on common Australian values and the Australian way of life, and the acceptance that diversity, while a value, had to be subservient to national unity (see discussion of this in Chap. 4). It also displayed the tension between a civic view of what was expected of immigrants and all those from different ethnic backgrounds in Australia—acceptance of “Parliamentary democracy, the rule of law and equality before the law, freedom of the individual, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, equality of women and universal education” (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p. 94)—and a vaguely conceived broader adherence to “Australian national culture”: The idea of One Australia is that those common Australian values and traditions to which we have all contributed and in which we all should feel an equal degree of pride are those ideals which should bind us together. Those who wish to settle here permanently as citizens should be prepared to make an overwhelming commitment to the country they have chosen as home—to its democratic traditions and institutions, to its moral and ethical values and to its cultural background, in other words a commitment to those things that together give it a national identity. (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p. 93)

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In critiquing multiculturalism in Future Directions, the Liberal-National Coalition had to maintain a balancing act between repudiating the policy altogether—difficult, as the Liberal-Country Fraser government, in which Howard had been treasurer, had been a strong proponent of multiculturalism, and multicultural policy had expanded significantly during its 8-year rule—and criticising the way that it had developed under the Hawke Labor government. The formulation it came up with was: One of the saddest features of the Labor Government over the last six years has been the way in which it has gone out of its way to deliberately pursue policies that divide Australia, that set Australian against Australian ….[T] heir policies for immigrant Australians have turned the original aims of multiculturalism back on themselves and elevated the differences between us over the similarities we share. (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p. 89)

The Coalition accepted the need to design particular “needs based” programmes to deal with groups of people who were disadvantaged because of “their background.” This especially related to Aborigines, but could also mean immigrants or others who were disadvantaged. But Future Directions claimed that: Far too often, current policies simply perpetuate the existing disadvantages, their victims locked into a cycle of deprivation which they had hoped to escape. That is true of some so-called multi-cultural programmes, which simply ensnare individuals in ethnic communities denying them the opportunity to fully participate in Australian society … Where communities are kept separate from Australian society there is no equality of opportunity. (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, pp. 89–90)

However, despite the criticism, at no point did Future Directions elaborate upon which statements, actions, policies or programmes of the Hawke government in the area of multiculturalism “elevated the differences between us over the similarities we share,” “ensnare[d] individuals in ethnic communities” or encouraged immigrants to lead lives “separate from Australian society.” While these criticisms could be levelled at some multicultural advocates outside of the Hawke government, the Hawke government itself, like the Fraser government before it, stressed the

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central importance of unity and loyalty to Australia in its multicultural policy; and it also explicitly argued against ethnic separatism. The critique of immigration policy in Future Directions involved issues separate to multicultural policy, unless one accepted the claim, voiced by Blainey among others during the 1980s, that the Hawke government had been pressured on the ethnic make-up of the immigration programme by the “ethnic lobby” (Blainey 1984). The Fitzgerald Report had argued that the emphasis of the programme had to shift away from family reunion to skilled migration, as the programme had become unbalanced in favour of the former during the 1980s. But The Fitzgerald Report did not claim that multiculturalism had caused this shift in the balance of the programme. Critics like Katharine Betts have claimed that ethnic lobbyists, paid for by government under multicultural policies, had pressured governments in the late 1970s and 1980s to expand the family reunion programme to serve their own interests, and thus multiculturalism was driving and distorting immigration, including driving up the numbers and influencing the ethnic composition (Betts 1988, 1992; Birrell and Betts 1988). Examining what, according to Future Directions, a future Coalition government would do differently sheds no further light on the claim that the Hawke government’s multicultural policies had been divisive. For example, there was no suggestion that a Coalition government would stop funding the state level Ethnic Communities’ Councils or the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA). It supported the continued teaching of “community languages in government and non-government schools” which it saw as “a valuable tool in obtaining social cohesion and improving understanding within the whole community” (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p. 94), where some critics in the 1980s had cited exactly this as an example of wasteful government multicultural programmes (Chipman 1980b). Though the emphasis would be on using mainstream services for settlement purposes, the Coalition was committed to continuing various special “grant-in-aid schemes to community-based groups offering services in welfare, education and family support …” (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p. 93). The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) was also supported (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p.  83). There was a claim that the Hawke government had not

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explained its immigration programme to the people and that the immigration programme should be reoriented towards younger, higher-skilled immigrants—but none of this suggested the division Labor was causing in this area. Future Directions separated “multiculturalism” from national identity. Australia’s national identity was not multicultural, but rooted in a single “Australian culture.” However, distinguishing “Australian identity” from multiculturalism and diversity was not easy. Unlike multiculturalism, Future Directions argued, “One Australia” was a policy for “all Australians” not just immigrants (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p. 89). The aim of the policy was to create “a nation in which all Australians are proud of their diverse heritage but united by shared values, common beliefs and an overriding commitment to the Australian way of life” (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p. 3). However, in attempting to describe Australian identity it became less of a permanent essence handed down from the past that immigrants had to adopt, and more of an entity that they interacted with and altered: The Australian identity is unique. It owes its origins to people who have come from many nations, each making a contribution to the development of that identity. Over the years successive waves of immigrants have changed our identity—and that process will continue. (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p. 92)

There was also a more positive recognition of “ethnic background,” where rights to retaining “personal and family traditions” were upheld, where it was recognised that it was “natural” that people would continue to feel a bond with their country of origin, and that by bringing their “cultural traditions and heritage to Australia,” immigrants had “helped to enrich Australian society by opening it up to new influences and a wider understanding and appreciation of different backgrounds.” Moreover, they had “made a positive and welcome contribution to the development of a uniquely Australian lifestyle and culture and they have enabled many other Australians to better appreciate the wealth of human civilization around the globe.” It was also acknowledged that in an open society the sharing of cultural heritages “encouraged the exchange of ideas and

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cultural experiences” that would “enrich our nation and strengthen our sense of unity.” Nevertheless, it asserted that there was a vast difference between this kind of openness to and tolerance of cultural differences and “a Government committed to elevate a whole range of different cultures, customs and values and accord them all equal status within the Australian way of life” (Liberal Party of Australia 1988, p. 92). Despite the breakdown in bipartisanship on multicultural policy, and the strong criticism of multiculturalism contained in the Fitzgerald Report, the Hawke government pushed ahead with developing the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia, which was publicly launched in July 1989. The goals and principles of the “Towards a National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia” discussion paper were accepted by the Hawke government (see Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, p.  1) and were addressed in the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia under three main dimensions of multicultural policy: • cultural identity—the right of all Australians, within carefully defined limits, to express and share their individual cultural heritage, including their language and religion; • social justice—the right of all Australians to equality of treatment and opportunity and the removal of barriers of race, ethnicity, culture, religion, language, gender or place of birth; and • economic efficiency—the need to maintain, develop and utilise effectively the skills and talents of all Australians, regardless of background (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, p. vii). It was stressed that multicultural policies were “based upon the premise that all Australians should have an overriding and unifying commitment to Australia, to its interests and future first and foremost” (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, p. vii). As evident in the first of the three dimensions above, the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia emphasised an “individual” right to expression and enjoyment of cultural heritage, and was silent on group rights. Elsewhere this was also emphasised, when stressing the importance of cultural mixing:

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Fundamentally, multiculturalism is about the rights of the individual—the right to equality of treatment; to be able to express one’s identity; to be accepted as an Australian without having to assimilate to some stereotyped model of behaviour. Multiculturalism is concerned to encourage all Australians, including those from non-Anglo-Celtic backgrounds, to share their diversity of cultures, rather than excluding one another or being forced into separate enclaves. (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, p. 16)

The “carefully defined limits” to cultural expression and sharing included respecting others’ rights to culture, and also acceptance of “the basic structures and principles of Australian society—the Constitution and the rule of law, tolerance and equality, Parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as the national language and equality of the sexes” (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, p. vii). It had been clear from the Advisory Council’s discussions and consultations that there was some public confusion about the relationship between immigration and multicultural policies, and, as noted above, this was also expressed in the Fitzgerald Report. The National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia made clear that multicultural policy “plays no part in migrant selection” but was a policy aimed at managing Australia’s already diverse society (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, p. vii). On the other hand, it was an emphatic reassertion of a commitment to multiculturalism in the context of the race debates of the late 1980s, the strong conservative attacks on multiculturalism accumulating during the 1980s, especially in popular conservative journals such as Quadrant, and also in the context of the strong claim in the Fitzgerald Report that multiculturalism was unpopular in all sections of Australian society. The National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia was a pragmatic document, focused on how institutions should adapt to better serve a more linguistically and culturally diverse Australia, and to ensure that Australia was economically efficient in the use of all its productive resources, including immigrants (economic efficiency). Important specific initiatives included strategies to improve the recognition of overseas skills and qualifications; a community relations campaign aimed at making sure that ethnic diversity went together with social cohesion; strengthening the access and equity strategy to overcome any barriers to inclusion

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based on language, culture and prejudice experienced by migrants and Indigenous Australians1; improved access to English language education for non-English speaking migrants; legislation establishing SBS as an independent corporation; and directing OMA to investigate the desirability of a Multiculturalism Act for Australia, to enshrine multicultural policy in legislation. The National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia did not explicitly claim that Australian national identity was multicultural, but it implied that it was, by stressing that Australia was a multicultural society, and that “it is the vigour of our diversity, and the degree of interaction between different cultures, that contributes so much to the uniqueness of the Australian identity today” (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, p. 6). As indicated by this quote, the preferred nomenclature for national identity was simply “Australian” rather than multicultural. The British heritage was still important according to the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia. Historically, Australia’s British and Irish “customs and institutions,” modified in Australian conditions, had served well a relatively homogenous British-derived population. As Australia had become more diverse, the customs and institutions had to adapt, but this did not mean wholesale change: That does not mean that we should dismantle or repudiate our institutions in order to start afresh. Our British heritage is extremely important to us. It helps to define us as Australian. It has created a society remarkable for the freedom it can give to its individual citizens. It is a large part of what makes Australia attractive to immigrants and visitors. It is a potent source of unity and loyalty. (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, pp.  50–51, my emphasis)

Notably, Australia’s ethno-cultural diversity was not cited in the same way as a “potent source of unity and loyalty.” Multiculturalism did not “entail a rejection of Australian values, customs and beliefs.” Australia 1

The access and equity strategy was initially focused on immigrants, but its scope widened with the 1989 National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia to include anybody who may face barriers because of race, culture, religion, language or Indigenous background, with priorities in the areas of health, and community services, local government and consumer education (see National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 2, p. 25).

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still had a common core, but a multicultural approach recognised that “any such common core evolves and changes over time,” and is open to new influences. Getting policy frameworks right would help ensure that “the richness of our diverse origins can contribute—as indeed they are already—to an evolving, but distinctive Australian culture” (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, p. 53). It is worth highlighting at this point this emphasis on the importance of British traditions as a source of national unity for the Hawke government, within its multicultural agenda. One of the major criticisms of the Howard Government’s approach to multiculturalism was that it stressed the centrality of Britishness, unlike its predecessors (see Fozdar and Spittles 2009, p.  498; see also Forrest and Dunn 2006, p.  209). As the above shows, this narrative of the shift from the full embrace of multicultural diversity under the Hawke (and later Keating) years to the Anglocentrism of the Howard era needs to be modified. As I will show in Chap. 4, Howard’s emphasis on British origins, reflecting a broader conservative critique of multiculturalism, was stronger than that of Hawke and Keating; but the latter were also wary of downplaying the British influence.

Multiculturalism and Keating The Keating government, formed when former Treasurer Paul Keating took over the Labor leadership from Hawke in December 1991, remained committed to multicultural policy and carried through, and extended, the programme of the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia. This included the 1990–1993 “Community Relations Strategy,” run by a working party with representatives from OMA, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), the Department of Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs and HREOC, where the government spent 5.7 million dollars on 89 projects relating to multiculturalism and cultural understanding, in areas of legislation, police, media, education and housing (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 2, pp. 62–64). This programme was replaced in 1994 by the “Community Relations Agenda” that committed 3 million dollars for three main purposes to:

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• foster and promote harmonious community relations; • contribute to the shaping of our national identity; and • encourage a greater degree of acceptance and respect for people of different race, ethnicity, religion, culture and language and to promote the notion of inclusiveness, the need for a fair portrayal of Australian diversity by the media, as well as other aspects of multicultural policies which contribute to tolerance and harmony (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 2, pp. 63–64). The “access and equity” strategy, which was initially focused on immigrants, was expanded “to address all groups facing racial, religious, cultural or linguistic barriers, not only immigrants” and including also Indigenous people (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p.  40), with priorities in the areas of health, and community services, local government and consumer education (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 2, p. 25). Nevertheless, Keating himself was somewhat ambivalent about multiculturalism, and it was less prominent in his prime ministerial discourse than economic reform, or his other “big picture” items, the Republic, Aboriginal Reconciliation and engagement with Asia. It is worth highlighting this ambivalence, as it is often assumed by commentators that Keating unambiguously championed multiculturalism (see Johnson 2000, pp. 30–34, 65–66, although she is critical of aspects of Keating’s multiculturalism, especially its emphasis on the economic value of diversity; Melleuish 1998, p.  8, p.  102).2 Though he supported the policy, Keating was wary of ideological versions of multiculturalism, especially where they became forms of “political correctness” (Watson 2002, p. 668). 2

It is notable in this respect that the index of Don Watson’s (2002) biographical memoir of Keating, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, lists “multiculturalism” as appearing in just 4 of its over 700 pages. In one of those discussions, Watson recounts how in 1992 he, as Keating’s speechwriter, tried to convince Keating and his economic advisers to put something “cultural” into a speech to Australian company directors, in order to redirect attention away from Keating’s responsibility for Australia’s failing economy, and he suggested that the theme of “multiculturalism” might work (Watson 2002, pp.  207–208). He argued that by telling a story about the economic contribution of dynamic, entrepreneurial and loyal European and other migrants it might appeal to some of the migrant businessmen. It would also provide a less ideologically driven multiculturalism and thus appeal to the wider public, restless about so-called special handouts to migrants. Keating and his economic advisers were less than enthusiastic, and the idea was shelved.

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As he commented in a speech to the FECCA conference in 1992, “We don’t support particular cultures for their own sake. We do it to keep the barriers down. We take the view that these policies are an extension of the democratic tradition” (quoted in Watson 2002, p. 208). As James Curran (2006) has explained in his book The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image, Keating was one of the most explicitly nationalist of Australia’s post-war prime ministers. But the passion informing Keating’s nationalism was enflamed, not by multiculturalism, but by the older battle between “Australian Britons,” represented by the figure of Robert Menzies and British loyalists, and “radical nationalist” Australians, exemplified by his political mentor, 1930s NSW premier and iconic Labor figure Jack Lang, the labour movement and the Australian Labor Party (Curran 2006, Ch. 5). Curran suggests that to some extent multiculturalism thwarted Keating’s radical nationalism and his desire for a distinctive, independent and cohesive Australian nation. Curran refers to this as Keating’s “aggressive Australianism” inspired by his early, formative political education by Lang. Keating suggested the dilemma himself when he said, in a 1992 speech at an Australian publishers awards ceremony, that “in a sense, multiculturalism has combined with the lingering Britishness of the place to circumvent the emergence of a singularly Australian identity to replace the old imperial one” (Keating 1992, p.  42). As Curran (2006, p.  282) notes “Keating could not accept the viability of multicultural nationalism.” Nevertheless, the Australian identity that Keating promoted was a cosmopolitan one, outward looking and at the same time fundamentally committed to Australia and its interests. Keating returned to these themes in an address to the Global Cultural Diversity Conference held in Sydney in 1995, titled “The Benefits of Diversity,” where he was also more expansive in his discussion of Australian multiculturalism. There, while honouring Australia for finding ways to manage its profound “linguistic, racial, religious and cultural diversity” (Keating 1995, p.  263), he raised questions about conflicts elsewhere around the world that seemed to be related to the inability to manage cultural and racial diversity (Keating 1995, pp. 264–265). And he also raised the issue of the dilemma of getting the most out of cultural diversity while building a strong sense of national identity, and that this sometimes meant “redefining the nation”:

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The challenge in many cases is how we can create societies rich in cultural, racial and religious diversity but do so in ways which encourage rather than compromise a sense of national identity. It is too glib to say that the answer lies simply in better understanding. The problems in the Balkans or in central Africa do not stem from a lack of familiarity with the culture of the antagonists. This means that the redefinition of the nation is a complex task. It involves economic and social development, justice, human rights, good governance, inclusive institution building, tolerance, respect for difference, the strengthening of civil society. (Keating 1995, pp. 266–267)

Keating noted that while what had been done in Australia might have some lessons for other countries, and “may suggest to others ways of improving harmony within and between states,” he did not assume that this would necessarily be the case. What had been done in Australia in terms of creating “a culturally rich, diverse and peaceful Australian society” had been a great success, though he cautioned against assuming that “multicultural successes” were now complete (Keating 1995, p.  267). For example, he stressed multiculturalism could not be considered a success in Australia until Australia truly reached a reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples (Keating 1995, p. 268). Keating argued against the idea, sometimes promoted by multiculturalists, that the tolerant, culturally diverse society had only come about with the introduction of the word multiculturalism and its policies. Notably, he emphasised how the previous phase of assimilation, during which migrants from Europe and the Middle East were welcomed into Australia, had also made a contribution to Australia’s cultural diversity and cultural achievements. Like the historian John Hirst (1991), Keating pointed to the “tolerance” already existing in Australian society long before the emergence of multiculturalism as policy: It seems to me we should remember that tolerance of cultural difference is ultimately a necessary condition for a successful new world country, and that those traditions of egalitarian democracy which emerged in the last half of the 19th century had the seeds of multiculturalism in them. If it is true that earlier generations of Australians traditionally took the view that where and to what rank people were born should be no measure of their character, and that in Australia everyone should begin without these handicaps, then we can see ourselves as building on a tradition. (Keating 1995, p. 268)

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This was important, as it suggested the long historical continuity of this aspect of Australian national identity, and drew the link also with the radical nationalist tradition that emphasised egalitarianism. As Keating (1995, p. 268) concluded “we can learn the lesson that the best traditions of a country, and the best instincts of a people, can be the basis of radical change.” He also emphasised the foundational importance of British and Irish culture to building that society: I think we must also always bear in mind that the dominant cultures of our history, those of the British Isles and Ireland, far from being hostile to the growth of a culturally diverse society, provided in democratic institutions and ideas its essential precondition. (Keating 1995, p. 268)

It is worth emphasising again here that Keating, like Hawke before him, highlighted the historical and cultural importance of British and Irish traditions as the foundations upon which Australia, and multiculturalism, had been built. Yet another important theme of the speech was that multiculturalism meant not only rights, but also responsibilities. The rights included those typically pointed to in official multiculturalism, the right to “cultural identity, the right to express and share individual cultural heritage, including language and religion,” and also rights to social justice, and “equality of treatment and opportunity, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, language, gender or place of birth” (Keating 1995, p. 269). On the responsibilities side of the ledger, Keating stressed “that the first loyalty of all Australians must be to Australia, to its interests and its future” (Keating 1995, p. 269). Next he listed what had become official multiculturalism’s standard limit to the expression of cultural diversity: … that all Australians must accept the basic principles of Australian society, including the Constitution and the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as the national language, equality of the sexes and the right of every Australian to express his or her views and values. (Keating 1995, p. 269)

This emphasis on rights and responsibilities addressed what he termed “the essential balance in the multicultural equation”:

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the promotion of individual and collective cultural rights and expression, on the one hand; and on the other, the promotion of common national interests and values. And success depends on demonstrating that each side of the equation serves the other. (Keating 1995, p. 269)

The final, important theme of the speech was the new government emphasis on the “economic dividend” of cultural diversity, which gave multiculturalism an important economic rationale, and which his government had come to term “productive diversity.” The updated, replacement term for the National Agenda’s “economic efficiency,” productive diversity was first introduced by Keating as a policy in 1992 (Keating 1992), aimed at encouraging businesses to make full use of diversity as part of Keating’s globally focused, economic restructuring agenda. It was promoted as a key strategy in the Keating government’s “Working Nation,” the 1994 white paper on employment and growth. It was also highlighted in the Karpin Report of “The Industry Taskforce on Leadership and Management Skills” (April 1995), where the need to capitalise on Australia’s diversity was stressed. The Keating government introduced a series of funded initiatives to increase awareness of and utilise the economic benefits of cultural diversity, in areas of government, industry and unions (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p. 18). In his 1995 speech, Keating explained that, though there was a cultural and social “dividend” in the sense that cultural diversity provided a “society which is both more rich and interesting and more harmonious and peaceful,” there was also a “productivity dividend”: We have learned that cultural difference means different ways of looking at the world. In an economic environment which demands of enterprises that they use every possible advantage to be innovative and flexible this is likely to be a tangible asset. We have learned that being among the very few countries whose people understand all but a few of the world’s languages and cultures is a very considerable competitive advantage. In addition, we are discovering that our policies have provided us with the most valuable links to countries where we can do business: personal links and personal understanding between Australian enterprises and the markets they wish to enter. (Keating 1995, p. 270)

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His government had developed the “Productive Diversity Agenda” to capitalise on culturally diverse Australians’ capacities and multiple connections outside Australia. This aspect of multiculturalism showed, in a concrete way, that “the encouragement of cultural diversity is much more than an act of benevolence—it is an act of national self-interest” (Keating 1995, p. 270). The main official documents relating to multiculturalism in the Keating era did not appear until the last year of his government, when the National Multicultural Advisory Council, chaired by ALP icon and former minister Mick Young, produced its two-volume report “Multicultural Australia, The Next Steps, Beyond 2000,” released in June 1995. Volume 1 of the report had prominent discussions of the relationship between multiculturalism and national identity. Reflecting on the state of the nation, it referred not only to the valuing of immigrants but also of Indigenous Australians: As a nation we have become more hospitable to people of different backgrounds. Ethnic and indigenous communities are valued not only for their folk culture and culinary arts, dances, crafts and so forth, but also for their framework of ideas, beliefs, values and knowledge. A just and equitable relationship has begun to be established between indigenous and nonindigenous Australians. (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 3)

The first chapter of Volume 1 dealt with issues of “Identity,” and reflected on evolving national identity. Unlike in the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia, here there was no emphasis on the British heritage of the nation, and nor was there any claim that it had a special place in the national identity. The chapter did reflect on what held the nation together, but it was civic culture, not any vestige of ethnic homogeneity, which, it claimed, had always, in any case, been illusory: “What we have in common as Australians is a legal, political and constitutional system based on democratic principles, a single national language, and an evolving web of shared experiences and aspirations” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 7). Other significant aspects contributing to Australian unity included the “fair go,” a vibrant cultural attitude that was seen as underpinning the National Agenda for a Multicultural

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Australia. The report highlighted the central importance to “social cohesion and unity in Australia” of the access and equity strategy, the major arm of the government’s multicultural social justice strategy (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 23). Volume 2 reported clear evidence of significant improvement in access and equity in Commonwealth departments and agencies, especially in the main service delivery departments in the areas of social security, employment, education and training, immigration and ethnic affairs, and human services and health. These improvements included the use of translations, the employment of bilingual staff, making use of ethnic media to promote major initiatives and government staff training programmes in cultural awareness (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 23). There were two recent developments that the report claimed (perhaps contentiously) had the capacity to strengthen Australia’s national unity, or “our sense of common identity.” The first concerned developments in settler/Aboriginal relations, including the Mabo decision of the High Court, particularly the overturning of terra nullius, and the reconciliation process—which “invents a sense of national identity more fluid in its time frame, more caring of the land, and more inclusive of the nation’s first peoples than previously possible” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p.  7). Second, the lives of half the population incorporated immigrant and refugee experiences, and greater reflection on these, the report claimed, had the potential to “strengthen our sense of a common identity”; it was already “leading to a greater appreciation and commitment to our nation’s heritage of freedom and stability” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 7). The report had its own prescription for balancing difference and commonality: “Equal weight needs to be given to encouraging the things we have in common, the preservation and sharing of our differences and the benefits attained from them, and openness to cultural change and development” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 8). The report also adopted an outward looking nationalism, allowing people to recognise their commitments and loyalties to Australia, but also their relationship with the rest of the world, and their global responsibilities. It emphasised Australia’s openness to Asia and the region, without foregoing older loyalties, links to and commitments in North America and Europe; it recognised a more global Australia, “a society open to

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the world through trade, new forms of information and communication technology, and mass movements of people for recreation, work and other purposes” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 8). In this new environment, where cultural diversity was the norm and people became more proficient at negotiating and absorbing cultural differences, “being Australian” would still involve primary loyalty and commitment to Australia, its well-being, people and land, but would “also mean having an ability to relate easily and productively with the rest of the world” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 9). People would be “comfortable in their dual roles as both Australian and global citizens, a situation that will be brought about because of the growing maturity of the society itself and a new sense of our own unique national identity” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 9). This sense of openness and optimism, of seeing the world as a place of excitement and possibilities rather than threats, permeates the report and is captured in its conclusion: Australians are entering an exciting era. The twenty-first century holds the promise of being the century of a global community. Trade, media, information technology, labour movement, will all link us inseparably to countries and cultures far different to our own. Australia’s successful experience of being multicultural will be an asset, allowing us to move confidently into a world too often mired by ethnic and cultural bigotry and violence. (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1995, Vol. 1, p. 45)

The emphasis here was on national identity as developing, fluid, in process. Less important for identity, as generations moved on, were the two world wars, the report concluded. The Keating government’s response to this report, released in January 1996, represented an updated agenda for multicultural Australia. Titled Our Nation: Multicultural Australia and the 21st Century, this supported, or supported in principle, 43 of the 47 recommendations, reserving 3 recommendations for further consideration. These were Recommendation 9 to amend the Citizenship Act to allow Australian citizens to take up dual citizenship, Recommendation 10 that all citizens should be able to hold office and that this should be considered in any discussions of

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constitutional change (the issue here was what would happen with dual citizens, as Sect. 44(i) of the Constitution restricted their ability to serve as Commonwealth parliamentarians) and Recommendation 13 to consider options for further representation of Australia’s Indigenous peoples in parliament (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996). Our Nation contained its own explanation of what multiculturalism meant and implied for Australia. This was contained in a “Multicultural Compact” that aimed to set out clearly the rights and responsibilities of all Australians (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p. 2): We share this land with the first Australians who hold a unique position in our society. As a result of immigration we also share a wealth of cultures, histories and traditions. What unites us as a nation is our common identity—our first loyalty—to Australia. Australia expects certain commitments from all members of the community, regardless of their background:

• to share an overriding loyalty to Australia, its interests and future; • to accept the basic structures and principles of Australian society—the rule of law, tolerance, equality of opportunity, Parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as the national language, and equality of the sexes and races; and • to acknowledge that the right to express one’s own culture and beliefs involves a reciprocal responsibility to accept the right of others to express their views and values; and Australia makes these commitments in return: • to ensure equality of access, opportunity and participation in the social, political and economic life of Australia, unimpeded by barriers of race, ethnicity, culture, religion, language, gender or place of birth; • to ensure that our institutions, especially government processes and programs, reflect and respond to Australia’s cultural diversity in a fair and equitable way; • to ensure that the potential contribution of all Australians is recognised; and

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• to provide opportunities for all Australians to acquire and develop proficiency in English and in languages other than English and to develop cross cultural understanding. Our Nation also endorsed the three key principles of the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia, “Cultural Identity,” “Social Justice” and “Productive Diversity” (formerly known as economic efficiency (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p. 3). Referring to productive diversity, Our Nation highlighted the fact that Australia’s multiculturalism might pay off, that its diversity could be used to its advantage in its trade and business relations with the rest of the world, in particular, the Asia-Pacific region, what Our Nation called the “multicultural dividend”: The challenge for today is to ensure that Australia gains every possible competitive edge by nurturing and utilising the skills of its culturally diverse workforce. By building on the solid foundations of the past decade, Australia is poised to reap both the economic and the social dividend of being a tolerant and inclusive multicultural society. (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p. 5)

It promised to introduce or expand various anti-racist measures, in particular, in the areas of education and sport (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p. 9). It emphasised creating greater representation of Australia’s cultural diversity in the programming and content of commercial television (which government could only encourage), as well as that of the ABC and SBS. It included a commitment to seek greater representation of diversity on Commonwealth government appointed boards and advisory bodies—aiming for 15 per cent from Indigenous and non-English speaking backgrounds by 2000. As part of the social justice agenda, it expressed a commitment to targets for employment in the Australian Public Service of 2 per cent for Indigenous people and 15 per cent for NESB people (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p. 16). This emphasis on “equal outcomes,” proportionate to population representation of Indigenous and ethnic groups, rather than simply equal

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opportunities and “equal access” to government services and resources, alarmed critics like Bob Birrell, who saw the report and proposed government agenda as “doctrinaire and proselytising” compared to previous federal government approaches to multiculturalism (Birrell 1996; quotes at p. 24 and p. 23). Despite Birrell’s criticism, it should be noted that Australian Public Service targets had already been met for Indigenous people by December 1994, and already stood at 14.7 per cent for NESB.  However, it was also noted that NESB people were seriously underrepresented in key areas such as all three levels of government (only 6.7 per cent), the judiciary (6.7 per cent) and police force (11.1 per cent), according to 1991 ABS Census data. Our Nation did not, however, refer to imposed quotas for these sectors (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p. 16). Birrell (1996, p. 26) criticised these aspirations and developments as representing “a significant intrusion of ethnic criteria into Australian employment conditions,” developments he saw as already set in train by the earlier Hawke government’s “equal employment opportunity” legislation for the Australian Public Service first established in 1984 through changes to the Public Service Act (Birrell 1996, p. 25). Compared with the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia, the Keating government’s Our Nation had a stronger emphasis on the place of Indigenous people in multicultural discourse and in the future of Australian national identity (reflective of the broader Keating agenda in Indigenous affairs). It was notable in this respect that the Keating government, accepting the recommendation from Multicultural Australia, The Next Steps, Beyond 2000, directed the BIMPR to introduce a research focus on the impact of Indigenous, migrant and refugee experiences in shaping Australian national identity (Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs 1996, p. 10).

Conclusion: Further Critiques of Multiculturalism As explained in this chapter, the embrace of multiculturalism by the Hawke and later Keating governments was never uncritical. And, as with the preceding Fraser government, it was always argued for in the context

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of a commitment to broad national cohesion, an overriding loyalty to Australia, and within a common liberal democratic and legal framework. As discussed in this book’s Introduction, Joppke (2004) argued that Australian multiculturalism had first retreated during the Labor governments of the 1980s and 1990s. As I have shown above, there is considerable evidence that goes against this argument, especially after 1985. The Hawke and Keating governments refurbished rather than retreated from multiculturalism. As with the Fraser government’s multicultural policy, the Hawke and Keating policies attracted critiques from both left and right. Early critics from the left included Foster and Stockley (1984) who argued that the recently elected Hawke government seemed to be following the same conservative path as the Fraser government before it, placing “ethnicity” within a framework of “cohesion” and in the main ignoring the class aspects of ethnic experience and of multiculturalism (Foster and Stockley 1984, p.  10). This was a familiar critique of “cultural pluralism” as a conservative ideology aimed to stifle more radical ethnic rights claims, pioneered by Andrew Jakubowicz (1981b) in his critique of the Fraser government’s multicultural policies, as discussed in Chap. 2. In a later work, Foster and Stockley (1988) raised the question of whether the “corporatism” of the Hawke government might have spilled over into non-economic policy areas, like ethnic affairs. They argued that corporatism meant that there could be a disjuncture between public rhetoric and actual decision-making behind the scenes between major players: “could ethnic/multicultural issues be downgraded substantively while on the surface and in the rhetoric, lip service continues to be paid to the promotion of multiculturalism?” (Foster and Stockley 1988, p. 35). They claimed that the “consensus” approach of the Hawke government itself seemed to “contradict the idea of accepting cultural diversity, especially within the current stress on maintaining Australia’s social cohesiveness” (Foster and Stockley 1988, p. 36; their emphasis). A prominent left critique of multiculturalism was produced by Castles et al. in their best-selling book Mistaken Identity (first published in 1988). Reflecting on the development of multiculturalism in the Hawke government era, this book homed in on the nationalist aspects of multiculturalism, arguing that this nationalism made multiculturalism a regressive

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ideology. Castles et al. (1988) saw multiculturalism as a “necessary ideology” fitting the ethno-cultural diversity of Australia, and to the extent that it attempted to define the nation in “non-nationalistic, non ethnocentric terms” it was “progressive.” But it was also “regressive,” in two main respects. First, it was a conservative ideology that, through its “affirmative celebration of being colourfully different,” trivialised and obfuscated major cleavages and inequalities in Australian society, based on class, ethnicity, race (“structural racism”) and gender (Castles et al. 1988, p.  13). Importantly, multiculturalism as ideology drew attention away from the continuing exclusion of Aborigines, and the deep-seated racism that was still entrenched in Australian society. Second, and this was central to the whole thesis of Mistaken Identity, multiculturalism was regressive because it did not question the importance of any form of national identity, or of the need to draw boundaries around the nation. Australian multiculturalism was problematic because it situated multiculturalism as part of Australian national identity: The step beyond multiculturalism is the transcending of national identity, the denial of its necessity, the recognition that through the crisis of modernity we are now all in the same boat—economically, ecologically and politically. Human identity must become transnational. (Castles et al. 1988, p. 13) I will return to this critique and challenge it in Chap. 5, where I take up the theme of the relationship between multiculturalism and national identity. Other critiques from the left appeared later, and focused upon the “economic efficiency” and “productive diversity” agendas of the Hawke and Keating governments, seen as forms of neo-liberalism that sought to exploit diversity (Hage 1998; see also Bertone and Leahy 2003). As the 1990s wore on, one of the new influences shaping these left critiques of multiculturalism was the burgeoning of “whiteness” studies. This involved a very particular critique of “liberal” multiculturalism shaped more by a critique of colonialism, racism and nationalism, than by Marxist class analysis of the earlier period. It repeated older left critiques of multiculturalism’s neglect of race but placed an even greater emphasis on the ways that multiculturalism obscured the workings of race, placed “Anglo-Celts” at the centre of the national experience (while claiming to

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do otherwise) and continued to restrict and police the cultures of others by deciding on what was acceptable and unacceptable expression of cultural difference (see Stratton 1998; Stratton and Ang 1998). One of the leading figures of this critique was the anthropologist Ghassan Hage who, during the 1990s, wrote of a discourse of “Anglo decline” to be found among opponents of multiculturalism and multiethnic immigration (Hage 1994). In such works Hage coupled the critique of opponents of immigration and multiculturalism with critique of multiculturalism’s supporters. Multiculturalism was not the antidote to racism and assimilation that it purported to be; rather, it did little to challenge the power and centrality of Anglo-Celts (Hage 1994). The approach and focus was extended in his widely cited book White Nation (1998), where, while he also dealt with “white worriers” and the “discourse of Anglo decline,” he aimed as much of his critique at “white” supporters of multiculturalism. While this book was published when John Howard was in power, and in the context of the rise of Hansonism (discussed in Chap. 4), the critique of multiculturalism was wide-ranging, covering the Fraser, Hawke and Keating years of government. A key criticism was of the discourse of “tolerance.” It was the language of tolerance that so characterised historical accounts of the emergence of multiculturalism, as a kind of enlightenment from the racism of white Australia and the intolerance for difference of the assimilation period. But “tolerance,” argued Hage, always involved speaking from a position of power: to tolerate implied that one was denying oneself the privilege of being intolerant. It implied choice and moral superiority on the part of the tolerant. The line of attack in White Nation was mainly on government policy and “governmental” discourses—whether by politicians, policy makers or ordinary concerned “white” Australians. Hage (1998) claimed that in speaking and thinking about non-white “others,” “white nationalists” “governed” their nation and sought to control national space. They took up a subject position as the true owners and representatives of the “white” nation. Adopting French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s approach to cultural capital and social fields, Hage argued that people from different ethnic backgrounds were able to gather up Australian national cultural capital, to the extent that they were able to approximate the language and appearance codes associated with a fantasy of whiteness. But Anglo-

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Celtic Australians retained a powerful grip on the whiteness so central to the Australian nation. Seeing themselves as central to the nation, they therefore saw themselves as legislators who had the right to decide what was good for the nation. Turning his attention to “white” supporters of multiculturalism, Hage criticised them also for their domination of others, through ideological, cultural and political processes. In their white nationalist “tolerance” of non-white others they shared with explicit white racists the same underlying structural relationship of dominance of non-white others. They occupied a position of governmentality of the nation and of all who resided within it. Hage also criticised those “cosmo-multiculturalist” white Australians who engaged in a discourse of cultural enrichment through interaction with other cultures and ethnicities, because, he argued, this too was underpinned by a white nation fantasy that “still positions him or her in the centre of the Australian cultural map” (Hage 1998, p. 118). Similarly, he criticised the “productive diversity” agenda that saw Australia’s ethnic and cultural diversity as a resource that Australia could draw upon in its exchanges with the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. This strand of multiculturalism and multicultural policy, he argued, positions ethnic diversity and ethnic communities as useful for mainstream, white Australian society. As with the other left-wing critiques discussed in this book, it is difficult to know what Hage supported at the level of government policy on multiculturalism. As Hodge and O’Carroll (2006) have argued in their much more celebratory account of multiculturalism, Borderwork in Multicultural Australia, this is a general problem with left-wing critiques that, in emphasising the negative at the expense of the positive, fail to suggest any constructive way forward, either for governments or for people more generally. While these left critiques gained influence among sociologists and cultural theorists, more important for public debate was a gathering storm of critique from the right, given new impetus after Blainey’s 1984 intervention (discussed earlier). Unlike Knopfelmacher’s critique (discussed in Chap. 2), in All for Australia Blainey (1984) had criticised not only multicultural policies—which he saw as undermining the general public’s acceptance of immigration, that it had at least tolerated under

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assimilation—but also the level of Asian immigration itself. As noted previously, Knopfelmacher found Asian immigration perfectly acceptable, even that such immigrants were desirable, as long as Australia also assimilated them into an “Anglomorph” society. Despite his protestations that his position was moderate, Blainey took a more extreme view. Blainey claimed to accept Asian immigration (as long as it did not run “ahead of public opinion”), refugees and a “moderate, tolerant and articulate” form of multiculturalism, and stressed that he was against the return of the White Australia Policy (Blainey 1984, pp. 31–33). But he also argued for the right of governments and nations to decide on their ethnic makeup, which they could legitimately control through immigration (Blainey 1984, p. 55). Multiculturalism was contributing to a dangerous game, he argued, creating the conditions for possible future ethnic conflict by promoting ethnic cultures and differences. Most multicultural societies do not work, he claimed, and multiculturalists always underplayed or denied the negatives while extolling the positives (Blainey 1984, pp. 170–171). However, Blainey was against not only current multicultural policies but also the emergence of a demographically multicultural society, brought about by continued, non-ethnically-discriminatory immigration. The logic of this argument was that even if Australia abandoned its multicultural policies, and demanded assimilation of immigrants, some immigrants, such as those from Asia, if their numbers were too high, would be destabilising for the society. He referred to “the dangers inherent in a multiracial society” (Blainey 1984, p. 46). He claimed that the current immigration policy was: … forsaking our historical experience for the sake of a nimble dream. It ignores the lesson provided by so many lands—from Fiji to Malaysia, from Britain to South Africa—that a multicracial, multicultural society has many pitfalls. (Blainey 1984, p. 52) He also argued that allowing in too many immigrants from very different racial and cultural backgrounds threatened to transform the historical Australian nation and culture, and that old Australians had a legitimate right to reject this: People are … entitled to inquire whether the distinctive character of their nation—and some of its greatest achievements—will remain if

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people from very different cultures are encouraged to come and, as far as possible, to maintain their own cultures. (Blainey 1984, p. 154) Echoing Chipman’s earlier critique (discussed in Chap. 2), it was argued by some critics that “multiculturalists” despised Australian culture, especially its British heritage. Important conservative critiques along these lines were published in Quadrant, sometimes in essays that combined this with critique of Aboriginal affairs (including what became known as “black armband” history that over-emphasised negative aspects of Australia’s past) and a general critique of political correctness (see, e.g. Blainey 1993; Hirst 1991, 1993, 1995; Partington 1988). Geoffrey Partington, for example, argued that young people must be taught to accept the basic legitimacy of Australia’s institutions and its basic legitimacy as a society in the Asia-Pacific region against those who saw it as an intruder: “Worst of all is the systematic denigration of almost all the central cultural and political heritage of Australia and of the societies of which it forms a part” (Partington 1988, p. 34). In a lecture critiquing the Hawke government’s handling of the planning for the 1988 Bicentenary celebrations, Blainey (1985, p. 47) claimed that: The multicultural lobby has little respect for the history of Australia between 1788 and 1950. In the eyes of multicultural supporters, Australia was a desert between 1788 and 1950 because it was populated largely by people from the British Isles and because it seemed to have a cultural unity, a homogeneity which is the very antithesis of multiculturalism. John Hirst (1993) argued that “multiculturalists” distorted Australian history. They got it wrong because, in focusing on contributions from diverse ethnic sources, they failed to give enough, or even any, emphasis to the creation of the core institutions and values upon which survival of a cohesive Australian nation depended: egalitarianism, liberal and secular democracy, and a strong predilection for social harmony. Histories that emphasised the multicultural contribution to Australia underestimated or denied the central importance of British history and traditions to Australia. Good history recognised that there had not been an “equal” contribution to the formation of Australia and its culture, but a hierarchy of influences, starting with the English, moving through the Irish and Scots and only later including more diverse ethnic sources in a minor development and elaboration.

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In an earlier paper “Australia’s Absurd History: A Critique of Multiculturalism,” Hirst (1991) had attacked multiculturalists for caricaturing pre-Second World War Australia as an inward looking, racist Anglo-Celtic nation that was only transformed into a more tolerant multicultural society because of the influx of ethnically diverse immigrants who brought tolerance to Australia. This was “absurd” because it did not recognise that it was because a tolerant Australian society already existed that Australia was able to accept ethnically diverse immigration in a profoundly peaceful way. Hirst argued that because Australia had to confront the issue of ethnic diversity in the past (i.e. English, Irish and Scots), even if on a more limited scale than is evident today, Australian political culture had already developed the capacity to handle diversity, long before the mass migrations after the Second World War. Australians had found ways to accommodate and defuse ethnic and religious differences at the level of the public culture by separating church from state, ensuring public recognition of religious equality, by providing non-religious public education and by fostering civil society organisations which did not distinguish between the religious or ethnic backgrounds of members—for example, trade unions, mechanics institutes, sporting clubs, friendly societies and schools of arts which ran libraries and public halls. It was these capacities, especially for tolerance, Hirst argued, that Australians drew upon to maintain a cohesive society as the population became more ethnically diverse in the late twentieth century (see also Hirst 1995, 2002). In addition, again continuing Chipman’s theme, there were arguments that multiculturalism involved incredible waste of public money, for purposes like preserving outdated cultures, promoting separatism and impeding assimilation. Graeme Campbell, former ALP federal MP and member for Kalgoorlie co-wrote a book in which it was claimed that: Any fair minded person who looks closely at this policy [multiculturalism] in practice will find it deeply corrupt. It has not only swallowed up millions of dollars in intellectually corrupt research, bureaucratic funding and attempts at ethnic bribery, but promotes a multiplicity of often mutually hostile, narrow, ethnic nationalisms. It encourages migrants to fight the battles of the old world anew on our shores. (Campbell and Uhlmann 1995, p. 2)

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Australian Chamber of Commerce economist Stephen Rimmer claimed that a shady “multicultural lobby” made up of “policy makers, ethnic leaders, bureaucrats and sections of the media” (Rimmer 1991, p. 3) carefully controlled debate on immigration and multiculturalism, and deliberately hid the social and economic costs of the policy from the public. Rimmer claimed that the gross cost of multicultural policy to the Australian economy was 6.9 billion dollars per year in the 1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s (Rimmer 1991, p.  57), and that the three levels of government spent approximately 2 billion per year on the policy (Rimmer 1991, p.  11). These claims about costs were wildly exaggerated according to others (Jupp 2007; Theophanous 1995, pp. 152–153). Rimmer also made the claim that multiculturalism contributed to organised crime and terrorism by causing isolation of ethnic groups from mainstream society, and encouraging foreign connections and loyalties (Rimmer 1991, pp. 43–47). Yet another criticism, a continuation of Knopfelmacher’s argument, was that government promotion of the ideal of multiculturalism threatened Australian national cohesion. As Cooray (1986, p. 28) put it in a Quadrant essay titled “Multiculturalism in Australia: Who Needs It?,” “do we want an Australian culture or a collection of distinct ethnic cultures?” The great danger was that multicultural argument and policy was sowing seeds of communal discord. Along with historians and other commentators who had criticised Australia’s historical and contemporary treatment of Aborigines, multiculturalists had, according to Geoffrey Partington (1988), stimulated a “severe crisis of legitimacy in Australia.” Multiculturalists threatened Australia’s major institutions because they wanted to change them in response to Australia’s post-Second World War ethnic diversity. Instead, the emphasis should still be to assimilate everyone, no matter what their background, into the one shared Australian culture and to preserve Australia’s national institutions. This conservative critique of multiculturalism was well developed by the time that the Keating government lost power and was replaced by the conservative government led by John Howard, in March 1996. Apart from the concern with public waste, it involved an emphasis not upon specific policies and programmes but upon more symbolic and cultural issues, to do with nationality, cohesion, loyalty to Australia and supposed

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societal fragmentation. These themes had, of course, already been present in the early conservative critiques discussed in the previous chapter. Elements of this critique had been taken up by the Howard-led opposition in the late 1980s, and these elements were again emphasised, initially in more muted form, as the Howard-led opposition campaigned against the Keating government in 1995 and in the lead up to the March 1996 federal election. It is to the Howard period of government, and the fate of multiculturalism during those years, and beyond, that I turn in the next chapter.

References Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs. 1988. Towards a National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia: A Discussion Paper, September 1988, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra. Australia. Committee of Review of Migrant and Multicultural Programs and Services [Chair: James Jupp]. 1986. Don’t Settle for Less: Report of the committee for Stage 1 of the Review of Migrant and Multicultural Programs and Services. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Australia. Office of Multicultural Affairs. 1996. Our Nation: Multicultural Australia and the 21st Century: The Government’s Response to the Report of the National Multicultural Advisory Council ‘Multicultural Australia: The Next Steps, Towards and Beyond 2000’. Canberra: The Office of Multicultural Affairs. Bertone, S., and M. Leahy. 2003. Multiculturalism as a Conservative Ideology: Impacts on Workforce Diversity. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources 41(1): 101–115. Betts, K. 1988. Ideology and Immigration: Australia 1976 to 1987. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. ———. 1992. Australia’s Distorted Immigration Policy. In Multicultural Australia: The Challenges of Change, ed. D.  Goodman, D.J.  O’Hearn, and C. Wallace-Crabb, 149–177. Melbourne: Scribe. Birrell, B. 1996. Our Nation: The Vision and Practice of Multiculturalism Under Labor. People and Place 4(1): 19–27. Birrell, R., and K. Betts. 1988. The Fitzgerald Report on Immigration Policy: Origins and Implications. The Australian Quarterly 60(30): 261–274.

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Blainey, G. 1984. All For Australia. North Ryde: Methuen Haynes. ———. 1985. They View Australia’s History as a Saga of Shame. Annual Community Lecture, Sponsored by Mt Eliza Uniting Church, 4 October 1985. In Blainey Eye on Australia: Speeches and Essays of Geoffrey Blainey, ed. G. Blainey, 46–50. Melbourne: Schwartz & Wilkinson, 1991. ———. 1993. Drawing Up a Balance Sheet of Our History. Quadrant 37(7–8): 10–15. Bradbury, D. 2003. The Institutions of Governance: Parliament, the Executive, the Judiciary and Law Reform. In The Hawke Government: A Critical Retrospective, ed. S.  Ryan, and T.  Bramston, 381–395. North Melbourne: Pluto Press Australia. Burrell, D., and L. Boylen. 1988. Libs Fall out Over Howard’s Asian Stand. The Australian Financial Review, August 11. Burrell, S., and R. Reid. 1988. Liberal Policy Vague Over Asian Immigration. The Australian Financial Review, August 23. Campbell, G., and M. Uhlman. 1995. Australia Betrayed. Victoria Park, Western Australia: Foundation Press. Castles, S., M. Kalantzis, B. Cope, and M. Morrissey. 1988. Mistaken Identity. Multiculturalism and the Demise of Australian Nationalism. Sydney: Pluto Press. Chipman, L. 1980b. The Menace of Multiculturalism. Quadrant 24(10): 3–6. Clyne, M. 1997. Language Policy in Australia—Achievements, Disappointments, Prospects. Journal of Intercultural Studies 18(1): 63–71. Committee of Review of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs [Chair: Moss Cass]. 1983. Report to the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, November, 1983. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies [Chair: Stephen Fitzgerald]. 1988. Immigration: A Commitment to Australia. The Report of the Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Cooray, L.J.M. 1986. Multiculturalism in Australia: Who Needs It? Quadrant 30(4): 27–29. Curran, J.  2006. The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press. Fincher, R. 2001. Immigration Research in the Politics of an Anxious Nation. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19: 25–42. Forrest, J., and K. Dunn. 2006. “Core” Culture Hegemony and Multiculturalism: Perceptions of the Privileged Position of Australians with British Backgrounds. Ethnicities 6(2): 203–230.

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Foster, L., and D.  Stockley. 1984. Multiculturalism: The Changing Australian Paradigm. Clevedon, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. ———. 1988. Australian Multiculturalism: A Documentary History and Critique. Clevedon, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Fozdar, F., and B. Spittles. 2009. The Australian Citizenship Test: Process and Rhetoric. The Australian Journal of Politics and History 55(4): 496–512. Hage, G. 1994. Anglo-Celtics Today: Cosmo-Multiculturalism and the Phase of the Fading Phallus. Communal/Plural 4: 41–78. ———. 1998. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Sydney: Pluto Press. Hawke, B. 1984. Speech by Bob Hawke at the Opening of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council of Australia headquarters. Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library Archival Database, April 26. http://www.archivaldatabase.library.unisa.edu.au/detail/uuid%3AI413;jsessionid=BA422A3E9D98 9A6042B8EF6DA38E840D. Accessed 10 Feb 2010. ———. 1986. Government’s Position on Multiculturalism. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, August 22. Henderson, G. 1995. A Howard Government? Inside the Coalition. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins. Hirst, J.  1991. Australia’s Absurd History: A Critique of Multiculturalism. Quadrant 35(3): 20–27. ———. 1993. Australian History and European Civilisation. Quadrant 37(5): 28–38. ———. 1995. Who Tugged the Forelock? Australian Attitudes to Britain and Independence. Quadrant 39(11): 10–16. ———. 2002. Australia’s Democracy: A Short History. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Hodge, B., and J. O’Carroll. 2006. Borderwork in Multicultural Australia. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Jakubowicz, A. 1981b. State and Ethnicity: Multiculturalism as Ideology. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 17(3): 4–13. ———. 2009. New Groups and Social Cohesion in Australia. In Nations of Immigrants: Australia and the USA Compared, ed. J.  Higley, and J.  Nieuwenhuysen, with S.  Neerup, 115–131. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. ———. 2011. Playing the Triangle: Cosmopolitanism, Cultural Capital and Social Capital as Intersecting Scholarly Discourses About Social Inclusion and Marginalization in Australian Public Policy Debates. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal 3(3): 68–91.

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Jakubowicz, A. n.d. Cleaning Up the Mess? 1987—A New Agency in Prime Minister’s Department to Advise on Multicultural Policies. Making Multicultural Australia. http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/library/ media/Timeline-Commentary/id/117.An-office-for-multicultural-affairs. Accessed 21 Jan 2014. Jennett, C. 1988. Political Review. The Australian Quarterly 60(30): 360–383. Johnson, C. 2000. Governing Change: Keating to Howard. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press in Association with the API Network. Joppke, C. 2004. The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy. The British Journal of Sociology 55(2): 237–257. Jupp, J.  2007. From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Kalantzis, M. 2003. Immigration, Multiculturalism and Racism. In The Hawke Government: A Critical Retrospective, ed. S. Ryan, and T. Bramston, 311–324. North Melbourne: Pluto Press Australia. Keating, P. 1992. ‘Projecting Our Identity’, Speech at the Australian Book Publishers Association Awards, Sydney, June 26. In Advancing Australia: The Speeches of Paul Keating, Prime Minister, ed. M. Ryan, 39–43. Sydney: Big Picture Publications, 1995. ———. 1995. The Benefits of Diversity. In Advancing Australia: The Speeches of Paul Keating, Prime Minister, ed. M. Ryan, 263–271. Sydney: Big Picture. Kelly, P. 1992. The End of Certainty: The Story of the 1980s. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Liberal Party of Australia. 1988. Future Directions: It’s Time for Plain Thinking. Barton, ACT: Liberal, National. Melleuish, G. 1998. The Packaging of Australia: Politics and Culture Wars. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. National Multicultural Advisory Council. 1995. Multicultural Australia: The Next Steps, Towards and Beyond 2000: A Report of the National Multicultural Advisory Council, Volumes 1 & 2. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Office of Multicultural Affairs. 1989. National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia: Sharing Our Future. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Pakula, K. 1988. Howard Partly to Blame for Racists’ Attack, Says Sham-Ho. Sydney Morning Herald, December 7. Partington, G. 1988. Education for Citizenship. Quadrant 32(8): 29–35. Rimmer, S.J. 1991. The Cost of Multiculturalism. Belconnen, ACT: S. J. Rimmer.

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Sheldrake, P. 1987. Autonomy and Control of Statutory Authorities: The Case of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs. Australian Journal of Public Administration XLVI(3): 273–279. Steketee, M. 1988. Senior Liberal Says Rebel Should Leave. The Sydney Morning Herald, August 30. Stratton, J. 1998. Race Daze: Australia in Identity Crisis. Annandale: Pluto Press. Stratton, J., and I. Ang. 1998. Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Difference and National Identity in the USA and Australia. In Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity, ed. D. Bennett, 135–162. London and New York: Routledge. Tate, J. 2009. John Howard’s “Nation” and Citizenship Test: Multiculturalism, Citizenship and Identity. Australian Journal of Politics and History 55(1): 97–120. Theophanous, A. 1995. Understanding Australian Multiculturalism and Australian Identity. Melbourne: Elikea Books. Walsh, M. 1988. Howard Runs a Red Light in a Go-Slow Zone. Sydney Morning Herald, August 15. Watson, D. 2002. Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM. Milsons Point, NSW: Knopf.

4 Enduring in Practice if Not in Name? —Official Multiculturalism During and Beyond the Howard Government

The 11 years of the conservative Liberal-National Howard government (1996–2007) were difficult times for Australia’s multiculturalism. As noted in Chap. 3, Howard had been a critic of multiculturalism since the 1980s, and one of his main strategic moves against the Keating government once he became opposition leader (in 1995) was to claim that it had pandered to sectional interests (such as unions, ethnic lobbies, feminists and Aborigines), while ignoring the interests and concerns of the mainstream. Multicultural policy seemed to fit that charge. To his critics, Howard was never comfortable with the diverse society that had emerged in Australia after the Second World War, and hankered for the certainties, supposed homogeneity, Anglo superiority and uniformity of old White Australia (Dawson 2008; Hage 1998, 2003; Johnson 2000; Jayasuriya 2003, pp. 7–8). Pervasive as this view is among the left, it is a caricature of Howard’s position, and the position of his government, on multiculturalism. While Howard was critical of multiculturalism, he was not as uncomfortable with diversity as his critics (Johnson 2007) have suggested, and nor did he dismiss all multicultural ideas and meanings. Howard’s polarising effect, particularly for the left in Australia, has often obscured the continuities of multiculturalism during the Howard era of government. © The Author(s) 2017 A. Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8_4

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In this chapter I address the theme of the retreat of multiculturalism by examining official multiculturalism’s fate in Australia since the election of the Howard government. To what extent was there a retreat, and in what senses? As noted in the Introduction, Levey (2009) has argued that while there has been a global retreat of multicultural political rhetoric in recent times, this frequently conceals a broader continuity of multicultural policy in many countries. Thus, I will consider the issue of the retreat of multiculturalism in terms of both political rhetoric and institutions and policies. I look closely at the political language and commentary on multiculturalism of Howard and other Coalition government politicians. The symbolism of multiculturalism is an essential part of what multiculturalism is. In Australia’s case, it has implications for the ways that the diverse members of the population identify (or cannot identify) as Australian. To the extent that the Howard government de-emphasised the public language of multiculturalism, there was an important symbolic retreat from multiculturalism. In the final section of the chapter, I examine briefly the approach to multiculturalism of the Rudd (2007–2010) and Gillard (2010–2013) governments, which did not represent a significant departure from the Howard approach, until the Gillard government explicitly and publicly embraced multiculturalism in 2011, announcing the “People of Australia” policy and establishing a parliamentary inquiry into multiculturalism, migration and multicultural policy.

Howard’s Critique of Multiculturalism On different occasions since the 1980s, Howard criticised multiculturalism for its national divisiveness, denigration of “old Australia” and lack of direction. He defended the historical Australian nation against the charge that it had been racist and uninteresting before it was transformed by multi-ethnic mass immigration (Howard 1996a)—a claim made by new left intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s and by some multicultural activists in the 1970s and 1980s (for commentary and critique, see Betts 1999, Melleuish 1998). He was a protagonist in Australia’s “history wars,” arguing that many Australian historians had adopted a “black

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armband” view in which Australia’s history of racism and destruction of its Indigenous population had overshadowed its positive achievements, like its civil peace, political stability, continuous democracy, economic success and the development of an affluence and quality of life that was the envy of the world (Howard 1996a; Macintyre and Clarke 2003). As discussed in Chap. 3, Howard had provoked a race debate about Asian immigration after his public comments in 1988. It is a widely held view that Howard lost the leadership of his party in May 1989 because of his ill-judged comments about slowing down Asian immigration in the service of cohesion, and his stubborn refusal to publicly back down (Kelly 1992, Ch. 22; Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Henderson 1995). Just before regaining the Liberal Party leadership in 1995, in an interview for the Weekend Australian with journalist Greg Sheridan, Howard expressed regret about his 1988 comments about Asian immigration: “If they were seen by Australians of Asian descent as suggesting that I regarded them in any way as lesser Australians … then I regret that very much” ( in The Weekend Australian newspaper, 7 January 1995, cited and quoted in The Sunday Age, 8 January 1995; see also Megalogenis 2006a, p. 165; Brett 2003, p. 186). But Howard did not resile from his criticism of multiculturalism, or at least one version of it. Gerard Henderson has suggested that Howard’s early opposition to multiculturalism was subliminally related to his aversion to the Australian sectarianism that historically saw Protestants pitted against Catholics, which Howard had experienced within his own family (his mother being sectarian in her views). This Howard saw as a “ridiculous” division among all those who professed the same Christian faith. Unity was preferable to plurality if the emphasis on the latter led to differences and division (Henderson 1995, p.  26; see also Errington and Van Onselen 2007, p. 19). The nation was an important source of societal unity for Howard, and to the extent that he felt it was threatened or undermined by multiculturalism, he opposed multiculturalism. Howard felt strongly about multicultural critics who appeared to question the value of the Australian nation, for which he felt a powerful attachment. When Henderson interviewed Howard in 1989 about his strong opposition to multiculturalism, Howard explained:

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The objection I have to multiculturalism is that multiculturalism is in effect saying that it is impossible to have an Australian ethos, that it is impossible to have a common Australian culture. So we have to pretend that we are a federation of cultures and that we’ve got a bit from every part of the world. I think that’s hopeless. (quoted in Henderson 1995, p. 27)

The discussion of the development of official multiculturalism in the previous two chapters has established that this notion of a “federation of cultures” was never part of the mainstream official discourse. If Howard had a point in this claim about multiculturalism, then it was a claim that only really applied to some intellectuals and activists involved in broader debates about the nature of multiculturalism, and can hardly be levelled at Australia’s official brand of liberal multiculturalism. Howard’s attempt to reorient multiculturalism had an important symbolic dimension, aimed at various perceived anti-Australian antagonists. His expressed opposition to multiculturalism involved political positioning against Labor, as was evident in the earlier Future Directions policy of “One Australia” discussed in the previous chapter. It was a way of asserting his own vision of Australian nationalism, especially against that of Keating (see Howard 1995a), and against those critiques of Australia’s past and present from multicultural or Indigenous perspectives. But Howard’s vision of national identity, though having a strong traditionalist framework, was not a monoculturalist position, and neither was it a vision of white Australia. Like most politicians in the Australian mainstream, Howard accepted that “white Australia” was a thing of the past. While critical of multiculturalism, he never argued for a return to white Australia. His government’s commitment to large-scale immigration, from diverse source countries, should in itself show that the claim that Howard hankered for a white Australia is a red herring when trying to understand his relationship with multiculturalism. After losing the leadership of the Liberal Party in May 1989, Howard spent years focused on shaping the Coalition’s industrial relations policy (he was shadow minister for industrial relations from April 1990 to January 1995), wrote regular columns for News Limited and refined his own position within what became known as the “culture wars,” opposing the “political correctness” of Keating, Labor and the left-wing intelligentsia

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and championing the mainstream or ordinary Australians (Megalogenis 2006a; Errington and Van Onsolen 2007, Ch. 8). He also began developing a strategy to counter what he saw as the ALP’s distortions of Australia’s history. These “distortions” included Keating’s claims that the Liberals were subservient to Britain and not true Australian nationalists, and also the way that the ALP and its supporters tried to write the Liberal Party out of the history of successful immigration policy, and in ending the White Australia Policy. Howard, like other conservative politicians and commentators (the latter including Gerard Henderson), engaged in an ideological campaign of writings and speeches aimed at showing that it was the Liberal government, under Prime Minister Harold Holt, that ended the White Australia Policy in 1966, rather than Gough Whitlam and the ALP in 1973 (Brawley 1997).1 Howard’s views on multiculturalism did not change significantly during this period in opposition in the early 1990s. In 1991, for example, he wrote in reply to one of his constituents, who had asked for his views on multiculturalism, that his view was “that Australia made an error in abandoning its former policy of encouraging assimilation and integration in favour of multiculturalism” (quoted in Kalantzis 2005, p. 10). While he did not explicitly discuss multiculturalism in his series of “Headland speeches” during 1995 in the lead up to the March 1996 federal election, there was in some of these speeches an implicit critique of multiculturalism as one of the divisions that the Keating government had promoted and sought to benefit from. Multiculturalism was not mentioned by name in his first Headland speech on “The Role of Government,” but Howard (1995b) appealed to a “frustrated mainstream” who felt powerless as they watched “government decisions increasingly driven by the noisy, self-interested clamour of powerful vested interests with scant regard for the national interest,” and stressed that a Coalition government would strongly rectify this. In his fourth Headland speech “Politics and Patriotism,” the key theme was national identity (Howard 1995a). Here he admonished Keating for 1

In what was regarded by contemporaries as a powerful speech in parliament asserting the Liberal Party’s credentials on race and immigration, Howard had in August 1984 asserted that it was the “Liberal Party’s immigration minister, Harold Holt, who formally ended the White Australia Policy” (quoted in Errington and Van Onselen 2007, p. 113).

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attempting to politicise the national identity, and argued that the national identity was secure and belonged to the people, not politicians and governments. Australian national identity was basically decent and benign, its “abiding values” being “the spirit of tolerance, independence and inclusion” (Howard 1995a). Again, in this speech, there was no explicit critique of the supposed divisiveness of multiculturalism, in fact no mention of multiculturalism at all. A positive view of multiculturalism might have been implied for some listeners and readers of the speech when, discussing Australian “national character,” Howard noted that “successive waves of immigration have … beneficially shaped our identity” (Howard 1995a). More negatively, there was a nod to the critics of multiculturalism when he claimed that while Keating was prepared to criticise Australians who were proud of their British heritage, he would never dare to denigrate in such a way “people of any other culture of origin.” “If anyone else denigrated the cultural and historic ties of Australians from a background other than British,” Howard said, “the Prime Minister and his coterie would brand them with all types of labels” (Howard 1995a). The claim that multiculturalists denied or denigrated the British heritage was a staple of conservative anti-multiculturalism, and Howard clearly meant that those who denigrated anyone from a background other than British would be called racists, hinting at multicultural hypocrisy and the pervasiveness of “political correctness” during the Keating era. Carol Johnson, discussing the key division in Howard’s pre-1996 election rhetoric between the “mainstream” and “special interests,” argues that the Coalition left these terms “intentionally vague” in order to maintain the claim that Howard would govern “For All of Us,” as the key election strategy claimed, while also signalling to the “mainstream” that various “special interests,” including ethnic ones, would have less prominence under a Howard government (Johnson 2000, p. 40). This is a convincing reading of the strategy, but less convincing is Johnson’s argument that Howard was engaged in promoting a “revenge of the mainstream” that involved encouraging Anglo-Celts to reassert their preeminence, their centrality, while putting other identities in their place as “special interests” (Johnson 2000, p. 42). Johnson assumes that in his conception of “the mainstream” Howard was thinking predominantly of “AngloCelts.” In an interview in 2002 with Australian newspaper journalist

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George Megalogenis, Howard suggested a much broader concept of the mainstream, when he spoke of people from various migrant backgrounds dissolving into a broad mainstream where no particular ethnic group lined up with any political party. He had Anglo-Celt and non-AngloCelt supporters and detractors: I don’t find any different reaction to me as Prime Minister as I move around the country from people according to their ethnic background, I mean some of my strongest supporters are Anglo-Celtic conservatives, Italian conservatives, Greek conservatives, Chinese conservatives … [P]robably some of my fiercest critics would be more Anglo-Celtic than non AngloCeltic (laughs). (Megalogenis 2002)

The Coalition’s active courting of ethnic groups before the 1996 election is discounted by Johnson as part of a strategy of “playing the race and ethnicity card much more subtly than in the 1988 debate” (Johnson 2000, p. 43). This underestimates the extent to which the Howard government, like the Hawke and Keating governments before it, continued to promote the benefits of diversity for Australia, and also the extent to which it supported, or at the very least accepted, a version of multiculturalism. When Henderson interviewed Howard in 1995, Howard professed to be not against multiculturalism in all its senses. He was in favour of individual expressions of diversity, including cultural diversity, but was worried if this was only emphasised, and at the expense of unity. He described himself as a “very strong multiracialist” and said that “If multiculturalism means that there should be respect for everybody’s own individual cultural identity then I’m totally supportive.” He nevertheless also expressed the belief that people had become too much inclined to see themselves as members of sub-groups rather than “primarily as Australians” (Henderson 1995, p. 27). To claim, as Johnson does, that Howard wanted Anglo-Celts to assert their centrality, and to “police” those Anglo-Celts who were not prepared to do so by calling them “politically correct” seems to put an all too predictable racial spin on Howard’s position, rather than considering his position on its own merits (see Judith Brett’s earlier critique along these lines, in Brett 2003, Ch. 9). It also ignores the counter-evidence, including the Howard government’s continuing, though partial, policy commitment to multiculturalism.

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The policy platform that the Howard-led Coalition took to the 1996 election, Policies for a Coalition Government: For All of Us, included policy statements on immigration, multicultural affairs and settlement. There was a difference between the Coalition position on immigration and that of Labor, with the Coalition pledging that it would cut back on family reunion and increase the proportion of skilled migration. But these policy statements gave no indication of opposition to the broad thrust of multicultural policy, and even referred to Australia as a “multicultural nation.” The Coalition pledged its support for many already existing multicultural programmes, including expanding the role of SBS, and promised new funding in some areas (Liberal Party of Australia, National Party of Australia 1996). Though Howard’s past criticism of Asian immigration did feature in the ALP’s campaign, Howard had done much grassroots work to repair his image with Asian Australians, including the many in his own electorate of Bennelong (Henderson 1995, p. 143); and the Coalition disendorsed Liberal candidate for Oxley in Queensland Pauline Hanson after she made racially disparaging remarks in an interview in the Courier Mail (Williams 1997, pp. 18–19, and pp. 244–251). Multiculturalism was not a major area of policy debate during the 1996 election campaign, though it was believed by Keating’s Labor advisers to be an issue of electoral concern, and they tried to push him to make multiculturalism “less threatening” (Williams 1997, pp. 173–174). The Australian Election Study survey after the 1996 federal election also indicated that “immigration” was an issue on which the Coalition achieved their greatest lead in popular approval over Labor; however, multiculturalism was not included as a major issue in the survey (Goot 2004, p. 62), suggesting also that it had not been an issue of importance or as dividing the positions of the major parties. Nevertheless, in the immediate aftermath of its election victory, the new Howard government made changes that were widely interpreted as a strong attack on immigration and multiculturalism. In Howard’s first term of government he cut immigration to “the lowest … levels ever for a period of economic prosperity” (Kalantzis 2005, p. 13), scaled down multicultural policy and dismantled key multicultural agencies such as the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) (1987–1996) and the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research (BIMPR) (1989–1996).

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As was the case with changes to multicultural institutions and programmes in the early years of the Hawke government (discussed in Chap. 3), such changes cannot be simply read as indicating the rejection of multicultural policy. For example, it should be noted that OMA had already fallen out of favour during the Keating government, and had lost some of its resources and status. The Howard government had stated in policy before the 1996 election that it would be abolished. Howard initially scaled down OMA’s role and shifted it to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA), before abolishing it altogether.2 The Howard government abolished BIMPR in 1996. As noted in the last chapter, BIMPR had played an important research and consultative role, with a strong record of publications and hosting conferences, and building strong networks in academic and ethnic communities (see Fincher 2001). Jupp (2007, p.  57, and pp.  74–75) lamented that the closure of BIMPR greatly reduced what had been Australia’s excellent research capacity in the study of immigration and its effects. Its critics argued that it had researched areas that were not relevant to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, that it was an advocate of immigration and multiculturalism and pushed subjective agendas, that it was a “creature of the Labor government,” and that its publications had been widely criticised as not having direct policy relevance and producing only vague recommendations (Parliamentary Service 1996; Jupp 2007). Ethnic communities and other critics viewed this closure, and more restrictive immigration policies including reduction in family reunion, a stronger emphasis on English language competency and reduction of welfare benefits for new settlers (see Fincher 2001), as indicative of the Howard government scaling down multiculturalism. But the Howard government’s neo-liberal and cost-cutting agenda also has to be considered as part of the explanation for these policy changes. The government argued that rather than scaling down it was making multicultural policy more efficient and the immigration programme more sustainable, and shoring up its public support. It pointed to its 2

On the other hand, the last head of OMA, Bill Cope, claims that the new Treasurer Peter Costello informed the Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock that multiculturalism was to be “zeroed,” and funds for the office were removed in the 1996 budget (Making Multicultural Australia n.d.a).

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renaming of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs as the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs as indicating its ongoing commitment to multiculturalism (Parliamentary Service 1996). Critics have pointed out, however, that the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs was consigned to the outer ministry, with its minister Phillip Ruddock outside Cabinet, until 1998 (Kalantzis 2005, p.  13). Significantly, and in this sense unlike the Hawke government’s actions after it closed AIMA, the Howard government did not engage in new multicultural institution-building. Reluctance to use the language and symbolism of multiculturalism is another matter. It was rumoured that in his initial period of government Howard banned the use of the term multiculturalism in the public service (Betts 2003, p. 187), and critics have noted that Howard avoided using the “M” word in public until the late 1990s, and only did so reluctantly after that (Jupp 2007, p. 52; Brett 2003, pp. 194–196). Howard’s initial refusal to publicly criticise Pauline Hanson’s political attacks on Aborigines, Asians and multiculturalism during and after the 1996 federal election was seen by many left-liberal critics as further evidence that Howard harboured racist views himself and was a supporter of white Australia and thus against multiculturalism and a diverse Australia (Gray and Winter 1997). After her election to the House of Representatives as an independent in 1996, her maiden speech to parliament and the subsequent spectacular rise of her One Nation Party, Hanson became a central and symbolic figure for those attacking multiculturalism and so-called political correctness. Hanson’s One Nation Party advocated a return to a protectionist, economically nationalist Australia, and attacked Aborigines and Aboriginal policies, immigration, Asians and multicultural policy and asylum seekers. Her inflammatory comments and speeches, and evidence of electoral support for her party, including gaining 23 per cent of the vote and 11 elected members in the 1998 Queensland state election, alarmed many. Some Australian commentators3 claimed that Australian 3 These commentators ranged from media figures, through politicians to academics. Prominent historian Henry Reynolds (1998) restricted his claims about racism to rural Queensland where, he argued, Hanson was very popular, and where nineteenth century style racism still prevailed. Popular left-wing newspaper and radio commentator Phillip Adams (1998) put Hanson’s popularity down

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racism seethed beneath the surface and that a considerable section of the public resented changes to Australia brought by immigration and globalisation more generally; Australian racism and white nationalism, they claimed, were on the rise. When Howard agreed to a Joint Parliamentary Statement, on 30 October 1996, confirming Australia’s commitment to non-discrimination based on race, colour, creed or origin, and its commitment to reconciliation with Australia’s Indigenous peoples, aimed at Pauline Hanson’s inflammatory comments, he insisted that multiculturalism not be included in the wording (Galligan and Roberts 2004, p. 93; Ang and Stratton 2006, p. 24). Nevertheless, after 1996 Howard, alongside other conservative, Labor, Australian Democrat and Green politicians, and together with intellectuals, and much of the media, publicly repudiated Hanson’s views. At the 1998 federal election, the major political parties worked together to ensure that One Nation would return to the political wilderness, and the party dwindled afterwards. There was also a concerted public protest against One Nation with large, sometimes violent demonstrations staged outside public meetings of Hanson’s party as it endeavoured to attract members and explain its policies (Brett 2003, pp. 191–195; Jupp 2007, Ch. 7).

The Howard Government’s Multicultural Policy Consistent as Howard was in his personal doubts and public criticisms of multiculturalism, it is important to note that the critique and approach to multiculturalism was not always the same throughout 11 years of government. In fact, for periods of the Howard government after 1998, the approach was more conciliatory towards multiculturalism. Even before that, one can find evidence of multicultural ideas within Howard’s public speech. In his first year as prime minister, Howard was invited to submit his views on multiculturalism to a new website, “Making Multicultural Australia.” His “Statement,” dated 3 December 1996 was brief and, notably, did not use the word “multicultural”: to a resurgence of racism, spurred by grievances about changes to Australia over the previous two decades (see also Hage 2003).

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The Coalition is committed to maintaining and further enhancing Australia’s unique cultural diversity within the framework of national unity. I believe in a diverse society and it is clear migrant communities have contributed greatly to the enrichment of our country and our lives. Australia is a tolerant, compassionate and cohesive society. One of the reasons is that our migration program has brought people from many cultures and backgrounds to Australia. The diversity together with an overriding commitment to Australia has given us strength. It is not a weakness. We are a nation that has demonstrated our credentials so far as the successful settlement of people from all around the world is concerned. Our achievements entitle us to be extremely proud about our past and confident about our future. (Howard 1996b)

Except that Howard did not use the term multiculturalism, this statement reiterated official definitions of multiculturalism since the late 1970s. It is important to note what else was not there. There was no evidence of any fear of cultural difference. In fact, unlike his earlier critiques of multiculturalism, there was a commitment to “further enhancing Australia’s unique cultural diversity.” The fact that Howard added that this enhancement of cultural diversity would occur “within the framework of national unity” was also in accordance with official multiculturalism since the late 1970s, and also accords with the arguments of one of the strongest contemporary proponents of multiculturalism, including “communitarian multiculturalism,” the British sociologist Tariq Modood (2007). Modood has argued that to argue for strong multicultural identities makes no sense unless one also is willing to argue for strong national identities within which multicultural identities are experienced and imagined. In a speech at the launch of the National Multicultural Advisory Council’s issues paper, “Multicultural Australia: The Way Forward” on 11 December 1997, Howard included reflections on his own personal experiences of living in a diverse Australia, including “the experience one has of the friendships of one’s children, through their school and university, with people of vastly different ethnic and religious backgrounds but brought together in a very unselfconscious way as Australians.” Further, Howard made the point that Australia’s embrace of diversity did not simply involve “tolerance”:

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It is a rich, personal experience, and it’s very important that we take the opportunity, on occasions such as this, to say the simple uncomplicated things. To say that we believe, not only in tolerance—tolerance is a great quality—but, in a sense, it’s a passive thing. We believe in pro-active embrace of the diversity of our community. We believe in sharing the values and reaping the dividend of our diversity. (Howard 1997)

The words about tolerance being “too passive,” and that what was also needed was the pro-active embrace of diversity, were almost exactly the same as those spoken by Malcolm Fraser in his inaugural speech to AIMA in 1981 (Fraser 1981). And “reaping the dividend of our diversity” repeated the words of Keating at the Global Diversity Conference of 1995 (Keating 1995).4 One important Howard government initiative indicative of its support for multicultural ideas was the launching in 1998 of the Charter of Public Service in a Culturally Diverse Society, a new approach to access and equity accepted by all the state and territory governments. This Charter was aimed at ensuring that “cultural diversity considerations” were built into “the strategic planning, policy development, budgeting and reporting processes of government service delivery,” rather than being added on and addressed as “an after-thought” (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs 1998a, p. 1). From 1998 this Charter became the primary instrument for implementing access and equity principles, applying not only to government services but also to community-based and private sector services receiving government funding (Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs 2003, p. 33). A second multicultural initiative was the “Living in Harmony” community strategy, introduced by the Howard government in 1998 as the antiracism campaign it had promised during the 1996 election. This was developed and administered by the Department of Immigration and 4

Very pointedly, however, Howard did not use the word multiculturalism in the speech. Howard made use of the word “multicultural” only twice in the speech, first simply in using the portfolio title “Immigration and Multicultural Affairs” when thanking his Minister Phillip Ruddock for his efforts, and second when endorsing Ruddock’s earlier claim in a speech that Australia had been “a multicultural or a diverse society” for most of its history. He also used the word “multiculturality” once in the speech, and even then only as a possible alternative word for his obviously preferred “diversity.” By contrast, he used the words “diverse” or “diversity” 13 times in the speech.

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Multicultural Affairs, as one of its multicultural programmes. “Living in Harmony,” aimed at combating racism, reducing community conflicts and encouraging multicultural interaction, through a media strategy, funding community projects, a partnership programme between federal government and organisations for strategic projects to address racism and community cohesion issues (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs 1998b), and organising its annual “Harmony Day,” held for the first time on 21 March 1999. While criticised by some for its superficial cultural celebration and calls for unity (see Phillips 2010), it nevertheless involved a commitment to multiculturalism and supporting diversity; this was sustained from the late 1990s and extended after 2003 (Commonwealth of Australia 2003). After the 2001 election, Howard created a new portfolio of Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, and when asked why after previously avoiding use of the “m-word” he was now prepared to use it for a ministry, he responded that the term “had acquired a certain meaning and place in our society.” Explaining to a journalist his apparent conversion to multiculturalism, he said that “you have to go with the flow” (Steketee 2002). In a long interview with The Australian newspaper journalist George Megalogenis, Howard explained that his recent willingness to accept a version of multiculturalism was that its “sharper edge … is not there anymore,” that people, including himself, no longer felt that it meant that one had to repudiate an older, Anglo-Celtic Australia and cultural influence. People were generally accepting of diversity, especially when they understood that it did not mean that they had to reject the Australian past (Megalogenis 2002). The Howard government released two policy agendas on multiculturalism. The first was A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia in 1999 (Commonwealth of Australia 1999), in response to the report by the National Multicultural Advisory Council (chaired by Neville Roach) titled “Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1999). The second was the update to the 1999 agenda, covering the years 2003–2006 called Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity (Commonwealth of Australia 2003). Both of these national multicultural policies had much in common with earlier policies, including the Hawke government’s

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National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia, and both can be described as predominantly celebratory of the contribution of multicultural policy to the creation of a harmonious, productive and diverse Australian society and nation. The Howard government had appointed the National Multicultural Advisory Council in June 1997. Its terms of reference stated that it was to “advise the Minister on policies for further enhancing Australia’s unique culturally and linguistically diverse society,” including providing a report to the Minister advising on “a policy and implementation framework for the next decade, that is aimed at ensuring that cultural diversity is a unifying force for Australia.” The terms of reference relating to the report firmly emphasised the way that diversity was meant to contribute to cohesiveness and national unity, stressing that in constructing the report that the Committee “take account of the context emerging from wider Government directions, priorities and policies, including commitments to” “seek a socially cohesive, tolerant and harmonious nation united by common values, goals and aspirations” and “advance the interests of the wider community, and hence the national interest, as distinct from the special interests of sectional groups.” This latter point nodded towards conservative critiques of previous multicultural policy, that it rewarded ethnic groups at the expense of others, by handing out grants and favours. Other commitments were to the importance of individual choice and responsibility in public policy, to fair and open markets, to work with community groups to get the best out of cultural and linguistic diversity while reaffirming “the unifying values that Australians share,” and a basic acceptance of the values and principles contained in the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1997, pp. 11–13). In December 1997 the National Multicultural Advisory Council released an issues paper “Multicultural Australia: The Way Forward” and called for submissions. The issues paper was strongly supportive of multiculturalism, which it deemed mostly successful over the previous 25 years, but recognised that there had been doubts raised about aspects of the policy in the community and that it had been too often assumed to be a policy only aimed at migrants, especially those of non-English speaking background, when it should “become more inclusive by embracing

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and being relevant to all Australians” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1997, p. 2). After asserting that multicultural policies had made an important contribution to managing Australia’s diversity, the paper nevertheless raised as one of its questions whether we should use some other term: Is multiculturalism an appropriate term to describe a policy for managing cultural diversity, or has it outlived its usefulness? If the latter, what alternative term would you suggest? (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1997, p. 11)

The report arising from the issues paper, Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness, released in December 1999, asserted that Australia should retain the term multiculturalism to describe such policies, as there was no suitable alternative and it was now so well known in the community that it would be counter-productive to change it (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1999, p. 3). The report did however push the concept of “Australian multiculturalism” to better emphasise its specific Australian character and how it was meant to serve the cause of national unity, defining it as follows: Australian multiculturalism is a term which recognises and celebrates Australia’s cultural diversity. It accepts and respects the right of all Australians to express and share their individual cultural heritage within an overarching commitment to Australia and the basic structure and values of Australian democracy. It also refers to the strategies, policies and programs that are designed to:

• Make our administrative, social and economic infrastructure more responsive to the rights, obligations and needs of our culturally diverse population; • Promote social harmony among the different cultural groups in our society; • Optimise the benefits of our cultural diversity for all Australians. (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1999, p. 4, italics in original)

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Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century strongly endorsed the constructive role that multicultural policies and programmes had played in maintaining harmony in a culturally diverse society and argued that governments still had an important role to play in contributing to that harmony, in ensuring that everyone received a “fair go” and that Australia benefited from its diversity, through multicultural policy (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1999, p. 3). The Howard government’s December 1999 response to the report, A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia, accepted the Council’s definition of multiculturalism, affirmed the government’s ongoing support for multiculturalism (including use of the term) and presented a “plan of action,” involving facilitating partnerships within government departments through a “Diversity Australia” homepage, implementing a public information and education strategy to raise awareness of the benefits of cultural diversity, to dispel misinformation and damaging myths and to promote constructive “behaviour patterns and attitudes” in the service of harmony, to continue to use diversity management strategies, including private partnerships, to improve productivity and to promote an “outreach programme” aimed at encouraging harmonious relations between people and organisations from different cultural backgrounds (Commonwealth of Australia 1999, p. 9). A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia fully supported (or supported in principle) all of the report’s 32 recommendations. However, according to Jupp, the Howard government did not move to implement some of the most important recommendations, including more funding for advocacy of multiculturalism, that the government implement greater cultural diversity on government boards, agencies and workforces involved in delivering services and community contact, and that the government create an independent central coordinating agency for multiculturalism (see Jupp 2007, p. 95). In relation to the last point, it should be noted that while the government did establish a Council for Multicultural Australia with a 3-year term, this had a much less prominent and directional role than that recommended in the National Multicultural Advisory Council’s report Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1999, pp. 72–76).

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A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia argued that within the broad democratic framework of Australia, including rights and responsibilities, the aim was not to produce sameness but to allow individuals and groups to make their own contributions: We do not seek to impose a sameness on all our people. Nor do we seek to discourage the further evolution of the Australian culture which already includes the heritage of Indigenous Australians, our British and Irish settlers, our Australian-grown customs, and those of our more recently-arrived migrant groups. We are, in reality as well as by definition, a multicultural nation. (Commonwealth of Australia 1999, p. 6)

As suggested by its directions to the Council, the new agenda aimed to “ensure that our cultural diversity is indeed a unifying force for Australia” and “the achievement of enhanced community harmony and maximum benefits from our diversity, in the national interest” (Commonwealth of Australia 1999, p. 9), and provided its own version of the principles of multiculturalism: • Civic Duty, which obliges all Australians to support those basic structures and principles of Australian society which guarantee us our freedom and equality and enable diversity in our society to flourish; • Cultural Respect, which, subject to the law, gives all Australians the right to express their own culture and beliefs and obliges them to accept the right of others to do the same; • Social Equity, which entitles all Australians to equality of treatment and opportunity so that they are able to contribute to the social, political and economic life of Australia, free from discrimination, including on the grounds of race, culture, religion, language, location, gender or place of birth; and • Productive Diversity, which maximises for all Australians the significant cultural, social and economic dividends arising from the diversity of our population (Commonwealth of Australia 1999, p. 8). The Howard government’s second significant multicultural policy statement, Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity, released in 2003, is

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of particular interest in that it was formulated explicitly against the background of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, and the 2002 Bali bombings, as reflected in the three statements at the front, from Prime Minister Howard, from Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs Phillip Ruddock and from Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Gary Hardgrave. Referring to the updated agenda and the continuation of multicultural policies, Howard noted that “These actions are especially important given the tragic events of 11 September 2001 in the United States of America, and 12 October in Bali and the changed global environment in which we live.” In these three statements, multicultural policies were not seen as divisive, but as active contributors to economic success, unity and harmony.5 The updated agenda was guided by the four principles of multiculturalism announced in the New Agenda for Multicultural Australia—Civic Duty, Cultural Respect, Social Equity, and Productive Diversity—but these were translated into plain language as Responsibilities of all; Respect for each person; Fairness for each person; and Benefits for all (Commonwealth of Australia 2003, p.  6). There was a strong emphasis on using multicultural, community harmony and social cohesion policies to defend Australia in a context of enhanced terrorist threats (Commonwealth of Australia 2003, p. 7). Despite the Howard government’s adoption of an explicit multicultural agenda in 1999, many critics still saw Howard as anti-multiculturalist, and for some he (and his government) was even racist (Kuhn 2009). The Howard government’s increasingly harsh asylum seeker policies, especially in relation to those who arrived by boat, were according to critics, yet another indication that Howard opposed multiculturalism (see Steketee 2002). These policies were brought to international attention in 2001 by the Howard government’s dramatic intervention to prevent the Norwegian vessel MV TAMPA, carrying more than 400 rescued 5

Typically, again Howard did not use the word multicultural except when referring to the 1999 government agenda, preferring “diversity”: “In 1999, I announced the New Agenda for Multicultural Australia as a statement of the government’s multicultural policy. Over 3 years on, the government remains committed to nurturing our inclusive society with its proud record of community harmony. This new statement reaffirms the government’s commitment to promoting diversity.”

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asylum seekers, from landing on Australian shores. This action, and the subsequent “Pacific Solution” during which asylum-seeker boats were intercepted by the Australian Navy and asylum seekers delivered to offshore detention centres (Marr and Wilkinson 2003), was seen by critics as damning evidence of Australia’s reluctance to receive non-white immigrants, in this case Middle-Eastern and mainly Muslim. Asylum seekers who arrived by boat, once their refugee status was established, were only given temporary protection visas, and they had reduced access to welfare, services and family reunion provisions. The hard-line approach to asylum seekers proved electorally successful for the Howard government in 2001, though it was tempered in later years as public concerns were raised, particularly about the plight of detained women and children. There are many criticisms that can be levelled at this harsh regime, including that it was inhumane and that it was an exaggerated response to people arriving by boat, given the far greater burden of asylum seekers carried by much poorer countries. It may also be the case, as Soutphommasane argues, that politicising the asylum seeker issue and demonizing boat people, as has occurred since the 1990s, might have negative flow on effects for multiculturalism: in terms of distrust of immigrants more generally, in reducing social cohesion in a multicultural society and, through powerfully highlighting national sovereignty, encouraging “a form of national identity not inclusive of cultural diversity” (Soutphommasane 2012, p. 168). But the claim that it was antimulticulturalist, or racist in intention and/or approach, is asserted rather than convincingly argued by critics. In the context of panic about global terror, it seems likely that sections of the Australian public were expressing, in their overwhelming support for a tough approach to asylum seekers, some fears about Middle-Eastern and Muslim immigration (Marr and Wilkinson 2003; Jupp 2007, Ch. 10; Moran 2005, Ch. 5). But that does not prove that the Howard government was motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment in adopting this approach to asylum seekers. After all, it was the Keating government that introduced mandatory detention of asylum seekers in 1992 (Crock and Saul 2002), and at this time boat people from the Middle East were not an issue; and, since the 1970s, both conservative and Labor governments have felt pressure to act to stop significant flows of unauthorised boats

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arriving on Australia’s coastline. When the Howard government adopted increasingly harsh detention policies from the late 1990s, the motivation seemed to be the dramatic increase in numbers arriving on boats, long periods of onshore detention in overcrowded centres, contributed to by access to lengthy legal processes of review and appeal, and the public perception that Australia was losing control of its borders. The Howard government was by this time a strong supporter of a large and continued immigration programme and believed that through convincing the public that borders were controlled, it would shore up support for the immigration programme and the humanitarian refugee programme (Howard 2010, pp. 394–395). Tellingly, against those who make the racism and anti-multiculturalism claims, the mainstream immigration and refugee programmes continued as before under a non-discriminatory policy, and Australia’s Muslim population continued to grow. None of Australia’s major political parties advocated discriminating in immigration policy against Muslims, though the Howard government did from time to time single out Muslims when discussing immigrant groups that failed to integrate into the Australian way of life, and some Coalition MPs raised questions about Muslim immigration. The other main arguments for policy retreat of multiculturalism under Howard refer to the diminution of immigrant and multicultural institutions and services. Here, the case is stronger, as, apart from closing major multicultural institutions such as OMA and BIMPR as discussed earlier, the Howard government engaged in a policy of surveillance, control and budget cuts for many organisations previously associated with multiculturalism. The Howard government progressively reduced federal funding for Migrant Resource Centres that had been central to the local delivery of services and advice to migrants and which had strong input from representatives of ethnic communities. These and other ethno-specific organisations were increasingly required to compete for funding sources, and eventually had their core funding stripped under the new Settlement Grants Program introduced on 1 July 2006 (some Multicultural Resource Centres lost this core funding earlier, around 2003–2004 after the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs’ [DIMIA] Report of the Review of Settlement Services for migrants and Humanitarian Entrants, see Migliorino et al. 2013).

