Multiculturalism in Australia

Multiculturalism in Australia has a special cultural status.

Many similar policies were put in place, for example the formation of the Special Broadcasting Service.^[1] While the White Australia Policy was quietly dismantled after World War II by various changes to immigration policy, the full political introduction of official policies of multiculturalism was not until 1972.

Facts

The top ten religions in Australia account for less than 63% of the population.^[2]

According to the census more than one fifth of the population were born overseas.^[2] Furthermore, almost 50% of the population were either:

• born overseas; or
• had one or both parents born overseas.^[2]

In terms of net migration per capita, Australia is ranked 18th (2008 Data) ahead of Canada, the USA and most of Europe.^[3]

Social importance of immigration

The overall level of immigration to Australia has grown during the last decades. Net overseas immagrants increased from 30,000 in 1993^[4] to 118,000 in 2003-04.^[5] During the 2004-05, total 123,424 people immigrated to Australia.

Of them, 17,736 were from [[Africa], 54,804 from Asia, 21,131 from Oceania, 18,220 from United Kingdom, 1,506 from South America, and 2,369 from Eastern Europe. 131,000 people migrated to Australia in 2005-06^[6] and migration target for 2006-07 was 144,000.^[7]

In 2008-09 about 300,000 new migrants are expected to arrive in Australia, the highest number since World War II.^[8]

File:Thai Food Festival-Canberra 2009-04-19.JJPG

Thai Food Festival held at Wat Dhammadharo, Canberra, 2009-04-19

National Multicultural Festival

The national Capital city, Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, has developed a tradition of the National Multicultural Festival, held over a week in February.^[9] Additionally, Canberra has numerous other inter-cultural events, such as the Thai Food Festival held at Wat Dhammadharo,^[10] Canberra's Thai temple, on 2009-04-19.

Cultural identity of migrants

The meaning of multiculturalism has changed enormously since its formal introduction to Australia. Originally it was understood by the mainstream population as a need for acceptance that many members of the Australian community originally came from different cultures and still had ties to it.^[11] However, it came to mean the rights of migrants within mainstream Australia to express their cultural identity. It is now often used to refer to the fact that very many people in Australia have, and recognise, multiple cultural or ethnic backgrounds. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs in Australia estimated that, in 2005, 25% of the Australian workforce was born outside of Australia and 40% had at least one parent born outside of Australia.

Following the initial moves of the Whitlam Labor government in 1973, further official national multicultural policies were implemented by Malcom Fraser's Liberal Government in 1978.^[12] The Labor Government of Bob Hawke continued with these policies during the 1980s and early 1990s, and were further supported by Paul Keating up to his electoral defeat 1996. CALD (or Culturally and Linguistually Diverse) policies continue to be implemented at all levels of government and public service, such as medical support systems which cater specifically to non-English speaking residents.^[13]

Role of indigenous people

Prior to settlement by Europeans, the Australian continent was not a single nation, but hosted many different Aboriginal cultures and between 200 and 400 active languages at any one time.^{[citation needed]} According to the 2006 census some 150 indigenous languages are still spoken. The present nation of Australia resulted from a process of immigration intended to fill the continent (also excluding potential rivals to the British Empire). The continent was regarded as essentially empty. Settlers from the United Kingdom, after 1800 including Ireland, were the earliest people that were not native to the continent to live in Australia. Dutch colonisation (see New Holland) and possible visits to Australia by explorers and/or traders from China, did not lead to permanent settlement. Until 1901, Australia existed as a group of independent British settler colonies.^{[citation needed]}

The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 was the first act of Australian Federal parliament, also known informally as the White Australia policy. This is the term used for the policy of restricted non-European immigration to Australia from 1901 to 1973. Such a policy limited the ethnic and cultural diversity of the immigrant population, and in theory facilitated the cultural assimilation of the immigrants, since they would come from related ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Taken from a historical perspective, however, this was not a matter of cultural diversity or otherwise, but an attempt to preserve the British ethno-cultural identity of the Australian nation. It was official policy for much of the 20th century to promote European immigration and to keep out those who did not fit the European, predominately Anglo-Celtic, character of Australian society. As the Twentieth century progressed and the number of migrants from the United Kingdom became insufficient to meet planned quotas, immigrants came increasingly from other parts of Europe, such as Italy, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, and the former Yugoslavia.^{[citation needed]}

Criticisms

Main article: Criticism of multiculturalism

Howard government

The election of John Howard's Liberal-National Coalition government in 1996 was a major watershed for Australian multiculturalism. Howard had long been a critic of multiculturalism, releasing his One Australia policy in the late 1980s which called for a reduction in Asian immigration - a policy he later retracted, citing his then position as wrong. Shortly after the new government took office, the new independent member Pauline Hanson made her maiden speech in which she was highly critical of multiculturalism, saying that a multicultural society could never be strong. Notably, despite many calls for Howard to censure Hanson, his response was to state that her speech indicated a new freedom of expression in Australia on such issues. Rather than official multiculturalism, Howard advocated instead the idea of a "shared national identity", albeit one strongly grounded in certain recognisably Anglo-Celtic Australian themes, such as "mateship" and a "fair go". While Howard changed the name of the Department of Immigration, Multiculturalism and Indigenous Affairs to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the policy of multiculturalism has remained intact, with the Howard Government introducing expanded dual-citizenship rights at the turn of the Century.

