But the 1970s brought two momentous changes.

The first was a profound recasting of the past. Previously, Australian cultural elites, while rarely hiding from our history’s often grim realities, viewed the building of Australia with pride – a pride that underpinned a strong, distinctive and unifying sense of national identity.

Now they framed a new imaginary history in which the Australia of the past was, according to Whitlam acolyte Phillip Adams, “the most remote, ethnocentric, inward-looking and changeless society on earth”, a barren, empty and grey wasteland, punctuated only by the craven fawning of British imperialists and the genocidal dislocation of the continent’s first inhabitants.

At the same time, as the previous national identity was derided, the ideal of a unifying culture was scorned with it. Australia’s strength, the revisionists argued, lay not in an encompassing sense of being Australian; rather, what was to be highlighted and encouraged was cultural difference, as if difference was a good in itself.

In its origins, the ambitions of this new multiculturalist approach were reasonably modest. Trusting implicitly in the continuance of the social code of tolerance built up over the decades, it assumed that code was so strong that it didn’t require protecting. Its primary focus was on supplementing the processes of ongoing migrant integration with some largely harmless commitments to maintaining cultural diversity via language programs and greater appreciation of European culture.

The term itself had originated in Canada in the mid-’60s and was soon adopted by prime minister Pierre Trudeau. The appeal for Trudeau was obvious as he struggled to cope with separatist pressures in Quebec while remaining cognisant of Anglophone Canadian views. The idea of multiculturalism shifted the focus from two to many, potentially easing the head-to-head confrontation between Quebec and the rest.

Its immediate use value for the more singular culture of Australia, where there were no separatist tensions, was less apparent. But it rapidly acquired great political appeal.

Nowhere was that appeal greater than in the ALP. Since 1901 the Labor Party had been more deeply invested in the White Australia Policy than any other major political movement.

In the opinion of its greatest speechwriter, Graham Freudenberg, it was the policy that had proved its most reliable source of voter support.

But the generation of party leaders who began emerging in the early ’60s – Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Bill Hayden, Don Dunstan and others – fought a long battle to remove the policy of racial exclusion from the party platform and replace it with the principle of non-discrimination.

However, new developments in more recent years and decades have dramatically increased the dangers that the policy’s original flaws always threatened.

The rise of virtual worlds, immersive media, social and otherwise, with global reach, now means it is possible to live at Lakemba in western Sydney while being for all intents and purposes in, say, Beirut.

As the Productivity Commission warned in 2016, “the ease of communicating with family and friends in the immigrant’s country of origin, and access to news and other media in their home language through the internet, has made it much easier for people who do not feel capable or have no desire to integrate”.

“To the extent that immigrants’ intent to integrate is decreasing,” the commission continued, that “raises an important issue about whether this provides scope for separatism that conflicts with, and/or has the ability to undermine, key norms and longstanding understandings that are important to the functioning of Australian society”.

To make things worse, the changes the Productivity Commission pointed to coincided with the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, which – in the name of maintaining religious purity – elevates separatism into an overriding religious obligation.

There were, and are, many Australian Muslims who are anything but Islamists and entirely reject separatism. Successfully integrated into the wider community, their contribution is there for all to see. But it would be foolish to deny that Islamist separatism presents threats on an entirely new scale.

That there were also intense ethno-sectarian pressures in the Irish Catholicism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is undoubtedly true. The priestly champions of Irish Catholicism in Australia pursued and insisted on a religious separation, demanding (with mixed success) that all Catholic parents eschew schools not devoted to an explicitly Catholic curriculum. Social, economic and political separatism was, however, largely non-existent. There was no ghettoisation, intermarriage rates were high, and the Labor Party and the unions provided membership alongside the wider Australian populace in mass movements that insisted, as best they could, on ignoring religious identity.

Additionally and crucially, even the most strident advocates of Catholic schooling never promoted a hatred of Protestants, much less a desire for their extermination. But, in contrast, it has become an integral part of Islamist preaching that, in the words of an Islamic text widely available in Australia, “vileness and depravity are inherent to Jewish nature”, accompanying “the Jew” just as “the shadow accompanies a man”.