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The Howard government placed restrictions on skilled immigrants’ access to social security benefits in their first 2 years of residence, and together with the strong shift in emphasis towards skilled migration and away from family reunion (Betts 2003), some saw this as indicative of retreat from multiculturalism. It made changes to delivery of settlement services for immigrants (partly reflecting the shift to skilled migration), including the rationalisation of those services so that they focused on mainly humanitarian and refugee category immigrants who had been less than 5 years in Australia, the mainstreaming of some of those services and making greater use of mainstream services for migrants who had been in Australia longer than 5 years (Collins and Lalich 2004; Spinks 2009). There was decreased funding for the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) and less government consultation with it and other state and territory-based Ethnic Communities’ Councils (Migliorino et al. 2013). Finally, the retreat from reconciliation in Aboriginal affairs, reduction of the role of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and then its closure in 2005 and a shift back towards assimilation finally confirmed (in the eyes of critics) by the emergency intervention in the Northern Territory’s remote Aboriginal communities in 2007 were seen as further evidence of the Howard government’s general downscaling of multiculturalism (Altman and Hinkson 2007). Though the overall sense of a diminution of multiculturalism is apparent in the above, not all of these changes can necessarily be read as signalling the retreat of multiculturalism. For example, though settlement services and programmes were, in response to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs’ (DIMIA) 2003 review of settlement services, distinguished from strictly multicultural services and programmes, their continued funding and operation also made a contribution to multicultural agendas. Moreover, it should be stressed that the Howard government also retained important multicultural policies and programmes, even if it reduced funding for some of these, and shifted the emphasis of others, as can be seen from Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (later Department of Immigration and Citizenship) annual reports. For example, it retained the access and equity and productive diversity strategies. Its “Living in Harmony”

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strategy was sustained from the late 1990s and, as noted above, extended after 2003 (Commonwealth of Australia 2003); by 2011, including the period of the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments, it had funded over 450 community projects (Gambaro 2011). In 2001 it altered the Citizenship Act to allow Australian citizens who wanted to take up another citizenship the opportunity to retain their Australian citizenship, thus broadening the opportunity for dual citizenship. The arguments for dual citizenship in the 1980s and 1990s, including in government inquiries into citizenship, saw this as a recognition of Australia as a multicultural society and one whose citizens might have more than one allegiance and connections to different countries of social, cultural and economic activity. Dual citizenship was strongly and more uniformly supported by Australia’s ethnic communities in the 1990s, after earlier doubts for some communities, for example, from communist countries that had since renounced communism, evaporated (Millbank 2000). In sum, the cases for both the symbolic and policy retreats from multiculturalism under the Howard government between 1998 and 2005 have merit, but there is also counter-evidence suggesting broad continuity with the Hawke and Keating era. The Howard government’s multicultural agenda was more assimilative in character than that of the Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments, but it also continued to emphasise the benefits of diversity and also, at least, signalled that the national identity was multicultural and subtly evolving under the influence of different waves of immigrants. I will now turn to the more emphatic symbolic retreat from multiculturalism that did occur in the last 2 years of the Howard government.

The Symbolic Retreat from Multiculturalism: The Battle over “Core Values” As has been explained, Howard had always emphasised the importance of traditional Australian identity and values as the cement that contributed to Australian unity. Nevertheless, in the period between 1998 and 2005 the Howard government acquiesced, if unenthusiastically, to continued use of the term multiculturalism, and established its own recalibrated

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multicultural agenda and policy. This changed in the last 2 years of the Howard government when it decided to move more emphatically against the symbolism of multiculturalism, replacing it with concepts such as “social cohesion,” “citizenship” and “Australian” or “core” values. The central driver of this change of direction was the ongoing issue of global Islamist terrorism and concerns over small pockets of alleged immigrant separatism. These two phenomena were brought together dramatically with the London Underground terrorist attacks on 7 July 2005, and in both Britain and Australia multiculturalism became the scapegoat. The connection between multiculturalism and terrorism was never coherently argued, though it rested upon a claim that multiculturalism promoted cultural relativism, and reduced commitment to national communities in which one resided, thus supposedly seeding the ground for internal terrorism related to identity concerns. Spurious as an argument in the UK, it was even less convincing in Australia (see Levey 2011). The implied connection nevertheless contributed to the Howard government’s symbolic retreat from multiculturalism. The perception of immigrant separatism, since the early 2000s, came to mean predominantly Muslim separatism and a possible clash between fundamentalist Muslim beliefs, including attitudes towards women and mainstream Australian values. Later, as the numbers of African immigrants increased, especially those from traumatised, refugee backgrounds, there were also concerns raised about their capacity to integrate into the mainstream community. In 2007, Howard’s immigration minister, Kevin Andrews, suggested that Australia had reduced its numbers of refugees from Sudan because of problems with integration (Farouque et al. 2007). In the lead up to his statement, there had been sensationalist media reports that Sudanese youth were causing social unrest and were heavily involved in crime and gang activity in Melbourne (Australian Associated Press 2007a). Victorian police publicly repudiated claims that Sudanese youth were disproportionately involved in these activities (Collins 2007a). Public perceptions of Muslims had been exacerbated, in the postSeptember 11 era, by the extensive public commentary on the trial of nine young men from Lebanese backgrounds who had committed a series of gang rapes in Sydney in 2000, in which racist epithets were used against their young white female victims (Poynting et  al. 2004).

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The young men received long prison sentences, with their leader, Bilal Skaf, a Muslim, initially receiving a sentence of 55 years, later reduced on appeal. The nature of these crimes, as discussed during the criminal trials, had led to claims in the media that a small but significant group of young men of Middle Eastern background, often of the second generation, was growing up with values that put them at odds with modern Australia (see Devine 2002). This media commentary was repeated in relation to a second series of gang rapes, this time by two young Pakistani Australian brothers, and a Nepali friend, in Sydney in 2002. The lawyer for one of the brothers exacerbated the claims about culture influencing the rapes when he claimed that his client was influenced by “Pakistani cultural conditioning,” a claim taken as fact by some journalists, including prominent Sydney journalist and commentator Paul Sheehan (Hussein 2011, pp. 110–111). The concern with Lebanese youth gangs in Sydney had been long standing, and some critics also point to the growth of Islamophobia across the Western world as also contributing to these perceptions of Muslim and Middle Eastern immigrants as a problem and as people who were failing to integrate (Poynting and Mason 2008; Collins and Reid 2009). The terrorist attacks on the London Underground of 7 July 2005 sent shock waves through Western countries, including Australia, especially when it was revealed that the bombers were British Muslims, some of whom had appeared, beforehand, to be integrated into British society. Australian police and security forces had foiled planned attacks by Muslim extremists on its own soil, including Jack Roche’s plan to blow up the Israeli Embassy (2004) and Faheem Khalid Lodhi’s plot to blow up Sydney’s electricity grid (2003), and political leaders, and the media, were sensitive and alert to voices of extremism in Muslim communities and to derogatory statements by Muslim clerics and leaders about Australia and the West. This set of concerns became inextricably associated with multiculturalism, though the argument was first elaborated in Britain, under very different social and political circumstances. Britain’s experience with multiculturalism included the alleged  growth of segregated immigrant and white communities (Cantle 2001); the Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses affair of the late 1980s, which resulted in conflict and tension between Muslim communities and mainstream British society including violent

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demonstrations in Bradford, and the politicisation of Muslim identities (Modood 1992, 2005; Malik 2009); the experience of ethnic rioting in its northern cities in 2001; and a far greater problem with extremist Muslim clerics. This was the context for the strong UK backlash against multiculturalism, and its association with terrorism. The same arguments were imported into Australia, though the social and political context surrounding multiculturalism there had been far different. In Britain, in the year prior to the London Underground attacks, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, had argued that Britain should turn away from 40 years of multiculturalism because it was breeding separatism. There was an “urgent need to ‘assert a core of Britishness’” across society because young British Muslims were being indoctrinated by radical clerics. The immediate provocation for his rejection of multiculturalism was a group of radical Muslims who had burnt a Union Jack outside the London Central Mosque and chanted “UK, you will pay, bin Laden on his way” (The Times, April 3, 2004). In September 2005, 2 months after the July bombings, Phillips made a politically sensational speech at the Manchester Council for Community Relations, titled “After 7/7: Sleepwalking to Segregation” that highlighted the segregation between ethnic and racial groups in Britain, and called for urgent political and community action to address it (Phillips 2005). It should be emphasised that, unlike in Australia, multicultural policies in Britain had, for the most part, been “divorced from the notion of national unity” (Asari et al. 2008, p. 13; see also Modood 2007). In the aftermath of the London Underground terrorist attacks, the Howard government was increasingly concerned with asserting the importance of “Australian values,” immigrant integration into a core Australian culture and, like many other Western countries, social cohesion. Much of this emphasis was directed explicitly, or implicitly, at Muslims. In his memoirs, former Howard government Treasurer Peter Costello explains his reaction to the 7 July 2005 London Underground bombings: The bombing in the London underground of 7 July 2005, which killed fifty-two civilians including an Australian, opened a new area of concern. The four young men who apparently carried it out had lived all or most of their lives in Britain and appeared quite assimilated into British life. They

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did not enter Britain with the purpose of committing a terrorist act. They were British; they were home-grown. If this could happen in Britain, it was possible in Australia. Some of our fellow citizens, apparently well adjusted to Australian life, could be radicalised and turned to terrorism. (Costello 2008, pp. 195–196)

As Costello went on to explain, this was part of the background to his controversial speech to the Sydney Institute on 23 February 2006, in which he criticised “mushy misguided multiculturalism” (discussed in more detail below). In late 2005 the Howard government rushed through new anti-terrorism legislation that was perceived by many Muslims as directly targeted at their communities (Roose 2010, p. 3). In response to the London Underground bombings, the Howard government also increased its efforts to engage directly with Muslim communities. On the 23 August 2005 Howard met with Muslim leaders at a summit in Canberra, and members of this meeting agreed on a “Statement of Principles that commits all Australians to work together to protect Australia from intolerance and extremism and promote harmony and understanding.” The meeting also agreed that the Howard government would work with the states and territories to develop a national strategy to ensure social cohesion and to combat extremism. On 27 September the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) commissioned the Council on Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to develop a National Action Plan (NAP) “to address extremism and the promotion of violence and intolerance in Australia,” and this was developed during 2005 and 2006 in consultation with state and territory agencies, and liaising with Muslim communities (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs 2006, p. 223). This became the “National Action Plan to Build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security,” and was primarily focused on the integration of Muslim communities in order to diminish the possibility of extremism and terrorism gaining a foothold in Australia. As DIMA noted in its Annual Report 2005–2006: Community input has been a key aspect of development of the NAP. Supporting Australian Muslims to become more integrated and connected with the rest of the community, particularly in terms of jobs, educational attainment, and participation in community activities, is an

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important aspect of preventing extremist and violent ideologies gaining influence in Australia. (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs 2006, p. 223)

As outlined in a speech by Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs Andrew Robb to the Muslim Community Reference Group on 2 August 2006, the plan involved a government commitment of 35 million dollars over 4 years to support a range of key initiatives: programmes, including pilot programmes, in disadvantaged suburbs such as Lakemba and Macquarie Fields in Sydney, involving a values-based education initiative, employment coordinators and initiatives aimed at young people, and sporting and mentoring programmes for children and young people aimed at increased community, education and work-based integration; the creation of a “world class” centre for Islamic studies in a major Australian university, “to play a leadership role in exploring the place of Islam in modern society”; support for interfaith dialogue projects; a helpline and counselling service for Muslims, staffed by volunteers; educational materials, specialist training and forums, aimed at bringing the Muslim communities and law enforcement agencies into more productive engagement; and continued funding for the Muslim Community Reference Group (Robb 2006a). It was administered by DIMA as one of its cultural diversity programmes (see Koleth 2010). The Howard government had established the Muslim Community Reference Group in September 2005 to facilitate community consultation. Critics have claimed that the primary purpose of this Reference Group was to contribute to government surveillance of extremism and terrorism in Muslim communities, and there was also criticism of the lack of representativeness due to the Reference Group being allegedly handpicked by Howard. There was dissent within the Reference Group itself that it was set up as “an ideological ploy to ‘rubber stamp’ government moves involving coercive targeting of, and pre-emptive intervention in, their communities” (Poynting and Mason 2008, pp. 238–239; quote at p. 238). The Reference Group at times proved controversial for the Howard government, and after its term expired in September 2006, it was not replaced with another forum (Roose 2010; Poynting and Mason 2008, pp. 238–239). Other government actions included encouraging Australian Muslim clerics to conduct their services in English and “training homegrown Imams in Australia”

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(see Robb 2006b), and encouraging the accreditation of Muslim clerics by an Islamic board, proposals later taken up and recommended by a conference of Australian Imams in Sydney in September 2006 (Poynting and Mason 2008, pp. 238–239). The above mentioned Howard government proposal to establish “a world class Institute of Islamic Studies … within a prominent Australian university” would, it argued, greatly assist the local training of Imams (Robb 2006b). This engagement with the Muslim community, though clearly shaped by security concerns, is nevertheless an example of at least implicit multicultural policy, by virtue of recognising the need to address culturally different individuals and groups as part of enhancing their participation in mainstream Australian life. This approach and intent was evident in the address Andrew Robb (2006a) made to the Muslim Community Reference Group, mentioned above.6 In less conciliatory fashion, in 2005 Howard threatened to intervene in the curriculum of Australia’s 30 independent Muslim schools to make sure that they were serving to integrate Muslims into mainstream Australian society and teaching Australian values. He also threatened that his government would get inside Islamic schools and mosques to ensure that they were not promoting terrorism (Poynting and Mason 2008, p. 237). In an interview with journalist George Megalogenis on 9 December 2005, Howard, while noting that most Muslims would follow the same path as Asians in becoming integrated into Australian society, reflected on the “problem” with integration of a section of Australia’s Muslim population: But I do think there is this particular complication because there is a fragment which is utterly antagonistic to our kind of society, and that is the difficulty. You can’t find any equivalent in Italian, or Greek, or Lebanese, or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad, but that is the major problem, and I think some of the associated attitudes to women [are] a problem. (Megalogenis 2006b, p. 121) 6

Meer and Modood (2012) make a similar point about ostensibly anti-multiculturalist political leaders and governments in Europe seeking to engage Muslim communities in dialogue.

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For some Australian Muslims, this qualified claim, repeated at other times by Howard during 2006, together with comments by other Coalition politicians about Muslim, Lebanese and Middle-Eastern immigrant communities during 2005 and 2006, was further evidence that Howard and his government were anti-Muslim. In an interview reported on the front page of The Australian newspaper on 23 August 2005, on the same day that Prime Minister Howard’s summit with Muslim leaders began in Canberra, Treasurer Peter Costello told Muslim clerics that they should leave Australia if they believed in Sharia law and did not agree with Australian values. In an interview with Tony Jones on ABC’s Lateline programme that night, Costello expanded on these comments, suggesting that Muslims who did not believe in the Australian values of democracy, secularism and the rule of Australian law should either not come to Australia or else leave Australia for countries whose values better suit their views and beliefs (ABC Lateline 2005). On 24 August 2005, education Minister Brendan Nelson said that Australia’s 30 Islamic schools must teach “Australian values” or else leave the country, comments he also bluntly directed at all those in Australia who did not embrace Australian values: We don’t care where people come from, we don’t mind what religion they’ve got but what we want them to do is to commit to the Australian Constitution, Australian rule of law and basically, if people don’t want to be Australians and they don’t want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off. (ABC Radio National, PM Program 2005)

On 28 August 2005 Liberal Senator Bronwyn Bishop advocated banning Muslim headscarves in public schools on ABC’s Radio National, claiming that the girls were wearing them “as a point of difference”: Public schools where there is a uniform, the uniform is a great leveller, it is a great sign of a society that is working with different cultures. But it [the Muslim scarf ] is being used by the sort of people who want to overturn our values as an iconic emblem of defiance and a point of difference.

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Bishop suggested in her comments that her call for the ban on headscarves was aimed at a broader issue: It’s not about headscarves per se, it’s about a clash of cultures where there are extremist Muslim leaders who are calling for the overthrow of the laws that indeed give me my freedom and my equality as defined by the society in which I live. (ABC The World Today 2005)

Victorian Federal Liberal MP Sophie Panopoulos (later Sophie Mirabella) backed the call for a ban on headscarves in public schools (ABC The World Today 2005). In January 2006, Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock, invited to speak at a Sydney mosque at a gathering to mark an important Islamic holy day, lectured his audience on the need for Muslims to be law-abiding, which implied to his outraged Muslim audience that they needed such reminding (Levey 2011, p. 40). Strong feelings of resentment among Muslims were aroused by these repeated comments from Coalition politicians. In a heated debate on the SBS programme Insight, Muslim audience members voiced strong concerns about Howard’s comments, and comments made in Costello’s speech to the Sydney Institute, including that Muslims were being unfairly singled out as a community or unfairly stigmatised as a group or community because of the comments of one or two Muslim clerics (SBS Insight 2006). After Howard commented on national talkback radio on 31 August 2006 that Muslims needed to treat women equally, learn English and make greater efforts to embrace Australian values, Muslim leaders expressed their outrage, and former Liberal candidate Irfan Yusuf (also a Muslim) questioned why Howard had mentioned Muslims in particular, as the same issues were there for “a whole range of ethnic and religious groups” (ABC News 2006). Five months after the London Underground bombings, in December 2005 Australia experienced what has become known as the Cronulla riots in Sydney’s southeastern suburbs. A mob of 5000 predominantly white male Australians, fuelled by alcohol, sun, text messages purportedly circulated by small, far right “white pride” groups and the provocations of Sydney’s radio “shock-jocks” (extremist radio commentators including Alan Jones), rallied against “Middle-Eastern” or Lebanese Australians

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who visited the beach area. In a supposed act of “Aussie pride” and a show of strength against those who, it was claimed, insulted and harassed women and lifeguards on the famous Cronulla beach, thugs wrapped in Australian flags and carrying anti-immigrant placards physically attacked anyone they believed was Middle-Eastern. Some people, fearing for their lives, had to be saved by police. On the following two nights, other youths, reportedly of Middle-Eastern background and from Sydney’s western suburbs, rampaged through suburbs near Cronulla in revenge attacks physically assaulting residents and damaging shops, houses and cars. Cronulla is one of Sydney’s most Anglo-dominated areas, in a city that is the most multicultural in Australia, with over 30 per cent of its population born overseas (Burchell 2006; Collins 2007b). The events at Cronulla were shocking, and extremely damaging in the way that they confirmed the feeling among many Muslim, and in particular Lebanese, Australians that they were only considered secondclass citizens at best and outsiders at worst, who should be ejected from the country they had believed was their home. Many had been born and raised in Australia, and yet were confronted with slogans like “We grew here, you flew here.” This humiliation and hurt goes some way in explaining, though not excusing, the rage of the youths who carried out revenge attacks on the following nights, who specifically targeted those of Anglo appearance, and property in Anglo-dominated suburbs (ABC Four Corners 2006). The 2005 troubles were seen by critics as the culmination of a period of vilification of Muslims stretching back to Australia’s involvement in the first Gulf war in 1991, through the public hysteria surrounding Sydney’s gang rapes (mentioned above) and debates about Muslim youth and failure to integrate in the context of “ethnic gangs” and “ethnic crime,” and intensified by the events of September 11, and Australia’s involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Cronulla riot was also seen as a consequence of the Howard government’s strong, assimilationist nationalism with its emphasis on “Australian values,” and its harsh asylum seeker policies, that gave white Australians licence to police the national boundaries (Poynting 2006; Perera 2006). Nevertheless, despite a level of anti-Muslim feeling in Australia (Dunn et al. 2004, 2007), the Cronulla riots and retaliations were widely condemned as “un-Australian” in the Australian media, by most politicians

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and the police, indicating more general expectations of civil Australian behaviour. Also important was the rapid community response, with religious and other community representatives meeting and organising to prevent any recurrence of violence. Local lifesaving clubs began to actively recruit Lebanese and Muslim lifesavers. Despite text messages circulating in the days following the Cronulla riot inviting Melbournians to repeat the “defence” of its own beaches against unwanted “Lebs” (Lebanese), nothing happened (Calma 2006). The Howard government’s immediate public response to the riot was curious. Howard was sensitive to claims that it indicated a problem with racism in Australia. In fact, Howard vehemently rejected the accusation, and played down, or even largely dismissed, the racial elements of the riots, on the day after the riot claiming “I do not accept there is underlying racism in this country … I have always taken a more optimistic view of the character of the Australian people.” In this comment Howard was defending the Australian people as a whole with this claim, not the perpetrators of “mob violence,” as he clarified that: Attacking people on the basis of their race, their appearance, their ethnicity, is totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians irrespective of their own background and their politics … but I’m not going to put a general tag [of ] racism on the Australian community. I think it’s a term that is flung around sometimes carelessly and I’m simply not going to do so.

In the same reported comments Howard also raised the issue of “ethnic gangs,” calling these a “manifestation of tribalism,” and implying that this had something to do with the Cronulla riots. But when asked whether the previous day’s violence was an example of “tribalism,” Howard pointedly said “no” and then claimed that “I think yesterday was fuelled by the always explosive combination of a large number of people at the weekend and a large amount of alcohol” (Australian Associated Press 2005). Labor Opposition leader Kim Beazley also played down any racial motivation in the riots, claiming that it was “just criminal behaviour” and that “Australian multiculturalism is alive and well” (Davies and Peatling 2005). By early 2006, influenced by concerns about handling the Muslim presence, and ensuring that all immigrants were integrated into the Australian nation and the Australian way of life, it was apparent that

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the Howard government was looking to move beyond the symbolism of multiculturalism. In his 2006 Australia Day Speech, delivered the day before, on January 25, Howard stressed the features that he saw as dominating Australia’s core culture, while accepting that Australia had also been enriched by cultural diversity: Most nations experience some level of cultural diversity while also having a dominant cultural pattern running through them. In Australia’s case, that dominant pattern comprises Judeo-Christian ethics, the progressive spirit of the Enlightenment and the institutions and values of British political culture. Its democratic and egalitarian temper also bears the imprint of distinct Irish and non-conformist traditions. (Howard 2006a)

As he had so often done in the past, Howard used the metaphor of balance in this speech to suggest, nevertheless, that Australia’s great achievement had been to absorb many different peoples from around the world, and to strike a balance between “national identity and cultural diversity” in the service of social cohesion. And, as he had also claimed in his comments at the beginning of the 2000s, he suggested that Australians had moved beyond a type of multiculturalism that had been, to quote historian Gregory Melleuish, associated “with the transformation of Australia from a bad old Australia that was xenophobic, racist and monocultural to a good new Australia that is culturally diverse, tolerant and exciting.” “Such a view” Howard said “was always a distortion and a caricature.” In this speech Howard also announced that his government would renew the teaching of Australian history in schools, ensuring that it produced a clear narrative of achievements free of “postmodern” questioning and a “culture of relativism,” that would prepare “young Australians to be informed and active citizens” through teaching them “the central currents of our nation’s development.” But his speech did not reject multiculturalism as such, and indeed emphasised that Australians from all backgrounds were equally Australian. On 23 February 2006, Costello (2006) gave a speech to the Sydney Institute where he criticised “mushy misguided multiculturalism.” The speech was primarily about the importance and nature of Australian

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citizenship, institutions and culture, and how central they were to managing Australia’s diversity: Australia is often described as a successful multicultural society. And it is in the sense that people from all different backgrounds live together in harmony. But there is a predominant culture just as there is a predominant language. And the political and cultural institutions that govern Australia are absolutely critical to that attitude of harmony and tolerance.

Costello went on to tell an anecdote about his attendance at a recent citizenship ceremony in his own electorate, and how he had become irritated as he listened to a state MP “extolling the virtues of multiculturalism” and telling the attendees that to become an Australian citizen they did not have to give up “culture or language or opinions,” and that “it certainly did not mean giving up the love of their country of birth.” It was this attitude that Costello criticised as “mushy misguided multiculturalism” that fails to recognise that people who come to a new country and want to become citizens of it want to embrace something new and positive, that they are conscious that it “changes their identity.” It might have been assumed by some who listened to Costello that he was suggesting that to become an Australian one did need to give up love of one’s previous culture and country. For example, he said that “If you loved Uruguay, wanted to speak Spanish, love Uruguayan food, culture and political institutions you would not mark out Australia as the place to pursue these passions.” But Costello’s main point was that immigrants also must want to embrace something, which is not present in their country of birth, which has attracted them to Australia. “People come to Australia and become Australian citizens because they want to embrace the things this country stand[s] for” he claimed. These “things” that immigrants came looking for and wanted to embrace, he claimed further, were “Australian values.” Costello proceeded to produce a list of these that mixed what might be conceived as values, like economic opportunity, security, democracy and personal freedom, with others that might better be named as features or characteristics, such as the physical environment and strong physical and social infrastructure (Costello 2006). The remainder of Costello’s speech sent a strong message to those who did not accept the broad expectations included in the pledge of loyalty a person makes when they become an Australian citizen, which reads:

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“From this time forward [under God] I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey.” People who did not agree with the pledge should be denied citizenship, and others who did not agree or abide by its principles should be stripped of their Australian citizenship if they had dual citizenship and another country recognised them as citizens. Costello singled out for attention and criticism Muslims who, he claimed, wanted to abide by Sharia law that, in his view, conflicted with Australian law. In his speech he mentioned them immediately after criticising terrorists and “those who support them” who should be denied citizenship (Costello 2006). According to Costello, his remarks were prompted by comments made late in the previous year by “Muslim cleric Ben Brika” about the conflict between Sharia and Australian law. He believed that there was a small but radical group of Muslims who did not accept Australian values (ABC News Online 2006). Earlier in the same week of Costello’s speech, John Howard’s comments from the interview with George Megalogenis (quoted above) about a small group of radical Muslims, claiming that it was “utterly antagonistic to our kind of society” had been published in the Australian newspaper (see Gordon and Topsfield 2006). And on 13 February 2006, at a press conference to oppose the removal of a ministerial veto over anti-abortion drugs such as RU486, former Howard government minister and then backbencher Danna Vale had claimed that Australians were “aborting ourselves almost out of existence” and could become a Muslim country in 50 years. In making these claims, she was reflecting on comments by a Muslim Imam at Lakemba Mosque in Sydney who had, she said, claimed that Australia would be a Muslim nation in 50 years’ time (Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February 2006). In a radio interview where he also defended Peter Costello’s “mushy multiculturalism” speech, Howard (2006b) argued against what he called “zealous multiculturalism” that viewed Australia as simply “a federation of cultures”: You can’t have a nation with a federation of cultures. You can have a nation where a whole variety of cultures constantly influence and mould and change and blend with the mainstream culture … and the core culture of

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this nation is clear; we are an offshoot of western civilization. Because we speak the English language our cultural identity is very heavily AngloSaxon. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t distinctively Australian, but you have to recognise that there is a core set of values in this country.

Howard suggested in this radio interview a rather limited definition of multiculturalism: To many people multiculturalism simply means that we are tolerant to people of different cultural backgrounds, now if that’s all it means, then it’s a fine concept … If multiculturalism simply means that we respect everybody, we want everybody to be an Australian first, second and third, but we also understand that people retain affections for their original cultures and countries, and that’s perfectly normal and I think we enjoy that. And we want those other cultures to be part of our mainstream culture and we welcome that. Now if it means that we’re all for it. If it means that we’re going to encourage people to maintain their differences and that basically we have an attitude that well all cultures are equal, all cultures are the same, then I don’t think people feel comfortable with that. (Howard 2006b; see also Tate 2009)

None of this was especially new, and basically reiterated things Howard had said since the 1980s. But, multiculturalism and diversity were increasingly symbolically sidelined as the Howard government’s repeated mantra became one of immigrants adopting Australian values, and integrating into the Australian way of life. During 2006, senior Liberal and Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs, Andrew Robb, sent clear signals that the Howard government was looking for a language beyond multiculturalism. During the year he had addressed a meeting of the Howard government-appointed Council of Multicultural Australia where he openly canvassed for opinions on a term to replace multiculturalism. When interviewed by the Weekend Australian on 3 November 2006, he said that at the meeting “I expressed my frustration that the term is not often helpful because different people listen to it and give different meanings to it and a lot of the others expressed similar frustrations.” Robb confirmed to The Australian that the government intended to scrap the word from a revamped ethnic policy

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emphasising integration and responsibility among migrants, when the agenda expired at the end of 2006. The Council of Multicultural Australia’s 3-year term had expired in June that year, and there was no indication that it would be replaced. Former Council of Multicultural Australia members quoted in the newspaper report, Yasser Soliman and Professor Tom Stannage, expressed concern about a revamped policy and the dropping of terms including multiculturalism and diversity (Hart 2006). Reflecting government concerns about immigrant integration and the adoption of Australian values, in early 2006 the Howard government, following the lead of the UK and the Netherlands, began to prepare the ground for the introduction of a citizenship test (Davison 2008). In September 2006 the Howard government’s Citizenship Task Force released a discussion paper, “Australian Citizenship: Much More Than a Ceremony,” and called for submissions. The proposed test was necessary, it was claimed, in order to help integrate immigrants from many different source countries than in the past, who needed to be encouraged to learn English, and to embrace Australian values and an Australian way of life, which might contrast sharply with the value systems and ways of life of their countries of origin (Australian Government 2006; Robb 2006c). The proposed citizenship test provoked heated public debate, with commentary from politicians, academics, journalists, ethnic leaders and community groups. Some, like the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria (ECCV) in its official submission in response to the discussion paper, opposed the test on post-nationalist grounds (Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2006). Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship Andrew Robb made a series of speeches where he outlined the government’s reasoning for introducing the citizenship test (Robb 2006b, c, d, e). On 27 November, in his plenary address “The Importance of Shared National Identity” to the Transformations Conference, at ANU in Canberra, Robb (2006d) also indicated that the government wanted to move away from the term multiculturalism to focus more firmly on national identity, core values and citizenship. One of the main targets of his claim about an unacceptable version of multiculturalism was that which he claimed was evident in the ECCV’s submission to the discussion paper “Australian Citizenship: Much More Than a Ceremony.”

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In the ECCV’s submission, it was argued, based on comments made by Robb in the foreword to the discussion paper, that: The underlying premise of the Discussion Paper is that Australia is a monocultural society with ‘one overriding culture’. ECCV disputes this claim and rather believes that Australia is a multicultural society where people unite as Australians around democracy, the rule of law and our shared homeland. (Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2006, p. 1)

There was no mention in the submission of a shared national culture, which it nevertheless appeared to dismiss as a fiction, based on a reading of its critique of the various “national values” proposed in the discussion paper. The discussion paper had asked “How important is a demonstrated commitment to Australia’s way of life and values for those intending to settle permanently in Australia or spend a significant period of time in Australia?” and suggested the following six possible key national Australian values: “respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, support for democracy, commitment to the rule of law, the equality of men and women, the spirit of the fair go and mutual respect and compassion for those in need” (Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2006, p.  4). In response, ECCV stated that “This question is misplaced because Australian values and claims to an Australian way of life are both nebulous and highly contested” (Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2006, p.  4). Though ECCV conceded that commitment to democracy and the rule of law were indisputably Australian values (but not distinctively Australian), beyond these values, it was difficult to establish shared values that citizens could be expected to agree with. They argued that in a democracy, “pluralism” became one of the most critical values, and this meant that we should go no further beyond the commitment to democracy and the rule of law in developing a list of shared values (Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2006, p. 5). This recognition of pluralism as a “critical value,” however, is contradictory, as it already goes beyond democracy and the rule of law, as does their claim that “[m]ulticulturalism could also be considered a quintessential Australian value.” Here, it would seem, they were not satisfied with the suggested list, rather than that there could not be shared values. This was

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also suggested by their claim that respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual drew on “western liberal traditions,” not Australian traditions, and that the discussion paper had ignored other values within that tradition including “social democratic or communitarian values” (Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2006, p. 5). They disputed that some of the listed values, such as the “fair go” and “mutual respect” were distinctively Australian values, and claimed that they were in fact “universal values found among a vast array of nations and among different religious and secular belief systems” and that it was “culturally naïve” to claim otherwise. Some of the other values, ECCV claimed, were “particular to the government of the day” though it did not specifically name what these were (Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2006, p. 5). In claiming that the “underlying premise” of the Howard government’ s discussion paper was that Australia was a “monocultural society,” ECCV misconstrued the government position. While the discussion paper argued for “one overriding culture,” it did not argue that Australia was a “monocultural society,” as Andrew Robb (2006d) explained in his address to the Transformations Conference. Emphasising that Australia was “a nation of immigrants,” “that each wave of new settlers has broadened and deepened our culture and character, helping to mould new attitudes and traditions,” that Australia valued and benefited from its cultural diversity, and even that Australia was “a nation incorporating many cultures, and as a community we are the stronger for it,” Robb also emphasised that: the fruits of this diversity can only be realised if taken within the framework of the common values that unite us as one community: respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, a commitment to democracy and the rule of law, the equality of men and women and a spirit of egalitarianism that embraces mutual respect, fair play and compassion for those in need … This sense of shared values is the glue that binds our nation together. It involves the maintenance of a shared national identity. It is about how we define ourselves as Australian. A shared identity is not about imposing uniformity. It is about a strong identification with a set of core values, whilst permitting a large measure of personal freedom and ‘give and take’. A shared identity is about commitment and avoiding the emergence of a community of communities. But

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within this framework of core values it is also about openness and respect for the ‘dignity of difference’ that has so enriched our cultural and economic life in Australia. (Robb 2006d)

But while the ECCV’s submission misconstrued the government’s position, Robb in his account of the submission also misconstrued the ECCV’s position. Picking up on the point that the ECCV rejected the notion of an “overriding culture,” he claimed that it displayed a version of multiculturalism that he and the Howard government rejected, a version that only stressed diversity and never unity. He claimed that the ECCV’s rejection of an “overriding culture based on a common set of values” meant that it endorsed a society of “separate identities”: “This particular interpretation of multiculturalism assumes that communities with separate identities can live together peacefully, united only by the rule of law and common geography, rather than a shared understanding of nationality, a shared identity” (Robb 2006d). But, while the ECCV did not discuss shared national identity, it did not endorse separate identities. In fact, it emphasised the importance of common citizenship as a way of integrating immigrants into the Australian community, and argued that already high take-up rates of citizenship showed that immigrants “recognise the great benefits, rights and responsibilities associated with Australian citizenship and becoming a fully fledged member of the Australian community.” It saw “national citizenship as a fundamental aspect of a person’s identity,” and furthermore that “[c]ommon citizenship also forms the glue that holds a nation’s people together” (Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2006, p. 1). Certainly, if Robb was implying that the ECCV’s position showed that they were like “some interest groups” that, Robb (2006d) argued, had progressively transformed the meaning of multiculturalism into “a philosophy which puts allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community,” he was also mistaken. It seems that Andrew Robb, and the ECCV, were battling over what was meant by the notion of “shared national culture.” The Council seemed to be endorsing a notion of civic national identity, or even post-national identity, unified through what German social theorist Jürgen Habermas

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(1992) referred to as “constitutional patriotism,” or a unity based around a common political culture, involving certain types of democratic values, processes and procedures, a kind of rational commitment. Robb (2006d) was endorsing a deeper sense of historical, inherited common culture that people from different cultural backgrounds had to accept and adapt themselves to, even if, over time, their presence and cultural difference might continue to reshape that identity. This difference of view over culture can be summed up by a comment made by historian John Hirst (2007) in the introduction to his book of reflections on the national character, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character Since 1970, commissioned by the National Australia Day Council: Those who have attacked the old Australian character and the very notion of a national character argue that a diverse nation has no need to discover or define or celebrate a distinctive character; it should be committed solely to the civic values of democracy, the rule of law and toleration—or better, the welcoming of difference—the values that a liberal nation anywhere needs to cultivate. There may come a time when these are enough, though it is hard to imagine a nation so defined being one to love or die for. Will anyone lay down their life for diversity? For the moment anyway we cannot manage without a sense of what unites us as Australians. (Hirst 2007, p. 3)

I will return to this theme of national identity and how it relates to multiculturalism in the next chapter. On 23 January 2007, Howard announced in a press conference a ministerial reshuffle and at the same time announced that the name of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs would change to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, with Kevin Andrews as the new minister (Howard 2007a), a change taken by many, both supporters and opposers, to signal the end of multicultural policy. In explaining the name change, Howard briefly noted, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald (23 January 2007) “The whole purpose of immigration is to recruit more people to the broader Australian family” (Australian Associated Press 2007b). However, in other media commentary, the name change was taken as a clear indication that the Howard government was officially discarding multiculturalism. In Brisbane’s Courier Mail,

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Michael Madigan made this claim in an article titled “Multiculturalism Dumped,” despite quoting Howard to the contrary as saying “I don’t think the term (multiculturalism) is defunct,” but rather that “I think the desired progression is for an immigrant to become Australian. Simple as that” (Madigan 2007). The Daily Telegraph (23 January 2007) reported in “End of Multiculturalism” that “Prime Minister John Howard officially scrapped multiculturalism today,” despite also quoting Howard as saying “This is not designed to kick multiculturalism, it’s designed to better reflect the pathway to becoming an Australian inherent in a vibrant immigration program” (The Daily Telegraph 2007). When asked by a journalist at another press conference on 24 January 2007, in relation to the departmental name change “what do you say to those people who are fearing that this is some kind of condemnation of other cultures or downgrading the role of multiculturalism in Australia?,” he replied: Well they’re wrong. This is not condemning cultures, it’s just positively asserting the obvious and that is immigration should lead to citizenship and the path is you come to this country, you embrace its customs, its values, its language, you become a citizen. You don’t lose a place in your heart for the country you came from and you’re not expected to. I’ve always said that, and people are understandably going to retain a place in their heart for their home culture and we don’t discourage that in any way. But the premium must be upon, the emphasis must be upon, the dominant consideration must be, the integration of people into the Australian family. That’s always been my belief, it was my belief before I became Prime Minister and it continues to be my belief. But that can sit comfortably with total respect for different cultures and total respect for the fact that somebody born in China or Croatia will retain a place in his or her heart for the customs and the manner and the tempo and so forth of his or her birthplace. (Howard 2007b)

As Mark Lopez pointed out, the simple name change did not necessarily mean an end to multicultural policies; after 30 years, these were so deeply entrenched in the fabric of Australian society, and all levels of government, that they were likely to persist even if a federal government no longer supported them. The departmental name change, together with other developments including the tightening expectations of citizenship

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did suggest, however, that the policy framework was shifting to the “give and take” integration policy of the 1960s, and with a stronger emphasis on the duties rather than the rights of immigrants (Lopez 2007). Despite Howard’s disclaimers, it was apparent from statements by other government representatives that by early 2007 the term multiculturalism was now seen by the government as problematic, and sending the wrong messages. In a speech to the Islamic Council of Victoria/ FaCSIA Symposium on 23 February 2007, recently appointed Assistant Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Teresa Gambaro (2007) made this clear. While reassuring her audience that the Howard government was still committed to honouring Australia’s diversity, and to retaining a series of major multicultural policies and programmes, the term multiculturalism was now seen as redundant. Her speech, titled “How Muslim communities have integrated into the wider Australian community” congratulated Muslim communities for their embrace of Australian values, and for their recent efforts to improve Muslim integration into Australian society. She also wanted to clarify that the change of the name of the department from multicultural affairs to citizenship was a positive approach aimed at indicating to immigrants that they would be welcomed into the Australian community as citizens. Nevertheless, the term multiculturalism was, she argued, no longer useful: Rumours of the ‘death’ of multiculturalism are greatly exaggerated. But multiculturalism—as a term—has become redundant … Many have grown attached to multiculturalism as a catch phrase or label, while remaining unsure of its definition, and unconvinced of its benefits. Multiculturalism, as a term, can be interpreted in a number of ways. In my view, its very imprecision is a critical weakness. (Gambaro 2007)

Seeing multiculturalism as simply the celebration of different foods, as indicated by a panelist on the ABC’s programme “Difference of Opinion,” Gambaro claimed, trivialised the contribution of immigrants to Australian society, including that of her own Italian immigrant parents. The term, she claimed, also “magnifies the perceived distance of Australian Muslims from the rest of Australia”:

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Multiculturalism, as a word, can serve to distance us from ourselves. In my view, I think multiculturalism as a label is past its use by date. It doesn’t tell us what we share in common, it doesn’t tell us who we are, it doesn’t tell us what our values are, and it does not point the way toward continued national prosperity. But I believe its policy fundamentals are important and should remain. (Gambaro 2007)

In late 2007 the Howard government introduced the citizenship test for immigrants that emphasised knowledge of English; Australia’s political institutions, culture and history; and Australian values, habits and traditions (Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2007).

Developments After Howard: The Rudd and Gillard Governments The Rudd Labor government (2007–2010) continued significant aspects of the Howard government approach, including downplaying multiculturalism while remaining committed, like the Howard government before it, to large-scale immigration and to some form of public recognition of Australia’s cultural diversity. It did not reintroduce the term “multicultural” to the title of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, and it retained the citizenship test, in slightly modified form after a review. Since 2006 and the expiry of the Howard government’s updated multicultural agenda, there had been no official federal policy on multiculturalism, a position lamented by major agencies supporting multiculturalism including the state Ethnic Communities Councils (Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2009), the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) (2008) and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (Calma 2007). This absence of an official national policy framework for multiculturalism continued throughout Rudd’s prime ministership. The Rudd government emphasised policies of social inclusion and social cohesion, rather than multiculturalism. Tellingly, when the Rudd government appointed Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard minister for

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social inclusion, and created the Social Inclusion Board in May 2008, the specific problems faced by immigrants were not included in the agenda (Markus et al. 2009, pp. 154–155). Rudd called for an end to the “history wars,” by which he meant that Australia had moved on from the virulent fights over history, racism and national identity of the 1990s and early 2000s (ABC News 2009). Unlike Howard or his Labor predecessor, Prime Minister Paul Keating, Rudd had a low-key approach to issues of national identity, with less emphasis placed on the “Australian Way of Life” and “Australian values” than characteristic of the Howard era. Joseph Wakim, former multicultural affairs commissioner and founder of the Australian Arabic Council, noted in Brisbane’s Courier Mail (8 February 2008) the avoidance by the Rudd government of the “M” word. For example, “immigration” and “multiculturalism” did not appear on the agenda of 10 key national issues for Rudd’s 2020 Summit, held in Canberra, on 19 and 20 April 2008. Responsibility for multiculturalism was difficult to see within the roll call of government departments and ministers, gaining only a small status through Laurie Ferguson’s appointment as Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Programs (Wakim 2008). Liberal Senator and long-standing multiculturalism advocate Petro Georgiou, in a lecture at the University of Melbourne, also lamented that the Rudd government’s position on multiculturalism remained opaque. He called for all political leaders to come out and formally endorse multiculturalism, which he saw as a major policy success story of the last 30 years (Georgiou 2008). However, there were some portents of a more positive affirmation of multiculturalism. In December 2008 the Rudd government announced the formation of the 16-member Australian Multicultural Advisory Council, with its members drawn from business, sporting, social welfare and academic circles, and diverse ethnic backgrounds (including members from Filipino, Chinese and Islamic communities), to advise government on promoting social cohesion and tackling racism (Narushima 2008). Lawyer and commentator Irfan Yusuf (2008) saw, in the appointment of what he believed was a truly diverse and representative Advisory Council, multiculturalism’s return to the political fold. Prominent academic expert on multiculturalism Andrew Jakubowicz felt that the appointment of AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou as the Council’s chair “was a symbolic

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statement about mainstreaming cultural diversity in Australia” (quoted in Narushima 2008).7 The Australian Multicultural Advisory Council (2010) released its report The People of Australia in April 2010, calling for the federal government to adopt a new, updated multicultural strategy, and also to be more open in telling the story of the achievements of multiculturalism in Australia. The official government response to this report, including the announcement of a new national multicultural strategy, came in early 2011, by which time Julia Gillard had replaced Rudd as prime minister and had won minority government in the 2010 federal election. It also came after the Gillard government had been criticised for neglecting to assign anyone responsibility for multiculturalism in the announcement of the new Gillard ministry in September 2010 and dropping the term “Multicultural Affairs” from the title of the parliamentary secretary assisting the minister for immigration (Karvelas 2010). Announcing the new policy in a speech to the Sydney Institute on 17 February 2011, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Bowen spoke glowingly of the “genius of Australian multiculturalism.” Australian multiculturalism had been unique and was immune to the criticisms levelled at multiculturalism in other countries such as Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel had claimed that it had “utterly failed,” and the UK, where Prime Minister David Cameron had also rejected multiculturalism as a failed experiment. Australian multiculturalism had combined commitment to “traditional Australian values” and loyalty to Australia with respect for culture and integration. It was a citizenshipbased form of multiculturalism, committed to inviting immigrants into the national community with equal rights and opportunities, and this meant that it contributed to social cohesion (Bowen 2011). The new policy statement, titled The People of Australia: Australia’s Multicultural Policy, although brief (at less than 10 pages) unabashedly used the language of multiculturalism, reiterating the Gillard government’s 7

Markus, Jupp and McDonald draw the opposite conclusion from Demetriou’s appointment, seeing this as further evidence of the Rudd government’s inadequate and low-priority response to immigration and multicultural issues. They described Demetriou as “a high-profile public figure without a record of substantial work or achievement in immigrant communities” (Markus et al. 2009, pp. 154–155; quote at p. 155).

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“unwavering … commitment to a multicultural Australia”; claiming that “Australia’s multicultural composition is at the heart of our national identity and is intrinsic to our history and character”; and that “Australia is a multicultural nation” (Australian Government 2011, p. 2). It continued the approach to multiculturalism that developed in Australia from the 1970s to the early 2000s (when the last Howard government’s multicultural policy was announced), with its four broad principles attending to (1) the right to expression of cultural diversity, “within the broader aims of national unity, community harmony and maintenance of our democratic values”; (2) the commitment to access and equity (in terms of government services and public goods), and equality of opportunity for all; (3) a commitment to reaping the benefits of Australia’s cultural diversity (known previously as economic efficiency and productive diversity); and (4) a commitment to promote cultural acceptance, and to tackle discrimination and racism (Australian Government 2011, p. 5). Key initiatives of the new policy included: the creation of a new independent advisory body, the Australian Multicultural Council, with a broader role than the previous advisory body, tasked with acting as a multicultural champion in the community, including implementing a “multicultural ambassadors” programme “to articulate the beliefs of and help celebrate our multicultural nation,” advising government on multicultural policy and ensuring that Australian government services responded to the needs of immigrant and refugee communities, through a formal role in the strengthened access and equity strategy; the creation of a new “National Anti-Racism Partnership and Strategy,” bringing together multiple government departments, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Race Discrimination Commissioner, and the new advisory body, in consultation with non-government organisations; new grants to community groups for multicultural arts and festivals as part of the Diversity and Social Cohesion Program; further measures to strengthen access and equity, and to bring it into line with the government’s “social inclusion” agenda; and a Multicultural Youth Sports Partnership programme, “to create connections and involve youth from new and emerging communities, and culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (including refugees and minor refugees), through sport and active recreation activities” (Australian Government 2011, pp. 7–8).

