Relationships, not rules: beyond social cohesion to genuine multiculturalism
The Royal Commission should move beyond a static or coercive concept of social cohesion to a vocabulary of nation-building.
Andrew Jakubowicz
Participants in a multifaith camp (Deborah Stone)
Published: 5 May 2026
Last updated: 6 May 2026
Australia has arrived at a consequential moment. The violent attack on members of the Jewish community at Bondi Beach on 14 December 2025 confronted us with what happens when the slow erosion of social trust goes unaddressed. It also reminded us that the work of building a cohesive, pluralist democracy is never finished — it must be actively tended, generation by generation.
Now we have a first analysis in the interim report of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion of the security coordination failures that enabled the Bondi shooters through the net that was supposedly designed to prevent such horrors. This is just the first, if necessary, step toward the much larger question of the current threats to community safety and what the nation must do in order to move beyond this moment.
Ours is an immigration nation ten generations deep, built upon the foundations of the world’s oldest continuous cultures. That is a remarkable inheritance. Yet we have not fully honoured it. The marginalisation of First Nations peoples has left racism woven into our social fabric — not as an aberration, but as a practised capacity that can be turned, and has been turned, against Jews, Muslims and many other communities differentiated by faith, culture and appearance.
The vocabulary of nation-building, intercultural participation, mutual recognition and civic complementarity better describes what we are actually trying to achieve
Jewish Australians increasingly live with fear, some withdrawing from public life. Muslim Australians continue to navigate structural prejudice and suspicion. Many other communities carry the weight of prejudiced and discriminatory experiences they have been told to keep private.
From social cohesion to social resilience
The language we use shapes the solutions we can imagine. For too long, “social cohesion” has been understood primarily in terms of law and order — a condition maintained by the suppression of difference and the enforcement of compliance. This framing is not only inadequate; it is counterproductive.
A mature multicultural democratic nation requires something richer: a shared culture of recognition, mutuality and reciprocity. It asks us to understand that social cohesion is not a static equilibrium to be policed, but a living, dynamic process of nation-building — one in which difference is a creative resource, not a threat to be managed. It looks to the social resilience that emerges when these challenges are properly addressed. It looks to forming and sustaining cohesive resilience to overcome contemporary challenges and withstand and survive future shocks.
As a society built from immigration, Australian resilience requires three interlocking mechanisms as its organising framework:
- Settlement — the deliberate, well-resourced welcome of all who choose to make Australia home. Settlement is not a bureaucratic formality. It is the foundation of contribution, participation and a genuine stake in our shared future. Invest in settlement and people invest in Australia. Through effective settlement a deeper sense of belonging emerges. Neglect it, and alienation follows.
- Multiculturalism — the recognition of cultural diversity as a national resource, not a problem to be managed. Every community must feel it has a genuine voice at the table of nation-building, not merely a script written by others that they are expected to perform. Multiculturalism is contained within the embrace of a nation-building project where the right to culture for one means the right to culture for all, within a common set of democratic practices.
- Interculturalism — the active, ongoing engagement between communities in common tasks of nation-building, from the neighbourhood to the national. Recognition of difference is necessary but not sufficient. Cohesive resilience requires that diverse Australians work together to build the trust that underpins strong bridging relationships, and learn how to work together across their differences and through their commonalities.
Three foundations underpin this vision:
- Recognition — the active acknowledgement that every community’s history, contribution and experience is part of the national story. This includes, centrally, the unfinished work of truth-telling with First Nations peoples, whose marginalisation teaches all other communities that belonging in Australia is conditional.
- Mutuality — the genuine understanding that what damages one community diminishes all. Antisemitism is not “a Jewish problem”. Islamophobia is not “a Muslim problem”. Each is a corrosive agent in the shared civic life of the whole nation.
- Reciprocity — the practical reality that intercultural collaboration makes all communities more capable, more creative and more secure. Nation-building is not a zero-sum contest; it is a generative project.
Together, these three dimensions do not merely describe cohesive resilience ; they describe what nation-building in a pluralist democracy requires of its institutions and its people.
The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has an opportunity to translate years of thoughtful review into genuine structural change. The following four recommendations draw on the substantive work already done and ask only that government now act on it with the care, purpose and urgency the moment demands.
1. Adopt language that reflects the nation we are building
The royal commission — and the broader public conversation — should move deliberately beyond “social cohesion” as a static or coercive concept. The vocabulary of nation-building, intercultural participation, mutual recognition and civic complementarity better describes what we are actually trying to achieve and invites communities into a project they can own, rather than a condition imposed upon them. We want a society built on cohesive resilience.
2. Establish a national institution for intercultural nation-building
The federal government should legislate and properly resource a national body that consolidates the recommendations of the Multicultural Framework Review, while also drawing on the relevant insights and proposals of the Race Discrimination Commissioner, and the findings of the Antisemitism and Islamophobia envoys. In the meantime, the Australian Multicultural Council should be resourced to initiate this process and implement the strategy laid out in the report of the Multiculturalism Framework Review. This is not another review body — it is an action institution, charged with building intercultural engagement, stimulating co-operation across communities and widening shared understanding. The principle has been accepted by the federal government; the urgency now demands it be put into practice.
3. Embed research, legislative support and community voice
The national body must have genuine capacity:
- to support and inform legislative change;
- to commission rigorous research into the conditions that foster or fracture social trust and build social resilience; and
- to create formal advisory pathways that ensure voices from across the diversity of Australian culture, language, age, gender and geography are heard and acted upon.
- Structural diversity within the institution itself is non-negotiable.
4. Build from the ground up through local partnership
National frameworks only succeed when they are realised locally. The institution must work in close, sustained partnership with communities, local governments, state governments and civil society — identifying, documenting and communicating the practices that actually build intercultural collaboration in schools, suburbs, workplaces and faith communities. This is where social trust and productive collaboration are either made or broken, day by day.
Serious investment is required in the development, implementation and evaluation of ongoing communication that helps inform Australians about how we can all play a part in this nation-building process. At a time when disinformation and misinformation are widespread, and often promoted by bad-faith actors — with catastrophic effects on both cohesion and resilience — a serious strategy must be adopted and moved to the centre of national governance.
Australians already possess most of what is needed. We understand that cultural diversity is a national strength. We know that being seen and included improves the wellbeing of all. We recognise that working together achieves more than working apart. The task of the royal commission is to help translate that understanding into institutions, policies and practices robust enough to endure — and to ensure that no community in Australia is ever again left to face hatred alone.
The question is not whether Australia can become a more cohesive, integrated and generous nation. The question is whether we will finally choose to do what it takes to achieve that goal.
Members of the Working Group on Multicultural Australia Beyond Social Cohesion include:
Hakan Akyol, Executive Director, AMF Research Trust
About the author
Andrew Jakubowicz is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Technology Sydney. He is a participant in the Antisemitism Task Force Stakeholder groups; this article emerged from his work on preparing for those discussions.
Comments1
Andrew Jakubowicz9 May at 07:23 am
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