Multicultural Australia Quotes

A different Australia emerged in the 1950s. A multicultural one, and 30 years on we're still trying to fit in as ethnics and we're still trying to fit the ethnics in as Australians.

In the narrative of the left, Australia was a boring outpost of the British Empire until Gough Whitlam became prime minister, formally ended the White Australia policy, instituted multiculturalism and gave Aborigines land rights. Whitlam’s brief government was certainly a cultural watershed, but not everything that happened before 1972 is irrelevant and not all that happened afterwards is admirable. Australia was never quite the antipodean England of left-wing mythology. People from Africa, Asia and many of the countries of Europe were aboard the early convict fleets, as would be expected in a representative sample of London’s jails. In the 1830s, after the Myall Creek massacre, white men were hanged for the murder of Aborigines. Among the Gold Rush influx were thousands of Chinese, quite a few of whom stayed after the gold they’d chased ran out. The first decade of Australia’s national existence, which brought the passage of the ‘White Australia’ legislation, also saw our first Chinese-speaking MP, Senator Thomas Bakhap.

Our fascination with change won’t, of itself, make it more likely or more rapid. Come 2020, I’m confident that Australia will still have one of the world’s strongest economies because the current yearning for magic-pudding economics will turn out to be short-lived. The United States will remain the world’s strongest country by far, and our partnership with America will still be the foundation of our security. We will still be a ‘crowned republic’ because we will have concluded (perhaps reluctantly) that it’s actually the least imperfect system of government. We will be more cosmopolitan than ever but perhaps less multicultural because there will be more stress on unity than on diversity. Some progress will have been made towards ‘closing the gap’ between Aboriginal and other Australians’ standards of living (largely because fewer Aboriginal people will live in welfare villages and more of them will have received a good general education). Families won’t break up any more often, because old-fashioned notions about making the most of imperfect situations will have made something of a comeback. Finally, there will have been bigger fires, more extensive floods and more ferocious storms because records are always being broken. But sea levels will be much the same, desert boundaries will not have changed much, and technology, rather than economic self-denial, will be starting to cut down atmospheric pollution.

During this period, ‘Brits’ were still the main source of labour, but gradually the demographic of the country began to change as world events drove increasing numbers of Europeans to Australia, opening the floodgates and gradually relaxing the White Australia policy. Italians, Germans and Greeks arrived to join the communities established in the late 1900s. Following on were many Hungarians who had escaped after the 1956 revolution, then Czechs after the Soviet occupation in 1968. Gradually people from South America and the Middle East came, many fleeing persecution. In the 1970s thousands of ‘boat people’ from Vietnam were allowed in, and in the 1990s refugees from the Yugoslav Wars. This resulted in a pronounced cultural shift from what was essentially a British, or perhaps Anglo-Celtic, society to a multicultural country. It was a remarkably rapid conversion into what we see now in modern Australia – a nation of people whose heritage can be traced back to 190 countries. In the 2016 census the proportion of the total population born abroad was 26 per cent, but where they come from shows the changes in policy, attitudes and global economics since the start of the twentieth century.

My Earth, Your Earth (The Sonnet) My America fosters the spirit of self-correction, Your America lies in the continuation of exploitation. My England lives in a willful drive for making amends, Your England lies in deliberate denial of historic mess. My Australia battles to assimilate those once wronged, Your Australia boasts proudly atrocious plunders as tradition. My India is the most radiant beacon of multiculturalism, Your India is a septic tank of prehistoric nationalism. I wish I could tell you, you and I are the same, but we are not. My earth is a celebration of people, Your earth is chained to dead customs.

We should think very carefully about the perils of converting Australia into a giant multicultural laboratory for the assumed benefit of the peoples of the world.

It is dangerous, however, to be complacent about Western societies. In France and Italy neo-Fascist movements have captured considerable popular support, even respectability, with their xenophobic, anti-immigrant policies. Even in the United States, Canada, and Australia, nations founded on multicultural immigration, there is an insidious growth of support for white supremacist, pan-Aryan movements just when apartheid has crumbled in South Africa.