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This policy announcement was followed by a parliamentary inquiry into migration, multiculturalism and multicultural policy, by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration, requested by Minister Bowen in February 2011 (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2011). This was known as “The Inquiry into Multiculturalism in Australia” (chaired by Labor MP Maria Vamvakinou) and held public hearings in major cities and rural areas throughout Australia during 2011 and 2012. It also gathered over 500 submissions from individuals, community groups, non-government and government organisations. I will discuss this Inquiry, and the report arising from it, handed down in March 2013, in the book’s Conclusion. Some conservative critics saw this symbolic reinstatement of multiculturalism as a ploy by the Gillard government to differentiate itself from the Coalition parties, and, more cynically, to shore up its electoral prospects with ethnic communities, and with inner city voters who were attracted to the Greens (see Donnelly 2011). Others felt that the new “People of Australia” policy was more symbolic than substantive, with limited funding, no commitment to creating a multicultural research agency, no commitment to strengthening legal sanctions against racism and a refusal to revisit the arguments for national multicultural legislation (Jakubowicz 2012). Nevertheless, multiculturalism was again unquestionably the policy position of the national government.

References ABC Four Corners. 2006. Riot and Revenge. Four Corners, March 3. http:// www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1588360.htm. Accessed 22 Jan 2014. ABC Lateline. 2005. Respect Australian Values or Leave: Costello. ABC Lateline, August 23. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1444603.htm. Accessed 22 Jan 2014. ABC News. 2006. PM Stands by Muslim Integration Comments, September 1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2006-09-01/pm-stands-by-muslimintegration-comments/1253202. Accessed 22 Jan 2014. ———. 2009. Rudd Calls for an End to “History Wars”, August 27. http:// www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/27/2669177.htm. Accessed 20 Jan 2010.

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Betts, K. 1999. The Great Divide: Immigration Politics in Australia. Sydney: Duffy and Snellgrove. ———. 2003. Immigration Policy Under the Howard Government. Australian Journal of Social Issues 38(2): 169–192. Bowen, C. 2011. The Genius of Australian Multiculturalism. Address to the Sydney Institute, February 17. http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/media/ cb/2011/cb159251.htm. Accessed 20 Feb 2011. Brawley, S. 1997. A “Comfortable and Relaxed Past”: John Howard and the “Battle of History”. The First Phase—February 1992 to March 1996. The Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History. http://www.jcu. edu.au/aff/history/articles/brawley.htm. Accessed 1 June 2010. Brett, J.  2003. Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Burchell, D. 2006. An Email from the Ether: After the Cronulla Events. Australian Universities Review 48(2): 6–8. Calma, T. 2006. “Cronulla: Could It Happen Here?” Managing Racial Conflict and Building Community. Speech By Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma at Local Government New Zealand Conference, 17–19 July, 2006, Wellington, New Zealand. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/ about/media/speeches/race/2006/cronulla_NZ_200607.html. Accessed 1 June 2010. ———. 2007. Multiculturalism: A Position Paper by the Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney. Cantle, T. 2001. Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team. London: Home Office. Collins, J., and W.F. Lalich. 2004. The Dismantling of Australian Multiculturalism and the Migrant Third Sector: Spotlight on the St George Region of Sydney. Third Sector Review 10(2): 85–97. Collins, S-J 2007a Sudanese Crime only “1 percent”, The Age, 4 October 2007 http//www.theage.com.au/news/national/sundase-crime-only-1-percent/2007/10/03/1091183260.html (accessed 30/06/2016). Collins, J 2007b The Landmark of Cronulla. In J Jupp and J Nieuwenhuysen with E Dawson (eds) Social Cohesion in Austrialia, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, pp. 61–69. Collins, J., and C. Reid. 2009. Minority Youth, Crime, Conflict and Belonging in Australia. Journal of International Migration and Integration 10(4): 377–391.

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Galligan, B., and W. Roberts. 2004. Australian Citizenship. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Gambaro, T. 2007. How Muslim Communities Have Integrated into the Wider Australian Community, Address to Islamic Council of Victoria/FaCSIA Symposium. Melbourne, February 27. ———. 2011. Adjournment Speech, Harmony Day 2011. House of Representatives, Hansard, March 21, 2528. http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;page=0;query=gambaro%20harmony%20 day;rec=9;resCount=Default. Accessed 30 July 2015. Georgiou, P. 2008. Australia Must Affirm Its Commitment to Multiculturalism. Marion Adams Memorial Lecture. University of Melbourne, 9 October 2008, edited version reproduced in The Age, October 10. http://www.theage. com.au/opinion/australia-must-affirm-its-commitment-tomulticulturalism-20081009-4xis.html. Accessed 10 Feb 2010. Goot, M. 2004. Party Convergence Reconsidered. Australian Journal of Political Science 39(1): 49–73. Gordon, J., and J. Topsfield. 2006. Our Values or Go Home. The Age, February 24. http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/our-values-or-go-home-coste llo/2006/02/23/1140670207642.html. Accessed 20 Jan 2015. Gray, G., and C. Winter, eds. 1997. The Resurgence of Racism: Howard, Hanson and the Race Debate. Clayton, VIC: Department of History, Monash University. Habermas, J. 1992. Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections on the Future of Europe. Praxis International 12(1): 1–19. Hage, G. 1998. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Sydney: Pluto Press. ———. 2003. Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society. Sydney: Pluto Press. Hart, C. 2006. Multiculturalism is a Dirty Word. The Australian, November 4. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/multiculturalism-is-a-dirtyword/story-e6frg6nf-1111112468696. Accessed 17 Feb 2010. Henderson, G. 1995. A Howard Government? Inside the Coalition. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins. Hirst, J. 2007. The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character Since 1770. Melbourne: Black Inc. Howard, J. 1995a. Politics and Patriotism: A Reflection on the National Identity Debate. Headland Speech, December 13. http://australianpolitics.

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———. 2006b, April. Australian Migrant Integration—Past Successes, Future Challenges. Sydney: Sydney Institute. ———. 2006c. In Support of a Formal Citizenship Test. Address to the Jewish National Fund Gold Patron’s Lunch, 25 October 2006, Mercantile Rowing Club, Melbourne. ———. 2006d. The Importance of a Shared National Identity. Plenary Address, The Transformations Conference, 27 November 2006, Australian National University, Canberra. ———. 2006e. Celebrating Our Citizenship. Address on ‘Celebrating Our Citizenship’, followed by a Citizenship Ceremony, 17 September 2006, Immigration Museum, Melbourne. Roose, J. 2010. The Future of Australian Islam and Multiculturalism. Australian Political Studies Association (APSA) Conference, the University of Melbourne, Australia. http://apsa2010.com.au/full-papers/pdf/APSA2010_ 0200.pdf. Accessed 11 Dec 2012. SBS Insight. 2006. Culture Clash. SBS TV, March 7. Transcript. http://parlinfo. aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22media% 2Ftvprog%2F7ZZI6%22. Accessed 30 June 2016. Soutphommasane, T. 2012. Don’t Go Back to Where You Came From: Why Multiculturalism Works. Sydney: NewSouth Press. Spinks, H. 2009. Australia’s Settlement Services for Migrants and Refugees. Parliament of Australia, Australian Parliamentary Services, Parliamentary Library, Canberra. http://www.aph.gov.au/library. Accessed 10 Oct 2013. Steketee, M. 2002. M-Word Is Kosher Again, But Politics Won’t Let It Prosper. The Australian, May 9. Tate, J. 2009. John Howard’s “Nation” and Citizenship Test: Multiculturalism, Citizenship and Identity. Australian Journal of Politics and History 55(1): 97–120. The Daily Telegraph. 2007. End of Multiculturalism. The Daily Telegraph, January 23. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/end-of-multiculturalism/storye6freuy9-1111112878049). Accessed 21 Jan 2014. Wakim, J. 2008. Multicultural Input Needed. Courier Mail, February 8. http:// www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23174906-27197,00.html. Accessed 1 June 2010. Williams, P. 1997. The Victory: The Inside Story of the Takeover of Australia. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Yusuf, I. 2008. Rudd and the Return of Multiculturalism. Crikey.com, December 18. http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/12/18/rudd-and-the-returnof-multiculturalism/. Accessed 21 Jan 2014.

5 Multiculturalism and Australian National Identity

In previous chapters I have shown that multiculturalism was at once a policy for immigrants (less so for Indigenous Australians) and also a vision of a new kind of Australian society, evident in the title of Grassby’s 1973 speech “A Multi-cultural Society for the Future” (Grassby 1973), and in official reports including Australia as a Multicultural Society (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977) and Multiculturalism for All Australians (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982). The latter explicitly linked multiculturalism to a changing national identity. The Hawke government’s National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989) did not define the national identity as multicultural, simply as “Australian,” though it was designed to respond to the reality that Australia was a more culturally diverse society than it had been half a century before. The Fitzgerald Report into immigration, released the previous year, recommended that the Australian government emphasise the Australian identity rather than multiculturalism, since this was what most Australians believed in and adhered to (Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies 1988). Subsequent multicultural reports and the Howard government’s A New Agenda for Multicultural © The Author(s) 2017 A. Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8_5

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Australia spoke of “Australian multiculturalism” and of Australia as a successful “multicultural and cosmopolitan society” (Commonwealth of Australia 1999, p. 3, foreword by John Howard). While it did not specifically refer to the national identity as multicultural, A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia did confirm that Australia is “in reality as well as by definition, a multicultural nation” (Commonwealth of Australia 2003, p. 6). The nation had one Australian national culture, though it was, ambiguously, also honoured for its cultural diversity. The National Multicultural Advisory Council which developed the 1999 agenda did state in its report, Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness, that it was “optimistic about Australia’s future as a culturally diverse society and is confident that Australian multiculturalism will continue to be a defining feature of our evolving national identity” (National Multicultural Advisory Council 1999, pp. 13–14). In this chapter I focus more extensively on the relationship between multiculturalism and national identity. I will argue that “multiculturalism” constitutes an important aspect of Australian national identity. In making this argument, I am positioning myself against a more general claim that multiculturalism and national identity are opposing principles. I argue instead that part of multiculturalism’s success in Australia, including its tenacity as public policy and its broad acceptance by the general Australian public, has resulted from its articulation with a continually evolving, increasingly open and inclusive national identity. But I am also positioning myself against recent arguments about nationalism, national identity and multiculturalism in the Australian context. For example, Galligan and Roberts (2004, Ch. 4) dismissed the view that Australia is a multicultural society because they argued that it was far more culturally cohesive and assimilative than multiculturalists claimed. They argued that the national identity continued to express strong, distinctively Australian cultural traditions, despite Australia’s status as an immigrant society. Alternatively, while giving more credence to the extent of cultural diversity in Australia, and arguing for a more liberal rather than cultural form of Australian nationalism, Levey (2008b) argued that multiculturalism cannot serve as a symbol of Australian national identity because it signals diversity rather than unity. Similarly, Curran and Ward (2010, p. 264) claimed that multiculturalism served

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more as a symbol of “what Australia was not (a White British outpost of empire) than stating with any precision what the country had come to represent.” In contrast, I argue here that Australia is both a multicultural society, and that multiculturalism has become an important symbol of what it now means to be Australian.1

National Identity and Multiculturalism “National identity” is a notoriously difficult subject and attempts to characterise the exact nature of any particular national identity are controversial and contested. Lists of so-called national qualities and values are often called into question, challenged as inaccurate and repressive, or as qualities and values not exclusive to any one country or people (see, e.g. Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria 2006; Watson 2000). Many on the left find the concept of national identity meaningless, and even oppressive of a multitude of individual, ethnic, gender/sexual and cultural differences. Some recent globalisation theorists, and even more recent cosmopolitan theorists, claim that in a much more interconnected world, with increasingly ethnically intermixed populations, nationalism, nationstates, national identities and notions of national culture are becoming less and less meaningful and relevant (Day and Thompson 2004, p. 161 and Ch. 9; for a critique, see Calhoun 2002). Despite such claims, the issue of national identity is very much alive in multicultural debates, with some multiculturalists dismissing its relevance and others stressing its importance (see Modood 2007). Questions of national identity and unity have agitated the critics of multiculturalism, in Australia and elsewhere, as they see in multiculturalism a dangerous dividing of loyalties. In the USA, for example, prominent public intellectuals like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1992) and Todd Gitlin (1995) discussed threats to American civic and national unity associated with the rise of multicultural identity politics. Because of its racial history (especially slavery, but 1

I developed the original arguments, which are further developed and substantially revised here in this chapter, in an earlier article (see Moran 2011).

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also the confrontation with and incorporation of Indigenous peoples, and other peoples from the Americas), and the relationship between race and poverty, “race” and “racial problems” have been spotlighted in the USA, and in ways that give to identity politics a particular potency in everyday life. African Americans seek recognition of the historical and cultural specificities that mark their identities, and have challenged universities and schools to develop Afrocentric education (on the latter see also Glazer 1997). Societal debates about positive discrimination and minority quotas, education curricula, Western traditions and the Western canon have animated supporters and critics of multiculturalism in the USA. The promise, always limited by racism and other exclusions, that anyone could be an American if they were committed to the republican constitution, and the ethos of e pluribus unum, has also been challenged by multicultural identity politics. As Anglo-Protestant cultural dominance is seen to retreat in the face of the “Hispanisation” of America and the impact of the multicultural imagination, some intellectuals, like Samuel P. Huntington (2004), raise the spectre of national identity crisis and lament the loss of patriotism. As suggested by the USA example, the conflict between national identity (or national unity) and multiculturalism varies between different countries and socio-political contexts. To cite another prominent example, the debates and tensions take on particular inflections in multinational states, where the multiculturalism advocated by the broader state can come into conflict with minority nationalisms (Seymour and Gagnon 2012). In Canada, for example, Quebec has long resisted the policy formulations of Canadian multiculturalism, arguing that these are not suited to the peculiar situation of the Quebec nation, including the ways that it integrates diverse immigrants (Taylor 1993; Bouchard 2011). When multiculturalism was formulated by Trudeau in the early 1970s, and later constitutionally entrenched, Quebequois felt that Canadian multiculturalism threatened their national status, as it implied that their ethno-cultural difference was no different to the ethno-cultural difference of more recent, diverse immigrant populations in Canada. As Charles Taylor (1993, p.  162) put it: “As a federal policy, multiculturalism is sometimes seen as a device to deny French-speaking minorities their full recognition, or even to reduce the importance of the French fact in

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Canada to that of an outsized ethnic minority.” Bouchard has argued that since the mid-nineteenth century the francophones of Quebec have pushed a vision of Canada as having two founding nations, anglophone and francophone, and that “this vision of the country was undermined by the introduction of multiculturalism, which made francophones in Quebec simply one ethnic group among others throughout Canada.” Thus, multiculturalism was seen by francophones as something that weakened Quebec and Quebec national identity, and was keenly opposed by them (Bouchard 2011, p. 462). As Quebec itself has become increasingly ethnically and religiously diverse as a result of immigration, it has proposed its own alternative to Canadian multiculturalism in “interculturalism.” Interculturalism in Quebec, unlike multiculturalism, is meant to place more emphasis on the French Canadian character of the Quebec “host” nation (which is felt to be under threat and in need of state protection), while at the same time respecting and accommodating diversity. It calls upon immigrants to fit into the francophone “majority” Quebec culture, which its proponents argue distinguishes it as a “paradigm” from Canadian multiculturalism which rejects the notion of majority culture (Bouchard 2011, p. 463). At a more general level of critique, theorists and advocates of liberal nationalism can reach back to the authority of no less a figure than John Stuart Mill who put the strong case for the importance of common national sentiment, arguing that “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities” (quoted and discussed in Levey 2008b, p. 254; see also Kymlicka 1996). Liberal nationalists such as David Miller (1995) have argued that multiculturalism, if pushed too far, can undermine the national cohesion and solidarity needed to support social welfare and redistributive programmes. Unlike the older terms “nation,” “national character” and “nationalism,” the concept of national identity, like identity itself, is a relative newcomer to the social sciences, with many dating its entry to psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s use of the term in the 1950s (Gleason 1983; Poole 1999, pp.  44–45; see also Inglis 1991, pp.  14–16). In Childhood and Society (1950), Erikson included a chapter titled “Reflections on the American Identity” in which he replaced the more familiar notion of “national character” with “national identity.” In Erikson’s account, as with other

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psychoanalytic accounts, identity involves a deep intermeshing of individual and group or social identities through processes of identification. Identity in Erikson’s work was also discussed in the context of maturation and crisis, and these meanings of maturing and of “identity crisis” have often permeated the discussion of national identity since then. National identities involve aspects of personal identity related to one’s belonging to a particular national community, but we also speak of national identity in the sense of the particularistic identity of a community limited by symbolic and often also physical boundaries (Parekh 2008, p. 56; Anderson 1983). National identities come in many forms, with the classic distinction made between ethnic and civic (Kohn 1945; for a critique see Yack 1996). They involve historically contingent configurations of a range of elements including myths and memories, ethnic cores, civic beliefs and values, political values, shared language, religious beliefs, and current or past connections with territories (Smith 1991). Having a national identity implies some kind of shared way of life, however generally that is conceived and articulated. National institutions, including the political system and standardised education systems, support and reinforce national identities (Gellner 1983) and thus can become battlegrounds for competing versions of national identity. As noted above, education has been a major field of “identity politics” in the USA; and Australia has had its own public debates about national education curriculum in schools from the 2000s onward. National identities are also supported in banal ways, through everyday “flaggings” (Billig 1995), through political discourse, the production and consumption of “national news,” and through other cultural production such as literature, music, television and film (Anderson 1983). Governments help promote national days of commemoration where national identity is articulated, rehearsed and reproduced symbolically (Spillman 1997). National identities are constructed and articulated against national others, as Colley (1992) famously showed when arguing for the historical emergence of the British nation and national identity against the French nation and identity. This relation between national self and “others” is often seen as one of the inherently negative features of national identity, highlighting “differences” that deflect attention from common humanity, and creating the basis for a range of exclusions.

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While there is a strong sense of voluntarism associated with civic national identity in particular, reflected by the fact that in many cases we are able to take on new national identities and discard old ones, national identities can also be inherited. Many people are born into national identities that they continue to adhere to, and strive to pass on to future generations. They experience a strong connection to their national identity through history, family and communities of belonging (Canovan 2000).

Changing Australian National Identity The notion that Australia has an “identity crisis” has been a periodic feature of public debate since the 1960s. This registering of crisis and flux in Australian national identity is related to important cultural, social and political changes that have undermined earlier mythical bases for that identity. In particular, the Britishness and whiteness of Australian identity have been undermined, resulting in a search for less ethnic bases for that identity. Like other settler societies including the USA, Canada and New Zealand, in the first half of the twentieth century Australia imagined itself as a white nation, and also like those other societies, controlled its immigration to protect that imagined nation (see Lake and Reynolds 2008; Pearson 2001). In Australia’s case, this was through what was known as the White Australia Policy, a series of government acts mainly restricting immigration of “non-whites” but also restricting the citizenship rights of non-whites within Australia, including Indigenous peoples, lasting from the beginning of the twentieth century up until the 1960s (see Tavan 2005). Notions of race (white, Anglo-Saxon), ethnicity (British, English, Scots, Irish, etc.) and religion (Christianity) were the shared bases for a white, British-Australian identity (Davison 2009). This racial national identity was infused with Australian features that were seen to make up the Australian character, developed from a range of experiences. Australia’s history of pastoralism produced at least two (in some senses competing) myths about Australia’s national character. The first was the “Australian legend” described by Russel Ward, that drew on the experiences of convicts and pastoral workers to depict Australians

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as egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, collectivist, practical, laconic and easygoing bushmen, lauded by poets and other writers in poems, folk songs, newspapers, stories and books (Ward 1958). The second was the “pioneer myth” that celebrated the virtues of the landowner struggling against the harsh elements, a far more individualistic, courageous, tenacious and stoic figure, set off against politicians, colonial governors and government officials (Hirst 1992; Barnes 1994). By the time that Australians entered the First World War, these mythical Australian traits found their way into the potent myth of the Anzac soldier, who was anti-authoritarian, courageous and pragmatic and who looked after his “mates.” The actions of soldiers at the failed Gallipoli campaign of 1915 took on legendary status, and it has been often claimed by politicians and others that the Australian nation was born at Gallipoli (Inglis and Brazier 1998). That the power of the Anzac myth still reverberates is evident in phenomena including the popularity of Anzac Day and its “Dawn Services” held in cities and country towns all over Australia, often drawing large crowds, and the many Australians visiting overseas battle sites, including Gallipoli, significant to them (Scates 2002). A recent article points out that 90 per cent of respondents to the 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes associated Anzacs with the national identity, 65 per cent saying they had a “lot of ” influence and 25 per cent saying they had “a little” influence on the way Australians saw themselves (Donoghue and Tranter 2013, p. 5). The racial myths that underpinned white Australia identity have to a large extent been undermined, despite outbursts like the Cronulla riots discussed in Chap. 4. This was a gradual process of destabilisation contributed to by a range of forces and events, such as revisionist histories condemning the racism and domination involved in colonisation (Rowley 1970; Reynolds 1987), the role of antiracist social movements and the general shift away from racial beliefs in a context of decolonisation and economic pressures, including the emergence of new trading partners for Australia in Asia. This is not to say, however, that some of the civic values attached to those myths, like the “fair go,” egalitarianism, and “mateship” lost their power among Australians when they thought about their national identity. The masculinist and patriarchal aspects of national identity were also challenged by feminist critics, who highlighted women’s hidden con-

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tributions to Australian national life and how “mateship” had traditionally excluded women (Dixson 1976; Grimshaw et al. 1994). The “Britishness” of Australian identity was also subtly undermined as Britain’s Imperial horizons and influence reduced after the Second World War and as Britain became more oriented to its European context and less oriented to its former colonies like Australia, New Zealand and Canada (Meaney 2001; Curran and Ward 2010). Mass immigration after the Second World War increased Australia’s ethnic diversification so that the British ethnic bases became less meaningful for Australian national identity. Neville Meaney (2001) has argued that to the extent that nationalism has been a force in Australia, this has been a case of thwarted British nationalism rather than the thwarted Australian nationalism lamented by radical nationalists (e.g. Robin Gollan, Ian Turner and Russel Ward in the 1950s and 1960s and later the historian David Day). In the crucial nationalist period between the 1850s and the 1960s, Australians had, he argues, overwhelmingly and unambiguously considered themselves members of the British race and nation. The Anglo influence had not thwarted nationalism in Australia, and one could only imagine this if one ignored the overwhelming British influence on Australia. There was no competition between being British and being Australian; to be Australian was to be British. Meaney adopts American historian David M. Potter’s (1962) distinction between “community of culture” and “community of interest” to explain away the apparent expressions of specifically Australian nationalism and national interests in conflicts with Britain over immigration, defence and trade policy. These, Meaney argues, were really expressions of community of interest, a non-national phenomenon. At the same time, these expressions did not directly challenge Australians’ sense of belonging to a common British community of culture. It was only when it became clear in the 1960s that the Empire was over, and that Britain was moving into the European Economic Community, that Australians finally came to accept that Britain was a foreign country. But Meaney argues that this did not give rise to a renewed and completed Australian nationalism, in part because the era of nationalism had passed, and that Australia, like much of Europe, had moved into a post-nationalist phase.

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None of the attempts to create new, distinctively Australian national symbols resonated emotionally or carried the conviction that British symbols once had. The cultural assertions of Australianness notable in Australian films like Breaker Morant and Gallipoli in the 1970s, harked back to the radical nationalism of the 1950s, and the bushman myth, immortalised by Russel Ward (1958) as “the Australian Legend.” But this was, Meaney claims, a splutter rather than the beginning of a nationalist resurgence (Meaney 2001; see also Meaney 1995, p. 186). In Meaney’s view, the multiculturalism of the late 1980s and onward was not a nationalist expression either, but an example of post-nationalism. Meaney concluded that “What holds the post-nationalist society together remains obscure” (Meaney 2001, p. 89). Nevertheless, looking beyond the nationalist teleology that has so often seduced historians, Meaney (2003, p. 132) noted that societies held together before the age of nationalism, and that they will hold together after nationalism’s demise, with new forms of post-national identity and new kinds of loyalty. As he commented in a senate lecture on the Australian Republic, where he rejected the usefulness of the term “nation” to describe the new kind of unity and political culture that might be ushered in by a republic: Even if a usable national tradition were available I would suggest that Australia, like the Western European countries, has outlived the need; that accepting the permanence of change it no longer requires the irrational and intense national mythology which helped mediate the earlier traumatic transition of traditional societies into modern ones. There should be a place for nation as the shared experience of a common homeland within a unifying concept of political community, but it should be a subsidiary one. (Meaney 1996, p. 20)

The language here is telling: national mythology is “irrational and intense,” something rooted in a more unstable past and the transition from rural to industrial society. Therefore, Australians do not need it anymore. The term Meaney preferred to “nation” was “Commonwealth” which suggested a truly rational, political coming together but which also had an impeccable Australian history going back to the framers of the constitution, as well as a long British intellectual history, whose essential meaning was “a free community organised for the common good” (Meaney 1996, p. 23).

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James Curran (2006), surveying the discourse of Australian prime ministers from Gough Whitlam to John Howard, has examined the attempts by political leaders to speak of and explain the character of the nation to the public in the post-1960s, post-British era. He too sets up his argument by registering the seismic shift in orientation caused by the collapse of the British Empire and Britain’s tentative movement into the European Economic Community. He notes that for most of the post-Menzies prime ministers “the task of articulating a new language of “national community” was undertaken with some trepidation and unease” (Curran 2006, p. 3), partly because nationalism had a bad name after two world wars and the Nazi genocide. But they also struggled to find a new language beyond the British myth to explain Australian distinctiveness. Curran and Ward in The Unknown Nation (2010) examine in detail several of those attempts to invent new symbols of nation, like new forms of currency (money), the national anthem and the national flag. They suggest the near impossibility of presenting a case for national distinctiveness once Australians realised that they had been thoroughly abandoned by Britain in the 1960s, leaving them in a “post-imperial void” (Curran and Ward 2010, p.  21 and p.  26). They suggest that the existence of this void, coupled with the coinciding low standing of nationalism, helps explain the ease with which intellectuals and political leaders adopted multiculturalism “as the new organising principle for civic community.” Unlike British race ideology, or ethnic nationalism more generally, multiculturalism suggested a new inclusiveness for both non-Anglos (European and non-European, immigrant and Australian born) and Aborigines. However, there were doubts about multiculturalism as a principle of unity, as many remained unconvinced that it had the same unifying power as ethnicity. These doubts were expressed in the official language of multiculturalism, where “the old language of Britishness lived on side by side with a new rhetoric of ‘unity in diversity’ and a new definition of the country as a ‘nation of immigrants.’” This tension, or “doublespeak,” was evident in Prime Minister John Gorton’s claim in Singapore in 1971 that Australia “could become ‘the world’s first truly multiracial society’ and yet remain ‘homogenous’” (Curran and Ward 2010, pp. 73–76; quotes at p. 73 and p. 75).

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I am less convinced than these authors that the search for a national identity is futile, or, in Meaney’s view, unnecessary. As Calhoun (2007) has argued, nations matter as sources of solidarity, even in multicultural contexts. In fact, I argue that one of the strengths of the multicultural imaginary in Australia has been the way that it has been overtly articulated with a view of a new, open Australian national identity. The contrast with the Netherlands, which as explained in the Introduction has dramatically retreated from multiculturalism, is telling. There, argues Fleras (2009), multiculturalism was adopted in an ad hoc way, did not engage the public imagination, and it was never really engaged with issues of national identity: Holland never endorsed a multiculturalism as part of a new national identity—that is, a nation composed of different but generally equal cultures— but continued to embrace a core Dutch culture that admittedly placed a strong emphasis on tolerance toward dissenting views. (Fleras 2009, p. 159)

Mainstream Dutch society did not actively embrace its more recent immigrant populations in a discourse of renewed national identity, but instead left them to lead separate lives, partly in unrealistic expectation that they would return to their home countries. When problems with immigrant integration became publicly visible and Dutch anxieties about identity were exacerbated in the context of terrorism and extremism, a multiculturalism without national roots found no resonance with mainstream Dutch society and was rapidly eclipsed. Australian multiculturalism has been a nation-building policy, and this emphasis has contributed to its general approval (Goot 1999; Goot and Watson 2005). This is not to underestimate the difficulties of reimagining national identity in a multicultural context. Notions of ethnic homogeneity have been central to many conceptions of national identity, including Australia’s for a large swathe of the twentieth century; when the principle of diversity is embraced, and ethnic homogeneity diluted, it may appear that the idea of nation loses relevance, and is replaced. However, this is less the case for civic nations which, as Hollinger (1995) argues, can find ways to unite societies with many ethno-racial communities under a broad, common national identity. Despite its strong,

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historical ethno-racial underpinnings, Australian national identity also always had strong civic dimensions (Birrell 1995; McGregor 2006). As the ethno-racial bases of the national identity have been undermined, the civic dimensions have become more prominent. This has not meant a reduction in the sense of pride, or of feelings of being Australian. Though the Australian national identity is less tied to an ethno-racial character, as I show below, Australians still entertain the belief that there is something distinctive about being Australian, and that there is a distinctive national culture (however diffuse and difficult to articulate).“Being” and “feeling” Australian do have relevance for many Australians’ understandings of their personal and social identities—and this despite also recognising that Australia is increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse. National identity does not necessarily conflict with multiculturalism. However, this means conceiving national identity as involving an open and ongoing dialogue about national traditions (Soutphommasane 2009), rather than as an identity simply handed down from the past. It means understanding national identity as predominantly post-ethnic (Hollinger 1995), and accepting that different individuals and groups in multicultural societies have different ways of experiencing and engaging with that broad, open national identity and always developing national culture. This includes the possibility of people coming at their particular experience of Australian identity through the avenue of other, distinctive experiences of identity—ethnic, Indigenous, religious, gender. The possibilities expand, in the context of the “deep diversity” that Charles Taylor (1993), writing in the Canadian context, argues is now a feature of the experience of Canadian national identity, and which one could also claim is an Australian reality. But it also means accepting that, as Smith argues, “nations must have a measure of common culture and civic ideology, a set of common understandings and aspirations, sentiments and ideas, that bind the population together in their homeland” (Smith 1991, p. 11). Bhikhu Parekh has argued that a multicultural society, which promotes strong levels of multicultural interaction, in both the private and the public spheres, builds up a common culture that is different to what is typically thought of as homogenous, national culture. Though Parekh argues that under globalising influences the idea of distinct “national culture makes little sense” (Parekh 2000, p. 8), elsewhere he does claim

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that people do build up a common culture and way of life that is also necessary for the stability and solidarity of a well-functioning, integrated multicultural society: Like any other society, a multicultural society needs a broadly shared culture to sustain it. Since it involves several cultures, the shared culture can only grow out of their interaction and should both respect and nurture their diversity and unite them around a common way of life. (Parekh 2000, p. 219)

Even multicultural nations require some degree of common national culture, supporting a sense of “we-ness,” that provides the context through which co-nationals can debate—and are willing to debate together—the complexities of identity, diversity and contested national traditions. And this is denied or ignored by some supporters of multiculturalism, who simply see in national identity a homogenising force that crushes expressions of cultural difference and multicultural identity. This underestimation of the vitality and importance of national identity was evident in some of the citizenship discourse of the late 1990s and early 2000s. An example of the multiculturalist dismissal of the relevance of Australian national identity can be found in the Australian Citizenship Council’s (2000) government commissioned report Australian Citizenship for a New Century. In August 1998 the Howard government established the Australian Citizenship Council and in its terms of reference asked it to give “advice both on contemporary issues in Australian citizenship policy and law and on how best to promote increased awareness of the significance of Australian citizenship, including its role as a unifying symbol” (Australian Citizenship Council 2000, p. 1). The Council’s chair was Sir Ninian Stephen, and prominent members on the council included public intellectuals Sir Donald Horne and Robert Manne, who were thanked especially by the chair for their contribution to writing the report (Australian Citizenship Council 2000, p. 2). Donald Horne (1994) had earlier published a book advocating the replacement of national identity with post-national, civic identity. The report began by suggesting that “citizenship” as civic values might provide a sense of unity in an increasingly multicultural society that is

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no longer unified by traditional national symbols (Australian Citizenship Council 2000, p. 4). One of the report’s main emphases was the removing of the relationship between those remnant traditional national symbols and citizenship, instead promoting a notion of citizenship as civic in character. The report endorsed multiculturalism and argued that a civic commitment to Australia was now the main source of unity, replacing older forms of unity such as national symbols (i.e. the bush), AngloSaxon or British greatness. The Council suggested that we might be better to forget the emphasis on identity altogether: Should we go beyond the idea of a single ‘identity’? Why do we have to imagine we have an ‘identity’ in any restricted sense which excludes many Australians? The Council considered it might be better to proclaim core civic values for all Australians to respect as the basis of our citizenship. In other words, it might be better to proclaim not a ‘national identity’, but a national civic ‘compact’. Such a compact could in practice be a statement that represents a form of ‘understanding’ or ‘agreement’ amongst Australians setting out commitment to our shared civic values which have evolved over many years. (Australian Citizenship Council 2000, pp. 10–11)

The report claimed that there were seven such unifying civic values: • A commitment to the land (so strong in Australia that it might be seen as a civic value) • A commitment to the rule of law (as one of the essential bases of a free and peaceful society) and to equality under the law • A commitment to the basics of a representative liberal democracy including freedom of opinion • A commitment to principles of tolerance and fairness • A commitment to acceptance of cultural diversity • A commitment to the well-being of all Australians • A commitment to recognising the unique status of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples The values themselves would, in all likelihood, be acceptable to many, with the possible exception of recognising the “unique status” of Australia’s

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Indigenous people. But as critics have argued, this was a vision of Australian citizenship that failed to acknowledge the existence of a historical, cultural nation (Betts and Birrell 2007; Galligan and Roberts 2004). Galligan and Roberts (2004, 2008) criticised such advisory groups for “hollowing out” the meaning of Australian citizenship by removing any notion of the cultural nation from it. They also claimed that multiculturalism was largely to blame for this hollowing out of the meaning of citizenship, depriving it, they claimed, of its cultural base. They criticised the way that multiculturalism shifted from being a set of policies meant to ease the integration of immigrants into Australian society and culture, to a description of, and ideal for, the Australian national identity. Australian society was not in fact multicultural, they argued, but far more culturally homogeneous than multiculturalists claimed it to be. Multiculturalism, they argued, was also largely irrelevant to the national identity, which remained strongly Australian, not multicultural. Though Australia’s is a strongly assimilatory culture, on the other hand, Galligan and Roberts recognised that diverse immigrants have also made a contribution to the “national culture,” gently transforming it over time: While professing multiculturalism, Australia has been essentially integrationist with multicultural policies assisting immigrants to bridge the transition from their original cultures to Australian culture. This has been a two-way process of Australian national culture being enriched and diversified—into something “rich and strange,” with the old and new blending into “a better and more varied community of people”. (Galligan and Roberts 2008, p. 222)

This is confusing, as on the one hand they are suggesting that immigrants shift from their original cultures to Australian culture, while on the other suggesting a much more subtle process of cultural interchange resulting in something “rich and strange.” The latter is, in fact, what many multiculturalists, and official multiculturalism as outlined in Chaps. 2 and 3, have argued, so it is hard to see in this respect how Galligan and Roberts can claim that they are arguing a position against or beyond multiculturalism. It is also difficult to see how multiculturalism has been responsible for hollowing out the cultural basis of citizenship.

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While Galligan and Roberts claim that Australia lacks the cultural diversity that would allow it to be described accurately as a multicultural society, it is difficult to know exactly what to make of this claim either. The main evidence that they rely upon is high rates of intermarriage, which they take to mean strong assimilation into Australian culture and the decline of ethnic difference. Use of languages other than English in the home, in the street and in whole shopping strips, different kinds of dress, different cultural habits and family forms, and religious diversification seem undeniable aspects of a more diverse Australia. Few adherents of multiculturalism would deny the fact that cultural interaction also produces broad similarities in the way that people do a broad range of things. This highlights a dilemma difficult to resolve for highly immigrant and diverse societies. While one might want to stress that there is some kind of cultural continuity to the nation, and something that we could call a national culture, it is nevertheless difficult to define the key features of that national culture without reifying it, and without underestimating the significance of its cultural diversity. Geoffrey Brahm Levey (2008b) is strongly critical of the post-nationalist discourse that summarily dismisses the relevance of national identity for social cohesion and unity. He also argues (like Galligan and Roberts) that the idea that “multiculturalism” can be either a central component of, or the new meaning of, Australian national identity is deeply flawed: On the face of it, this approach seems to be a category mistake: that is, it mistakes political and administrative measures that variously allow, accommodate and integrate the realm of diverse identities for an identity itself. (Levey 2008b, p. 261)

He contrasts “multiculturalism” as a possible unifying myth for Australian national identity with the American myth of the “melting pot.” Even though the latter mis-describes the reality of American life where there is much evidence of linguistic, cultural and ethnic separation between groups, as a myth it provides a powerful symbol of unity which serves American democracy by helping create a “sense of solidarity.” In contrast, Australia is far more integrative than the USA, and thus “multiculturalism” is mythic as a descriptor of Australian reality. However, it fails as

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a myth not because it does not accurately describe Australian life, but because, unlike the “melting pot” it “semantically conveys diversity and difference rather than unity and solidarity.” Here Levey is critical of multiculturalism as national myth of unity, and not of multiculturalism as policy which he sees as having been largely successful in answering the needs of diverse migrants and in producing a high degree of integration for a diverse society “based on liberal democratic values of liberty, equality, and justice” (Levey 2008b, p. 261). In his view “it makes more sense to construe multiculturalism as a set of principles, policies, and programs in the service of an Australian national identity than as the locus of that identity itself ” (Levey 2008b, p. 262). Unlike many multiculturalists, and also against those liberal nationalists who, he argues, operate with too thin a concept of culture as part of national identity, Levey argues for a thicker cultural conception of national identity. He argues that liberal nationalists have too quickly jettisoned the concept of national character. Levey argues for reinstating the term, though critically, understanding that it can too often serve the bellicose aims of states, and lead to an uncritical glorification of one’s own nation and denigration of others. But, he argues, there is also truth in national cultural differences that allow one to speak of different national characters: Canadians are different from Americans, and Australians are different from Brits and even the New Zealanders. Imprinted, as they are, with their national cultures, they tend to exhibit distinctive habits of mind, emotion and behaving, instantly noticeable to most outsiders. (Levey 2008b, p. 263)

This does not mean that everyone within a nation exhibits the same national character, and nor does it mean that national character is formed at one time in history and forever remains the same. But, Levey argues, there is a national character and a national culture, and these are too important to simply dismiss and ignore. National character will find expression through distinctive ways of doing things, and in the political institutions and processes of a country. However, it is not the legitimate role of government to seek to impose this character on its citizens, nor should it try to present its own definitive version of the national character,

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for this will inevitably caricature and reify it, when national character is constantly evolving. It needs to be “left to its own devices” (Levey 2008b, p. 264), but politicians and other policy makers ignore it at their peril. Levey argues that a more full-blooded understanding of national identity allows one to stipulate the legitimate domains in which its different aspects operate and the legitimate role and limits of those agencies involved in its reproduction and development. Governments have a legitimate role to play in “the inculcation and transmission of a national language, the teaching of the nation’s history, and the establishment of national institutions, holidays, and memorials.” But there are other aspects that belong to the domain of civil society, in which government has no role to play, “such as how people dress, call themselves, or spend their leisure, what languages they speak to each other, and even in what accent they speak their English.” And it is in this latter realm that the national character truly evolves, shaped by myriad social interactions, and influenced subtly by everyday interactions between the dominant Anglo culture and the cultures of other groups entering the society through mass immigration (Levey 2008b, p. 266). John Kane makes a similar argument about the undeniable reality of “a strong Australian cultural-national identity that, though founded in a racially exclusive past, has maintained considerable continuity through adaptive change to altered values and increasing cultural and racial diversity” (Kane 2008, pp. 78–79). As in other nations, the persistence, continuity and legitimacy of the state make no small contribution to this experience of a continuing Australian cultural-national identity (Kane 2008, p. 64 and p. 79). Like Levey, he also argues for the need for a thicker conception of national culture than liberal nationalists allow, while adding the point that it would be absurd for multiculturalists to call for the recognition and preservation of ethnic cultures, while dismissing or wishing to expunge this cultural-national identity (Kane 2008, p. 79). Both Levey and Kane make valid points and suggest useful ways of thinking about national culture and national identity in the context of ethnic and cultural diversity. However, I would suggest, contra Levey, that “multiculturalism” has come to mean more in everyday life than simply a set of policies and programmes for integrating immigrants. In fact, evidence, including qualitative research, suggests that “multiculturalism”

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and “diversity” are now thought about as important features of Australian national identity. This does not mean that it is the “locus” of the national identity; but its symbolic importance for Australian national identity is greater than Levey has suggested. In our own qualitative interview study of over 70 people from Victoria, in South Eastern Australia in the late 1980s and the early 2000s, Judith Brett and I found widespread use of terms like “diverse,” “multicultural,” “multiracial” and related terms when people were asked to describe Australia and Australians (Brett and Moran 2006, 2011). People were interviewed at length and between three and five times about their experiences of living in Australian society, and about how the society had changed. There were general life history questions, as well as more specific questions relating to multicultural and Indigenous issues. People depicted Australian society as unambiguously multicultural in make-up, but also often commented that diversity was now part of what it meant to be Australian, and that the typical Australian no longer belonged to any racial or ethnic group. As one young Chinese-Malaysian Australian woman put it, “The face of Australia is not just your typical Australian. It’s everyone now. It’s just a mix” (see Brett and Moran 2011, p. 197). The fact that it was difficult to say what being Australian exactly entailed, or what Australian culture was, did not necessarily prevent one from experiencing a strong sense of “being Australian,” as a young Lebanese Muslim Australian noted when explaining her own powerful feeling of being Australian-Lebanese: “See, that’s where I get confused, that’s where I always get stumped, when people say ‘What’s the Australian way of life?’, and ‘What is being Australian?’ I just identify being Australian.”2 Other qualitative studies have produced similar findings. For example, Lentini et al. (2009) conducted a focus group study in city and rural Victoria (15 focus groups) and found that among these diverse groups many participants felt that multiculturalism was a “major factor for making Australia a very tolerant society,” and also that “multiculturalism helped transform ‘Australianness’ into a distinctive Australian identity, and that it is a significant component of contemporary Australian identity” (Lentini et al. 2009, p.  4). People praised the diversity of their local areas (Lentini, Halafoff 2

This quote was from an interview in our sample, conducted in 2003. The young woman felt a strong sense of Australian identity, but also strongly identified with her Lebanese heritage.

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and Ogru, p. 21). They saw Australian identity as “diverse and dynamic,” something that was changing over time (a few lamented the loss of an older, more stable Australian identity). Many felt that no one ethnic group or ethnic experience was pre-eminent in Australia, and thought that this was a strength (Lentini et al. 2009, pp. 24–26). There was some consensus among the groups that there were expected Australian behaviour patterns, and an expectation that people accepted a broad Australian way of life. Perhaps reflecting the discourse of the time (the mid to late 2000s), people spoke of Australian values and the need to accept and embrace them, but the main ones mentioned were civic, like the “fair go,” “mateship” and caring for and helping others. People described Australians as “laid back,” open and “easy-going” and also considered these to be Australian values (Lentini et al. 2009, p. 25). Nola Purdie and her co-authors used short essays (over 400) from a sample of school, technical college and university students to elicit commentaries on the topic “What does it mean to be Australian?” Students produced some of the traditional images like being “sporty,” being free and the ones mentioned above like the fair go and mateship, but they also prominently reported things including “diversity,” “being multicultural” and “respecting other cultures,” suggesting that the latter were also considered important for being Australian (Purdie and Craven 2006). Responses were mainly positive about cultural diversity, and “accepting diversity” was considered an important Australian trait (Purdie and Wilss 2007, pp. 71–78). These qualitative research findings, together with findings from survey research of national Australian samples, suggest that people now accept multiculturalism and diversity as part of Australian national identity. Quantitative surveys seem to indicate that Australians in the present adopt a more civic type of national identity that is more open to people from many different backgrounds. When asked what qualities are important for being “truly Australian,” for example, in the 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, those one would associate with more civic notions of identity stood out, like “feeling Australian” (92 per cent saying this was important), having “Australian citizenship” (91 per cent saying this was important) and “respecting Australian political institutions and laws” (89 per cent saying this was important). “Speaking English” was

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also seen as important to being truly Australian by 92 per cent of respondents. This is not so clearly “civic,” though it is nevertheless an achievable rather than necessarily ethnically ascriptive quality. The more ascriptive qualities were also seen as important to being “truly Australian” by many people, but the percentages were much lower: being born in Australia (58 per cent saying this was important), having “Australian heritage” (37 per cent saying this was important) or “being Christian” (36 per cent saying this was important) (Goot and Watson 2005, p. 188). Jones (1999) used findings from earlier national surveys (from the 1990s) to build a scale of “nativists” (traditional, conservative Australian nationalists, closer to the ethnic pole of nationalism and more inclined to be against multiculturalism) and “civic pluralists” (closer to the civic pole of nationalism and more accepting of multiculturalism). According to his analysis, only a quarter of Australians in the 1990s held “nativist” views of Australian identity, with three quarters holding more “civic pluralist” views, and he suggested that as the former tend to be older, and less educated, the civic pluralist views were likely to continue to grow, as the population became more educated. There have been many influences contributing to this gradual shift to a more inclusive, multicultural national identity. The leadership at all three levels of government has played its role, given the generally bipartisan political agreement of the major political parties since the 1970s on at least the need to accept and respect ethno-racial and cultural diversity in Australia, and for the most part accepting multiculturalism. Education has played an important role, including in socialising students to become citizens comfortable with living in and accepting of a multicultural society. People’s experiences in everyday life, living in a complex, diverse society, and in a context where the ethno-national political forces, including extreme nationalist groups and political parties, have not had a great deal of influence, have subtly influenced the impression that Australian national identity is more varied than it may have been in the past. Intermarriage, and mixed friendship and social circles, including in workplaces and sport, have also been important. The high rate of intermarriage in Australia across ethnic and religious groups, especially in the second and third generation after immigration (Heard et al. 2009), and between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians, means that most

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individuals have at least some direct, personal experience with Australia’s growing diversity through their own extended families. As a 72-year-old, rurally based working class Anglo-Australian man succinctly put it in our above-mentioned interview study, interviewed in 2003 (Brett and Moran 2011, p. 197): I sat down at Christmas dinner about three or four years ago and there were twenty-two of us and there was about eleven different nationalities. So anybody comes to me and starts to whinge about multiculturalism I tell them, hang on, this is my family structure and we’re all Australians.

