An overdue vision for multicultural Australia

The Australian Government has just released the Multicultural Framework Review report  ‘Towards Fairness: A Multicultural Australia for All’. 

The report, produced by an independent panel, urges proactive steps to build Australian multiculturalism, including the establishment of a Multicultural Affairs Commission and standalone government department, investment in language services, and improvements in multicultural grants programs.

The government seems to have accepted the key recommendations which comes after a long period of policy apathy in the multicultural space.

 The review foregrounds the most difficult issue for a settler-colonial nation like Australia, made up of hundreds of different ethnic and religious backgrounds and transnational diasporas:  how does it hang together? What guiding principles, shared values and common practices should be encouraged? How exactly do we do that successfully together?

In the wake of the European invasions, a watered-down version of social cohesion was enforced through assimilation and identification with a primary British heritage. This amounted to government-sanctioned suppression of the cultural expression of almost everyone outside that White “charter group”: among them First Nations peoples, Jews, and Muslims .

Then, 50 years ago the White Australia policy was rejected, and a social movement emerged that celebrated cultural diversity, inter-communal tolerance, and a commitment to mutual respect and recognition. Its first advocate was a fiery politician of Irish and Spanish heritage, Al Grassby, and he was supported by a network of activists from many of those marginalised or excluded communities, including Jews and Muslims. The demands of the day were for social justice and human rights.  They asked for cultural recognition and social inclusion and equity.

Since then, these principles have been joined in the literature by an understanding of a need for social cohesion, a concept that balances respect for diversity with the need for unity around core principles and behaviours.

In 2024 the debate about social cohesion in Australia has flared up spectacularly in the glow of passions inflamed over the war in Gaza on the historic lands that are claimed at once as both Falasteen (Palestine) and Eretz Yisrael (Israel). 

We two are sociologists who have worked over many years advancing research and policy insights on multiculturalism and diversity governance, seeing Australia’s adoption of the idea of multiculturalism as a sometimes flawed though nevertheless aspirational policy framework. We have very different backgrounds, Fethi is a Muslim from Tunisia and Andrew  a Jew from Poland  but we share a common perception and vision of Australian multiculturalism.

In our scholarly understanding, multiculturalism involves people comprehending that society depends on the recognition and defence of justice and human rights, not just for some people, the ones we identify with or prefer, but for all people. We recognise that people can find it very difficult to insist on mutuality and reciprocity. We may know but not really accept that if our defence of rights is not mutual then we can scarcely expect our own rights to be respected by strangers.  Easy enough to say, but where do rights meet obligations, where does the assertion of the Self recognise the existence of the Other?

We also acknowledge the deep distress and pain in communities as we/they watch, experience and hear about the rise of Islamophobia and antisemitism here, and the unending violence over there. We can see the gradual disintegration of trust between our respective communities, in the mixture of fear and anger that are the toxins dissolving an ever more fragile social cohesion. We need not list the strings of events that contribute to the sense of betrayal, oppression and marginalisation, and feed the fear and anger, which too often finds expression as hate.

So, what is to be done? For those of us who see the deep dangers for our multicultural nation in the disintegration of our collective capacity for civil dialogue, there are two threats. From within our communities, we can detect at times a charge that any interaction with the “Other” represents the deepest sort of moral and ethnic treason that might somehow legitimise the horrendous slanders and lies thrown at us. There are even some who claim that the “Other” has no valid case, and maybe even deserves its pain. From outside our communities, we have an apprehension that we will only be tolerated if we accede in full to a version of social cohesion that does not leave any space for reasonable disagreements, robust exchanges and even tension when dealing with calamitous events overseas.

We can take heart from the Multicultural Review report, insistent as it is on fairness and inclusion for all. It demands that no one should be exposed to the slurs and intimidation that Muslim and Jewish Australians are reporting.

The imminent creation of the Multicultural Commission and the intensification of the work of the Race Discrimination Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission will hopefully help in moving the debate about racism out of the arena of political point-scoring and into the real world of interaction among Australians of all backgrounds. Living safely and harmoniously in a multicultural society is not a natural human orientation – it has to be learned, practiced and perfected through strong leadership and enabling policies.

Too often people associate the word “multicultural” with license for every minority group to express their own grievances, concerns and priorities in any way they wish. conserving and advancing one’s own culture is only one part of what makes a multicultural society tick.

 Another and equally important part involves the recognition of other groups with the same rights to hold their opinions and advocate their positions. We all share the same society and have an investment in its solidarity and harmony.  Multiculturalism has a meta-status, sitting above the specific content of a particular culture and  lived experience, and holding open the opportunities that all cultures require in order to prosper and engage with each other.

Perhaps what explains the current state of social cohesion is that for the nearly three decades we have not succeeded in progressing and sustaining that kind of inclusive, mutually supportive form of multiculturalism. Indeed, we seem to have moved from a nation-building aspiration for equality and inclusion, to a more fearful, anxious society, where concern about security has replaced creativity and collaboration as the dominant ethos.

 It is simply not acceptable that successive governments failed to think through how our multicultural institutions should look and how they should function as our society changed.  Multicultural policy has languished while we experienced rising racism, the rise of far-right political parties like the One Nation party and the spread of antisemitic, anti-Islamic and anti-Asian discourses, all aggravated by the explosion of the internet and, in particular, social media.  

Now the moment is back, and it is as electric with fear and anger as it was a generation ago. This time though, we can and must get it right. Together, we can choose to recognise our fears, confront our anger, and put aside our hate in the pursuit of mutual respect and shared empathy.  Some of the policy levers have been put in place with the launch of the Towards Fairness report and its proposal for a Multicultural Commission with a focus on intercultural action, now under the charge of Julian Hill MP, Assistant Minister for Multiculturalism.

We have also just seen the appointment of Peter Khalil MP as Special Envoy for Social Cohesion. An Anti-Racism Strategy by the Human Rights Commission is promised soon. There are also the new community envoys against antisemitism and, soon expected, Islamophobia.

People who are Islamophobes, antisemites, common racists and White Power advocates will oppose some or all of these initiatives. In this context of bold policy initiatives, we call on the government and those millions of Australians who support a more civil, inclusive and respectful society to have the moral courage to  press forward with these timely interventions.