The overall result is not just a separatism that tears at social cohesion; it is an active hostility to, and incessant attack on, the Australian community. And far from impeding those tendencies, the multicultural project legitimises them and bestows funding and authority on their promoters.

As those developments loomed, the Productivity Commission urged the government to “monitor social cohesion and integration trends” and take remedial action “if the proportion of the immigrant population not wishing to integrate rises”.

In reality, little was done by either side of politics – and Labor’s reliance on the Muslim vote made reform even more difficult.

Already in 1986, acting in the name of multiculturalism and mindful, according to a report in this paper, of “pressure from the growing local Muslim community”, Paul Keating was instrumental in blocking the deportation of Taj Din al-Hilali despite the latter’s viciously anti-Semitic statements. Subsequently acquiring citizenship, Hilali, one of the nation’s most senior Muslim clerics, unsurprisingly continued in the same vein, setting a trend that was subsequently copied in myriad mosques and prayer halls.

Keating’s decision as acting prime minister in Bob Hawke’s absence to grant permanent residency to Hilali in 1990 cemented a turning point. From this point the political die was cast and a policy whose risks were steadily materialising became untouchable.

Now it is time for it to be junked. Different cultures must be respectfully considered, not uncritically embraced. The illusion that diversity will bring unity, or even allow basic civility to survive, is as hollow as it is damaging.

Geoffrey Blainey put it well: “People need to feel they belong to their country.” As he said: “The multicultural policy and its emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority, gnaws at that sense of solidarity that many people crave.”

The Hawke government’s own FitzGerald report on immigration echoed these conclusions. Recommending that even the term multiculturalism be abandoned, it emphasised that “it is the Australian identity that matters most in Australia”. Unless the balance shifted from enshrining difference to promoting a unifying national identity, it was only a matter of time before the centrifugal forces that could tear Australia apart proved overwhelming.

The FitzGerald report shocked Hawke. He repudiated it and buried it in punishment for failing to provide his government with what it expected to hear. The news still may be unwanted. But this much is clearer than ever: closing our eyes and ears to multiculturalism’s failures is a luxury Australia can no longer afford.






Happy Australia Day!

In March 2022, Declan Cutler, a working-class 16-year-old, died after being stabbed over 50 times by a ‘gang of teenagers’ in a random attack in North Melbourne.

Hours after the incident, one of the attackers allegedly went home and searched the question, ‘Is hell guaranteed for a Muslim who commits murder?’
Earlier this year, Jason Langhans, 17, was killed when he tried to stop a fight between gatecrashers and partygoers at a get-together in the small coastal town of Tooradin.
The attacker, a 17-year-old Afghani who has not been named, moved to Australia as a refugee, drove a screwdriver 8cm into Jason’s brain. The judge noted that he had a ‘traumatic upbringing’, leaving Afghanistan for Pakistan, Indonesia, and then Australia by boat.

Earlier this month, hundreds of protesters gathered at the Sydney Opera House and called for the death of an entire race of people … the Jewish people.  Minister for Immigration Andrew Giles says that Australia’s multicultural diversity is ‘a source of national strength’.


But these increasingly common events, along with a changing conversation abroad, might give us pause to reflect.  Suella Braverman, Home Secretary for the United Kingdom, recently stood in front of a crowd last month and announced that ‘multiculturalism in Great Britain had failed’.  Her analysis of Britain’s handling of immigration and diversity was scathing, and perfectly reflected the way the debate around multiculturalism is changing.

‘Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.  ‘We are living with the consequence of that failure today. You can see it play out on the streets of cities all over Europe. From Malmo, to Paris, Brussels, to Leicester. It is 13 years since Merkel gave her speech, and I’m not sure that very much has changed since.’

Australia’s official policy of ‘Multiculturalism’ is celebrated in ministerial white papers and corporate boardrooms but its real-life consequences are starkly different.  In the streets of Melbourne’s CBD earlier this year, Sikh separatists attacked Hindu protesters with sticks while chanting ‘death to India’.  In Sydney, Hindu protesters were filmed allegedly menacing Muslim-run businesses in Harris Park, an area with a long history of ethnic-religious violence.  In Brisbane, during the Hong Kong independence protests at the University of Queensland, students were physically assaulted by a number of pro-Chinese students.  Fireworks and celebrations erupted in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba following the attack of Israel by Hamas.