While those who have argued that national identity is a redundant leftover that has little place in modern Australia underestimate the emotional attachment people have to their nation, attempts to reclaim an “ethnic core” as the basis of the national identity are just as flawed, but for different reasons. In this respect, prominent leftist historian Miriam Dixson’s (1999) book The Imaginary Australian represents a cautionary tale. Dixson had tried to find a way through the 1980s and 1990s debates about national identity, by reasserting the unifying importance of an “Anglo-Celtic” core culture to the stability of the national identity. She argued that in a period of transition to a polyethnic nation and identity, Australians were still dependent for their cohesion and unity as a nation upon an Anglo-Celtic “core culture,” and its myths, memories and traditions. Dixson adopted Anthony Smith’s notion of the ethno-symbolic core to support her argument, but in intellectually promiscuous fashion drew also upon other intellectual frameworks including philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s notion of the “mytho-poetic core” of imagination, and on the psychoanalytic tradition including Erik Erikson, Donald Winnicott, Melanie Klein, Julia Kristeva and Cornelius Castoriadis. Her main thesis was that the Anglo-Celtic core culture performed a Winnicottian “holding” role for the whole nation, providing the continuity and cohesion that Australians required to contain their fears and anxieties as they worked their way through to a new identity, a new synthesis that would only emerge through an open process of mourning for the older Australia. “Old identity” Australians, she argued, had not been allowed to openly mourn the losses they felt over the dismantling of the core culture and national identity (Dixson 1999, pp. 42–44). Australia, like other nations

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in a globalising world, was threatened with fragmentation, and it was only this Anglo-Celtic core, this ethnic foundation of the nation, that could supply the unifying symbolic framework. The Anglo-Celtic core and its Anglo-Celtic bearers needed to continue to play the role of transmitting the core Australian national values “such as respect for the ideal of the individual, for freedom of expression, for egalitarianism, for fairness and for the rule of law” (Dixson 1999, p. 33). An exaggerated sense of urgency and crisis pervaded The Imaginary Australian and this provided the rationale for its key claim about the continuing importance of the Anglo-Celtic core culture. The nation was threatened with fragmentation, and only the Anglo-Celts had the historical understanding and feeling for how it could be held together. The book had little to say about the emergent multicultural or polyethnic society except to highlight the ways that it threatened old Australia, and that opinion-makers and politicians needed to take that threat seriously, and allow the culture to safely work its way through it. But at what point would Australians be able to say that it was now safe to let Australia’s multi-ethnic Australians also be the nation’s enunciators and representatives? If, as Dixson claimed, the ethnic core was so central to nationhood, how could Australia ever move beyond its Anglo-Celtic core and at the same time hold together and demand of its people their loyalty, allegiance and even love? It appears that in her view, this would not be the case for a very long time, as when she wrote that “a reasonably robust core culture is vital if a nation’s transitional structures are to persist without unduly fragmenting over what may be a long haul” (Dixson 1999, p. 160). As for what needed to be done, Dixson felt that Australians, especially AngloCeltic Australians, needed to be more self-affirming and proud in their appreciation of the key features of their nation and identity, and free themselves of the negativity and self-doubt that had plagued them since the 1970s (on negativity and self-doubt, see especially Dixson 1999, Ch. 4). “I propose,” she wrote “ that in addition to the ‘cold prudence’ of formal allegiance to the civic culture, Australians need by way of our most effective ‘bonding force’ a more confident, less ambivalently self-affirming core culture” (Dixson 1999, p. 40). And in so doing, Australians would enact a moderate sacralising of their national culture, which, as Dixson

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pointed out, renowned theorist of nationalism Ernest Gellner (1994)3 had conceded might be necessary for nations to hold together (discussed in Dixson 1999, pp. 8–40). Dixson’s repeated emphasis of the need for Anglo-Celtic representatives to embrace their role as the carriers of the nation, left the uneasy impression (though this was not her intention) that Anglo-Celts were still the true Australians who had a deeper, unconscious and even mystical hold on the nation’s mainsprings. By implication, non-Anglo-Celtic Australians were less distinctively Australian, and needed to take up the position of “listening” as the Anglo-Celts debated and worked through their old history and identity. This was certainly the feeling that the book inspired in one Australian of Chinese descent, who noted the implication of being a “less than core” Australian (Chan 2000; see also Soutphommasane 2012, pp. 101–102). Nevertheless, and even if Dixson’s solution seemed vague and unworkable, her book at least attempted to address the continuing importance of the nation (against those who impatiently or with hostility dismissed it) and to raise difficult questions about the nature of cohesion and unity that some multicultural arguments simply choose to ignore. To her credit, she also attempted to counter the “thin culture” approach to the nation evident in civic or post-national arguments about national belonging, identity and cohesion. One of the most influential and popular examples of the latter was the book Mistaken Identity, published to coincide with Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988. In this widely cited book, Stephen Castles and coauthors claimed that Australia had entered a post-national phase where the concept of an Australian national identity—always fragile and contentious because of a lack of foundational national events—had become meaningless and redundant. Globalisation (a term they did not use but whose meanings cover the transnational and global social and economic changes they call “internationalisation,” Castles et al. 1988, p. 106) coupled with the development of a multi-ethnic society in Australia meant the end of Australian national identity, nationalism, national culture and nation, except as repressive ideologies. 3

Gellner did not, however, argue that this sacralising aspect was peculiar to nations. Following Durkheim he saw some degree of sacralising of the social as central to all human societies (Gellner 1994).

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In the last chapter of their book, evocatively titled “Community Without Nation?”, Castles et al. went through a series of possible unifying elements that have been important for other nations, but discounted the relevance of each for Australia. Unlike America, Australia had no revolutionary war of independence, nor any other traumatic moment of birth that in other states makes nationalism “most intense and least problematic” (Castles et al. 1988, p. 142). Australia does not have the long historical continuity that legitimises and strengthens other nations. Australians did not have an investment in a state with a sense of “unique responsibility for some chiliastic mission” (Castles et al. 1988, p. 143). Because (at that time) 40 per cent of Australians were born overseas or had a parent born overseas, and a quarter of the population was of nonBritish origin, shared “heritage and culture” was “also not, for Australia, a viable ideology of the nation” (Castles et al. 1988, p. 144). Shared economic prosperity, a high level of consumerism as the Australian way of life that any person, regardless of ethnicity could aspire to, was no longer an option in poorer economic times (Castles et  al. 1988, p.  144). Racism, which had been central to Australia’s national identity from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s, and which was still prevalent in Australia, was no longer available as a legitimate, unifying national symbol; materially the central importance of ethnically diverse migrants to Australia’s society and economy itself made this impossible, while ideologically the doctrine of multiculturalism checked racism and managed potential conflicts (Castles et al. 1988, pp. 144–146). Rather than attempt to resuscitate a moribund “imagined” national identity, Castles et al. argued that Australians should focus on fostering what they believed were more meaningful and plausible local senses of community and identity (“face-to-face community”) and a commitment to humanity as a whole (Castles et al. 1988, p. 13 and pp. 147–148). A progressive strategy should “be based on an attempt to redefine the basis of social organization, and to move away from a political emphasis on the nation-state” (Castles et al. 1988, p. 148). At several points in the book they claimed that national identity and nationalism had become increasingly meaningless to Australia’s diverse people. For example, though virulent nationalisms and nationalist and ethnic conflicts were evident in Europe and the Soviet Union undergoing “Glasnost,” “in New

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World States, which have uncontested borders and no serious separatist movements, the decline of nationalism is most evident.” Australia, they argued, was perhaps even further along this developmental path, as it only had a weak national identity to begin with (Castles et al. 1988, p. 106). Once Australia reached the late 1970s, a “fledgling Australian nationalism” based on “standards of living and domestic progress” was “beginning to come apart.” This argument involved an unsubstantiated empirical claim that: Deeper down, the nation-state was beginning to lose its political and cultural significance, as culture and identity increasingly took on stronger international and local or subcultural dimensions. (Castles et  al. 1988, p. 114)

It is on this point that their views and proscriptions depart substantially from the everyday experiences and beliefs of the bulk of the population, who indicate, for example when surveyed, that they believe that they live, not just in local communities, but also in an Australian nation, and that they have an Australian national identity. For example, when, around the same time that Castles et al. published Mistaken Identity, Baxter, Emmison and Western (1991) asked a representative national sample of Australians to choose between a list of 15 “identity sources” to describe themselves, on a scale from “Very Important” to “Not At All Important,” 54 per cent listed “Australian” as “Very Important,” and a further 28 per cent listed it as “Fairly Important.” Only 5 per cent responded that it was “Not At All Important.” Notably, “class,” the main focus of their study, was far less important as a source of personal identity than being Australian. The only identity source higher on the list was “family group member” (62 per cent “Very Important,” and 27 per cent “Fairly Important”) (reported in Emmison and Western 1991, p.  289). Though providing a list of identity sources might arguably provoke some to include “Australian” as an aspect of their identity when they might not otherwise, and though we do not know from this survey what meaning they attached to being Australian, it is clear that having an Australian identity was at some level important to an overwhelming majority of the

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Australian population, in all of its immigrant, multicultural diversity. This has been shown again and again in subsequent national surveys that report high levels of national pride among Australians (ranking among the highest levels in the world), show that large majorities feel that it is very important to be patriotic and that Australians should be more patriotic (see Phillips 1998) and suggest a strong level of emotional attachment to Australia, with 94 per cent of a 1995 national sample expressing “close” or “very close” attachment to Australia when asked “how close,” “how emotionally attached” to Australia they felt (Pakulski and Tranter 2000, p. 209). Further evidence comes from Tim Phillips’s (2002) analysis of the findings from the 1995 World Values Survey. Phillips was interested in empirically exploring Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined community,” particularly issues surrounding self-identity and attachment to different kinds of groups or communities, including the nation. He used data from the World Values Survey to examine how Australians assessed their own sense of attachment to different kinds of geographical groups. The survey asked a national sample of Australians “To which of these geographic groups would you say you identify yourself with first? And which geographic group next?” The choices were “Locality or town where you live,” “State or region of Australia where you live,” “Australia as a whole,” “Asia,” “The world as a whole” and “Don’t know.” Phillips points out that this scale had several virtues. While the list was not exhaustive, it was balanced in that it supplied two geographic groups above and two below the level of the nation, and ranged from the most immediate (town or locality) to the most abstract (the world). Ranking responses allowed one to gain a sense of the layered nature of self-identification. It gave respondents the option of not identifying with any of the groups if they found the list meaningless (“Don’t know” response). Phillips notes in relation to the last that only 1 per cent of respondents said “Don’t know” about the geographic group identified with first, and only 2 per cent with the group ranked second. This meant that the geographical groups were readily available categories for almost all respondents (Phillips 2002, pp. 604–605). Phillips also points out that there are limitations of this scale, as it did not include other kinds of identification, such as those to ethnic or Indigenous groups (Phillips 2002, p. 613).

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For my purposes, the most important finding was that the most selected first choice was “Australia as a whole” (43 per cent), with the next most selected group being “locality or town” (32 per cent). State or region of Australia was the first choice for almost 13 per cent of respondents, and the world for 10 per cent. Less than 1 per cent chose Asia as the first geographical group they identified with. As a second choice the most favoured were state or region of Australia where you live (32 per cent) and Australia as a whole (29 per cent), with locality or town where you live coming in next (23 per cent), followed by the world (12 per cent). Less than 2 per cent gave Asia as their second choice (Phillips 2002, p. 605). The figures for first and second choices for each geographic group could be added together and divided by two to present a picture of which groups attracted the most devotion. According to Phillips (2002, p. 606): Australia emerges as the most popular geographic group (36 %), followed by locality or town where you live (28 %), state or region of Australia where you live (22 %), and the world as a whole (11 %).

It should be pointed out that the finding of strong identification with the nation is equivocal. Another way to look at these findings, as Phillips explains, is to suggest that identification with Australia (36 per cent) is less popular than identification with all the other geographical groups combined, which becomes 60 per cent (Phillips 2002, p. 606). As Phillips concludes from this reading of the data, by using a research model that recognises “the plural bases, multidimensional character and divisible nature of self-identity,” such studies can avoid “the risk of overstating the importance of the nation as a social source of self, at the expense of alternative forms” (Phillips 2002, p. 613). Phillips further analysed the data to produce four categories of respondents, based on the geographical groups that they felt most deeply attached to, and showed their percentage distribution among respondents: “Localists,” who identified predominately at the levels of locality or town and state or region where they lived, in other words below the nation (19.5 per cent); “Local-looking nationalists,” who identified predominantly with geographic categories at the national and local levels (58.4 per cent); “Global-looking nationalists,” who identified predominantly with

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the nation and the world (15.6 per cent); and “Global-looking localists,” who identified predominantly with their locality and the world (6.4 per cent). Again, these survey-based findings indicate strong identification with the nation. Though there was a considerable proportion of localists whose main identifications were below the nation (19.5 per cent), these were far outweighed by the two kinds of nationalists (a combined 74 per cent). It is worthy of note that the group described as having predominantly local and global identifications (by-passing the nation)—the type of non-nationalist identificatory group favoured and recommended by Castles et al. (1988)—only represented 6.4 per cent of respondents.

Conclusion Australia has experienced tensions around national identity through the shift from a more ethnically homogenous British-Australian society to a more multi-ethnic and multi-racial society in the decades after the Second World War. I explained in detail in Chaps. 3 and 4 some of these tensions, expressed through sometimes explosive debates, including the race debates of the 1980s and 1990s, and the debates about Australian values and core culture in the 2000s. In this chapter I have focused specifically on the relationship between multiculturalism and national identity, exploring some of the arguments, including that Australian national identity is a separate issue to multiculturalism (which should be viewed more restrictively as a set of policies and procedures), and that multiculturalism or multi-ethnicity render national identity less meaningful than it may have been in the past, or even that it is redundant. Against the first position I argued that multiculturalism was too bound up with questions of national identity in the Australian context to separate the two, and that part of multiculturalism’s continued success in the Australian context was the way that it was always closely aligned with conceptions of, and emphases on, a continually developing, open and inclusive national identity. I also provided evidence to show that Australians now thought of their national identity as multicultural. Compared to minority nationalisms like those of Quebec, though Australian national identity has been challenged by the transformation of its population in a

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multi-ethnic direction, Australians appear to have felt less threatened in their national identity by multiculturalism. Political leadership stressing the importance of national cohesion, unity and identity, while also stressing the importance of acceptance of, and opportunities for expression of, ethno-cultural diversity, and generally bipartisan symbolic commitment to multiculturalism by the major political parties, Liberal and Labor, have also enabled the development of a multicultural national identity. Australians are proud of their country and of their nation (Pakulski and Tranter 2000), and official multiculturalism has shored up its legitimacy by recognising this. In relation to the second position, I claimed that national identity continued to be an important source of solidarity for many Australians, even in a context of increased ethno-cultural diversity. I argued against the assumption that nationalism and national identity are the enemies of, or in necessary conflict with, multiculturalism. Though it may be true that nations and nationalism rely on a level cultural homogeneity (Gellner 1983), such reliance does not necessarily threaten the expressions of ethno-cultural diversity so important to supporters of multiculturalism. As Parekh (2000, p. 196) has argued, diverse societies also demand strong forms of unity and cohesion, to nurture their diversity. Such societies also need a powerful political structure that commands loyalty and allegiance from their diverse citizens, otherwise they feel “threatened by differences,” and lack “the confidence and the willingness to welcome and live with them.” Parekh also emphasises that the “shared view of national identity has a particularly important role in multicultural society because of its greater need to cultivate a common sense of belonging among its diverse communities” (Parekh 2000, p. 231; see also Modood 2007 and as discussed earlier in this chapter). There have been critics in Australia who have argued the opposite, criticising governments for continuing to speak the language of unity, arguing that this threatens and stifles the proliferation of cultural difference, which is considered a value much more important than unity (Stratton and Ang 1998). The threat that cultural difference will be squashed through calls for unity and adherence to a shared national culture is always a possibility, but multiculturalists have also erred in underestimating the importance of sharing some degree of common culture, and the importance

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of political leaders continuing to discuss national identity and national unity as they support multiculturalism. If political leaders and intellectuals avoid issues of national identity as they discuss multiculturalism and pursue multicultural policy, there is the danger that more extreme advocates of defensive, and even ethno-nationalist, nationalism will take their place in leading such discussions. The issue remains of how national identity is discussed and debated in the public realm, by politicians and others, and the degree to which advocates of national identity are supportive of the peaceful co-existence, within nation-states, of a plurality of cultures united under a common, liberal and open national identity. For example, as explained in Chap. 4, there were times when the Howard government stepped back from that position in its political rhetoric, and appeared to try to reinforce a more ethno-religious basis for the Australian national identity. Howard claimed in 2006 that Australian values were predominantly shaped by “Judeo-Christian ethics” (Howard 2006a), and that while Australia was a diverse society, it was also important to accept that there was a dominant cultural strain. Immigrants to Australia had to accept this, and adapt to that dominant strain, that Howard also referred to as Australia’s “AngloSaxon” core culture (Howard 2006b; see also Tate 2009). As also shown in Chap. 4, more extreme political figures such as MP Pauline Hanson went much further, highlighting in the 1990s the perils of “Asianisation,” claiming that multiculturalism was dividing and ruining Australia, and arguing that Australian political leaders should adopt a more protective stance for the nation, and emphasise a stronger, traditional Australian identity. Hanson was re-elected to the Australian parliament in the 2016 election and has again highlighted the threats of “Asianisation” but has shifted her main opposition to Muslims and Islam, claiming that these are now major threats to Australia. Multiculturalism continues to evolve in the Australian context. New, diverse immigrant groups, including from Africa, a large increase of immigrants from India and China, and continuing immigration from the Middle East have brought new issues and debates. This includes debates about the place of religion in Australian national life. The parameters of what it means to be Australian continue to change. I will return to some of these issues in Chap. 7. In the next chapter, I turn to a closer examination of the relationship between multiculturalism and Indigenous Australians.

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Galligan, B., and W. Roberts. 2004. Australian Citizenship. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. ———. 2008. Multiculturalism, National Identity, and Pluralist Democracy: The Australian Variant. In Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism, ed. G.B. Levey, 209–224. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Gellner, E. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1994. The Sacred and the National. In Encounters with Nationalism, 59–73. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Gitlin, T. 1995. The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars. New York: Metropolitan Books. Glazer, N. 1997. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gleason, P. 1983. Identifying Identity: A Semantic History. The Journal of American History 69(4): 910–931. Goot, M. 1999. Migrant Numbers, Asian Immigration and Multiculturalism: Trends in the Polls, 1943–1998. In Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness, Statistical Appendix, Part 2, ed. National Multicultural Advisory Council, 29–61. Canberra: Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Goot, M., and I. Watson. 2005. Immigration, Multiculturalism and National Identity. In Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report, ed. S.  Wilson, G. Meagher, R. Gibson, D. Denmark, and M. Western, 182–203. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Grassby, A. 1973. A Multi-Cultural Society for the Future. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Grimshaw, P., M. Lake, A. McGrath, and M. Quartly. 1994. Creating a Nation. Ringwood, VIC: McPhee Gribble Publishers. Heard, G., B. Birrell, and S.-E. Khoo. 2009. Intermarriage by Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. People and Place 17(1): 1–14. Hirst, J.  1992. The Pioneer Legend. In Intruders in the Bush: The Australian Quest For Identity, ed. J  Carroll, 2nd ed., 14–38. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Hollinger, D. 1995. Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New  York: Basic Books. Horne, D. 1994. The Public Culture: An Argument with the Future. Rev. 2nd ed. London: Pluto Press. Howard, J. 2006a. A Sense of Balance: The Australian Achievement in 2006. Australia Day Address to The National Press Club, the Great Hall, Parliament

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House, Canberra, January 25. http://australianpolitics.com/2006/01/25/ john-howard-australia-day-address.html. Accessed 17 Jan 2014. ———. 2006b. John Howard Interview with Neil Mitchell, 3AW. Melbourne, February 24. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10052/20060321-0000/www. pm.gov.au/news/interviews/Interview1788.html. Accessed 20 Aug 2011. Huntington, S.P. 2004. Who Are We?: America’s Great Debate. London: Simon and Schuster. Inglis, K.S. 1991. Multiculturalism and National identity. In Australian National Identity, ed. C.A. Price, 13–31. Canberra: Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Inglis, K.S., and J. Brazier. 1998. Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape. Carlton, VIC: Miegunyah Press at Melbourne University Press. Jones, F.L. 1999. The Sources and Limits of Popular Support for a Multicultural Australia. In The Future of Australian Multiculturalism: Reflections of the Twentieth Anniversary of Jean Martin’s The Migrant Presence, ed. G. Hage, and R.  Couch, 21–30. Sydney: Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Sydney. Kane, J.  2008. Liberal Nationalism and the Multicultural State. In Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism, ed. G.B.  Levey, 63–82. New  York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Kohn, H. 1945. The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background. New York: The Macmillan Company. Kymlicka, W. 1996. Social Unity in a Liberal State. Social Philosophy and Policy 13(1): 105–136. Lake, M., and H. Reynolds. 2008. Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the Question of Racial Equality. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Lentini, P., A. Halafoff, and E. Ogru. 2009. Perceptions of Multiculturalism and Security in Victoria: Report to the Department of Premier and Cabinet, State Government of Victoria. Clayton, VIC: Global Terrorism Research Centre, Monash University. Levey, G.B. 2008b. Multiculturalism and Australian National Identity. In Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism, ed. G.B.  Levey, 254–276. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. McGregor, R. 2006. The Necessity of Britishness: Ethno-Cultural Roots of Australian Nationalism. Nations and Nationalism 12(3): 493–511.

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Meaney, N. 1995. The End of “White Australia” and Australia’s Changing Perceptions of Asia, 1945–1990. Australian Journal of International Affairs 49(2): 171–189. ———. 1996. The Commonwealth and the Republic: An Historical Perspective. Papers on Parliament No. 27, March 15–30. http://www.aph.gov.au/About_ Parliament/Senate/Research_and_Education/pops/~/link.aspx?_id=472D73 A1ADBC46A2A3815D10D4079F93&_z=z. Accessed 10 June 2010. ———. 2001. Britishness and Australian Identity: The Problem of Nationalism in Australian History and Historiography. Australian Historical Studies 32(116): 76–90. ———. 2003. Britishness and Australia: Some Reflections. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 31(2): 121–135. Miller, D. 1995. On Nationality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Modood, T. 2007. Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea. Cambridge: Polity Press. Moran, A. 2011. Multiculturalism as Nation Building in Australia: Inclusive National Identity and the Embrace of Diversity. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34(12): 2153–2172. National Multicultural Advisory Council. 1999. Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness. Canberra: Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Office of Multicultural Affairs. 1989. National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia: Sharing Our Future. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Pakulski, J., and B.  Tranter. 2000. Civic, National and Denizen Identity in Australia. Journal of Sociology 36(2): 205–222. Parekh, B. 2000. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2008. A New Politics of Identity: Political Principles for an Interdisciplinary World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pearson, D. 2001. The Politics of Ethnicity in Settler Societies: States of Unease. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Phillips, T. 1998. Popular Views About Australian Identity: Research and Analysis. Journal of Sociology 34(3): 281–302. ———. 2002. Imagined Communities and Self-Identity: An Exploratory Quantitative Analysis. Sociology 36(3): 597–617. Poole, R. 1999. Nation and Identity. London and New York: Routledge. Potter, D.M. 1962. The Historian’s Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa. The American Historical Review 67(4): 924–950.

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Purdie, N, and R. Craven. 2006. Young People’s Perceptions of What It Means to Be an Australian. Student Learning Processes. http://research.acer.edu.au/ learning_processes/1. Accessed 1 July 2010. Purdie, N., and L.  Wilss. 2007. Australian National Identity: Young Peoples’ Conceptions of What It Means to Be Australian. National Identities 9(1): 67–82. Reynolds, H. 1987. Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Rowley, C.D. 1970. The Destruction of Aboriginal Society. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Scates, B. 2002. In Gallipoli’s Shadow: Pilgrimage, Memory, Mourning and the Great War. Australian Historical Studies 33(119): 1–21. Schlesinger, A. Jr. 1992. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Seymour, M., and A.-G. Gagnon, eds. 2012. Multinational Federalism: Problems and Prospects. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, A.D. 1991. National Identity. London: Penguin Books. Soutphommasane, T. 2009. Reclaiming Patriotism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2012. Don’t Go Back to Where You Came From: Why Multiculturalism Works. Sydney: NewSouth Press. Spillman, L. 1997. Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stratton, J., and I. Ang. 1998. Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Difference and National Identity in the USA and Australia. In Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity, ed. D. Bennett, 135–162. London and New York: Routledge. Tate, J. 2009. John Howard’s “Nation” and Citizenship Test: Multiculturalism, Citizenship and Identity. Australian Journal of Politics and History 55(1): 97–120. Tavan, G. 2005. The Long, Slow Death of White Australia. Carlton North, VIC: Scribe. Taylor, C. 1993. Shared and Divergent Values. In Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism, 155–186. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press. Ward, R. 1958. The Australian Legend. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Watson, C.W. 2000. Multiculturalism. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press. Yack, B. 1996. The Myth of the Civic Nation. Critical Review 10(2): 193–211.

6 Aboriginal and Multicultural Imaginaries: Tensions, Accommodations, Reconciliation

The discourse of multiculturalism in Australia, as in other white settler societies, has largely proceeded along parallel lines to discourse about Aboriginal rights and self-determination. In part, this reflects the way that multiculturalism developed out of government responses to ethnic diversification brought about by large-scale post-Second World War immigration and further developed with the growth of ethnic mobilisation. It is also due to the long-standing separate government-Aboriginal relationships and policy phases since the nineteenth century. As Ann Curthoys (2000) has argued, it is also about historical and ongoing distinctions in thinking about different types of racial “others.” Throughout the nineteenth century, she notes, “public debates about the native or the Aboriginal, on the one hand, and the Chinese Question, on the other, rarely met” (Curthoys 2000, p. 22), and this pattern was repeated in the twentieth century in the distinction between the Aboriginal question and the dilemmas of ethnically diverse immigration. In this chapter, I will argue that although there have been attempts by official Australian multiculturalism to include Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders within the multicultural framework, these attempts have, thus far, largely failed. Conceptually and politically, it has been argued © The Author(s) 2017 A. Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8_6

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that the predominant discourses of multiculturalism do not, and cannot, capture what is peculiar to relations between colonised and disinherited Indigenous people and the surrounding society, nation-state and government, in Australia or in other settler societies. Augie Fleras (1999, p. 188) goes so far as to claim that “indigenous ethno-politics do not entail a commitment to multiculturalism, with its focus on removal of discriminatory barriers and attitudinal adjustments.” The envisaged relations are nation to nation, or (Indigenous) nation to state, not Indigenous people as one group within a diverse society but a group with special claims and either complete or shared sovereignty (Fleras 1999; see also Maaka and Fleras 2005). Ronald Niezen argues more persuasively that multicultural discourse is, in fact, relevant to Indigenous claims, but that it is not the only relevant discourse: “Recognition of difference for indigenous peoples includes rights that go beyond notions of differences with equality. Indigenous claims are not only multicultural but also multiconstitutional” (Niezen 2003, p. 218). The multiconstitutional aspects of Australian Indigenous claims make them qualitatively different to the claims to equality, respect and freedom from discrimination granted to people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds within a single, unified Australian nation-state. Before looking closely at the Australian situation, I will first discuss briefly the relationship between multiculturalism and Indigenous people in two other white settler countries, Canada and New Zealand. While Canada and Australia were the first countries to introduce national multicultural policies in the early 1970s, New Zealand has been slower to introduce multiculturalism, and it has had a more tentative hold there. Though there are important differences between the experiences of Canada, New Zealand and Australia, there are also similarities that reveal the importance of the settler national character of these societies in shaping inter-ethnic and multicultural relations (Pearson 2001) and in particular the tensions between the multicultural and Indigenous imaginaries.

Canada As noted in the Introduction, multiculturalism in Canada arose, in part, in reaction to the “bi-cultural” compromise in the 1960s that saw federal policy officially recognising Canada as a bilingual country, with two equal

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English and French “founding nations.” In response to Quebec nationalism and separatism, federal governments moved to enshrine bilingualism to improve French participation in the civil service and to enhance equality between French and English Canadians (Kymlicka 2004). This was aimed at keeping Canada together, through dealing with the most obvious examples of ethno-cultural diversity—French Canadians concerned to preserve their unique culture. In reaction, Canada’s “white ethnic” groups of Germans, Croatians, Poles, Finns, Germans, Dutch and Jews were mobilised, declaring their “invisibility” in the context of “duality,” “bilingualism,” “biculturalism” and “two founding nations.” They became a third force demanding recognition, and this was found in “multiculturalism in a bilingual framework” (Kymlicka 2004; see also Fleras 2009, Ch. 3)—the formula that Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau came up with in 1971. Indigenous people were peripheral to these initial arguments and debates leading up to the establishment of official multiculturalism with the “Statement on Multiculturalism” of 1971 (Pearson 2001). And it was only later in the 1970s and 1980s, “that non-white immigrant groups became active players in the multicultural scene” (Kymlicka 2004). While the multicultural solution might have appeased “white ethnics,”, Indigenous peoples were mobilised by their own discourses of Indigenous identity, First Nation status and their special relations with the Crown (as legalised in a history of treaty arrangements for some “Indians” (Pearson 2001)). They were also famously mobilised by Pierre Trudeau’s 1969 White Paper on Indian policy that aimed to close reserves, get rid of official Indian status and integrate Canadian Indigenous peoples as individuals into mainstream Canadian society (Pearson 2001; Webber 1994). And Canada’s Indigenous peoples remain suspicious of the ways that multiculturalism obscures and diminishes their specific rights and claims, as noted by Indigenous author Bonita Lawrence (writing with Indian Canadian author Enakshi Dua): Perhaps the most difficult and contentious area in which Aboriginal realities conflict with the interests of people of color regards immigration and multiculturalism. Aboriginal theorists and activists, particularly in Canada, have largely been silent on these issues. This reflects the discomfort and

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ambivalence of many Aboriginal people when official policies and discourses of multiculturalism and immigration obscure Native presence and divert attention from their realities, and when communities of color resist their marginalization in ways that render Aboriginal communities invisible. Canadian language policy is a classic example. Multiculturalism policy overrides the redressing of assaults on Indigenous languages, with funding provided first for “official” languages and then for “heritage” languages. Only then are the dregs divided up among the 50-odd Indigenous languages in Canada currently at risk of extinction given ongoing cultural genocide. (Lawrence and Dua 2005, p. 135)

According to Kymlicka (2000, p.  219), federal multicultural policy in Canada is now understood as referring mainly to the ethnicity of immigrant groups and not to either the Indigenous peoples, or the Quebecois, that are considered “nations within” and whose situations are treated and accommodated under different policy regimes, different government departments and different sections of the constitution. Nevertheless, to some extent, Canada’s official multiculturalism, and the various instruments that support it, touches on the lives of all the different diverse peoples of Canada; French and Anglo Canadians, other immigrant groups, and Indigenous First Nations and Inuit. For example, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) instructed Canadian courts to interpret the rights enshrined in the Charter “in a manner consistent with the preservation of the multicultural heritage of Canada.” And the Charter also enshrined the treaty rights of Canada’s Indigenous peoples (see Calma 2007). There is also evidence that suggests that, in terms of national imaginings, multiculturalism has a broader and more general role than is suggested by these separations of policy domains. The Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1985 (assented to in 1988) has a clear statement that multiculturalism was for all Canadians and that it is also integral to the Canadian identity, as stated in the section outlining the intentions of the Act: “b) to recognise and promote the understanding that multiculturalism is a fundamental characteristic of the Canadian heritage and identity and that it provides an invaluable source in shaping Canada’s future” (qtd. in Fleras 2009, p. 67). The importance of the multicultural imaginary for Canada

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is also evident in the way that Canadians think of Canada as a “mosaic” rather than a “melting pot” (a source of contrast with the USA; see Taylor 1993, p.  161). Nevertheless, as noted in Chap. 5, Charles Taylor also points out that multiculturalism as federal policy is embraced far more ambivalently in Quebec than in British Canada, and rejected by most francophones (1993, p. 162; see also Pearson and Ongley 1996, p. 12). Bouchard (2011) states more emphatically that the Quebec nation has consistently rejected federal multiculturalism. As noted in Chap. 5, in its place he advocates an “interculturalism” that unambiguously recognises French Canadians as the majority culture in need of special protection in Quebec and as an endangered minority culture in the broader North American context. In promoting interculturalism as an alternative to multiculturalism in their government commissioned report Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation, Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor (2008) excluded Indigenous peoples in Quebec from the discussions of accommodation practices and recommendations, pointing out that relations between Quebec and Indigenous peoples are nation to nation relations and that they did not have the agreement of First Nations and Inuit peoples to be part of the Commission’s mandate.

New Zealand In New Zealand, with a predominantly homogenous European population and a “formidable” Maori Indigenous sector buttressed by greater homogeneity among Maori, the consolidated Treaty of Waitangi, the early achievement of formal citizenship rights, and Maori seats in parliament from the nineteenth century, multicultural discourse has been marginalised since the 1980s by a dominant bicultural discourse and framework (Fleras 1999, p. 218; Fleras 2009, Ch. 6). Biculturalism first emerged in the 1960s in the context of Maori mobilisation, cultural nationalism and political protest and has been officially espoused by the New Zealand state since the 1980s (Bell 2009, p. 148). In the 1970s Maori, together with other minority groups and Liberal Pakeha people, had to some extent embraced multicultural frameworks. As a discourse of equal citizenship rights that also included acceptance of cultural difference, it was useful

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to Maori because it challenged the previously dominant assimilationism, and addressed some of their claims (Hill 2010). Like Canada and Australia, though to a lesser extent, New Zealand government and opposition parties began to use multicultural language to describe New Zealand society in the 1970s. There were initial tentative political moves by a reformist Labour government in the early 1970s to respond to minorities through a multicultural approach (replacing assimilation policies), but this symbolic framework was supplanted by a bicultural framework as the 1970s wore on, and then more emphatically in the 1980s (Pearson 1990, p. 232; Hill 2010, p. 296). Pearson (2010, p. 154) has argued that this early dalliance with multiculturalism was influenced by the global rights agenda, but also represented an attempt by governments to deflect attention from and defuse more challenging specific Maori cultural rights and land claims. New Zealand is yet to fully embrace multiculturalism as an official national policy, even though, as Fleras (2009, Ch. 6) has pointed out, in recent times it has enacted several important de facto multicultural policies that recognise New Zealand’s recent demographic transformation in a multi-ethnic direction.1 Biculturalism still dominates New Zealand’s national imaginary, and it is far more present symbolically (in institutional naming practices, language and schools policies and New Zealand’s public institutions) than is the case, for example, in Australia. Maori claims to national status are symbolically supported by the Treaty of Waitangi signed between the British Crown (Queen Victoria) through her representative naval captain William Hobson and “the native chiefs and tribes of New Zealand” in 1840 and more recently by the Waitangi Tribunal established in 1975. The late 1960s saw an increase in Maori mobilisation around their distinctive historical rights, including rights over land and Maori selfgovernance, and a reassertion of Maori cultural identity. Maori represented a large minority—about 8 per cent of the New Zealand population in 1971 (and larger now, at about 15 per cent)—and by the late 1960s many Maoris lived in the cities after moving from the countryside, bring1

What this refers to is the opening up of immigration in the 1980s, including a new non-discriminatory Immigration Act in 1987, which has seen a predominantly British and Maori population transformed to include significant minority migrant populations, including those originating from places outside Europe.

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ing their protests into sharper, mainstream focus. In the midst of much political unrest, and demands for recognition of rights, the New Zealand Labour government responded with the Treaty of Waitangi Act setting up the Waitangi Tribunal (Williams 2004). The Tribunal has had an important political effect, giving public legitimacy to Maori claims and voices, especially since a series of legal decisions in relation to Treaty obligations in the 1980s (Kelsey 1991; Sharp 1991). Treaty conditions now enter into a number of legislative acts, recognising Indigenous claims, rights and concerns; and the Waitangi Tribunal works as a pragmatic vehicle to consider Maori issues and claims case by case (Williams 2004). Compared with Indigenous Australians, the Maori political voice is more prominent and mainstream. The Maori Party has been politically successful since it was formed in 2004, gaining several seats in the national parliament and some ministerial positions in government, and there is a sizeable number of MPs with Maori ancestry (including ministers) within the majority parties (McDonald and Muldoon 2006). Biculturalism is not wholeheartedly embraced by Maori, or by supporters of Maori interests and critics of current arrangements, who argue for a much stronger bi-national form of recognition and political arrangements that would more fully recognise the existence of two distinct nations within the New Zealand state, and give far more legitimacy to Indigenous Maori forms of political organisation (Maaka and Fleras 2000; Pearson 1990, pp. 235–236). Multiculturalism has been pushed, in part, by the newer minority migrant groupings post 1986, though they have not yet produced a consolidated political voice. It has been resisted by Maori leaders who believe that it disrupts the bicultural or bi-national accommodation between Pakeha and Maori communities and that it will mean a diminishing of the special Maori national status.

Multicultural and Indigenous Imaginaries in Australia As I argued in Chap. 5, Australia’s discourse of multiculturalism has been central to a reimagined Australian identity since the 1970s. Though multiculturalism has often been controversial, and has had its many critics,

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it has been a dominant part of the public discourse about Australia for the last four decades; roughly since the final official repudiation of white Australia and the White Australia Policy in 1973. Australia has not had a prominent bicultural or bi-national discourse. The sectarian conflict between Irish Catholics and English Protestants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not based on language differences or different territories, did not lead to the creation of distinct and separate national cultures in Australia, was framed by common political arrangements and faded after the Second World War (Beckett 1995; O’Farrell 1993). The only possible “nations within” who could legitimately push for biculturalism or bi-nationalism were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, but because of small size and dispersal of their population, and partly because of a lack of treaty-making history, they have never had the political power to push for national recognition in any kind of bicultural or bi-national framework. Here the contrast with both New Zealand and Canada is apparent. But as we have seen was the case in Canada and to an extent in New Zealand, multiculturalism has often run on parallel lines to discourse about Aboriginal rights and self-determination; and it has largely failed to capture the Indigenous Australian imagination, among Indigenous leaders and activists and among ordinary Indigenous people. The policy separation between ethnic/migrant and Aboriginal affairs in Australia was long-standing, stretching back to the nineteenth century and expressed at all levels of government (Jayasuriya 1990, pp. 124–125). When official multiculturalism emerged in the early 1970s, Indigenous Australians were typically mentioned as one aspect of Australia’s multicultural society but most discussion and policy emphasised the migrant experience; and indeed, apart from some non-migrant intellectuals, activists, public servants and politicians (Lopez 2000), it was activists and movements representing migrants who became the most vocal proponents for multiculturalism. The major multicultural institutions set up by governments typically focussed on immigrant cultures. For example, when the Fraser government, responding to advice contained in the Galbally Report, set up the important multicultural policy and research institution the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (1979–1986), it had no responsibility to conduct research into the cultures and experiences of Indigenous people or to promote cultural awareness and acceptance

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of Indigenous difference by mainstream society. These tasks were left to already existing, specific institutions such as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (later the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) (Jupp 2007, p. 86). As is obvious from its name, the Bureau for Immigration Research was not centrally concerned with Indigenous issues. An examination of the publication list of the Office of Multicultural Affairs indicates the overwhelming focus on issues faced by immigrants from non-English speaking backgrounds, with only one of 22 “Working Papers on Multiculturalism” explicitly focused on Indigenous people (see Making Multicultural Australia n.d.b). On the other hand, it should be noted that from the mid-1980s onwards there were more concerted efforts by institutions such as AIMA (Council of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1986) and later BIMPR and OMA to be more proactive in including Indigenous issues within multicultural policy and consulting more extensively with Aboriginal institutions such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Indigenous peoples were included in some of the multicultural strategies such as the “Access and Equity” and “Community Relations” programs (Castles 1997, p. 16). And as we saw in Chap. 3, there was a concerted effort by the Keating government to include Indigenous peoples more firmly within the multicultural agenda, as spelled out in the 1995 policy report Multicultural Australia: The Next Steps and government policy statement Our Nation. From 1989 to 2006 the variously named federal government advisory councils on multiculturalism always included at least one Indigenous member (Jupp 2007, pp. 87–88). In November 2001, the Howard government at least implicitly drew the connection between multicultural and Indigenous affairs by closing the Department of Reconciliation and Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and moving its role and functions into the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, which became the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. Distinct Indigenous programmes were nevertheless retained, and an Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs was set up within the expanded Department (DIMIA Annual Report 2001–2002). Nor had Aboriginal leaders, and the broader social movement for Aboriginal rights, campaigned for multiculturalism, which was largely

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viewed as a concern of non-Anglo migrant populations. The Indigenous sector (Rowse 2002) that emerged in the 1970s, with its institutional framework of Aboriginal associations, land councils and health and legal centres, supported by federal government legislation including the Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act 1976 and the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT) 1976, was broadly concerned with its own, specific set of Indigenous issues and demands. Despite some common experience of broad racism and discrimination, the social, economic and cultural positions of Indigenous peoples vis-à-vis mainstream Australian society had little in common with the positions of ethnic communities arising from mass immigration. And, after all, these immigrant communities were, like the dominant Anglo community historically preceding them, settler communities standing in a colonial relationship with Indigenous peoples who had never accepted the legitimacy of dispossession of their lands or loss of their sovereignty (Moreton-Robinson 2003). Indigenous people were far more excluded from mainstream society, including in the areas of employment and housing, than were migrant Australians, and suffered greater levels of racial abuse and discrimination. Though nonAnglo immigrant Australians suffered from racism and discrimination, it had different sources, a different quality and, however damaging, had been experienced to a lesser degree. The discourse of Indigenous rights (including as it was developed among Indigenous leaders, intellectuals and activists) was well established before the 1970s emergence of multicultural discourses in Australia, and it provided powerful ways for Indigenous people to think about their relationship with the Australian state and the settler nation. By then, Indigenous political discourse included a potent mix of concepts such as Aboriginal land rights, autonomy, self-determination and cultural rights, together with older equality and citizenship discourses (Stokes 1997; McGregor 2009; Attwood 2003). For Indigenous leaders and activists, multicultural concepts were therefore less relevant. Since the 1970s, Australian Indigenous leaders and activists had also been protagonists in the emerging international discourse and politics of Indigenous rights (Niezen 2003), participating in UN and other international forums, such as the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, formed in 1975. Sovereignty and treaty arguments became stronger in the 1980s and 1990s, continuing the process of distinguishing Indigenous claims from multicultural claims.

