Just on the cultural aspect, Ghassan Hage in his controversial book "White Nation" has an interesting thesis, which states that promoters of multiculturalism are actually attempting to assert their white/anglo cultural dominance in society. Basically he proposes a "core/periphery" model of multicultural society, where cultural diversity is only promoted in so far as it emphasises the importance of a "core" dominant anglo culture - and this is done by patronising, objectifying and essentially dehumanizing the novel "periphery" cultures. Indeed, the  original ideology of multiculturalism that proposed a trully equal society of hybrid cultures espoused by those well-intentioned intellectuals like Jerzy Zubrzycki has been well and trully hijacked by the 'core/periphery' model.Zubrzycki's original idea would be considered anathema to even the most ardent 'progressive' today:

Mass immigration wasn’t a ‘mistake’. A mistake is forgetting to take an umbrella when heavy rain is forecast. A mistake is wearing brown suede shoes with a blue pinstripe suit.

No, trawling the globe for immigrants was a deliberate Labour policy. It was designed, in the memorable words of former Blair speech-writer Andrew Neather, to ‘rub the Right’s noses in diversity’.

Labour set out utterly to transform the demographic make-up of England without making any attempt to obtain democratic consent.

I say ‘England’ specifically, because it is England which has borne the brunt of mass immigration and is now struggling to live with the consequences.

New Labour hated the English. We weren’t to be trusted. In 2000, Straw himself damned the English as violent nationalists who have used force to subjugate other races. It was a despicable slur, but entirely in keeping with Labour’s core strategy.

The fear was that the love affair with New Labour wouldn’t last and the English would revert to type and return a Conservative government. So the plan was to flood the country with immigrants who would then repay the favour by voting Labour.

Ministers told bare-faced lies about their true intentions and smeared anyone who objected to the unprecedented influx of foreign nationals as a ‘racist’ or a ‘xenophobe’.

Sir Andrew Green, the mild-mannered former diplomat who runs MigrationWatch UK, was subjected to a vile and sustained campaign of character assassination. Green’s ‘crime’ was to expose, forensically and accurately, the genuine scale of immigration.

Straw was up to his neck in this synchronised deceit. Now that he is standing down as an MP and no longer has to ingratiate himself with his Muslim constituents in Blackburn, he seems to think that a quick mea culpa and a couple of Hail Marys will absolve him of his share of responsibility.

In Sheffield, the locals are angry about Roma gypsies loitering in the streets and dumping litter.

Blunkett said: ‘We have got to be tough and robust in saying to these people: “You are not living in a downtrodden village or woodlands.” ’

This would be hilarious were it not so tragic. Labour’s pernicious policy of ‘multi-culturalism’ encouraged immigrants to carry on behaving as they did in their homeland with no concessions to the host community.

The multi-cultists expected British society to adapt to accommodate immigrants, not vice versa.

Astonishingly, this country now has one of the biggest Roma populations in Europe — 200,000 and counting, even before Romanians and Bulgarians get the right to work and feast on Britain’s benefits buffet in January.

Those of us who expressed reservations about Labour’s reckless  open-door immigration policy were howled down and smeared as neanderthal racists by Labour and its allies in the BBC and the Left-wing press.

However, the rise of multiculturalism in Australia was due to the operations and lobbying of an entire movement and network of people (many now part of the "Multicultural Industry") who pushed for the adoption of multiculturalism as official government policy. James Jupp has admitted that "There is, then, no doubt that a small, mainly politically-involved minority ushered in multiculturalism as public policy". Zubrzycki claimed that "the major breakthrough" came in 1972 when Jean Martin (who largely wrote the 1977 report) gave her Meredith Memorial Lecture on the subject, followed by Grassby's "much publicised address" on multiculturalism in 1973. Indeed, "Australia's public debate about `multiculturalism' really developed during 1973 with the then Minister of Immigration, Al Grassby".

The advent of the Whitlam Labor Government (December 1972 to November 1975) was the vehicle via which multiculturalism "exploded onto the political scene". It was Grassby who, with the backing of the new government, pushed multiculturalism as far as it could go. It was a concept popular with the liberalistic academia and "migrant intellectuals ... [who] found the idea of multiculturalism attractive". Not only was the concept "a popular idea with the new intelligentsia, but more important, it had clearly struck a responsive chord with many immigrant communities, particularly those from southern Europe".

Multiculturalism was one of the few Whitlam programmes not jettisoned by Malcolm Fraser's incoming Liberal Government in 1975. Voting pattens had by then emerged which showed that "while voters from northern Europe had a similar voting pattern to the Australian-born and the eastern Europeans tended to support the conservative parties, southern Europeans were supporting the ALP". The Fraser government decided that a "commitment to multiculturalism ... could offer something to the southern European electorate". Support for multiculturalism came to be seen as a way of "buying the ethnic vote". As part of this political strategy, "Organised ethnic groups were recognised, funded and listened to. Politicians hoped that sections of the electorate could be reached if ethnic leaders were cultivated, and cultivation and funding helped to strengthen the position of ethnic leaders". Indeed, in 1976, the then Minister for Immigration, Michael MacKellar, admitted "that his Government intended to pursue multicultural policies because the Liberal/National Country Party coalition appeared to be unpopular with migrant voters".

Raymond Sestito has revealed the vote-chasing nature of multiculturalism; how the political parties introduced such policies, not "responding to organised pressure but rather as the initiators of the new policy". He explained that "By the early seventies a great deal of Italian and Greek migrants who had arrived from the mid-1950s onwards had become citizens and so gained the vote. Between January 1965 and June 1979, 188,640 Italians and 150,208 Greeks were granted Australian citizenship. This was too large a group of votes to be ignored by the major political parties. The migrant vote would become especially important to the Victorian ALP since there was a heavy concentration of Greek and Italian votes in the inner suburban area of Melbourne; attracting the migrant vote would be a way of keeping these seats ... Multiculturalism is so appealing to the parties because there are votes to be gained by promoting it. In this case we can say that Australia's political parties have been the initiators of multiculturalism, rather than responding to group pressure."

Sestito further explained the political dilemma of multiculturalism: "Once an issue is established, the bargaining process begins. This is where the parties are caught in a political bind. Once they have articulated the needs of groups, then it becomes hard for them to pull back. Groups which were previously unorganised become stronger and make increasing demands which the parties cannot ignore if they are to gain their vote. Political parties become locked into a situation where one tries to outbid the other in the promises each makes. Thus while in the 1960s one would be mistaken in thinking that migrants hardly existed, we now have a situation where parties compete to see who can promise the most to migrants."

"The first move to buy into the ethnic vote was made by the Federal ALP Government and its Minister for Immigration, Mr Al Grassby", whereby Whitlam's ALP Government (1972-1975) set up various migrant and ethnic services and infrastructures. "If the ALP was first off the mark, the Federal LCP coalition [Liberal Party and the Country Party] was quick to follow. In August of 1975 the coalition issued a detailed policy on immigration and ethnic affairs which was not only an extension of the ALP policy, but was radically different from previous coalition policies in this field. Introducing the policy, the shadow Minister for Immigration, Mr Michael MacKellar, said he `did not believe that Gough [Whitlam] had the migrant vote all tied up' ... Whereas in the 1960s there was a bi-partisan policy of ethnic assimilation and integration, it seems that multiculturalism has now become the policy of both major parties."(23)