The question has to be asked: How is the average Australian benefiting from this? And if we’re not benefiting, what are we doing to stop it?  Because as one British writer put it, the eruption of ethnic tensions in our cities doesn’t just reflect the complete failure of integration, it also reflects a complete repudiation of our systems, laws and way of life.  ‘When you watch people have so little respect for British values and British laws they gleefully saunter around Britain’s streets saluting atrocities committed by ISIS-style terrorists then you know multiculturalism is failing.’  This has happened, he says, ‘Because of mass immigration into Britain, because of the total failure of our politicians to integrate old and new immigrants into British society, and because of their determination to continue to import more culturally and religiously distinctive migrants and tribal grievances from abroad.’

It isn’t just Britain changing their tune on multiculturalism.  Last year, the Sweden Prime Minister announced: ‘Integration has been too poor at the same time as we have had a large immigration. Society has been too weak, resources for the police and social services have been too weak.’  More than Sweden, the other paragon of Scandinavian progressive pragmatism, Denmark, instituted an abrupt turnaround on its previously generous immigration program, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen citing a multi-decade failure of its newcomers to integrate.

And just weeks ago, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview that ‘it was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different cultures, religions, and concepts’.  ‘It creates a pressure group inside each country.’

Is it now time to admit that Australia also made a ‘grave mistake’? Do we have pressure groups inside our country, and if so, what are we going to do about it?  ‘I think we are starting to realise there’s a difference between being an Australian and living in Australia,’ wrote one person in a viral tweet, following the Opera House incident.

Australian politicians like to claim we’re the ‘most successful multicultural nation on Earth’, but how much longer can they ignore the fraying edges that has become increasingly evident this month?  Opposition leader Peter Dutton is talking tough on the issue, saying that anyone on a visa at the protests who was breaking the law ‘should be deported’. But what of the hundreds of thousands of new arrivals coming in next year? What of the gangs roaming our streets, killing unsuspecting teenagers? There is simply no plan to deal with these multicultural clashes – governments are just throwing a Hail Mary and hoping it doesn’t explode on their watch.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/is-multiculturalism-failing/

Quote:


We seem to have people from multiple cultures getting along in all the workplaces I have been in over the last 50 years and not just workplaces, sports, clubs anywhere really.

Maybe it snuck up on you when you were not watching.

Dnarever wrote on Jan 26^th, 2025 at 8:48pm:

You evidently have not read or understood the first few posts on his thread.
No surprise.

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZS6tWGTqJ/

Frank wrote on Jan 26^th, 2025 at 9:04pm:


I think that is the other way around, you think that 50 plus years of a stable mixing of cultures is destroyed by a couple of incidents that are about something different.

How many of us don't have friends who's original heritage is from any of 10 or 15 other countries. How many of us are not just as comfortable eating food that is Australian based - Italian, greek, Asian, Lebanese, english, french etc ? Not a second thought. You can have a beer with 5 guys who all have a family from a different country and you don't even notice.

Sorry but Multi culture in Australia is a done deal. It's over and done. The Australian guy I play golf withs father was German, the guy I sit next to on the train speaks Spanish, My Daughters swim coach was Polish. I worked with a Video machine tech for 10 years before I realised that the reason he didn't drink was because he was Muslim. They are all Australian, all nice people. They are us.

Dnarever wrote on Jan 26^th, 2025 at 10:55pm:



I am so glad I own my own place.

I feel so sorry for the young people of today.
Their country was ruined by incompetent politicians.

A 63-year-old man has been charged for allegedly taking lewd photos without consent at Bronte Beach on Sunday.

About 3.40pm on Australia Day, Kamal Arora was arrested at the scene following reports of inappropriate behaviour.

Police took Mr Arora to Waverly Police Station and charged him with three counts of intentionally record intimate image without consent.


He was also charged with three counts of behave in offensive manner in/near public place/school.

He was refused bail and is set to appear before Parramatta Local Court on Monday.