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Indigenous claims were also framed by an Indigenous nationalism that emerged in the late 1960s and consolidated in the 1970s, which rivalled the broader Australian national identity for Indigenous peoples’ allegiances. Indigenous leaders and activists articulated notions of an Aboriginal nation or nations within the territory of Australia (Gilbert 1973). McGregor (2009, p. 343) argues that these developments led to a “diminution of interest in securing Aboriginal inclusion in the Australian nation,” evident in earlier struggles for citizenship and equal rights that had been characteristic of Indigenous activism and political thought since the 1920s. These arguments were not necessarily given up, but became less prominent than arguments for reinvigorating a suppressed, Aboriginal cultural nation. Drawing on the work of Anthony Smith and John Hutchinson, McGregor sees this as a movement primarily of cultural rather than political nationalism. This cultural nationalism had reached a high level of development in the early 1970s exactly when Australian governments were embracing and promoting multiculturalism. The Aboriginal nationalism of leaders like Paul Coe (seeTatz 1975, Ch. 18),  Kevin Gilbert and others (see Gilbert 1973) meant that their energies were devoted to the cultural rejuvenation of Aboriginal communities, and to powerful political claims related to Aboriginal land rights, treaties and sovereignty, which extended into the 1980s and 1990s (Attwood 2003, Ch. 13). According to Aboriginal activists like Kevin Gilbert, multiculturalism might be good in theory, but he did not think that it was particularly significant for Aboriginal people. In a 1987 interview, for example, Gilbert commented that a more ethnically diverse (“multicultural”) Australia, as a result of mass migration, had meant that racism had been toned down; and people from non-Anglo backgrounds, who he had met, had personally expressed to him sympathy for the Aboriginal plight. But though many from ethnic communities had “known oppression in their own lands that they have had to leave,” they had done little politically or otherwise to support Indigenous people, and they had “grown fat with the white Australians, like maggots feeding on the carcass of Black Australia.” Multicultural policy made the government look good internationally, but again meant little in reality for Aborigines (Gilbert 1987). The application of multicultural discourse to the Aboriginal situation was, therefore, treated with suspicion and resisted by some

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sections of Indigenous Australia, as it might diminish Aboriginal claims, “trivialise their disenfranchisement from the land,” and potentially limit their claims for social justice, rendering these no different to the claims for social justice of other ethnic minorities (Council of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1986, p. 3). The Fitzgerald Report, in its critique of multiculturalism, asserted that through its consultations it had found that Aborigines distanced themselves from it (Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies 1988, p. 10)—though in this respect they were joined by most other Australians, albeit for different reasons. Ordinary Indigenous peoples’ perceptions of and feelings about multiculturalism have received little attention (Dunn et al. 2010), but one study sheds some light on attitudes to multiculturalism. In the late 1990s, Indigenous researcher Rosemary Van den Berg (2002) interviewed 41 Nyoongar individuals in Western Australia about the ways they thought about racism and multiculturalism. Van den Berg emphasised that Indigenous respondents strongly resisted the ethnic label, feeling that this referred to people who had migrated to Australia. One of her main findings was that: … Nyoongar people believed that multiculturalism, as a way of life accepted by the majority of Australians …, would place them further down the social ladder. Many Nyoongars believed that, as more and more different cultures arrived in Australia, the indigenous people would either be ignored as irrelevant in the broader spectrum of Australian society, or would lose their identities as the indigenous people and become just another ethnic group. (Van den Berg 2002, p. xiv)

The general view expressed in her surveys and interviews was that Indigenous people did not see the relevance of multicultural policies for their everyday lives and saw little improvement after the introduction of multiculturalism, because racism was still a major feature of Indigenous life in Australia and Indigenous people remained the most disadvantaged of all people in Australian society (Van den Berg 2002, pp. 233–241). As multiculturalism developed as an official concept, ideology and policy approach in the 1970s, there were, indeed, tentative attempts to

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include Aborigines within the policy’s domain as another ethnic minority. However, despite the fears outlined above about Indigenous people’s claims and rights being lost in a sea of indistinguishable ethnicity, policy makers were at least aware of their unique situation and typically highlighted it. Aboriginal distinctiveness was less apparent in the arguments of Australian Ethnic Affairs Council’s (1977) important policy paper Australia as a Multicultural Society, than in later policy statements. Here they were mentioned twice in relation to Australian multiculturalism. In the first instance, they were referred to when defining what is meant by dominant and minority cultures: Like most other societies, Australia is composed of a majority population from a roughly homogeneous ethnic background and a number of minority populations; the established institutions reflect and confirm the various interests, ways of life, values and world views of the majority. We use the term Anglo-Australian for this majority population and culture, though recognising of course that this term embraces class, regional, religious and other kinds of internal differentiation. We describe as “ethnic” the people who form the majority populations of non-Anglo-Australian origin and their institutions; apart from the Aborigines, the overwhelming majority of ethnics in Australia are migrants or the children of migrants. (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, pp. 2–3)

The second brief reference occurs in the context of a discussion of possible strategies of ethnic political action, by arguing that Aborigines have been one “ethnic group” that has gone against the mainstream approach by sometimes claiming that their own interests can only be served by forming their own political parties or organisations (Australian Ethnic Affairs Council 1977, p. 6), a strategy, as noted above, that Maori in New Zealand have adopted. Though the majority of the discussion of ethnic groups in this statement seemed to lean towards those groups formed due to migration, as these two references to Aborigines suggest, in principle Aborigines were conceived as an ethnic group, like others, engaged in “Australia as a Multicultural Society.” Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were placed firmly within the vision of a multicultural society in the 1982 policy statement from the Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and

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Ethnic Affairs (1982), Multiculturalism for All Australians. This statement was unequivocal in arguing that multiculturalism embraced all individuals and groups in Australia, including the majority Anglo population and Indigenous Australians: … all persons living in Australia are “ethnic,” whether they are Aboriginals, or trace their roots to the British Isles, continental Europe, Asia, Africa, the Pacific nations or the Americas, or regard themselves simply as Australians. This paper argues that the phrase “ethnic affairs” applies, strictly speaking, to the full range of inter-group relations and should not be limited to issues affecting minority groups alone. (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 1)

In Chap. 2 on “Our National Identity,” Indigenous people were given a special place: A unique feature of the Australian identity is the special dimension given to it by Aboriginal members of the Australian community. It is only through the Aboriginal part of our population that we can claim a longstanding, traditional relationship with our land, in a way possible to other nations who have occupied their native soil for hundreds of thousands of years. Through Aboriginal placenames and folklore, Australians have inherited an indigenous tradition which extends the history of their country beyond the short timespan of white settlement. Moreover, Aboriginal communities and their cultures remind us that the white majority culture, like those of newer migrant groups, has been of historically recent establishment in this country. (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 5)

It was also recognised that Indigenous people stood apart from all other groups in their experience of Australia, in that they had not experienced Australia as “being free of sectional limitations on individual rights and actions” (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 5). And, in terms of law, it was recognised that Indigenous people are not bound in exactly the same way as everyone else by one Australian law: “Except for adaptations of tribal law that may be applicable to some groups of Aboriginals, a socially

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cohesive Australia requires a legal framework that has one set of provisions applying equally to all members of society, regardless of their origin” (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 15). Apart from these specific points, Indigenous people were included in the notion of multiculturalism for all Australians in largely the same way as everyone else. As noted earlier in this book (see Chap. 2), to the three established underpinning principles of multiculturalism—social cohesion, cultural identity and equality of opportunity and access—a fourth principle, “equal responsibility for, commitment to and participation in society” (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 12), was added, and it made a point of stressing that the “principles apply to all sections of society, including Aboriginals” (Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982, p. 14). This all-embracing character of multiculturalism was also emphasised in the Hawke government’s National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989) which stated that multicultural policies applied to all Australians, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. By this time, in the late 1980s, the incorporation of Aborigines into the multicultural narrative had been extended in new ways. During the 1980s and the 1990s governments, intellectuals and media commentators emphasised the importance of the Aboriginal narrative for Australian national identity. As suggested in the above quote from Multiculturalism for All Australians, an “indigenising” form of nationalism highlighted the way that Aboriginal culture gave historical and spiritual depth to the nation, and more firmly rooted it in the Australian continent (Moran 2002). This narrative featured prominently in the rhetoric emerging from the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation during the 1990s reconciliation process. In several of his speeches in the 1990s on multicultural and Aboriginal issues, Prime Minister Paul Keating stressed that multiculturalism could not be considered a success in Australia until Australia truly reached a reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples. He made this point in his famous Redfern Park Speech in December 1992 (Keating 1993) and also in his 1995 Address to the Global Diversity Conference in Sydney, “the Benefits of Diversity” (Keating 1995).

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Multiculturalism needed to be extended to Indigenous Australians, in ways that recognised their unique cultures, traditions and connections with the land; and it needed to extend social justice to them so that they had equal opportunities, better health, better moral and self-esteem (Keating 1993). It is perhaps less well known that when Australia was introducing its most important legislation recognising Aboriginal land rights in the 1970s, one of the prominent conservative arguments in support of such legislation involved a version of multicultural logic. After it had won the 1975 federal election, the Fraser government published a statement about its new policies, including a statement on Indigenous affairs: A special obligation is also imposed upon us all to provide opportunities for Aborigines to preserve their traditions, languages and customs from further encroachment and destruction where possible. Aboriginal values are an intrinsic part of Australia’s culture and heritage. We are part of each other. Without mutual respect and support for each other’s cultural integrity we cannot secure our personal identities and complement each other’s enterprise as we should. (Commonwealth of Australia 1975–1976)

Aborigines were being thought of here as both having a right to culture (like other ethnic groups, in the multicultural imagination) but also as standing apart, with special qualities that marked them as a distinct case among ethnic groups. And the multicultural imagination was explicitly drawn upon later, during debates in parliament about what was involved in the policy of Aboriginal land rights. The Whitlam government had submitted to parliament an Aboriginal Land Rights Bill for the Northern Territory in 1975, and, after the dismissal of the Whitlam government and subsequent election of the Fraser government, the latter carried it through in revised form in December 1976. In the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Ian Viner’s second reading speech on the bill, he made a clear break with assimilation policy, while at the same time arguing that the government’s position on land rights was aligned with its liberal principles. He accepted that the cultural identity of “traditional” Aborigines was central to their autonomy and the

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development of their liberty. This called for the acceptance of cultural diversity: Most of us now appreciate more sensitively than in the past that traditional Aborigines think, feel and act about land according to a plan of life a world apart from ours … The depth of appeal that an Aboriginal’s “country” has for him can be gauged by the pictures he may paint, the songs he may sing, the stories he may tell and the dances he may perform. His “country”—no matter how stricken a wilderness it may seem to others—is to him a Canaan, from which his spirit came and where he wants his bones to rest. (Viner 1976, p. 3081)

Viner argued that there should be no suspicion among traditional supporters about his government putting forward land rights legislation, as it was completely in line with its commitment to “liberal and progressive reform.” He justified land rights as follows: It is the objective of the Government to secure conditions in which all Australians can realise their own goals in life—to find fulfilment in their own way—consistent with the interests of the whole Australian community. (Viner 1976, p. 3084)

Cultural diversity within the nation was a value that the government was committed to, and justified the legislation for Aboriginal land rights: The Australia we, as a Government, look to is one in which there is diversity and choice, because, it is in diversity that people can pursue the lives they want in ways that they determine. Securing land rights to Aborigines in the Northern Territory is a significant expression of this objective. It is an objective that will be pursued in a way consonant with the rights of other Australians. (Viner 1976, p. 3084)

In the period since the 1980s, Aboriginal leaders and spokespersons have typically resisted this incorporation within the multicultural nation, emphasising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ separate status, ongoing sovereignty and unique spiritual connection with Australia (Maddison 2009). On the other hand, especially during the reconciliation decade

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from 1991 to 2000, other Indigenous leaders have spoken from a position within a more inclusive Australian nation when arguing for what was needed for the “healing” of that nation (examples included the first Chairperson of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Pat Dodson, often referred to as the “father of reconciliation” and Lowitja (Lois) O’Donoghue, chair of ATSIC and also strongly associated with reconciliation). This positioning of claims inside one diverse nation was also evident in the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation’s “Draft Declaration for Reconciliation”: Speaking with one voice, we the people of Australia, of many origins as we are, make a commitment to go on together recognising the gift of one another’s presence. We value the unique status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the original owners and custodians of traditional lands and waters. We respect and recognise continuing customary laws, beliefs and traditions. And through the land and its first peoples, we may taste this spirituality and rejoice in its grandeur. We acknowledge this land was colonised without the consent of the original inhabitants. Our nation must have the courage to own the truth, to heal the wounds of its past so that we can move on together at peace with ourselves. And so we take this step: as one part of the nation expresses its sorrow and profoundly regrets the injustices of the past, so the other part accepts the apology and forgives. Our new journey then begins. We must learn our shared history, walk together and grow together to enrich our understanding. We desire a future where all Australians enjoy equal rights and share opportunities and responsibilities according to their aspirations. And so, we pledge ourselves to stop injustice, address disadvantage and respect the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to determine their own destinies. Therefore, we stand proud as a united Australia that respects this land of ours, values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage, and provides justice and equity for all. (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 1999)

The final “Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation,” presented to the Australian people at The Sydney Opera House in Sydney on 26 May

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2000, slightly modified the sentiments of the draft declaration, with a stronger emphasis on diverse peoples and rights and less emphasis on “speaking with one voice,” but was also framed by belonging to one nation (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 2000).2 For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the ongoing pull of their own kinship networks, “mobs,” nations and lands appear to be more powerful than that of the Australian nation as sources of their senses of belonging and identity (Martinez 1997). As Ang et  al. (2002, p.  39) noted in their focus groups and interviews with a representative sample of Indigenous people from urban, regional and remote communities, “Indigenous Australians overwhelmingly call themselves Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander first—this forms the core of their cultural identity that overrides all others.” On the other hand, that does not mean that belonging to Australia is irrelevant to them, or that having also an Australian identity is not part of the way that they see themselves. It may be that they do not primarily associate their “cultural identity” with Australianness. It may also be that “Australian” as an identity source is less relevant to Indigenous people living more exclusively within their own communities, 2

The “Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation” reads as follows: We, the peoples of Australia, of many origins as we are, make a commitment to go on together in a spirit of reconciliation. We value the unique status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the original owners and custodians of lands and waters. We recognise this land and its waters were settled as colonies without treaty or consent. Reaffirming the human rights of all Australians, we respect and recognise continuing customary laws, beliefs and traditions. Through understanding the spiritual relationship between the land and its first peoples, we share our future and live in harmony. Our nation must have the courage to own the truth, to heal the wounds of its past so that we can move on together at peace with ourselves. Reconciliation must live in the hearts and minds of all Australians. Many steps have been taken, many steps remain as we learn our shared histories. As we walk the journey of healing, one part of the nation apologises and expresses its sorrow and sincere regret for the injustices of the past, so the other part accepts the apologies and forgives. We desire a future where all Australians enjoy their rights, accept their responsibilities, and have the opportunity to achieve their full potential. And so, we pledge ourselves to stop injustice, overcome disadvantage, and respect that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have the right to self-determination within the life of the nation. Our hope is for a united Australia that respects this land of ours; values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage; and provides justice and equity for all.

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largely separated from broader interaction with the rest of Australian society, for example, in Australia’s remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia, than it is for those more integrated with mainstream society, in mixed towns and cities. There is considerable diversity among Indigenous individuals and groups in Australia and different levels of engagement and interaction with mainstream Australian society, including through family networks. As demographers have pointed out, there is a high level of intermarriage between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia, which contributes to complex forms of identification. From the 2006 Census, the general intermarriage rates for partnered Indigenous people were 52 per cent for males and 55 per cent for females. But the patterns vary, especially between urban areas, where two-thirds of Indigenous people now live, and more rural and remote areas. Indigenous people living in cities, those more highly educated and those on higher incomes, have much higher rates of intermarriage with non-Indigenous partners than people living in remote Aboriginal communities. As the Indigenous population has shifted since the 1960s from rural and remote areas to urban areas, so have the intermarriage rates gone up (Heard et al. 2009). For example, based on the 2006 census, in Sydney 82 per cent of partnered Indigenous men and 84 per cent of partnered Indigenous women had non-Indigenous partners, with similar rates in Melbourne, Brisbane and Hobart. In a dramatic contrast, in the Northern Territory outside Darwin, only 8 per cent of partnered Indigenous women, and 4 per cent of partnered Indigenous men had non-Indigenous partners (Heard et al. 2009, p. 6). However, for many in the cities and mixed towns of Australia, the Indigenous sense of identity retains a strong hold. This reflects the ongoing pride and persistence of Indigenous identities and attachment to Indigenous cultures and land and also the high levels of racism and discrimination Indigenous peoples have experienced throughout Australia’s history since colonisation, including ongoing racism in everyday life and informal discrimination in the post-1960s era of anti-discrimination and antiracism policy (Paradies and Cunningham 2009). It is notable that when prominent Indigenous intellectual and leader Noel Pearson argued, following Amartya Sen, against unitary identity and in favour of “layered identity” and went on to discuss his

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own complex, multi-layered Indigenous identity, he wrote that “Of course I am Australian, but not necessarily a proud one.” Indeed, of all the different layers of his identity—Indigenous, religious, land and mission-based, sporting and so on—Australian identity was the one he referred to most ambivalently, and he related this directly to the poor treatment of his own people: “I feel too troubled about the place of my Indigenous Australian people in this, their own country, to just simply say ‘I am a proud Australian’” (Pearson 2009a, pp.  336–337). While he could intellectually appreciate the sacrifice made by Australians in war, emotionally he felt a “faint nausea” on Anzac Day, because, while two of his grandparents had fought in the First World War, when they returned to Australia they were still not citizens. He also found it “hard to stomach the sight of white Australians saying “Lest We Forget” at the shrines of Anzac while vigorously seeking to forget what happened to the country’s Indigenous peoples. I feel alienated because Anzac Day just feels too white to me” (Pearson 2009a, p. 337). This issue of national identification also has a bearing on Indigenous engagement with the Australian multicultural imaginary. Official multiculturalism emphasises ultimate loyalty to Australia and the adoption of Australian national identity, albeit a non-ethnic, primarily civic national identity (as discussed in the previous chapter). But given the colonial history of invasion and dispossession, it is a more onerous expectation that Indigenous people will reserve their ultimate loyalty to the Australian nation than it is for others, including immigrants, as members of multicultural Australia. This expectation is less onerous for immigrants who seek permanent residence and citizenship in Australia, because they have at least made some level of choice in joining the unified Australian nationstate. And it is more justifiable to argue that they have an obligation to commit to a unified political community, under a multicultural framework, as they have implicitly or explicitly given their consent to join that political community (see Kymlicka’s 1995 related distinction between the rights of national minorities, including Indigenous peoples, and the rights of immigrants). In contrast, Indigenous people can legitimately claim to belong to an Indigenous political community (or communities) that exists in relationship, and even tension, with the broader Australian political community. As colonised peoples, they have never consented

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to relinquish their sovereignty, or to give up their claim to be a distinct political community, or set of political communities (see Danley 1991).3

Recent Indigenous Engagement with Multiculturalism Though Indigenous leaders and activists in the past typically avoided close engagement with official Australian multiculturalism, there have been several recent examples of Indigenous leaders/intellectuals attempting to map out a more constructive engagement between multiculturalism and Indigenous people in the Australian context. Indigenous legal academic and public intellectual Larissa Behrendt (2003), for example, attempts to negotiate a pathway between what Charles Taylor has called “difference blind” liberalism (that focuses on individual equality, but does not consider the individual’s culture to be of relevance when pursuing equality), “multicultural liberalism” (that recognises cultural differences, supports cultural preservation and fosters cultural differences) and Indigenous rights discourse, to expand thinking about Australia’s multicultural future. In terms of difference blind and multicultural liberalisms, each needs to temper the other, with some recognition of the importance of cultures and group affiliation to individuals, but also protections for individuals against the pressures of the culture or group, that may be lost when operating with strong notions of group rights. In policy terms, this means a combination of culturally specific services in some cases to answer specific needs, but combined with equal access to mainstream services. Difference blind liberalism is important for achieving “substantive equality” for the individual, while multicultural 3

This was reiterated in early 2014 by Maurie Japarta Ryan, chair of the Central Land Council, in response to Head of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Affairs Council Warren Mundine’s proposal that individual Indigenous nations could sign treaties with the federal government in place of pursuing native title claims that would recognise Indigenous nations’ rights over certain areas of land but also recognise the right of the Australian nation to exist. Mundine made this suggestion in his 2014 Australia Day Speech, when discussing the main things that needed to be done to achieve true reconciliation. Ryan argued that Indigenous nations could only sign treaties with the “Queen of England”: “Any treaty should be done with the Queen of England. Not with Australia, with England because we never acquiesce our sovereignty for 1788 to present day. I hear Tony Abbott talk about sovereignty. I hear the Foreign Minister talking about the border situation. It is not Australian sovereignty, it’s the sovereignty of the first nations people” (ABC News Online 2014).

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liberalism is important in ensuring “effective participation” in society, including through “group affiliation” (Behrendt 2003, pp.  83–84). In addition, for Indigenous people rights to self-determination must be added to a tripartite framework. Behrendt uses a broadly multicultural framework to defend a more inclusive national identity, to promote institutional change aimed at producing “substantive equality” for all, including Indigenous people, and to encourage true recognition of internal sovereignty and self-determination for Indigenous people within a unified Australian nation-state (Behrendt 2003, pp. 80–85, and pp. 172–179). In a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission position paper defending multiculturalism (from 2007), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner and the acting race discrimination commissioner, Tom Calma, explored the relationship between multiculturalism and Indigenous aspirations. He suggested a compromise position that meant that Indigenous people should be able to accept, and benefit from, some aspects of inclusion within a more generalised multicultural discourse, and set of policies for a multicultural Australia, while in other respects retaining a distance from multiculturalism, recognising and appealing to their special status as Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Calma pointed out that as minority groups in Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were at risk of exclusion from the economic, social and cultural benefits of mainstream Australian society. To the extent that multicultural policy was concerned with recognition and access and equity issues, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples could potentially benefit from taking part in that policy programme. This included multiculturalism’s emphasis on people’s right to cultural recognition and to social justice and the need for economic efficiency. But Calma reiterated that this was not enough—that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ unique history in Australia, including their history of systematic discrimination by the Australian state, society and nation, required special and different attention. Multiculturalism was “an inadequate response to the dispossession and exclusion that Aboriginal people have faced in Australia” (Calma 2007, p. 11). Indigenous peoples did not just claim rights as equal citizens of Australia (like all other Australians, including minority migrant groups), but a set of internationally recognised social, cultural, economic and political rights, including the right to self-determination within the Australian state, that other minority groups

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cannot legitimately claim. As Calma explained, Aboriginal rights to culture, according to international law, might include the right to enjoy a way of life embedded in land and resources: It can be seen from international human rights jurisprudence that while the recognition of culture is a measure of equality in the case of ethnic communities, the claim of culture in the case of Indigenous peoples is more fundamental. For Aboriginal Australians the claim is for recognition as a people, with all the concomitant political and economic rights. For Aboriginal Australians social justice implies restorative justice through a proper reconciliation treaty that acknowledges the historical wrongs done to Aboriginal peoples. For Aboriginal Australians the question of economic and political justice is about ensuring that future Aboriginal generations have control over their land, their lives and their destiny with sufficient resources to actualize their potentials as the first people of this country. (Calma 2007, p. 12)

Calma’s argument illustrates Neizen’s point that Indigenous people’s claims involve multicultural claims but go beyond them and that they are “multiconstitutional” (Niezen 2003, p. 218). Noel Pearson, a strong advocate for a bicultural future for Australia’s Indigenous peoples, suggests also the need for Indigenous engagement with a more global multicultural imaginary. He recognises that Indigenous people and their cultures now exist within a broader, global multicultural environment. This global multiculture belongs to everyone, including Indigenous people who should find ways to engage with it while retaining and developing their unique Indigenous cultures, languages, traditions and identities (Pearson 2009b, pp.  55–72). Pearson adopts a distinction between immigrant cultures and Indigenous cultures that mirrors Kymlicka’s (1995) famous distinction between the rights of immigrant and national, including Indigenous, minorities. Pearson argues, for example, that the Australian state has an internationally recognised obligation to put in place policies to serve the preservation of Indigenous languages and cultures, and that it cannot dismiss this obligation in the same way that it dismisses any obligation to actively preserve immigrant languages and cultures (Pearson 2009b, p. 69). But, thus far, Australian governments have not been committed to seriously putting in

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place such necessary policies. Despite introducing national language policies (Clyne 1997), Pearson argues that Australian governments have not devoted the necessary resources for the preservation of Indigenous languages and cultures that are unique to Australia (Pearson 2009b, p. 69).

Conclusion We have already seen how multiculturalism in the Australian context, and in other contexts like New Zealand and Canada, has had an uneasy relationship with the pursuit of Indigenous rights and claims. But does this mean that the logic and discourses of multiculturalism are irrelevant, or that in fact they should be kept separate from thinking and discussion about Indigenous issues? Some critics of “liberal multiculturalism,” like the anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli, highlight the way that multiculturalism is an ideological strategy used to continue colonial dominance of Indigenous peoples. Povinelli’s critique is located within a wider frame of the critique of colonialism, imperialism and liberalism. Povinelli’s (1998, 2002) argument is that liberal multiculturalists engage in a “cunning” form of recognition when they engage in recognising Indigenous rights to land and culture, in the sense that colonial domination is always lurking just beneath the surface. Liberal forms of recognition, she argues, always place Indigenous peoples in locations of culture and tradition that ultimately benefit the settler colonial state and its majority peoples. Such recognition always avoids true recognition of Aboriginal “alterity” and always enacts forms of exclusion of Aboriginal identities according to its own, Western perceptions of Aboriginality and Aboriginal tradition. As Povinelli does not defend an alternative form of multicultural discourse and would appear to see all forms of negotiation between settler governments and Indigenous peoples as suspect, it would seem fair to assume that Povinelli considers multicultural discourse, like all Western discourses including liberalism, as inevitably dominating as it attempts to engage with Indigenous peoples within settler societies. This is apparent in the following characterisation of the utopianism of Australian multiculturalism:

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The real optimism of Australian multiculturalism is what this essay troubles and is troubled by. These hopes and optimisms and the individual and national telos they describe seduce critical thinking away from an analysis of how dominant social relations of power rely on a multicultural imaginary and discourse in order to adjust core state institutions and narratives to new discursive, capital, and state conditions, not to transform them. (Povinelli 1998, p. 583) Such a position pays no attention to the possibility of Indigenous people engaging more creatively with multicultural discourses, as suggested above by Behrendt, Calma and Pearson. Pearson and Ongley (1996, p. 8) have made a similar point about critiques of biculturalism and multiculturalism as forms of domination, that continue processes of colonial domination, arguing alternatively that “multi and bi-cultural practices and discourses … should be seen as part of a broader political process that contains important resistive potential for the dispossessed and relatively underprivileged.” Dirk Moses (2011), in his analysis of Indigenous and non-Indigenous critique and support for Rudd’s National Apology of 2008, makes the related point about the complexity of Indigenous responses to, and engagement with, government policies, programmes and symbolism, thus highlighting the agency of Indigenous people as pragmatic political actors engaging with opportunity structures to think through and develop Indigenous strategies and futures. He argues that critiques such as Povinelli’s only stress the importance of Indigenous “alterity” and separateness and do not appreciate the ways that Indigenous people, including intellectuals and activists, might engage with new visions of a broader Australian nation in which they position themselves, without giving up their sense of Indigenous distinctiveness. There have been at least three stumbling blocks that have stood in the way of a deeper engagement between multicultural and Indigenous imaginaries in the Australian context. The first is the unresolved tension between Indigenous people and the Australian nation-state arising from colonisation and dispossession of land, only partially addressed through land rights and native title legislation and regimes. Multiculturalism has called for ultimate loyalty to the Australian nation-state and the embrace of Australian national identity, and Indigenous people have strong reasons for resisting both of these. However, as noted above, some Indigenous

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leaders nevertheless invoke a more inclusive notion of Australian national identity and express a sense of belonging or a desire to belong to a future, imagined “healed nation” that does not necessarily erode Indigenous particularity and engages with Indigenous claims (see Moses 2011). As Moses has shown, comments from ordinary Indigenous people at the time of the 2008 National Apology, including members of the Stolen Generations, express this desire to be included as equal citizens in a better Australia. In his 2014 Australia Day Speech, Nyunggai Warren Mundine, head of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, expressed such sentiments: Drawing a line in history means Indigenous people permitting themselves to love their country, express patriotism, take pride in Australia’s successes and achievement, and feel part of Australia as a nation, in addition to their own Indigenous nations. We can have all the reconciliation action plans that we like, but there will be no reconciliation until Indigenous people are willing to accept the nation’s apologies; until we as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people acknowledge Australia’s right to exist. (Mundine 2014) The second is that Indigenous people are suspicious of the application of the term “ethnic” to them, because in the Australian context, as for other settler countries, it has strong connotations of migrancy, and Indigenous people resist the notion that they migrated to Australia, even if geographers, historians and archaeologists put that migration back to as long as 60,000 years ago (Flood 1999; Lourandos 1997). The cultural recognition offered by multiculturalism appears to make no distinction between the rights to culture of different groups in the Australian context. Multicultural discourse in Australia, including official discourse, has not been firm or subtle enough in the way that it has addressed these Indigenous doubts. The third stumbling block, related to the first two, is the suspicion that Indigenous rights and the special status of Indigenous people will be diminished within broader multicultural discourse. This is not necessarily the case, as Kymlicka’s (1995) liberal multicultural arguments have shown, with the special claims to cultural protection and collective rights given to Indigenous people because of their unique history and status

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within surrounding nation-states; arguments also taken up, in at least some senses, by Indigenous leaders Larissa Behrendt, Tom Calma and Noel Pearson. And, as I showed above, at a pragmatic level, the compromise between multicultural and Indigenous imaginaries has surfaced within official multiculturalism in Australia, where there has been at least a tentative recognition of the particular Indigenous position and specific types of rights that singles Indigenous people out from other groups in a culturally diverse society. In this respect, Kymlicka (2000) has usefully pointed out that settler societies have in fact operated with two forms of multiculturalism while often not recognising the second of them, most relevant to Indigenous people and other suppressed nations within, as multiculturalism at all. The first form of multiculturalism, more individualistic in outlook, emphasises the voluntary and changing formation of groups, ethnic transformation and cultural intermixing. As in the USA that Kymlicka takes as his example, this has been a legitimate and integrative form of multiculturalism that has served immigrant nations, like Australia, well. But there is another form of multiculturalism, that is seen, and frequently criticised, as minority nationalism. For example, Hollinger (1995), who I will discuss in the next chapter, has argued that this is a form of “plural multiculturalism” that he views negatively in comparison to a more fluid, cosmopolitan multiculturalism. But Kymlicka argues that this second form of multiculturalism, focused on group preservation and rights that pre-existed the formation of the surrounding nation-state, is equally legitimate, adapted as it is to the very different needs of minority nations, including Indigenous nations. And it is this tradition of multicultural thinking that Indigenous people themselves have made an important contribution to in the development of international rights frameworks and agendas since the Second World War (Kymlicka 2007; see also Niezen 2003). This has been evident in Latin America, where the discourse of multicultural citizenship emerging there in the 1980s and 1990s has been advanced and developed by the ideological and practical struggles of localised Indigenous populations. Writing about Indigenous movements in Argentina, vom Hau and Wilde argue that, in the context of political developments including democratic reforms, and the 1994 constitutional changes that included redefining Argentina as a “multi-ethnic nation”

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and granting “special rights to Indigenous citizens” (vom Hau and Wilde 2010, p. 1284), “indigenous activism plays a central role in transforming multicultural citizenship into ‘something more’ than a formal institution” (vom Hau and Wilde 2010, p. 1285). On the part of non-Indigenous Australia, multicultural discourse has also contributed to creating a space for at least considering the legitimacy of Indigenous identities and claims, even if it has not translated into more substantive forms of recognition and redress. Nevertheless, if a renewed commitment to multiculturalism, as indicated by the 2011 Gillard government policy statement The People of Australia: Australia’s Multicultural Policy (Australian Government 2011), is to have meaning for Indigenous people, then it will not only need to preserve and reflect their unique status as First Peoples (including recognising their right to self-determination) but also contribute to providing the opportunities for Indigenous people to fully thrive and participate, as individuals and distinct communities, in broader Australian society.

References ABC News Online. 2014. Central Land Council Rejects Warren Mundine’s Indigenous Treaty Proposal, January 28. http://www.abc.net.au/news/201401-28/clc-rejects-mundines-indigenous-treaty-proposal/5221734. Accessed 31 Jan 2014. Ang, I., J.E. Brand, G. Noble, and D. Wilding. 2002. Living Diversity: Australia’s Multicultural Future. Artarmon, NSW: Special Broadcasting Service Corporation. Attwood, B. 2003. Rights for Aborigines. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Australian Ethnic Affairs Council. 1977. Australia as a Multicultural Society— Submission to the Australian Population and Immigration Council on the Green Paper, Immigration Policies and Australia’s Population. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Australian Government. 2011. The People of Australia: Australia’s Multicultural Policy. Canberra: Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Beckett, J. 1995. National and Transnational Perspectives on Multiculturalism: The View From Australia. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 1(4): 421–426.

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Behrendt, L. 2003. Achieving Social Justice: Indigenous Rights and Australia’s Future. Annandale, NSW: The Federation Press. Bell, A. 2009. Dilemmas of Settler Belonging: Roots, Routes and Redemption in New Zealand National Identity Claims. The Sociological Review 57(1): 146–162. Bouchard, G. 2011. What is Interculturalism? McGill Law Journal 56(2): 435–468. Bouchard, G, and C. Taylor. 2008. Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation. Report of the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, Gouvernement du Quebec, Quebec. Calma, T. 2007. Multiculturalism: A Position Paper by the Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney. Castles, S. 1997. Multicultural Citizenship: A Response to the Dilemma of Globalisation and National Identity? Journal of Intercultural Studies 18(1): 5–22. Clyne, M. 1997. Language Policy in Australia—Achievements, Disappointments, Prospects. Journal of Intercultural Studies 18(1): 63–71. Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies [Chair: Stephen Fitzgerald]. 1988. Immigration: A Commitment to Australia. The Report of the Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Commonwealth of Australia. 1975–1976. The New Government Policies: A Complete Guide to the Official Announced Policies of the Fraser Liberal/National Country Party Government Which Took Office in Australia in December 1975. Canberra: Hoquara. Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. 2000. Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/car/2000/12/ pg3.htm. Accessed 12 Jan 2014. ———. 1999. Draft Declaration for Reconciliation. http://www.austlii.edu.au/ au/orgs/car/docrec/draft/index.htm. Accessed 21 Jan 2014. Council of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs. 1986. Future Directions for Multiculturalism—Final Report of the Council of AIMA. Melbourne: Australian Institute Multicultural Affairs. Curthoys, A. 2000. An Uneasy Conversation: The Multicultural and the Indigenous. In Race, Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand, ed. J. Docker, and G. Fischer, 21–36. Sydney: UNSW Press.

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Danley, J.R. 1991. Liberalism, Aboriginal Rights, and Cultural Minorities. Philosophy and Public Affairs 20(2): 168–185. Dunn, K., A.  Kamp, W.  Shaw, J.  Forrest, and Y.  Paradies. 2010. Indigenous Australians’ Attitudes Towards Multiculturalism, Cultural Diversity, “Race” and Racism. Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues 13(4): 19–31. Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs. 1982. Multiculturalism for All Australians: Our Developing Nationhood. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Fleras, A. 1999. Politicising Indigeneity: Ethno-Politics in White Settler Dominions. In Indigenous People’s Rights: In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, ed. P. Havemann, 187–234. Auckland: Oxford University Press. ———. 2009. The Politics of Multiculturalism: Multicultural Governance in Comparative Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Flood, J 1999. Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and Its People. Rev. ed. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins. Gilbert, K. 1973. Because a White Man’ll Never Do It. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. ———. 1987. Interview with Kevin Gilbert, Chairman of Treaty ’88 Campaign. Ethnic Spotlight 12: 17–22. Heard, G., B. Birrell, and S.-E. Khoo. 2009. Intermarriage by Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. People and Place 17(1): 1–14. Hill, R.S. 2010. Fitting Multiculturalism into Biculturalism: Maori-Pacifika Relations in New Zealand from the 1960s. Ethnohistory 57(2): 291–319. Hollinger, D. 1995. Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New  York: Basic Books. Jayasuriya, L. 1990. Language and Culture in Australian Public Policy: Some Critical Reflections. International Migration Review 24(1): 124–148. Jupp, J.  2007. From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Keating, P. 1993. Redfern Park Speech of December 10 1992. Aboriginal Law Bulletin 61: 4–5. ———. 1995. The Benefits of Diversity. In Advancing Australia: The Speeches of Paul Keating, Prime Minister, ed. M. Ryan, 263–271. Sydney: Big Picture. Kelsey, J. 1991. Treaty Justice in the 1980s. In Nga Take: Ethnic Relations and Racism in Aotearoa/New Zealand, ed. P.  Spoonley, D.  Pearson, and C. Macpherson, 108–130. Palmerston North, NZ: The Dunmore Press. Kymlicka, W. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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———. 2000. American Multiculturalism and the “Nations Within”. In Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. D. Ivison, P. Patton, and W. Sanders, 216–236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2004. The Canadian Model of Diversity in a Comparative Perspective. Eighteenth Standard Life Visiting Lecture, University of Edinburgh, April 29. http://www.cst.ed.ac.uk/documents/Kymlickalecture.rtf. Accessed 22 Apr 2009. ———. 2007. Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lawrence, B., and E. Dua. 2005. Decolonizing Antiracism. Social Justice 32(4): 120–143. Lopez, M. 2000. The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945–1975. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press. Lourandos, H. 1997. Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory. New York: Cambridge University Press. Maaka, R., and A. Fleras. 2000. Engaging with Indigeneity: Tino Ranatiratanga in Aotearoa. In Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. D.  Ivinson, P.  Patton, and W.  Sanders, 89–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2005. The Politics of Indigeneity: Challenging the State in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. Dunedin: University of Otago Press. Maddison, S. 2009. Black Politics: Inside the Complexity of Aboriginal Political Culture. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Making Multicultural Australia. n.d.b. OMA Publications List. http://www. multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/doc/multoff_4.pdf. Accessed 17 Jan 2014. Martinez, J. 1997. Problematizing Aboriginal Nationalism. Aboriginal History 21: 133–147. McDonald, L., and P. Muldoon. 2006. Globalisation, Neo-Liberalism and the Struggle for Indigenous Citizenship. Australian Journal of Political Science 41(2): 209–223. McGregor, R. 2009. Another Nation: Aboriginal Activism in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s. Australian Historical Studies 40(3): 343–360. Moran, A. 2002. As Australia Decolonizes: Indigenizing Settler Nationalism and the Challenges of Settler/Indigenous Relations. Ethnic and Racial Studies 25(6): 1013–1042. Moreton-Robinson, A. 2003. I Still Call Australia Home: Indigenous Belonging and Place in a White Postcolonizing Society. In Uprootings/Regroundings:

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Questions of Home and Migration, ed. S. Ahmed, C. Castaneda, A.-M. Fortier, and M. Sheller. Oxford: Berg. Moses, A.D. 2011. Official Apologies, Reconciliation and Settler Colonialism: Australian Indigenous Alterity and Political Agency. Citizenship Studies 15(2): 145–159. Mundine, W. 2014. To Move On, Indigenous People Must Forgive. Australia Day Speech, January 26, The Age, January 27. http://www.theage.com.au/ comment/to-move-on-indigenous-people-must-forgive-20140127-31i9n. html. Accessed 28 Jan 2014. Niezen, R. 2003. The Origins of Indigenism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. O’Farrell, P. 1993. The Irish in Australia. Rev. ed. Kensington, NSW: University of New South Wales Press. Office of Multicultural Affairs. 1989. National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia: Sharing Our Future. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Paradies, Y., and J. Cunningham. 2009. Experiences of Racism Among Urban Indigenous Australians: Findings From the Druid Study. Ethnic and Racial Studies 32(3): 548–573. Pearson, D. 1990. A Dream Deferred: The Origins of Ethnic Conflict in New Zealand. Wellington: Allen & Unwin Port Nicholson Press. ———. 2001. The Politics of Ethnicity in Settler Societies: States of Unease. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Pearson, D. 2010. Citizenship, “Culturalisms” and Civic Pluralism: Comparing New Zealand and Australia. In Cultural Citizenship and the Challenges of Globalization, ed. W. Ommundsen, M. Leach, and A. Vandenberg, 147–164. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. Pearson, N. 2009a. Up From the Mission: Selected Writings. Melbourne: Black Inc. ———. 2009b. Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia, Quarterly Essay 35. Melbourne: Black Inc. Pearson, D., and P.  Ongley. 1996. Multiculturalism and Biculturalism: The Recent New Zealand Experience in Comparative Perspective. Journal of Intercultural Studies 17(1–2): 5–28. Povinelli, E. 1998. The State of Shame: Australian Multiculturalism and the Crisis of Indigenous Citizenship. Critical Inquiry 24(2): 575–610. ———. 2002. The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Rowse, T. 2002. Indigenous Futures: Choice and Development for Aboriginal and Islander Australia. UNSW Press, Sydney. Sharp, A. 1991. The Treaty of Waitangi: Reasoning and Social Justice in NZ. In Nga Take: Ethnic Relations and Racism in Aotearoa/New Zealand, ed. P. Spoonley, D. Pearson, and C. Macpherson, 131–147. Palmerston North, NZ: The Dunmore Press. Stokes, G. 1997. Citizenship and Aboriginality: Two Conceptions of Identity in Aboriginal Political Thought. In The Politics of Identity in Australia, ed. G. Stokes, 158–171. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tatz, C., ed. 1975. Black Viewpoints: The Aboriginal Experience. Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Company. Taylor, C. 1993. Shared and Divergent Values. In Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism, 155–186. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press. Van den Berg, R. 2002. Nyoongar People of Australia: Perspectives on Racism and Multiculturalism. Leiden: Brill. Viner, I. 1976. Second Reading Speech, June 3, 1976. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives. vom Hau, M., and G. Wilde. 2010. “We Have Always Lived Here”: Indigenous Movements, Citizenship and Poverty in Argentina. Journal of Development Studies 46(7): 1283–1303. Webber, J. 1994. Reimagining Canada: Language, Culture, Community, and the Canadian Constitution. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Williams, J. 2004. Treaty Making in New Zealand/Te Hanga Tiriti ki Aotearoa. In Honour Among Nations: Treaties and Agreements with Indigenous People, ed. M. Langton, L. Palmer, M. Tehan, and K. Shain, 163–170. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press.

7 Post-Multicultural Australia? Cosmopolitanism Critique and the Future of Australian Multiculturalism

In his Australia Day Speech in January 2013, delivered in London, then Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Scott Morrison (2013) made what had become a familiar Coalition argument that Labor (this time the Gillard government) had pursued a multicultural policy that too much emphasised difference at the expense of unity and national identity. In doing this, it had supposedly reversed the Howard government’s reorientation of multiculturalism that had “deliberately set out to explicitly recognise the supremacy of Australian values, the primacy of the English language, respect for existing institutions and adherence to the rule of law.” Labor’s policy had, Morrison claimed, “reverted back to the more traditional emphasis on accommodating and promoting diversity, almost as an end in itself, as has long been practiced in the UK and Europe.” As in earlier versions of this argument, for example, as put forward in Future Directions (Liberal Party of Australia 1988), and by the Howard government when critiquing the former Keating government, Morrison’s argument was not supported by evidence of Gillard government policy, programmes or symbolic gestures. Morrison stated, like some other conservatives before him, that he did not like using the word multiculturalism, because “it simply means too © The Author(s) 2017 A. Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8_7

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many things to too many different people and increasingly runs the risk of fuelling division and polarising the debate, which is the antithesis of what it is supposed to achieve.” He asserted that, as there was a general consensus about the benefits of diversity in Australian society, the barriers to people from different ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds were less likely related to failure to recognise and accept diversity, and more to do with specific geographic locations, and to processes internal to particular groups. This implied that typical multicultural policies, including anti-discrimination programmes and measures and antiracism initiatives, were now less necessary and that more mainstream policy efforts were needed to open up recalcitrant ethnic and religious groups to the benefits of wider Australian society. Here Morrison claimed to draw on the evidence of the Scanlon Foundation’s “Social Cohesion 2012 Report,”1 which he said showed that people were generally supportive of diversity, but that those in areas of heavy ethnic concentration were increasingly frustrated by persistent social and economic failure of some groups, and were annoyed by groups that were closed off from the rest of society, through what Morrison termed “self-imposed cultural withdrawal.” Though this phenomenon regarding people’s opinion is noted in the Scanlon Foundation’s 2012 Report (Markus et al. 2012), it is nevertheless unclear whether this ethno-cultural separation was really something happening on the ground or simply some people’s perception of things in areas with many different ethnic groups—but Morrison seemed to take it as a statement of fact. He also implied that multicultural policy contributed to this problem: “It surely cannot be the purpose of multicultural policy that Australians elect to disengage from our society for religious, cultural or ethnic reasons.” While extolling the benefits of Australia’s diversity, and honouring the contributions of Indigenous and recent immigrant populations, Morrison asserted that it was time to embrace a post-multicultural stance, as had been suggested by European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron. 1

The Scanlon Foundation reports involve representative local and national surveys of social cohesion and belonging in Australia, which have been conducted since 2007. They cover people’s sense of security, belonging and their attitudes to immigration.

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Morrison was hardly advancing an original position. Since at least the 1990s there have been different arguments about the need to move beyond multiculturalism in Australia, and elsewhere. Morrison’s argument, like that of Merkel and Cameron, and that of John Howard in the 1980s, and, at least implicitly, after 2005, was that we should move away from multiculturalism because it had failed. This position advocates a turning back to an assimilationist or strongly integrationist policy, focused on a strong national identity and a core national culture to which immigrants should adapt. Howard reiterated this view in his memoirs (Howard 2010). This is more accurately characterised as an antimulticultural than as a post-multicultural position. There are also arguments that the multicultural policy period was not a failure, but rather that it was such a success that Australians do not need to focus on it anymore, because they are thoroughly comfortable living their diversity and getting on with it in their everyday lives (and there was also a hint of that in Morrison’s speech). Sir James Gobbo, an important figure in federal multicultural policy in the 1980s and early 1990s, made this claim in a speech to the Global Diversity Conference in Sydney in 1995: … I have the view that as the core principles of multiculturalism are more and more accepted, there will be less need to use the word. The ideal to work for is that cultural diversity will be so much accepted and so much part of the fabric of Australian society that it will be unnecessary to use the word multiculturalism other than in describing its historical development and role. For similar reasons I expressed the hope some years ago that by the end of the decade both the word multiculturalism and the word ethnic will be largely unnecessary. (Gobbo 1995)

This can be argued as reflecting a post-multiculturalism perspective, and there have been recent developments to such arguments that I will address in this chapter, including cosmopolitan critiques of multiculturalism. Then there are those arguments that the word multiculturalism has become so divisive that it should be dropped, even as we maintain our policy commitment to enhancing Australia’s diversity, and providing equal chances for Australia’s diverse population. When one of the

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chief architects and promoters of multiculturalism in Australia, the late Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki (1995) told the Global Diversity Conference in Sydney that he wished he had never used the horrible neologism “multiculturalism,” he suggested that Australia should now drop the “clumsy, pompous word” and replace it with the motto “Many Cultures. One Australia,” while still retaining the term “multicultural” as a description of Australia’s demographic cultural and ethnic diversity. In interviews in major newspapers The Age (19 March 1994) and The Australian (8 April 1995), Zubrzycki had expressed worries about the direction of multiculturalism, including the tendency for Australian society to fragment, the outbreak of ethnic conflicts such as the battle over the name Macedonia among immigrants from different national backgrounds (e.g. in Melbourne) and the disenchantment of “middle Australia” with the concept (see Gobbo 1995). In his 1995 speech, he also emphasised the “distortion” of multiculturalism involved in wooing the ethnic vote by providing special grants to ethnic groups, suggesting that this had become a contemporary problem that was contributing to societal fragmentation rather than the cohesion that multiculturalism should produce. Zubrzycki did not, however, retreat from his advocacy of the continuing need for multicultural policy—many of the policies enacted under the term “multiculturalism,” he argued, should be retained and developed. There should be a careful balance between tolerance, recognition of ethnic cultures, but also acceptance that not all “traditions” are equal (e.g. notions of families taking the law into their own hands to inflict punishment when one of their own was harmed, clashed with Australian law and a fundamental Australian value, and therefore would not be treated as equal and allowable in Australia). And Zubrzycki reiterated the multicultural position he had articulated in the 1970s and 1980s: Social cohesion, respect for and awareness of cultural identity, equal opportunity and access to the nation’s resources for all Australians, and equal responsibility for commitment to and participation in Australian society, represent the key policy goals for the management of ethnic diversity and promotion of tolerance. If one of these dimensions is given more attention and financial commitment by governments at all levels, then multicultural policy is thrown out of balance.

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Emma Dawson (2008), co-editor of the book Social Cohesion in Australia (Jupp et al. 2007), after mounting a strong defence of Australia’s multicultural policies, nevertheless also believed it might be time to replace the word with something else related to “diversity” and “social cohesion”: In order to recover Australia’s diversity advantage, the Rudd Government should make a clean break with the sullied recent history of cultural diversity debates, and perhaps consider replacing the sadly discredited term “multiculturalism” with one that accurately reflects the objectives of maintaining social cohesion in a culturally diverse society. Such an approach must, most crucially, reject the stultifying conformity called for by reactionaries in the culture wars, and stress the benefits to all Australians of a pluralist, diverse, creative and innovative national culture. (Dawson 2008)

Dawson suggested that an important first step for the Rudd government to emphatically move out of the period of reactionary “cultural conformity” represented by the Howard years was to set up an “Office for Diversity and Social Inclusion (ODSI)” within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, as a replacement for the Office of Multicultural Affairs that the Howard government dissolved in the late 1990s. As noted in Chap. 4, the Rudd government did establish a Social Inclusion Board, but the Board did not address issues of diversity and multiculturalism as suggested by Dawson. Dawson’s argument was close to the position that Kymlicka (2010) has called the social democratic strand of post-multiculturalism discourse. This argument is that we should maintain commitments to fighting racism and discrimination, and argues for a more inclusive national identity, but also that we should avoid the more divisive and separatist rhetoric sometimes associated with multiculturalism. In the European context, this argument has been reflected in the Council of Europe’s endorsement of “interculturalism” in the place of a politically damaged multiculturalism (Council of Europe 2008; see also Kymlicka 2012). Arguments about replacing the word “multiculturalism” with some other term in Australia have been replayed several times since the 1980s and each time have ultimately been rejected by policy makers. It is indeed difficult to know how getting rid of the name, while retaining many of the

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same policies, would in fact resolve the issues and the political conflicts over multiculturalism, which these authors discussed above recognised. In addition, there is a case to be made for retaining the term multiculturalism. First, it is the internationally recognised term for such policies, even if some European countries prefer terms like “interculturalism” (Meer and Modood 2012). Second, after more than 40 years of public discussion and policy development, it has become part of the vernacular in Australia, a term recognised and used in everyday life (see Chap. 5). And third, there is little evidence that the “multicultural brand” has been as damaged in the Australian context as it appears to have been in Europe (on the latter, see Kymlicka 2012). In fact, the general public, according to national polling, generally approves of at least some aspects of multiculturalism. And in this respect multiculturalism may have in fact gained public support since the 1980s when it was frequently claimed that it only had elite support (Betts 1988). Quantitative studies show that the majority of Australians are generally positive about at least some of the benefits of multiculturalism, an average of almost 78 per cent over five surveys conducted between 1995 and 2003 agreeing that “Immigrants make Australia open to new ideas and culture” (Goot and Watson 2005, p. 186). And when asked a general question about support for multiculturalism, for example, whether it helps to produce harmony when a society has many different cultural groups, whether it has been good for Australia or whether they support or oppose a policy of multiculturalism, majorities of between 70 and 80 per cent have expressed support since the late 1980s (Markus et al. 2009, p.  130). Australians’ attitudes to immigration, multiculturalism and national identity have been collected in questionnaires based on the national identity module of the International Social Science Program which includes standard statements such as “It is better for society if groups maintain distinct traditions and customs” and “Ethnic minorities should be given government assistance to preserve their customs and traditions” which Australians overwhelmingly reject. Some authors (Pakulski and Tranter 2000; Goot and Watson 2005; Markus et al. 2009) see in this evidence of Australians’ ambivalent or even weak support for multiculturalism, and continuing commitment to the assimilation of immigrants. However, weakness of support is not so apparent if one

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makes a distinction between two types of multiculturalism, one political or communitarian and the other individual-based and cultural, a liberal or “multiculture” understanding of their diverse society (Meer and Modood 2009). The analysis of both quantitative and qualitative research indicates that what many Australians oppose is group rights and separatism, not cultural difference (Brett and Moran 2006, 2011); and this does not necessarily imply rejection of multiculturalism. The Scanlon Foundation Report of 2013, a national survey of social cohesion in Australia, which recognises that people have differing perceptions of what multiculturalism means, nevertheless concludes that it is “established as a strong and supported ‘brand,’” one that “resonates with the Australian population” (Markus 2013, p. 37). There is yet another critique of multiculturalism, that involves not only a call for its replacement by another name, but also a claim that Australia should adopt a new, even more diversity-friendly policy approach than official multiculturalism has thus far provided in Australia. This argument, made by Australian writers from the left on ethnic issues, such as Ien Ang, Jon Stratton and Greg Noble, tends to be a theoretical argument that has not, thus far, been translated into concrete discussions of how such a policy programme would be different to multicultural policy. The critique also continues and develops the leftist critiques of multiculturalism of the 1980s that were discussed in Chaps. 2 and 3. The particular focus of this critique, it seems, is the way that multicultural policy has been framed by national identity and unity, and by assumptions about ultimate loyalty to Australia. But the critique also contains other elements, some of which depend upon a flawed reading of official Australian multiculturalism. Ang (2008), for example, has argued that instead of multiculturalism we should use the term “cosmopolitan multiculturalism” in order to emphasise: … an ethos that starts with the knowledge that people are different, but also recognises that there is much to learn from our differences. Cosmopolitan multiculturalism strengthens interconnections across our differences rather than simply affirming the differences that divide us. It emphasises our multiple identities and the changing and dynamic character

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of groups and communities. The term is alert to the potential of cultural synergies and opportunities of cultural renewal through interaction. In short, cosmopolitan multiculturalism promotes, to speak with Appiah, the habits of co-existence: “conversation” in both its older meaning of living together and its newer meaning of dialogue. By cosmopolitanizing multiculturalism, we can arrive at a new, non-assimilationist mode of integration. Conversation plays a central role in this. (Ang 2008, pp. 230–231)

Older forms of multiculturalism, Ang implied, had stimulated and encouraged people to stay within their own ethnic enclosures. Drawing on a meeting on a Sydney train with a first generation, young Indian Australian woman she called “Ritika,” who in conversation told Ang that she was uncertain of where Australia was heading, and that she felt more part of the Indian community than the Australian community, Ang concluded that: Ritika’s sense of uncertainty can be blamed on an old multiculturalism, which encourages the separatism of ethnic communities with little to bind them. It needs to be replaced with a new multiculturalism that copes with our increasingly complex diversity. (Ang 2008, p. 229)

This is an ambiguous claim, as it is not clear whether Ang was referring to official Australian multicultural policy—in which case her argument would be clearly wrong, given that it has never encouraged separatism of ethnic groups—or to multicultural beliefs held by Ritika herself, that might, for example, draw upon intellectual and cultural strains of multicultural thinking. Ang does make clear that in her view national identity, core Australian values and Australian citizenship are not, in our globalising, “liquid” (as per Zygmunt Bauman’s idea of “liquid modernity,” see Bauman 2000) and highly mobile world, feasible concepts to bind people together (Ang 2008). But there was little direct comment in this paper on what was wrong with official multiculturalism. In an earlier paper, however, co-written with Jon Stratton, Ang produced a strong critique of state-sponsored “official multiculturalism.” Stratton and Ang (1998) claimed that it constrained the expression of cultural difference and heterogeneity within Australia by speaking to

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ethnically defined, supposedly stable and relatively homogenous ethnic communities. These “communities” were allowed and even encouraged to maintain aspects of their traditional cultures and languages, within the limits of their incorporation within the broader Australian nation. They were not allowed, for example, to express within Australia the conflicts, ethnic or otherwise, historically experienced in their countries of origin. To quote them: The problem with official multiculturalism is that it tends, precisely, to freeze the fluidity of identity by the very fact that it is concerned with synthesizing unruly and unpredictable cultural identities and differences into a harmonious unity-in-diversity. So the metaphor of the mosaic, of unity-in-diversity, is based on another kind of disavowal, on a suppression of the potential incommensurability of juxtaposed cultural differences. Here we confront the limits of state multiculturalism. Against the background of the state’s concern with the construction of (national) unity, multiculturalism can be seen as a policy, not to foster cultural differences but, on the contrary, to direct them into safe channels. (Stratton and Ang 1998, p. 157)

State multiculturalism was therefore a form of ideological repression, and “unity-in-diversity” was little more than an “exclusionary ideological construct” (Stratton and Ang 1998, p. 158). “To seize on multiculturalism’s more radical potential,” they argued, “is to give up the ideal of national unity itself without doing away with the promise of a flexible, porous, and open-ended national culture” (Stratton and Ang 1998, p. 160). Here we see critics from the left criticising multiculturalism for overemphasising what critics from the right have accused multiculturalism of under-emphasising or even undermining: national unity. As shown throughout this book, Australia’s official multiculturalism has always expressed a concern for forms of unity in the context of cultural diversity. And in fact, it is difficult to imagine how political leaders, especially national leaders who represent the concerns of the general population organised within the Australian nation-state, could avoid speaking the language of nation, unity and social cohesion, even if they believed in “multiculturalism’s more radical potential.” As Markus et  al. (2009,

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pp.  133–134) show in a careful reading of opinion polling since the 1980s, Australians show a strong concern with and commitment to unity when they are asked about immigration and multicultural issues. If multicultural policy downplayed or undermined this commitment, it is likely that public support for it would quickly evaporate. Picking up on the work of the anthropologist Steven Vertovec (2007), Australian scholar Greg Noble (2009) has argued that we live in an era of “super-diversity” that is not adequately captured by the term multiculturalism: Australian multiculturalism has long been predicated on the assumption that there is considerable cultural variety within society, but that variety was understood as an array of discrete cultures which make up a colourful mosaic. (Noble 2009, p. 47)

Vertovec has pioneered the concept of “super-diversity,” or the “diversification of diversity” which entails “the multiplication of significant variables that affect where, how and with whom people live” (Vertovec 2007, p. 1025). Theories of super-diversity question the contemporary relevance of older understandings of migration, multiculturalism and notions of relatively homogenous and stable ethnic and/or immigrant groups. Like Ang (2008), who also referenced the concept of superdiversity, Noble felt that cosmopolitanism, which referred less to groups and more to individuals mixing and matching cultural influences, was a better concept to understand this new reality. Ang and Noble have produced support for this view of a more cosmopolitan and super-diverse Australia in their national survey of Australians commissioned by SBS and published as Living Diversity (Ang et al. 2002) and in their follow-up focus group study, also commissioned by SBS, published as Connecting Diversity (Ang et al. 2006). In introducing the term super-diversity, Vertovec (2007) was reflecting in the first instance on the transformation of migration patterns in Britain (and by implication in other wealthy, Western countries). The diversity arising from immigration in the past in the UK was, he argued, simpler and more easily grasped by governments and services. Immigration from former colonies meant the arrival of large ethnic

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communities from the Indian sub-continent and from the Caribbean; these communities became recognised, and socially and politically organised, in the British context. Governments eventually responded to leaders and organisations representing these large minority communities. But the situation had changed: In numerous societies around the world, migration-driven diversification has brought changing configurations not only with regard to the movement of more people from more varied national, ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds, but also a diversification by way of distinctions of migration channels, the differentiation of legal statuses and their associated conditions, diverging patterns of gender and age in migration flows, and variance in migrants’ human capital (education, work skills and experience). (Vertovec 2012, p. 303)

Global migration flows had altered with “more people … now moving from more places, through more places, to more places.” In comparison to the past, “today newer, smaller, transient, more socially stratified, less organised and more legally differentiated immigrant groups comprise global migration flows” (Vertovec 2010, p. 87). Vertovec has also suggested that “super-diversity,” especially the growth of diasporic and transnational communities, has implications for multiculturalism, which lead to the need for governments to adopt a post-multiculturalist stance (Vertovec 2010). The post-multiculturalist position that he refers to involves what he depicts as the combining of left-wing concerns with diversity, building social capital and reducing inequality, with the right’s concern with maintaining cohesion, common values and national identity. It will be apparent by now that Australian multiculturalism has always had such combined emphases, so what Vertovec calls post-multiculturalism is very similar to official multiculturalism in Australia. The attraction of cosmopolitan thinking for some Australian critics of multiculturalism—mainly from the left—taps into a broader international literature that also suggests that the kinds of things multiculturalism hopes to encourage would be better served by cosmopolitanism. To take one important example, at the beginning of his book Cosmopolitanism:

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Ethics in a World of Strangers, Kwame Anthony Appiah asked himself what rubric he should use to think about our thoroughly interconnected world, where “every human community has gradually been drawn into a single web of trade and a global network of information …” (Appiah 2007, p. x). Globalisation would not do because, starting out as a marketing strategy, then used as a tool of macroeconomic analysis, it now seems to “encompass everything, and nothing.” But nor would multiculturalism, “another shape shifter which so often designates the disease it purports to cure” (Appiah 2007, p. xi). With some ambivalence, Appiah settled on cosmopolitanism which, as a concept, at least had the virtue of a very long history of survival. Appiah associated multiculturalism with more defensive and rigid postures concerning cultural preservation and with essentialising cultural or ethnic identities. Cosmopolitanism by contrast was more open, fluid and individualistic in approach. For its proponents, like Appiah, cosmopolitanism provides a normative framework for a new post-national world of mobility, flows and blurred boundaries, suggesting new ways of being in the world, new forms of political orientation and new kinds of political arrangements (see also Beck 2000, 2002). Doubts about multiculturalism’s stance on collective identities were also raised in David Hollinger’s (1995) influential book Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. Hollinger distinguished between different versions of universalism, which he termed cosmopolitanism and pluralism: Cosmopolitanism is more oriented to the individual, whom it is likely to understand as a member of a number of different communities simultaneously. Pluralism is more oriented to the group, and is likely to identify each individual with reference to a single, primary community. (Hollinger 1995, p. 86)

These, Hollinger noted, are also important dominant strains within multiculturalism. He favoured the cosmopolitan strain recognising individual cultural diversity over the pluralist strain recognising group identities within multiculturalism. Pluralists, he argued, have a tendency to overemphasise the stability and unchanging nature of groups and their

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fixed, inherited boundaries; individuals are situated within an array of distinct, permanent ethno-racial groups, which act like enclosures; and pluralists seek to protect and preserve them. Cosmopolitans are far more committed to a vision whereby people straddle different groups, where boundaries are seen to shift and where identities (or better, cultural and group affiliations) are at least partly voluntary; and cosmopolitans give more room to cultural development and change. Hollinger argued that a “postethnic perspective builds upon a cosmopolitan element prominent within the multiculturalist movement and cuts against its equally prominent pluralist element” (Hollinger 1995, p. 3). While it respects “communities of descent,” it de-emphasises the question of blood and belonging and seeks to make room for other kinds of groups to inhabit and gain respect in the shared social space. Ethnos—“a particular solidarity rooted in history” (Hollinger 1995, p. 4)—should replace ethnicity, he argued; and the notion of “ethnos” had a place within his conception of cosmopolitanism. Here Hollinger (1995, p. 5) distinguished his position from the cosmopolitanism to be found among some Enlightenment thinkers and “antiprovincial” cosmopolitan “citizens of the world”; his cosmopolitanism recognised the importance of roots and specific belonging (see also Appiah 1997). Thus, people have many affiliations, some based on belonging to an “ethnos.” But America, as a whole, is also a kind of “ethnos”; as a post-ethnic society it is nevertheless a historical national culture. There is such a thing as American national culture and national identity (of a civic, post-ethnic kind), he argued; America is not just a container for myriad groups, many of them transnational (Hollinger 1995, pp. 14–15, and Ch. 6). In this respect, Australian author Ien Ang differs from Hollinger in her cosmopolitanism, for she does not stress the reality of a continuous national identity, with its forms of solidarity, that Hollinger invokes; rather, in her view cosmopolitanism is like a conversation between strangers who we cannot assume share any values or beliefs (an argument she sources to Appiah); and the purpose is not to reach new forms of unity (or solidarities) but to accept the differences, and in some cases learn from them in terms of one’s own, somewhat limited cultural horizon; thus she promotes a politics of “co-existence” rather than “unity” (interconnections rather than solidarities). The super-diversity of the

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contemporary world, emphasised by writers like Vertovec as discussed above, means that any notion of a unified national identity is no longer possible (if it ever was). Gerard Delanty (2009) has also argued that multiculturalism needs to be rethought in a cosmopolitan direction. He mainly criticises the liberal multiculturalism characteristic of the West and as articulated by Kymlicka (2007). According to this critique, liberal multiculturalism is too focused on ethnic cultural differences, and assumes that ethnic cultures form distinct wholes (and thus concerns itself with the possibilities and limits of different forms of minority rights) (Delanty 2009, p. 135). In the contemporary world, difference has become pluralised and also to a considerable extent individualised. Cultures cross-cut and interpenetrate each other. Liberal multiculturalism emerged from the need to deal with relatively stable immigrant-based minorities, seen as existing in relation with stable majority cultures (typically conceived as national), but the world brought into being by intensifying globalisation was very different. Like Vertovec, Delanty argues that migration is less stable, with people coming and going and moving between different countries rather than settling permanently. New (and older) diversities and conflicts of values rival those centred upon ethnicities—class, gender, generational and moral diversities. People belong to multiple groups and communities, the boundaries between groups are more diffuse than ever before, and groups cannot be demarcated clearly from each other (Delanty 2009, pp. 141–145). Delanty argues that there are three main dimensions to the cosmopolitanisation of multiculturalism. The first is that the “distinction between the social and the cultural needs to be abandoned” (Delanty 2009, p. 132). By this he means that we need to abandon the distinction between ethnic groups (culturally defined), and the mainstream society (seen simply as the taken for granted social). No absolute distinction can be made between the non-natives and natives of any given society. Second, multiculturalism has to move beyond a concern with managing minority cultures to address the society as a whole; in particular, in dealing with issues like race and discrimination. Third, creating multicultural communities “requires a wider and more globally oriented perspective than one that can be achieved by national policies alone” (Delanty 2009,

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pp. 132–133). The contemporary world is one of global migrations and the intermingling of populations—thus, a cosmopolitan multiculturalism “will require a wider dialogue with social groups beyond the immediate local and national community” (Delanty 2009, p. 133). Delanty also makes a further point about cosmopolitan multiculturalism—which he says is very important—and this is its commitment to a common, normative public culture. This shared culture, as he imagines it, is not like a shared national culture—even if in many instances it will be instantiated at the level of the nation-state. Rather, it is a constantly negotiated Habermasian public culture that emerges through deliberation and dialogue between a society’s diverse individuals and groups; it emerges through a cacophony of voices, and Delanty argues that there is no reason why this shared normative culture could not also be experienced at a global level (Delanty 2009, p. 156). In sum, then, what these different cosmopolitan critiques of multiculturalism suggest is not a wholesale rejection of multiculturalism, but some ways of going beyond it, of rejecting some of its supposed outdated assumptions about culture, identity and unity and of finding new ways of existing peacefully and constructively in hyper-diverse worlds. A cosmopolitan turn is seen as providing many of the answers to the dilemmas that multiculturalism could not resolve. It is in this sense of being influenced by multicultural developments, but then going beyond them in new directions, that this stance can be characterised as “post-multicultural.” I will now consider whether the cosmopolitan critiques of multiculturalism are convincing as critiques of official Australian multiculturalism. As I noted in Chap. 2, official Australian multiculturalism has been liberal rather than communitarian in character. However, as a liberal form of multiculturalism, it has not involved, for the most part, the emphasis on minority group rights criticised by Delanty, as mentioned above. The only exception here, and it is an important one, has been a slightly stronger, though politically controversial, recognition of the particular group rights of Australia’s Indigenous peoples (e.g. Aboriginal land rights, native title, protection of sacred sites), including a tentative government recognition of the right to self-determination of Indigenous communities. Nor has it supported ethnic communities as “enclosures” (as per Hollinger’s critique of multicultural pluralism) and as at least

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implied by writers like Ang, Stratton and Noble. It has definitely not involved a discourse of “plural monoculturalism” so strongly criticised by Amartya Sen in his book Identity and Violence (2006). Sen argues that this form of multiculturalism celebrates the plurality of relatively self-contained and separate “ethnic and or religious communities,” its advocates conceiving of societies like Britain as a federation of cultures or religions (Sen 2006, p. 158). “Instead of encouraging British citizens of diverse backgrounds to interact with each other in civil society, and to participate in British politics as citizens,” Sen (2006, pp. 163–164) argues, “the invitation is to act ‘through’ their ‘own community.’” Sen felt that it was important to be conceptually precise when using the term multiculturalism, in order to avoid “conceptual disarray” about the meaning of social identities and also to avoid the “purposeful exploitation of the divisiveness that this conceptual disarray allows and even, to some extent, encourages” (Sen 2006, p. 165). He argued for a “multiculturalism with cultural liberty” and against a “plural monoculturalism with faith-based separatism” (Sen 2006, p. 165). As explained throughout this book, official Australian multiculturalism has always emphasised ethnic intermingling over ethnic separatism. In the early policy statements and submission papers on multiculturalism from the 1970s (discussed in Chap. 2), there is no doubt that, in an important sense, “ethnic communities” and ethnic groups were seen in a positive light, for example, as “primary groups” through which individuals could feel secure and orient themselves in mass societies. It was also argued that government could play a constructive role in helping ethnic communities to support their members. This was understood as moderate support for structural ethnic pluralism (to use Jean Martin’s term)—the institutionalising of already existing ethnic communities, through their engagement with government. But this was only a minor strain of multicultural thinking and policy. And it is also true that this recognition of ethnic communities (beyond ethnic individuals) fed into the various policy approaches since the late 1970s, including the use of special grants to ethnic organisations (often for welfare purposes, and some for limited cultural maintenance purposes, such as support for community languages); the use of ethnic and immigrant organisations and spokespersons as representatives of ethnic

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groups in consultations around policy (including the funding of state and federal ethnic communities’ councils); federal funding of private religious schools; and federal, state, territory and local government legislation, policies and programmes addressing racial discrimination, racial hatred and race vilification, and supporting intercultural dialogue and interaction. To this extent, the cosmopolitan critics are right in suggesting that multiculturalism has been primarily focused on the cultures of immigrant, ethnic groups. However, it should be emphasised that in the Australian case, from the early days, efforts were also made by multicultural policy makers to stress that multiculturalism concerned all Australians, not just migrants; Australia was a multicultural society and eventually conceived by multicultural policy advocates as a multicultural nation. More important, it is hard to know what alternative there is to this often mild, flexible approach with its assumption that people, to some extent, form groups based upon ethnic origins, religion and Indigeneity. Are the advocates of cosmopolitanism and “super-diversity” suggesting that the state should do away with any recognition of group cultural diversity? To suggest that Australian multicultural policies have been the cause of people inhabiting ethnic enclosures or enclaves—at least implied by Ang as shown earlier—is sociologically naïve. In fact, it over-estimates the capacity of governments to shape everyday life and group formation in the context of large-scale immigration and changes associated with intensifying globalisation. Though there are dangers in governing through ethnic groups and their sometimes self-appointed leaders, as Chetan Bhatt (2006) has so cogently argued in a critique of British multiculturalism, particularly for the way that it anointed patriarchal religious leaders as spokespeople for diverse communities containing individuals with strong, moderate and weak religious and secular identities, it could be argued that cosmopolitans push too far in the opposite direction, away from a multiculturalism that seeks to recognise groups (Modood 2007). Craig Calhoun has criticised elite cosmopolitans for ignoring the importance of particular forms of group solidarity, and for operating with an unexamined individualist social ontology; as a form of liberalism, it offers “no account of social solidarity or of the role of culture in constituting human life,” and is instead focused on an individualist, abstract humanity (Calhoun 2003, p. 535).

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It ignores the importance of belonging, and also the bases of belonging, for individuals; and it fails to appreciate that “social relationships might be as basic as individuals” (Calhoun 2003, p. 535). As Calhoun argues: … much of the new liberal cosmopolitan thought proceeds as though belonging is a matter of social constraints from which individuals ought to escape, or temptations to favouritism they ought to resist. Claims of special loyalty or responsibility to nations, communities, or ethnic groups, thus, are subordinated or fall under suspicion of illegitimacy. (Calhoun 2003, p. 535)

In any case, for the most part, government multicultural policy since the Galbally Report (Migrant Services and Programs 1978) has involved symbolic commitment to creating a more open cultural environment where people of diverse backgrounds do not feel that they have to dismantle or hide their cultures in the service of assimilation. The “cultural pluralism” that increasingly came to dominate multicultural policy in the 1970s under the Fraser government (and which was the object of critique of multiculturalism from the left) was a position not unlike the cosmopolitanism advocated by writers such as Hollinger (discussed earlier). “Cultural pluralism” tended to emphasise the equal legitimacy of ethno-cultural forms of life, and their importance to individuals, and that the main thrust of multicultural policy should be to recognise this. On the other hand, the ethnic structural pluralism approach, closer to the pluralist multiculturalism that Hollinger criticised, advocated by writers like Jean Martin in the Australian context, did not become a predominant strand of multiculturalism as pursued by governments. *** While I have argued that the cosmopolitan criticisms of multiculturalism appear misconceived when thinking about official Australian multicultural policy, I am not suggesting that there are not new circumstances, including some of these suggested by cosmopolitans, that multiculturalism must deal with in contemporary Australia. In their submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Migration and Multiculturalism, the Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre, from the University of Technology, Sydney, raised some of the issues

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discussed above, and also argued for a more cosmopolitan brand of multiculturalism. They also had specific policy recommendations for a “new” Australian multiculturalism (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Submission 420). The position was further elaborated when the Centre’s co-directors Jock Collins and Andrew Jakubowicz and member Christina Ho appeared and spoke at one of the Inquiry’s public hearings, on 24 February 2012, in Sydney. Their submission called on the government to adopt a “New Multiculturalism,” “which would go beyond the current Government position by”: creating national legislation that provides a human rights structure for Multiculturalism in Australia; establishing a strong research capacity linking researchers, policy makers, civil society and business, separate from but supported by government, that is both policy and inquiry driven; building effective settlement programs that ensure labour market participation and reduce the processes of de-skilling that affect many immigrants; developing a media and public culture strategy that recognises and respects the cultural diversity of Australia, and ensuring it appears strongly in the media and the arts; support anti-racism as one critical side of the settlement experience. (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Submission 420)

The proposal suggested that key elements of the multicultural tradition should be retained, some elements (like a major research body) reinstated and that there should be a re-commitment to earlier proposals, like the establishment of a federal Multiculturalism Act. The “new” part of the approach attempted to respond to the fact that much had changed since multicultural policies had been introduced more than 30 years ago and that multicultural policy had not kept up with these changes. Especially pertinent here were the broad effects of globalisation, the rise of the Internet and intensified global movements of people. These changes called for some form of government recognition and response to the following key developments:

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Globalization has enabled the mobility of diasporic communities that are often trans-national, carrying a number of national passports, offering much more subtle and fluid identities, especially for second-generation and later citizens; Australian society is created through all its citizens, so that multiculturalism has to recognise, respect and incorporate the “charter” cultures of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales; Diaspora communities in Australia include large numbers of temporary migrants, including 457 and international student categories, whose presence multiculturalism must recognise, respect and incorporate. (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Submission 420)2

These are important changes to the migrant experience, though one should not assume that such diasporic and transnational settlement experiences represent the general immigrant experience in Australia. Many still arrive in Australia with the expectation of settling permanently. On the other hand, the numbers of transient settlers are significantly large enough for them to come under the auspices of a developing multicultural policy. The submission stressed that “new” multiculturalism must “recognise and respect the presence and prior ownership of the Land by the Indigenous peoples,” which at least to some extent was recognised by earlier multicultural statements, if not in exactly those terms. It also emphasised that multiculturalism had to be explicitly framed by a commitment to human rights, and that it should be calibrated with the major human rights frameworks to which Australia is a signatory. It emphasised that multiculturalism needed a stronger antiracist approach, including the criminalisation of racial vilification. In response to one of the Inquiry’s terms of reference, concerning the relationship between the Gillard government’s social inclusion agenda and multiculturalism, the submission argued for a clear incorporation of the cultural aspects of social inclusion (which would call for closer monitoring of how well different cultural 2

Since the 1990s there has been major growth of temporary migration to Australia, in two major areas: the creation and expansion of temporary skilled migration through the Howard government’s introduction of the Temporary Business (Long Stay) (Subclass 457) visas; and the rapid expansion of the international student population (see Phillips and Spinks 2012).

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groups do, on all the relevant social inclusion indicators). It recognised that the Gillard government’s Social Inclusion Board had started to do this, but stressed that it needed to go further: … cultural diversity parameters of social inclusion such as recency of arrival, linguistic capacity, education, qualification recognition, trauma and torture survival, disability, mental health status, and family structure should all be operationalised, quantified, and calculated into the baseline understanding of social inclusion. From that point on, cultural diversity should be “mainstreamed” into the assessment of needs, development of programs, delivery of accessible services, and assessment of quality of outcomes. (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, Submission 420)

At the public hearing in Sydney, on the 24th of February, 2012, Christina Ho, like many cosmopolitan commentators, stressed the changing nature of ethnic groupness and ethnic identification. These were related to the progression of older migrant communities through the second, third and subsequent generations and changed migration flows, meaning that people had hybrid, multiple, fluid and transnational identities that the “old multiculturalism” was unable to capture and that called for a new multiculturalism that would speak to contemporary Australians’ identity and cultural aspirations. She further argued that multiculturalism needed to move away from a focus on “ethnics”: To talk about cosmopolitanism or a new multiculturalism is really about trying to describe diversity into the core of Australian identity so that to be Australian and to be ethnic is not seen as a contradiction. So I think the core of our understanding of new multiculturalism is that it is inclusive. It is not just about migrants; it is about people from every background, including English, Irish, Welsh et cetera. I think it is a way of making multiculturalism mature and responsive to the needs of the contemporary Australian diversity. (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, Sydney, 24 February 2012, p. 38)

As shown throughout this book, policy makers have been attempting to emphasise the applicability of multiculturalism for everyone in Australian

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society since the 1970s, so this hardly calls for a new form of official multiculturalism. Rather, it registers the impression that Australia’s official multicultural discourse had, thus far, failed to inculcate this belief in the non-immigrant population. The Chair and CEO of the Community Relations Commission, New South Wales, Stepan Kerkyasharian, speaking earlier at the same public hearing pointed out that this was one of the reasons why the NSW government had changed the name of the Ethnic Affairs Commission to the Community Relations Commission. The aim was to impress upon the public that multiculturalism was about general community relations and relations between all cultural groups and not about ethnicity or ethnic groups (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, Sydney, 24 February 2012, p. 29). In his comments at the Sydney public hearing, Jakubowicz emphasised the importance of a federal Multicultural Act, in order to make multiculturalism more consistent as a policy and approach across all levels of government, and between the many government departments and agencies, and to prevent it becoming the plaything of governments of the day. He suggested that this Act should also be concerned with promoting Australians’ cosmopolitan “capacities,” which he argued were invaluable skills in the contemporary world: If we prevent every Australian from becoming more cosmopolitan in their capacities then we are severely limiting their personal opportunities and we are severely truncating the future of Australia’s economic development. So in a sense what we would want to do in a legislative environment is to suggest that the act is aimed not simply in terms of preserving heritage or defining cultures but in terms of enabling citizens to interact as part of a national community and a global community. (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, Sydney, 24 February 2012, p. 38)

One important skill here was multiple language capacity, and Jakubowicz emphasised that multiculturalism over the previous 10 years had failed badly in continuing to develop these citizen capacities, with declining rates of bilingualism in Australia. He also reiterated the need for a government agency that would support research into migration and multicultural issues.

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Collins emphasised at the Sydney public hearing that he was a strong supporter of multiculturalism, but felt that it needed to be adjusted to reflect current circumstances, and to be extended to address some major weaknesses in order to defend itself against criticism from both the left and the right. The main weaknesses, in his view, were, first, that the Anglo majority had not bought into it and, second, that it needed to capture the imagination of Indigenous people and to build bridges with these communities (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, Sydney, 24 February 2012, p.  39). The third weakness concerned how multiculturalism treated and conceived of identities. Collins reflected on research he and others had done with young Muslims, and other young people from various immigrant backgrounds, whose identities were complex, not just exclusively Australian: To some extent our multiculturalism ought to be relaxed about the place in the global world. That is why when we argue for having a more cosmopolitan multiculturalism it is a multiculturalism that is relaxed about that new global world. Part of the implication of that is that there would be much more open paths to multicitizenship or transferable—a lot more rights about not only one-to-one country recognition of dual citizenship but also more portable rights, because we have a massive international community that are here but are not citizens and they often fall between the cracks. We think multiculturalism has made a great contribution to Australian society and ought to be maintained but it needs some reworking. (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, Sydney, 24 February 2012, p. 39)

As we have seen, the implications for multiculturalism of diasporic communities, transnationalism, multiple identities and temporary immigration, have been stressed by writers, including some in Australia, who have argued for a “cosmopolitan multiculturalism.” Multiculturalism was initially framed under the assumption that immigration meant permanent settlement and therefore incorporation into the Australian nation. Thus, multiculturalism has been framed by a conception of national community that immigrants would be welcomed into and encouraged to join.

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Responding to further questions about temporary migration and how governments should manage it, Collins argued that there should be more certain pathways between temporary migration and permanent settlement and that temporary migrants should have many other social rights available to permanent residents and citizens. Jakubowicz called for ways of engaging temporary residents with the political process, for example, allowing them to vote in  local government elections (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, Sydney, 24 February 2012, p. 40). Christina Ho added that this was exactly the sort of initiative that a new multiculturalism would express: That is a really good example of the kind of new multicultural framework that we are trying to articulate. It is about recognising people’s transnational experiences and lives and that people can have multiple commitments to multiple societies. As Jock was mentioning, a new multiculturalism should be able to not get too anxious about that. The idea that you can have multiple affiliations should be something that we should be harnessing for the strength that it can provide for a contemporary cosmopolitan Australian society. Giving that recognition to temporary migrants is a classic example of how multicultural policy could enact that approach. (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, Sydney, 24 February 2012, pp. 40–41)

Writing about the above-mentioned research on immigrant youth culture in western Sydney, Collins et al. (2011) argued that a new cosmopolitan multiculturalism would recognise people’s multiple including transnational attachments and loyalties and would play down national identity in favour of a commitment to cosmopolitanism. The young people in the research were less worried about Australian national identity, thinking of themselves differently as members of a global environment, and yet they were at the same time thoroughly at home and integrated in their local communities, and within their multicultural friendship networks, where they felt a strong sense of loyalty and belonging. Policy makers had nothing to fear from such detachment from Australian national identity (see also Jakubowicz et al. 2014).

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These sorts of changes, including changing identities among young people from immigrant backgrounds, need to be recognised; but exactly how far such cosmopolitan tendencies should lead to a reshaping of multicultural policy, language and symbolism is debatable. I have argued, for example, that multicultural policy has been right to emphasise the importance of Australian national identity, and that policy makers would undermine the legitimacy of multiculturalism should they stop doing so. Collins et  al.’s (2011) findings for particular groups of young people from immigrant backgrounds do not undermine this argument. For multiculturalism has to speak not only to them but also to the many other Australians who, though open to engaging with difference in the Australian context, do not themselves necessarily have multiple and/or transnational identities.

References Ang, I. 2008. Passengers on Train Australia. Griffith Review: Re-Imagining Australia 19: 227–239. Ang, I., J.E.  Brand, G.  Noble, and J.  Sternberg. 2006. Connecting Diversity: Paradoxes of Multicultural Australia. Artarmon, NSW: Special Broadcasting Service Corporation. Ang, I., J.E. Brand, G. Noble, and D. Wilding. 2002. Living Diversity: Australia’s Multicultural Future. Artarmon, NSW: Special Broadcasting Service Corporation. Appiah, K.A. 1997. Cosmopolitan Patriots. Critical Inquiry 23(3): 617–639. ———. 2007. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. London: Penguin Books. Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Oxford: Polity Press. Beck, U. 2000. The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of Modernity. British Journal of Sociology 51(1): 79–105. ———. 2002. The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies. Theory, Culture and Society 19(1–2): 17–44. Betts, K. 1988. Ideology and Immigration: Australia 1976 to 1987. Carlton: Melbourne University Press.

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Bhatt, C. 2006. The Fetish of the Margins: Religious Absolutism, Anti-Racism and Postcolonial Silence. New Formations, Special Issue—Postcolonial Studies After Iraq 59(Autumn): 98–115. Brett, J., and A. Moran. 2006. Ordinary People’s Politics: Australians Talk About life, Politics, and the Future of Their Country. North Melbourne: Pluto Press Australia. ———. 2011. Cosmopolitan Nationalism: Ordinary People Making Sense of Diversity. Nations and Nationalism 17(1): 188–206. Calhoun, C. 2003. Belonging in the Cosmopolitan Imaginary. Ethnicities 3(4): 531–553. Collins, J., C.  Reid, and C.  Fabiannson. 2011. Identities, Aspirations and Belonging of Cosmopolitan Youth in Australia. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal 3(3): 92–107. Council of Europe. 2008. White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue “Living Together as Equals in Dignity”. Council of Europe, Strasbourg. www.coe.int/ dialogue. Accessed 10 Dec 2015. Dawson, E. 2008. Australia’s Diversity Advantage. Centre for Policy Development, March 31. http://cpd.org.au/article/australias-diversityadvantage. Accessed 10 Feb 2010. Delanty, G. 2009. The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gobbo, J.  1995. Criticisms of Multiculturalism. Global Cultural Diversity Conference Proceedings, Sydney. https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/ settlement-and-multicultural-affairs/programs-policy/ a-multicultural-australia/programs-and-publications/1995-global-culturaldiversity-conference-proceedings-sydney. Accessed 3 Feb 2010. Goot, M., and I. Watson. 2005. Immigration, Multiculturalism and National Identity. In Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report, ed. S.  Wilson, G. Meagher, R. Gibson, D. Denmark, and M. Western, 182–203. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Hollinger, D. 1995. Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New  York: Basic Books. Howard, J. 2010. Lazarus Rising: A Personal and Political Autobiography. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins. Jakubowicz, A., J. Collins, C. Reid, and W. Chafic. 2014. Minority Youth and Social Transformation in Australia: Identities, Belonging and Cultural Capital. Social Inclusion 2(2): 5–16. Joint Standing Committee on Migration. 2012. Inquiry into Multiculturalism in Australia. Parliament of Australia, House of Representatives Committees,

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Committee Activities (Inquiries and Reports). http://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/house_of_representatives_ committees?url=mig/multiculturalism/index.htm. Accessed 20 Nov 2015. Jupp, J., and J. Nieuwenhuysen, with E. Dawson, eds. 2007. Social Cohesion in Australia. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Kymlicka, W. 2007. Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism? New Debates on Inclusion and Accommodation in Diverse Societies. Oxford: UNESCO/Blackwell Publishing. ———. 2012. Comment on Meer and Modood. Journal of Intercultural Studies 33(2): 211–216. Liberal Party of Australia. 1988. Future Directions: It’s Time for Plain Thinking. Barton, ACT: Liberal, National. Markus, A. 2013. Mapping Social Cohesion: The Scanlon Foundation Surveys National Report 2013. Caulfield East: ACJC Faculty of Arts, Monash University. Markus, A., J. Jupp, and P. McDonald. 2009. Australia’s Immigration Revolution. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Markus, A., Scanlon Foundation, Monash University and Australian Multicultural Foundation 2012, Mapping Social Cohesion: the Scanlon Foundation Surveys National Report 2012, Monash University, Melbourne. Meer, N., and T.  Modood. 2009. Muslims, “Multiculture” and the Civic Rebalancing of British Multiculturalism. Political Studies 57(3): 473–497. ———. 2012. How Does Interculturalism Contrast with Multiculturalism? Journal of Intercultural Studies 33(2): 175–196. Migrant Services and Programs. 1978. Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services for Migrants. Galbally Report. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Modood, T. 2007. Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea. Cambridge: Polity Press. Morrison, S. 2013. Australia, the Land of Our Adoption. Speech, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College, London, January 24. http:// australianpolitics.com/2013/01/24/scott-morrison-australia-land-of-ouradoption.html. Accessed 24 Jan 2014. Noble, G. 2009. Everyday Cosmopolitanism and the Labour of Intercultural Community. In Everyday Multiculturalism, ed. A. Wise, and S. Velayuthan, 46–65. Palgrave Macmillan: Houndmills. Pakulski, J., and B.  Tranter. 2000. Civic, National and Denizen Identity in Australia. Journal of Sociology 36(2): 205–222.

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Phillips, J., and H. Spinks 2012. Skilled Migration: Temporary and Permanent Flows to Australia—Background Note. Parliamentary Library, Canberra. http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/1601351/ upload_binary/1601351.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf. Accessed 12 Feb 2015. Sen, A. 2006. Identity and Violence. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company. Stratton, J., and I. Ang. 1998. Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Difference and National Identity in the USA and Australia. In Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity, ed. D. Bennett, 135–162. London and New York: Routledge. Vertovec, S. 2007. Super-Diversity and Its Implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6): 1024–1054. ———. 2010. Towards Post-Multiculturalism? Changing Communities, Conditions and Contexts of Diversity. International Social Science Journal 61(199): 83–95. Vertovec, S. 2012. “Diversity” and the Social Imaginary. European Journal of Sociology 53(3): 287–312. Zubrzycki, J. 1995. The Evolution of the Policy of Multiculturalism in Australia 1968–95. 1995 Global Cultural Diversity Conference Proceedings, Sydney. https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/settlement-and-multiculturalaffairs/programs-policy/a-multicultural-australia/programs-andpublications/1995-global-cultural-diversity-conference-proceedings-sydney. Accessed 3 Feb 2010.

8 Conclusion

Multiculturalism as a government approach to managing and celebrating diversity has existed for more than 40 years. The debates and arguments about its meanings, its value as an approach and its prospects continue. This book has closely examined one case study of multiculturalism from the early 1970s to the present. It has dealt with Australia’s official national policies of multiculturalism, traced and discussed the many discourses of multiculturalism and addressed multiculturalism’s public critics. Australian experiences have been compared to the experiences of other nations, highlighting how developments and debates in those other countries sometimes influenced debates about multiculturalism in Australia. Despite staunch criticism from both the right and left of politics in Australia—sometimes adopting critiques from the different contexts of Europe—multiculturalism has never ceased being the official policy position of federal governments, even if it appeared to lie dormant or undervalued under some governments. Certainly, governments, political parties and particular leaders have expressed doubts about multiculturalism, but even conservative governments such as those under Prime Minister John Howard, while initially ambivalent, eventually recommitted Australian government to a version of multiculturalism (see Chap. 4). Governments © The Author(s) 2017 A. Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8_8

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have placed different emphases on the meaning of multiculturalism and on multicultural policy over more than four decades, as was explained in detail in Chaps. 2, 3 and 4. In periods where it appeared less represented by federal government and institutions, for example, in the period of the Howard government (1996–2007), it remained a living force under state, territory and also local governments. All state and territory governments, for example, have created their own multicultural and/or ethnic affairs acts, agencies, policy initiatives and programmes (Koleth 2010). Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia have been proactive as strong supporters of multiculturalism since the 1980s, establishing broad-ranging multicultural legislation and setting up key institutions to promote and manage multiculturalism and multicultural affairs, the latter including the current incarnations, the Victorian Multicultural Commission  and Victoria’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship, the Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW, the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission and Western Australia’s Office of Multicultural Interests. More recently Queensland and Tasmania have enacted multicultural legislation, charters and strategic plans and set up their own multicultural agencies. The Northern Territory introduced its first major multicultural policy, Building on the Territory’s Diversity, in 2005, and manages its multicultural policy through the Office of Multicultural Affairs within the Department of the Chief Minister. The Australian Capital Territory has an Office of Multicultural Affairs and developed two multicultural strategies in the 2000s, the first for 2006–2009 and the second for 2010–2013 (Koleth 2010). Some local governments have been very active in promoting the benefits of diversity, supporting multiculturalism in local contexts, and in encouraging social inclusion within local communities (Thompson et al. 1998; Koleth 2010). This survival of multiculturalism as a public expression describing Australian society, and as a set of government policies, is significant, especially in the context of a global backlash against multiculturalism. We might indeed ask why this approach has survived in Australia despite its many critics. I suggested in the book’s Introduction some of the favourable circumstances that strengthened multiculturalism in Australia, including: the absence of land borders and separatist ethnic or national groups; the

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immigration context in which the policy was first introduced, including the religious, cultural and racial similarities of those initially imagined as part of the multicultural scene; the lack of a major problem with illegal immigration; the economic success of most immigrants, aided by the emphasis on skilled immigration; the mixing together of people from different ethnic backgrounds, including through intermarriage, and the avoidance of segregated areas of people leading “parallel lives”; and the comparatively small proportion of Muslims in the Australian population (given that the backlash against multiculturalism in Europe is frequently associated with rising Muslim numbers; see Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010b; Modood 2012). In other chapters, and extensively in Chap. 5, I argued that the resilience of Australian multiculturalism, and its public acceptance, is related to the way that it has emphasised unity along with diversity and successfully combined multiculturalism with the commitment to an increasingly open and inclusive national identity. These conditions, circumstances and multicultural approaches have not existed to the same extent in many other countries, and their absence may have resulted in much more fierce backlashes against multiculturalism, in particular in Europe. The Australian people, and their political leaders, have maintained a pragmatic commitment to the idea of multiculturalism, and have shown a willingness, in general, to accept that they can live among people from many different cultural backgrounds. As discussed in Chap. 4, after the Gillard government explicitly recommitted itself to a multicultural agenda in 2011, Minister for Immigration Chris Bowen directed the Joint Standing Committee on Migration to conduct a parliamentary inquiry into the role of multiculturalism, and settlement and other services. There is much evidence of the above-mentioned pragmatism and commitment to multicultural ideas that can be found in the many submissions to this inquiry. These came from civil society, church-based and other non-government groups and organisations; from small and larger rural- and city-based government-funded multicultural organisations, ethnic and religious groups and organisations; and from local government councils (see Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012). This pragmatism and careful, sophisticated thinking about diversity and multiculturalism was also apparent in the many debates and comments from members of those organisations, and commentators and academics,

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who appeared at the many public hearings across the country during 2011 and 2012. The transcripts of these public hearings suggest that community workers, and those working in the front line in settlement services all over Australia, were intensely engaged in the important work of integrating newcomers into Australian society, including dealing with the everyday complexities of cultural diversity, disadvantage, adjustment and social cohesion. The submissions from these kinds of organisations, and their comments in the public hearings, were overwhelmingly supportive of multiculturalism (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012). Some of the more interesting discussions in the public hearings and submissions dealt with the new issues that were emerging in Australian society, related to increasingly complex cultural and social diversity, and the huge rise in numbers of temporary residents, including skilled workers and international students, that multicultural policies had not really previously included within their thinking and programmes. Submissions and discussions in public hearings also provide insight into the importance of local and specific contexts. A picture of complexity emerges, including the existence of particular immigrant and refugee groups in city and rural areas, with specific needs and experiencing specific, contextualised dilemmas and problems, requiring action and commitment from all levels of government, from civil society groups and individuals. There was an exchange with Islamic representatives that resulted in a clear statement from the inquiry, and in the final report, that Sharia law would not become part of multicultural policy and that legal pluralism was rejected (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Submission 81; Public Hearing, Sydney, 17 June 2011; Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2013). The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils’ submission to the inquiry outlining the arguments in favour of legal pluralism was itself moderate in its assertions of forms of Sharia law compatible with Australian law, including family law and divorce (Karvelas 2011), and the issues were discussed calmly and openly in the Sydney public hearing (17 June 2011) and at other public hearings. There was more evidence of criticism and hostility towards multiculturalism in a considerable portion of the individual written submissions to the inquiry. Many of these reflected the kinds of criticisms, especially from the right, that have been discussed in this book—about the

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supposed separatism of the policy, the dangers of societal and national fragmentation and conflict, the supposed denigration of the British or Anglo basis of Australian society and nation and the dangers of cultural relativism. Disturbingly, there was also a strong anti-Muslim sentiment in many of these negative individual submissions and also in submissions from Christian groups including the Endeavour Forum (Submission 205), Salt Shakers Inc. (Submission 253) and the Christian Democratic Party (Submission 256) and from other organisations that emphasised the British and Christian foundations of Australian society, including the Q Society (Submission 335), the Australian Defence League (Submission 252) and The Family Council of Victoria (Submission 299) (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012). The Australian Defence League submission went so far as to claim that Muslim immigration was akin to inviting “Nazis” to immigrate to Australia (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Australian Defence League, Submission 252). Though these individual and group submissions cannot be assumed to be representative of Australian views and attitudes towards Muslims, and tolerance of religious diversity, they do reflect, nevertheless, some of the attitudes, and fears, currently faced by people from Muslim backgrounds within Australia’s multicultural mix. These fears, and exaggerated claims about the very nature of Islam as a political ideology incompatible with Australian values and the Australian way of life, were on display in some of the commentary at the public hearing in Melbourne on the 8th of June 2012. On the basis of their very critical submissions to the inquiry, including strong opposition to forms of accommodation of the Muslim presence in Australia, and in some cases to immigration of Muslims, representatives from Christian groups Endeavour Forum and Salt Shakers Inc., from the Q Society, the Family Council of Victoria and the Australian Defence League were invited to express their opinions and arguments in more detail to the inquiry (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, 8 June 2012, Melbourne). They did so in forthright fashion, and there was a robust discussion of the positions of the groups, and of the issues they raised. The position outlined at the public hearing by one of the representatives of the Endeavour Forum, Babette Francis, made it clear that for her, multicultural inclusiveness could not

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extend to Muslims. She told the inquiry that “You need to understand that Islam is not only a religion but also a totalitarian political ideology akin to communism or fascism” (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, 8 June 2012, Melbourne, p. 1). The submission from Endeavour Forum had claimed that the presence in Australia of large numbers of Muslims created problems that had previously been absent from Australian multiculturalism (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Submission 205). When asked by the committee to give examples of these problems in Australia, Francis admitted that she could not but claimed that places like Britain that were “30 years ahead” of Australia in terms of the experience of Muslim immigration made her believe that the same problems would occur in Australia, should the number of Muslims in Australia keep rising and reach, for example, 5–10 per cent of the population. She believed that Australian governments had made a mistake in allowing Muslim immigrants, including refugees, to settle permanently in Australia. The comparison with developments in Europe, and in particular Britain, was a recurring theme among critics of Islam who spoke at the Melbourne public hearing and in submissions to the inquiry by those critical of Islam and Muslims. The two representatives of the Salt Shakers, Peter Stokes and Jenny Stokes, were less concerned with excluding Muslims as immigrants but expressed concerns about the role of racial and religious vilification laws that, they claimed, allowed Muslims to attempt to stifle criticism of Islam and about the supposed closeness of religious Islamic communities that, they also claimed, became separate enclaves. In some of their comments, they expressed the view that Islam needed to be contained, because the inherent nature of the religion was to be a total system that could not tolerate non-Muslims, and did not see women and men as equals, unlike Christianity. Criticising Victorian state government support for setting up interfaith networks and government publications that supported greater acceptance of Islam, Peter Stokes claimed that: The people who were engage [sic] in it were Muslims who were trying to encourage Islam to be more accepted in the community. That sort of tried to dumb down the whole conversation about what this religion is really all about. And it is Islam which has really brought this issue to a

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head, because they are specifically a political system, a legal system, a financial system as well as just a religion—it is a whole system. And that whole system wants to replace what we now have, because it thinks it is better. (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, 8 June 2012, Melbourne, p. 31)

Peter Stokes and Mary Stokes argued that Australia remained a Christian nation, that its laws were based on the Christian tradition, that Christianity was central to the Australian way of life and that all immigrants to Australia had to adapt to this and integrate with Australian Christian culture. In their view, the meaning of multiculturalism had changed, in a negative way, because of attempts to accommodate Islam. They claimed that translation of public information into languages other than English deterred groups from learning English and contributed to separatism. In their submission, Salt Shakers claimed that multiculturalism had “passed its ‘use by date’ and should be abandoned” (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Submission 253). At the public hearing, and in a supplementary submission (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Supplementary Submission 253.1), they argued against any accommodation in Australia of Sharia law, including Halal certification processes, arguing that the latter was an unnecessary Islamic addition to Australia’s food regulations, and imposed cost burdens on Australian consumers. Andrew Horwood, a representative from Q Society, a secular group concerned about the rising influence of Islam in Australia, and aiming to educate the Australian public about the “true” nature of Islam, made the alarmist claim that: “On the surface, Australia’s diverse communities appear to be integrating. In reality, a growing population from various countries who follow a common belief system known as Islam are threatening our way of life.” He also commented that while Islam had historically had peaceful and violent parts, “this violent part has ended up being the core of Islam” (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, 8 June 2012, Melbourne, p. 41). He expressed the paranoid belief that Islam was carefully manipulating the Australian people with more moderate claims for accommodation of Muslim beliefs, as a political strategy aimed at fully implementing Sharia law. Similar comments were made by Julian de Ross, representing the Australian Defence League.

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In de Ross’s view, Islam stood out as a religion with a specific fighting creed, aimed at dominating all non-Muslims, and thus it was the responsibility of the Australian state to protect Australians from the purported broad aims of Muslims, which would undermine Australian freedoms (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, 8 June 2012, Melbourne, p.  51). The Q Society’s submission called on the Australian government to curb the spread of Islam in Australia and to re-examine its immigration programmes to avoid the greater problem of Islam that had already emerged in Europe (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Submission 335). In the public hearing, the Q Society representatives claimed that the money made from Halal certification in Australia may be being used to fund “jihad” or terrorism, as it was claimed such use of funds was evident in France, England and Canada (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, 8 June 2012, p. 48). The claim about other countries was followed up in a Q Society supplementary submission, giving examples of investigations and accusations of Halal certifiers in the USA, France and Canada funding terrorism (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Supplementary Submission 335.2). Vickie Janson of The Family Council of Victoria pointed to high rates of violent crime among Muslims in Europe and to the overwhelming involvement of Muslims in reported honour killings (reported in a research paper as 96 per cent in Europe), with the reported motives for such killings being “unacceptable westernisation” in 71 per cent of cases in Europe and in 91 per cent of cases in North America (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, 8 June 2012, Melbourne, p.  33). Janson also called for more balanced claims about racism, acknowledging where it occurred no matter which racial, ethnic or religious group perpetrators came from. While Australians had a robust sense of humour and capacity to laugh at themselves, she argued that accepting stereotyping and mockery of “whites” from minorities in the guise of one-way tolerance under multiculturalism, and “without more reinforcement of the western heritage,” would lead to “cultural suicide” (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2012, Public Hearing, 8 June 2012, Melbourne, p. 34). She argued that multiculturalism also had a negative effect on minorities, isolating and segregating them, and

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a particularly negative effect on vulnerable people, including women, within minorities, who, in the Australian context, should not have to fight against their own cultures and religion for freedom and equal rights. In this discussion, the main examples used were Muslims. And Janson reiterated claims by others that “dominance is hard-wired into Islamic texts,” claiming that examples of Muslim demands for exclusive spaces (such as separate prayer rooms or swimming spaces for Muslim women only), emerged from Muslim theology, that was inherently exclusivist towards all non-Muslims. Nevertheless, the comments at the public hearing by Janson, and by the other Family Council of Victoria representative Dr. Bernard Power, were more careful and balanced about Islam than those of other commentators at this hearing. The existence of negative and exclusivist attitudes towards Islam and Muslims, coupled with experiences of explicit discrimination reported in the media and in surveys of racism and discrimination (Poynting and Noble 2004; Dunne et al. 2007), suggests that Muslim inclusion remains an important issue for Australian multiculturalism to address. In particular, the claim that Islam is incompatible with a democratic, egalitarian Australia must be directly confronted—and many of Australia’s political leaders have done this. Interfaith networks are already doing the important grassroots work of dispelling some of the wilder claims about the supposed inherent violence and desire to dominate Islam (see Bouma 2006, pp. 210–211; Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2013, Ch. 4), where such claims rely upon a selection of quotes from the Koran or rely upon the actions of authoritarian religious and political leaders in majority Muslim countries. Religious identities, and accommodation of religious diversities, represent new and difficult challenges for multiculturalism, which has previously focused mainly upon cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversities, and in some instances has also addressed, or attempted to address, Indigenous diversities in contexts like Australia, Canada and New Zealand as discussed in Chap. 6, and also in many Latin American countries since the 1980s, including Argentina (vom Hau and Wilde 2010). Tariq Modood (2009) has argued that the biggest recent challenge to multiculturalism has come in the form of a confrontation with religious difference.

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As suggested by some of the submissions to and comments at public hearings of the inquiry into multiculturalism in Australia, the supposed clash between Islam and Christianity represents an important fault line in current multicultural debates. As noted earlier in this book, the critique of and backlash against multiculturalism in Europe has been strongly influenced by the growth of its Islamic population, mainly as a result of immigration. Major events and controversies related to Islam and Islamic identities have been central in these debates, including the Salman Rushdie Affair that began in the late 1980s with the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini’s “fatwa” on novelist Salman Rushdie in reaction to his depiction of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed in The Satanic Verses; controversies in countries such as France and the Netherlands over the right to wear the Muslim headscarf in public institutions like schools (banned for state schools by parliament in France in 2004); the rise of extremists including terrorists professing to be fighting for the Islamic faith, whose actions in the USA on 11 September 2001, in Madrid on 11 March 2004 and in London on 7 July 2005, among many other terrorist acts, symbolised a new battle called the “global war on terror”; and the Danish Cartoon Affair of 2005, where Danish journalists produced images of the Prophet Mohammed in what was claimed to be a defence of freedom of expression, provoking strong reactions and violent protests from Muslims in many other countries. Writing specifically about Britain, Modood (2009) argues that multiculturalism there had long suffered from a “secular bias,” treating religious identity as less relevant to its discourses and forms of cultural protection. British Muslims challenged the discourse of antiracism in the 1980s and 1990s with new arguments about respect for religious difference. The pursuit of religious equality challenged the hegemony of political secularism (Modood 2009). Modood argues that religious identities can be placed on the same plane with race, ethnic and gender identities and, in a multicultural society, should be accorded the same degree of pluralistic political engagement from the state and the same forms of cultural protection, for example, in laws preventing religious vilification, paralleling racial vilification laws. Laws against religious vilification have, however, proven controversial for Christian groups and freedom of speech advocates in Australia, and

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there are questions about whether they enhance multicultural tolerance, or exacerbate religious tensions by allowing religious groups to attempt to shut down religious debates, and criticism of religious beliefs and practices (Palmer 2006; Zimmerman 2013). Victoria was the first Australian state or territory to introduce an act specifically against religious vilification, with its Racial and Religious Toleration Act 2001. The states of Queensland and Tasmania have incorporated laws against religious vilification into their anti-discrimination acts (Race Discrimination Unit, HREOC 2002), though the Labor government of Bob Carr in NSW explicitly rejected the approach in 2005, and governments of Western Australia and South Australia publicly debated introducing religious vilification laws in the 2000s, but backed away when there was strong opposition from the Christian churches (Smith 2011). There is no federal religious vilification act or law. Legal commentators and academics have raised concerns about the dangers to democracy and freedom of speech of such laws (Zimmerman 2013; Smith 2011). The final report of the inquiry into multiculturalism in Australia (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2013) was handed down in March 2013, a few months before the Gillard government was swept from power by the Coalition under the leadership of Tony Abbott. It has received little public attention. The inquiry was carried out in a bipartisan manner, with parliamentary representatives from both major sides of politics. Notably, the members of the then Liberal and National opposition parties on the Committee of Inquiry supported, or supported “in principle,” all of the report’s recommendations. However, this claim of bipartisan agreement should be tempered by the fact that the opposition members and senators would only agree “in principle” to those recommendations that would lead to increased federal budget spending, suggesting that while multicultural policy was accepted, it would not be a major priority of a conservative government. These included recommendations: that community organisations are communicated with by government about the nature of multicultural policy and supported in programmes that promote the understanding of multicultural policy (recommendation 3); to improve data gathering on immigration and levels of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) people’s disadvantage (recommendation 14); to create and fund a new agency for research into immigration and

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diversity (recommendation 15); that government gather better quantitative and qualitative research on Australian expatriates and diaspora communities to better inform government policy (recommendation 17); ensuring that English language training and work placement for immigrants provided by private companies is conducted properly (recommendation 19); and that key government agencies work better together to ensure improved work opportunities, and in the investigation of barriers to participation, for CALD individuals in the workforce (recommendation 32) (Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2013, pp. 217–220). The report’s 32 recommendations were wide-ranging, and included, apart from the above-mentioned recommendations: recommendations to utilise more fully Australia’s diasporic connections, and to enhance cultural competency and multi-lingualism; strengthening antiracism legislation and initiatives; that the Australian government continue to support interfaith and intercultural initiatives in universities and other organisations, and to develop a strategic plan to support ongoing interfaith and intercultural dialogues; the further development of the Australian government’s social inclusion agenda to address inclusion and disadvantage based on cultural and linguistic diversity; that Australian government develop programmes to reduce the isolation of CALD women and to give them more opportunities to participate in society; that Australian government address barriers for CALD youth through working with the states and territories to develop specific programmes; improvements to existing government procedures and programmes including settlement, employment support and advice, monitoring access and equity, and data gathering, and improvements to skills recognition, licensing and registration requirements from professional bodies. Despite Scott Morrison’s Australia Day Speech critical of multiculturalism, discussed at the beginning of Chap. 7, multiculturalism has not been under explicit attack under the Abbott and Turnbull conservative governments (2013–). Tony Abbott had in January 2006 given a speech to the New South Wales Young Liberals, later published in conservative magazine Quadrant, that was generally supportive of official Australian multiculturalism while at the same time criticising more strident multicultural and antiracist critics of Australia. In the speech, Abbott admitted that he had previously feared, like historian Geoffrey

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Blainey, that multiculturalism was producing in Australia a “nation of tribes,” but that personal and political experiences led him to change his view to support a conservative form of multiculturalism. These included his experiences when he joined Australians for constitutional monarchy, where he met people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, who were just as committed to the Crown and the constitution as he was (Abbott 2006). “Over time,” Abbott (2006, p. 42) said, “multiculturalism has been of great benefit to Australia.” At the heart of multiculturalism, he argued, was an ethic of dialogue or accepting cultural differences as long as they did not override fundamental principles embedded in a broadly understood Australian way of life. Multiculturalism had increased migrants’ commitment to an Australia they could feel included within. Reflecting on the Cronulla riots of 2005, he argued against talkback callers who suggested that Australians should not tolerate those who were not themselves tolerant. He argued that multiculturalism was in fact the “long-term antidote” to the “antagonisms on display” at Cronulla: “By accepting difference, multiculturalism strives to avoid confrontation. By stressing respect, it aims to foster the kind of dialogue that diminishes the potential for conflict. Multiculturalism is an invitation to try to understand others’ ways of thinking and living” (Abbott 2006, p. 42). However, multiculturalism was not a priority for the Abbott government, and there was very little discussion of multiculturalism in Australia in the government’s first year. Signalling its major concern with asylum seeker policies and “stopping the boats,” in late 2013 the Abbott government changed the name of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Major public debates on changing the Racial Discrimination Act to weaken provisions against racial vilification  (Section 18C), argued for as strengthening freedom of speech, have been perceived by Australian minority groups as anti-multicultural, and caused widespread public debate and angst, resulting in the Abbott government eventually shelving the planned amendments. The term of the Australian Multicultural Council ended in June 2014, and it was in limbo for 6 months before new Council members were announced on 15 December 2014. Andrew Jakubowicz (2015) claimed that the new Council, which was much smaller (with six members) and less representative of Australia’s diversity

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than the previous one, was also more conservative, with half its members having strong links to the Liberal Party. Though there were other nonaligned and critical voices on the Council, Jakubowicz felt it had been designed to avoid advice critical of the government approach to multicultural issues. The Abbott government had a parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs rather than a minister. The ministry was abolished in September 2013 when Abbott announced his first ministry, and multicultural affairs shifted into the Social Services portfolio (SBS World News Radio 2013). Defending the move, the Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs, Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, argued that this would better align multicultural issues with settlement services in a mega Social Services Department. She also described multiculturalism as a form of gradual assimilation of migrants: “We have a unique Australian multiculturalism. It’s really one where we become Australians and assimilate at different paces. It’s a process, a journey, a richness of society …. It’s an acceptance that we come from different parts of the world” (SBS World News Radio 2013). More positively, in the context of the threat of Islamist terrorism, in September 2014 Prime Minster Abbott spoke at the United Nations Security Council strongly in defence of Australian multiculturalism: “The Australian Government will be utterly unflinching towards anything that threatens our future as a free, fair and multicultural society; a beacon of hope and exemplar of unity-in-diversity” (Steketee 2014). This signalled a commitment to the pragmatic, bipartisan government position that acknowledged that Australia’s version of multiculturalism has served the country well, and that such policies, such a response, and such an ethic at the level of everyday life, are necessary in the late modern, globalising world with its inevitable diversities in single places, including nation-states. And it recognised that Australia’s pragmatic multiculturalism, that expresses a commitment to democracy, tolerance of differences, and the ongoing pursuit of unity and solidarity without homogeneity, can continue to help steer Australia through troubling and sometimes violent times.

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References Abbott, T. 2006. A Conservative Case for Multiculturalism. Quadrant 50(3): 40–43. Bouma, G. 2006. Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dunn, K., N.  Klocker, and T.  Salabay. 2007. Contemporary Racism and Islamaphobia in Australia: Racializing Religion. Ethnicities 7(4): 564–589. Jakubowicz, A. 2015. New Multicultural Council Signals a Broader Shift to the Right. The Conversation, January 7. http://theconversation.com/newmulticultural-council-signals-a-broader-shift-to-the-right-35815. Accessed 12 Feb 2015. Joint Standing Committee on Migration. 2012. Inquiry into Multiculturalism in Australia. Parliament of Australia, House of Representatives Committees, Committee Activities (Inquiries and Reports). http://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/house_of_representatives_committees? url=mig/multiculturalism/index.htm. Accessed 20 Nov 2015. ———. 2013. Inquiry into Migration and Multiculturalism in Australia. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Karvelas, P. 2011. Muslims to Push for Sharia. The Australian, May 17. http:// www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/muslims-use-multiculturalismto-push-for-sharia/story-fn59niix-1226057100331. Accessed 1 Feb 2012. Koleth, E. 2010. Multiculturalism: A Review of Australian Policy Statements and Recent Debates in Australia and Overseas. Social Policy Unit, Research Paper No. 6 2010–11, Parliament of Australia, Parliamentary Library, Canberra. Modood, T. 2009. Muslims, Religious Equality and Secularism. In Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship, ed. G.B.  Levey, and T.  Modood, 164–185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2012. The Voice of Faith and the Challenge of Democratic Multiculturalism. Speech at Faith and Culture: The Politics of Belief, The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne, 14–17 June. http://wheelercentre.com/events/ event/the-voice-of-faith-and-the-challenge-of-democratic-multiculturalismtariq-modood/. Accessed 19 Jan 2015. Palmer, D. 2006. Religious Vilification Law Undermines Multiculturalism. The Age, May 1. http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/religious-vilificationlaw-undermines-multiculturalism/2006/04/30/1146335604488.html . Accessed 20 Nov 2014.

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Index

A Abbott government, 281–2 Abbott, Tony, 228n3, 279–82 views on multiculturalism, 279 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), 144, 84, 130, 215, 224 Aboriginal Land Rights, 216, 217, 222, 223, 255 Aboriginal nationalism, 217 Aboriginal reconciliation process (Australia), 18, 73, 85, 221, 224, 225. See also Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation, the, 224, 225n2 retreat from, 130 Aboriginal self-determination, 207, 214–16, 229, 255

Access and Equity (policy), 71, 82, 83n1, 85, 91, 121, 130, 156, 215, 229, 280 African Australians, 16, 132, 200 capacity to integrate doubted, 132 Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin, 9 Anderson, Benedict, 174, 196 Ang, Ien, 98, 119, 199, 225, 247–50, 253, 255, 257 Anglo/Anglo-Celtic Australia disconnected from multiculturalism, 192 dominance, 61, 99, 172, 231, 277 Anglo culture as dominant culture in Australia, 187 expectations for migrants to conform to, 29n3 multiculturalists’ “derision” of, 53 anglophone (Canada), 173

© The Author(s) 2017 A. Moran, The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45126-8

285

286

Index

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 248, 252, 253 Argentina, 234, 277 Asian immigration (Australia) and “Asianisation” of Australia, 49, 200 claimed to threaten social cohesion, 8, 67 Pauline Hanson’s attacks on, 118, 119, 200 restricted under White Australia Policy, 17, 175 Assimilation and Australian Aborigines, 222 and Australian culture, 185 and Maori, 212 of migrants, 29, 257, 258, 282 multiculturalism as impeding, 87, 98, 212 rhetoric, 9 shift back to, 130 Asylum seekers, 8, 15, 17, 118, 127, 128, 140, 281. See also refugees Australian policy towards, 127, 128, 281 and Tampa incident, 127 Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), 176, 227 Australian Arabic Council, 154 Australian Citizenship Council, 182, 183 Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, 272 Australian Greek Welfare Society, 29, 32, 37n7 Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (AIMA)

created, 70 criticisms of, 51 dismantled, 71 Australian Multicultural Advisory Council, 154, 155. See also People of Australia, The (multicultural policy) appointed by Rudd government, 153–4 People of Australia, The (report), 155 Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness (report), 122, 124, 170 Australian nationalism, 11, 112, 170, 177, 195. See nationalism

B Bauman, Zygmunt, 3, 248 Behrendt, Larissa, 228, 229, 232, 234 Betts, Katharine, 75, 79, 110, 118, 130, 184, 246 criticism of multiculturalism/ ethnic lobbyists driving immigration, 79 on multiculturalists denigrating old Australia, 110 Bicentenary (Australia), 74, 75, 101, 193 Biculturalism in Canada, 214 and colonial domination/ resistance, 232 in New Zealand, 214 Bilingualism

Index

in Canada, 30, 209 in Commonwealth departments and agencies, 91 and education, 37 Birrell, Robert (Bob), 17, 75, 79, 95, 181, 184 Blainey, Geoffrey (Australian historian), and Asian immigration, 68, 76, 111 and Bicentenary (Australian), 101 criticism of multiculturalism, 75, 76, 280 and race debate, 67 Bouchard, Gerard, 172, 173, 211 Bourdieu, Pierre, 98 Bowen, Chris, 155, 157, 271 Britain British migration to Australia, 130 British Muslims, 133, 134, 278 Britishness, 175, 177, 179 British underpinnings of Australian national identity/ society, 17–18 decline of British Empire, 179 ethnic communities, 250, 256 and ethnic concentrations of populations, 16 identity, 9, 174 London Underground bombing (7/7 terrorist attack), 132, 133 and multicultural critics, 132, 273 myths of greatness, 174 political culture, 142 race ideology, 179 rejection of multiculturalism/ retreat from multicultural policies, 6, 9 race relations policy, 9, 61

287

riots in Northern cities, 9, 134 Bureau of Immigration Research/ Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research (BIMPR) created, 72 criticisms of, 117 dismantled, 116

C Calhoun, Craig, 171, 180, 257, 258 Calma, Tom, 141, 153, 210, 229, 230, 232, 234 Cameron, David, 155, 242, 243 Canada Australia compared with, 11–13 Canadian Multiculturalism Act, 210 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 210 and its Indigenous peoples, 175, 209 as multicultural frontrunner, 1, 6, 11 and public support for multiculturalism, 13 and Quebec resistance to multicultural policy, 173 rejecting aspects of multiculturalism, 5 as a settler society, 12, 175, 208 success of its multiculturalism, 13–15 Cantle, Ted, 133 Castles, Stephen, 26, 27, 33, 35n5, 69, 70, 96, 97, 193–5, 198 and Mistaken Identity (book), 19, 59, 96, 97, 195

288

Index

Charter of Public Service in a Culturally Diverse Society, 121 Chipman, Lauchlan (critic of multiculturalism), 25, 52–4, 58, 79, 101, 102 Christianity and Australian national identity, 175, 275 Christian pressure groups in Australia, 176, 220 compared to Islam, 275 as foundation of Australia society, 275 values, 6, 142, 200 Citizenship tests, 11, 146, 153 Australian, 11, 153 Collins, Jock, 57, 130, 132, 133, 140, 263–5 Colonialism, 97, 231 Communitarianism, 27 community. See also ethnic community Anglo, 216 civic, 179 cohesion, 4, 9, 11, 122 of culture, 177 of descent, 35, 253 diaspora, 260, 279 diverse, 4, 199, 257, 275 global, 101, 215 Indigenous/Aboriginal, 98, 144, 237, 241, 247-48, 253, 259, 277, 280 of interest, 177 Islamic/Muslim, 299, 148, 150-56, 172-73, 181n local, 195, 264, 270 Maori, 213 and multiple belonging, 263, 264

national, 146, 177, 188-89, 217-19, 279, 290, 297 political, 178, 227, 228 refugee, 17, 156 religious, 27, 256 settler, 216 transnational, 251 Constitutional patriotism, 150 Cope, Bill, 37, 111, 117 Cosmopolitanism and Australian identity/society, 242, 244, 261 cosmopolitan critics of multiculturalism, 257, 258 cosmopolitan multiculturalism, 234, 247, 248, 255, 263, 264 of elites, 8, 257 as preferred to multiculturalism, 75, 246 as a strand of multiculturalism, 258 Costello, Peter comments on Muslim clerics and Sharia law, 138 “mushy misguided multiculturalism” speech, 135, 142, 143 reaction to July 2005 London Underground bombings, 134 Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, 73, 221, 224, 225 Council of Europe, 245 rejection of multiculturalism, 255 Cronulla riots, 139–41, 176, 281 Crowder, George, 2 Cultural diversity and Australian nation/national identity, 170, 175, 178

Index

Australians as accepting of, 189, 243 as a civic value, 183, 227 debates about, 245 and dominant culture, 142 everyday complexities of, 272 individual and group, 258, 272 and liberalism, 228 programs (Australian government), 124 and social inclusion, 261 and unity, 253, 255 Curran, James, 34, 68, 86, 88, 170, 177, 179 and Ward, Stuart, 170, 177, 179

D Delanty, Gerard, 2, 28, 254, 255 on cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, 254, 255 de Lepervanche, Marie, 54, 57–9, 61 Department of Immigration dismantled by Whitlam government, 28 Integration Branch of, 30 Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 281 Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (DIEA), 38, 48, 50, 60, 72, 118 created by Fraser government, 33 Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) multicultural programs of, 117, 135 old department renamed as such by Howard government, 122

289

renamed as Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 150, 153 Department of Immigration, and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA), 129, 130, 215 Discrimination, against Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 36, 229 addressed by multiculturalism, 3, 11, 69, 257 against Muslims in Australia, 274 against people from non-English speaking backgrounds in Australia, 42, 215 positive (policies), 49, 172 racial, 34–6, 48, 257, 281 Dixson, Miriam, 177, 191–193 Durkheim, Emile, 40, 193n3

E Entzinger, Hans, 7–9 Erikson, Erik, 173, 174, 191 Ethnic Affairs Taskforce of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs, 49–52, 162, 219–21 Ethnic Communities’ Councils of New South Wales, 37 of South Australia, 37 of Victoria (ECCV), 37, 146, 147, 149 Ethnic community. See also Community, Ethno-cultural backlash/pressure, 69, 134 funded by government, 36, 46, 79, 130

290

Index

Ethnic community (Cont.) government consultation with, 42 organisations/associations, 36 patron-client relations with government, 60 as primary group, 39, 256 separatism/enclaves, 73, 79, 132, 134, 248, 256 and super-diversity, 250, 251 in UK, 250 Ethnic “gangs”, 17, 140, 141 Ethnic radio, 36, 47 Ethno-cultural communities/groups, 25, 27, 258 diversity/differences, 30, 61, 83, 172, 199, 209 homogeneity, 26 preservation, 26 separation, 242 Ethno-national/ist, 190, 200 Ethno politics, 208 Ethno-racial bases of national identity, 181 communities/groups, 180, 256 diversity, 190 Ethno-religious, 200 Ethnos, 50, 253 Ethno-specific organisations, 129 European Economic Community, 177, 179

F Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA), 46, 68, 79, 86, 130, 153 Federation of Islamic Councils, 272

Fitzgerald Report (inquiry into immigration policy), 74–6, 79, 81, 82, 169, 218 Fitzroy Ecumenical Centre, 29 Fleras, Augie, 180, 208–13 Fozdar, Farida, 84 Francophone (in Canada), 173, 211 Fraser government election defeat, 61 and ethnic radio and television (SBS), 47, 54 immigration policy, 48, 68 and Indigenous affairs/land rights, 222 and Indochinese refugees, 48, 49 and multicultural policy and programs, 33, 37, 61, 78, 99 and support for Galbally report proposals, 44 and White Australia Policy (further dismantling of ), 48 Fraser, Malcolm, 19, 33, 121 as early supporter of multiculturalism, 33 Future Directions (policy), 77–80, 112, 241 Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, The (report), 9

G Galbally Report (review of migrant services and programs), 33, 44–7, 60, 67, 71, 214, 258 Gallipoli, 50, 176, 178 Gambaro, Teresa, 131, 152, 153 Gang rapes (in Sydney), 132, 133, 140 Gellner, Ernest, 174, 193n3, 199

Index

Georgiou, Petro, 38, 47, 154 Gilbert, Kevin (Australian Aboriginal leader), 217 suspicion of multiculturalism, 218 Gillard government, 19, 28, 110, 153–7, 235, 241, 260, 261, 271, 279 Gillard, Julia, 153, 155 Gitlin, Todd, 171 globalisation, 1, 2, 119, 171, 193, 252, 254, 257, 259 Gobbo, Sir James, 73, 243, 244 Good Neighbour Councils, 29n3, 36, 46 Grassby, Al (Immigration minister), 28–31, 33, 36, 60, 169 “A Multi-cultural Society for the Future” speech, 28

H Habermas, Jurgen, 149 Hage, Ghassan, 97–9, 109, 118 Halal certification, 275, 276 Hannerz, Ulf, 2 Hanson, Pauline, 98, 116, 118, 119, 200 on Muslim threat to Australia, 200 Hawke, Bob, 11, 12, 28, 49, 52, 61, 96 support for multiculturalism, 13, 69 Hawke government immigration policy, 68, 69, 72, 73, 75, 77, 117 and Indigenous affairs, 221 and Indochinese refugees, 49 and multicultural policy and programs, 52, 115, 119–31 and neoliberalism, 97

291

Hirst, John, 87, 101, 102, 150 Ho, Christina, 259, 261, 264 Hollinger, David, 180, 181, 234, 252, 253, 258 Houston, Jim, 30, 32n5 Howard government and asylum seekers, 127, 128 and cultural conformity, 245 immigration policy, 129 and Indigenous affairs, 222 introduction of Temporary Business visas, 260n2 multicultural policy and programs of, 74, 119–31, 156, 270 and Muslim Australians, 136, 139, 144, 152 retreat of multiculturalism under, 110, 129, 131, 132 stressing Britishness of Australia, 84 Howard, John. See also Future Directions (policy) Anglo-centrism of, 84 appealing to frustrated mainstream, 113 comments about slowing down Asian immigration, 76, 111 as critic of multiculturalism, 12, 84, 110–12, 114, 144 and Cronulla riots, 141 defending Asian immigration, 68, 111 nationalism of, 111 “One Australia” policy of, 76, 77 and Pauline Hanson, 116 positive view of immigration, 114 protagonist in “history wars”, 110

292

Index

Howard, John (Cont.) and racism, 98 reluctance to use language of multiculturalism, 118 re-orientating multiculturalism, 112 support for aspects of multiculturalism, 125-26, 163, 101, 149 and White Australia policy, 98, 113, 140 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) created, 72 defending multiculturalism, 229 Human Rights Commission, 70, 72, 156 created, 48 dismantled, 70 Huntington, Samuel P., 4, 172

I Inquiry into multiculturalism in Australia debate about Islam at, 278 final report, 272 public hearings, 259, 261 submissions to, 295-97, 272, 273 Integration Australian policy of, 25, 26, 28, 57, 59 as feature of Australian multiculturalism, 43, 52 interculturalism dialogue, 4, 257, 280 in Europe, 246 in Quebec, 173, 211

interfaith networks, 274, 277 intermarriage (Australia), 16, 41, 185, 190, 226, 271 Islam. See also Muslims; Sharia law accused of being a political ideology, 273, 274 “clash” with Christianity, 277 Mosques, 137, 139 schools, 137, 138 as “threat” to Australia, 200, 275 Islamic Council of Victoria, 152 Islamist terrorism linked to multiculturalism, 9, 10, 17, 68 plots in Australia, 133 Islamophobia, 133

J Jakubowicz, Andrew, 49, 57–61, 72, 75, 96, 154, 157, 259, 262, 264, 281 critique of multiculturalism, 56–61, 96 Johnson, Carol, 85, 109, 114, 115 Joppke, Christian, 5–7, 9, 11, 12, 96 Judeo-Christian, 14, 142, 200 foundation of Australian culture, 88, 192 (see also (Christianity)) Jupp, James, 11, 15, 16, 25, 26, 33, 35, 39, 46, 70, 71, 155n7, 215, 245

K Kalantzis, Mary, 67, 71, 111, 113, 118 Keating government

Index

accused of favouring “special interest” groups, 114 and conservative backlash, 101 and Indigenous affairs, 95, 215, 222 mandatory detention of asylum seekers introduced by, 128 and multicultural policy, 71, 84, 96, 99 and neoliberalism, 97 and support for multiculturalism, 13, 17 Keating, Paul accused of political correctness, 114 ambivalence about multiculturalism, 85 and Australian nationalism/ national identity, 86, 112 and British and Irish traditions of Australia, 88 and cosmopolitanism, 12 defining multiculturalism and its limits, 88 and Indigenous Australians, 83, 214 Redfern Park Speech, 221 Kymlicka, Will, 1, 2, 5, 5n1, 6n2, 12–15, 27, 173, 209, 210, 227, 230, 233, 234, 245, 246

L legal pluralism, 272 liquid modernity, 248 Living in Harmony Strategy, 122 and Harmony Day, 122 local government, 49, 83n1, 84, 85, 257, 264, 270, 271 role in supporting diversity and multiculturalism in Australia, 256

293

Lopez, Mark, 19, 29–3, 36, 37, 151, 152, 214

M Mapping Social Cohesion reports (Australia), 244, 249, 272 Markus, Andrew, 16, 26, 27, 154, 155n7, 242, 246, 247 Martin, Jean, 29, 30, 32, 33, 37, 42, 57, 225 McGregor, Russell, 18, 181, 216, 217 Merkel, Angela, 155, 242, 243 Modood, Tariq, 5n1, 7, 9, 10, 120, 134, 171, 199, 246, 247, 257, 271, 277, 278 Morrison, Scott, 7, 241–3 speech criticising multiculturalism, 249 Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity (policy), 123, 126 Multicultural education (Australian policy and approach), 38, 67, 70, 133 Multiculturalism. See also Cosmopolitanism; cultural diversity; national identity and asylum seekers, 8, 15, 17, 127, 128 and citizenship, 6, 7, 9, 11, 16, 29, 34, 36, 92, 122, 131, 153, 217 and class, 32, 58, 96 communitarian, 26, 27, 120, 148, 247, 255 and cosmopolitan capacities, 263 and cultural maintenance, 7, 27, 46, 256

294

Index

Multiculturalism (Cont.) cultural pluralism version of, 31–3, 43, 51, 57, 61, 70, 258 and cultural relativism, 2, 8, 9, 12, 43, 52, 73, 132, 273 definition, 39, 44, 87, 120, 125, 126, 145, 152 ethnic rights version of, 32, 57 ethnic structural pluralism version of, 32, 258 and human rights, 260 as immigrant settlement policy, 26, 28, 36, 61, 80, 140, 256, 264, 274 left wing critics of, 28, 57 liberal, 2, 27, 97, 112, 231, 254 and minority rights, 5, 12, 254, 255 and national identity, 2, 12, 13, 17, 18, 40, 43, 50, 51, 77, 80, 83, 86–8, 90, 92, 95, 97, 112–14, 128, 131, 142, 148–50, 154, 156, 169–201, 217, 220, 227, 229, 232, 233, 243, 245–8, 251, 253, 254, 264 and neo-liberalism, 97 as plural monoculturalism, 256 and public opinion (Australia), 19, 27, 75, 182, 255 and public opinion (Canada), 14, 15 and public opinion (Europe), 242 and racism, 1, 32, 53, 97, 98, 111, 122, 141, 157, 194, 226, 245, 276, 278, 280 and reified view of culture, 3, 4 and religion, 274, 275, 277

right wing/conservative critics of, 11, 25, 31, 33, 52, 53, 57–61, 70, 75, 82, 84, 96, 97, 101, 103, 112–15, 119, 123, 128, 157, 190, 222, 241, 269, 279, 280 secular bias of, 278 and separatism, 2, 14, 25, 52, 55, 73, 79, 102, 132, 134, 209, 247, 248, 256, 273, 275 and social justice, 67–104, 218, 222, 229, 230 and universalism, 252 welfare version of, 33 Muslim Community Reference Group (Australia), 136, 137 Muslims anti-Muslim strain in Australia, 128, 138, 140 diverse populations of in Australia, 19 Dutch pillarisation and, 28 immigration of, related to retreat of multiculturalism, 7, 8, 11, 18 political response to in Australia, 133, 153, 154

N National Action Plan to Build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security (NAP), 135 National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (policy), 12, 72–4, 81–4, 94, 95, 123, 169, 221 national character, 114, 150, 173, 175, 186, 187, 208

Index

Australian, 114, 150, 173, 186, 187 national identity. See also Multiculturalism and national identity Australian national identity depicted, 11, 175 British, 10 Canadian, 15, 181, 210 civic, 149, 175, 227 as concept, 171 Dutch, 180 ethnic, 179 inclusive, 2, 170, 198 Nationalism assimilationist, 140 Australian, 11, 112, 170, 177, 197 British, 177 civic pluralist, 190 critique of, 96 cultural, 86, 211, 217 and cultural homogeneity, 199 Dutch, 8 ethnic, 102, 179 and globalisation, 171 indigenising, 221 liberal, 173 minority, 172, 198 multicultural, 86 and multiculturalism, 199 nativist, 190 new (Whitlam’s), 33 New Zealand, 212 outward looking, 91 political, 200 Quebecois, 14, 210 radical Australian, 86 white, 119 National Multicultural Advisory Council

295

appointed by Howard government, 123 Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness (report), 122, 124, 170 Multicultural Australia: The Way Forward (issues paper), 123, 126 Netherlands, the pillarisation and multiculturalism, 7, 27, 28 retreat from multiculturalism, 6, 7, 180 New Agenda for a Multicultural Australia, A., 122, 125, 127, 169, 170 New Zealand, 18, 58, 175, 177, 208, 211–14, 219, 231, 277 Noble, Greg, 247, 250, 255, 277

O Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) created, 71, 72 dismantled, 116

P Pakulski, Jan, 40, 196, 199, 246 and Tranter, Bruce, 199, 246 Parekh, Bikhu, 2, 9, 174, 181, 182, 199 Pearson, David, 175, 211–13, 226, 227, 230–2 Pearson, Noel, 226, 230, 234 People of Australia, The (multicultural policy), 110, 155, 157, 224, 235

296

Index

Phillips, Anne, 3, 5, 10 Phillips, Trevor, 134 Pluralism and cosmopolitanism, 255, 258 cultural, 31–3, 39, 43, 44, 51, 55, 57, 61, 70, 96, 255, 258 ethnic, 39, 57, 58, 256 ethnic structural, 32, 258 and globalisation, 259 legal, 272 structural, 32, 33, 41, 53, 61, 258 pluralist society, 27, 30, 190 political culture Australian, 102 British, 142 republican, 178 post-ethnic, 181, 253 post-multiculturalism, 243, 245, 251 Post-national/ist, 38, 146, 149, 177, 178, 182, 185, 193, 252 Povinelli, Elizabeth, 231, 232 Poynting, Scott, 132, 133, 136, 137 Productive Diversity (policy), 89, 90, 94, 97, 99, 126, 127, 130, 156 criticism of, 97, 99

Q Quebec, 14, 172, 173, 198, 209–11

R race debates (Australia), 49, 72, 82, 198 Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), 35, 36, 48, 281 racism and anti-racism, 122, 156, 226, 242, 259, 278, 280

in Australia, 55, 98, 141, 154, 156, 157, 172, 194, 216, 226, 242, 276–8, 280 and colonialism (Australia), 176, 231 institutional (structural), 32, 93 and multiculturalism, 1, 53, 55, 97, 98, 176, 226 and reverse racism, 53 in USA, 172 refugees, 15, 17, 35, 48, 49, 100, 156, 274 religious vilification laws, 274, 279 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, The (Canada), 30 Rudd government, 153–5, 245 Rudd, Kevin, 11, 110, 131, 154 Rushdie, Salman and The Satanic Verses affair, 133, 278

S Schlesinger Jr., Arthur, 171 Sen, Amartya, 226, 256 settler societies, 12, 175, 207, 208, 231, 234 Sharia law, 6n2, 138, 144, 272, 275 Smith, Anthony D., 174, 181, 217, 279 social cohesion asylum seeker policies threatening, 128 national identity and, 142, 185 policies and programs, 127, 132, 153, 187 replacing symbolism of multiculturalism, 132, 245 Soutphommasane, Tim, 48, 128, 181, 193

Index

Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), 36, 47–9, 54, 70, 79, 83, 94, 116, 139, 250, 282 State governments (Australian), 274 promoting multiculturalism, 270 super-diversity, 250, 251, 253, 257

T Taylor, Charles, 2, 172, 181, 211, 228 transnational, 97, 193, 251, 253, 260, 261, 264, 265 Treaty of Waitangi (1840) (NZ), 211–13 Trudeau, Pierre, 172, 209 Turnbull government, 280

U United Kingdom (UK). See Britain United States of America (USA) criticism of multicultural identity politics, 171 and ethnic concentrations of populations, 16 and retreat of multiculturalism, 9, 11

V Values Aboriginal/Indigenous, 94, 222 Australian (“core”), 77, 83, 134, 137–40, 143–8, 152–5, 189, 198, 200, 241, 244, 248, 273 Christian, 6 civic, 150, 176, 182, 183

297

communitarian, 148 and culture, 2, 40 Dutch, 8 illiberal, 8 liberal-democratic, 6, 8, 186 Middle-Eastern/Muslim, 128, 138, 139 multicultural, 37, 47, 70 national, 12, 13, 81, 147, 192 political, 10, 174 values based education, 136 Vertovec, Steven, 4, 12, 250, 251, 254, 271 Viviani, Nancy, 15, 35, 48, 49

W way of life Aboriginal/Indigenous, 230 Australian, 31, 77, 80, 81, 129, 141, 145–7, 154, 188, 189, 194, 273, 275, 281 and multiculturalism, 12, 189, 218 and national identity, 174 White Australian Identity/Society/ Nation, 11, 99, 217, 227 white Australians, 98, 99, 140, 217, 227 White Australia Policy, 17, 34, 35, 40, 48, 100, 113, 175, 214 White Australia racism, 98, 111 Whitlam, Gough, anti-racism of, 32 and Indochinese refugees, 35 “new nationalism” of, 35 support for Aboriginal Australians, 35

298

Index

Whitlam government and beginning of multiculturalism in Australia, 28 and immigration, 34 rejecting White Australia Policy, 34 World Council of Indigenous Peoples, 216 World Values Survey, 196

X xenophobia, 142 Y Yusuf, Irfan, 139, 154 Z Zubrzycki, Joseph (Jerzy), 29, 30, 32, 38–40, 49, 54, 57, 244