A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services was a publication of the Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau designed to offer guidance to police and emergency services personnel on how religious affiliation can affect their contact with the public. The first edition was published in 1999.^[14][15][16] The first edition covered Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish and Sikh faiths with participation of representatives of the various religions.^[17] The second edition added Christian, Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander religions and the Bahá'í Faith to the list of religions was published in 2002.^[18]

Intellectual critique

One of the earliest critics of multiculturalism in Australia was historian Geoffrey Blainey, who wrote that multiculturalism threatened to transform Australia into a "cluster of tribes". In his 1984 book All for Australia, Blainey criticized multiculturalism for tending to "emphasize the rights of ethnic minorities at the expense of the majority of Australians" and also for tending to be "anti-British", even though "people from the United Kingdom and Ireland form the dominant class of pre-war immigrants and the largest single group of post-war immigrants." According to Blainey, such a policy, with its "emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority," was unnecessarily creating division and threatened national cohesion. He argued that "the evidence is clear that many multicultural societies have failed and that the human cost of the failure has been high", and warned that "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."^[19]

Blainey remained a persistent critic of multiculturalism into the 1990s, denouncing multiculturalism as "morally, intellectually and economically ... a sham" " Historian John Hirst is another intellectual critic of multiculturalism.^[20] He argued that while multiculturalism might serve the needs of ethnic politics and the demands of certain ethnic groups for government money to be used solely for the promotion of their separate ethnic identity, it is a perilous concept on which to found policy.^[21] Hirst identified contradictory statements by political leaders that suggested the word was a nonsense concept. These included the policies of Prime Minister Hawke, a multiculturalist while at the same time promoting a citizenship campaign and stressing the common elements of our culture,^[22] and anti-multiculturalism statements by Prime Minister Howard, who arose the ire of multiculturalists who thought that he was suggesting closing down Italian restaurants and prohibiting the speaking of the Italian language when he proposed no such thing.^[23]

Critics associated with the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University have argued that both Right and Left factions in the Australian Labor Party have adopted a multicultural stance for the purposes of increasing their support within the party.^[24] A manifestation of this embrace of multiculturalism has been the creation of ethnic branches within the Labor Party and ethnic branch stacking.^[25]

Following the upsurge of support for the One Nation Party in 1996, Lebanese-born Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage published a critique in 1997 of Australian multiculturalism in the book White Nation.^[26] Drawing on theoretical frameworks from Whiteness studies, Jacques Lacan and Pierre Bourdieu, Hage examined a range of everyday discourses that implicated both anti-multiculturalists and pro-multiculturalists alike.^{[citation needed]}

More recent critics of multiculturalism such as Greg Clancy^[27] argue that multiculturalism has resulted in political corruption, increased corruption and a destroyed social order.^[28]

See also

• Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)
• 2005 Cronulla riots

References

1. ^ Molloy, Bruce (1993). "Changing Cultural Channels: SBS-TV, Imparja and Australian Television". Communication Institute for Online Scholarship. http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/003/3/00334.HTML. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/research/_pdf/poa-2008.pdf
3. ^ http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/imm_net_mig_rat-immigration-net-migration-rate#definition
4. ^ Australian Bureau of Statistics, International migration
5. ^ Australian Bureau of Statistics, 3101.0 Australian Demographic Statistics
6. ^ Settler numbers on the rise^{[dead link]}
7. ^ Australian Immigration Fact Sheet 20. Migration Program Planning Levels
8. ^ Iggulden, Tom (11/06/2008). "Immigration intake to rise to 300,000". Lateline (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2272014.htm. 
9. ^ National Multicultural Festival, accessed 2009-04-19
10. ^ Wat Dhammadharo, accessed 2009-04-19
11. ^ Lyle Allan (1983), 'A Selective Annotated Bibliography of Multiculturalism', in Social Alternatives (University of Queensland), Vol.3, No.3, July, page 65.
12. ^ Mark Lopez (2000),The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945-1975, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Victoria (ISBN 0 52284895 8)
13. ^ "Information for non-English speakers". NPS Medicines Talk. June 2010. http://www.nps.org.au/consumers/publications/medicines_talk/medicinestalk_no._34_winter_2010/information_for_non-english_speakers. Retrieved 3 November 2010. 
14. ^ "Document Details". Abstract Database. US National Criminal Justice Reference Service. http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abstractdb/AbstractDBDetails.aspx?id=183016. Retrieved 28 April 2010. 
15. ^ Dunn, Andy (June 2000). "Two-Way Tolerance". Police Journal Online (The Police Association of South Australia) 81 (06). http://www.policejournalsa.org.au/0006/17a.html. Retrieved 27 April 2010. 
16. ^ Chilana, Rajwant Singh (2005). International bibliography of Sikh studies. Springer. p. 444. ISBN 9781402030437. http://books.google.com/books?id=wEX-98eVyBcC&lpg=PA444&pg=PA444#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
17. ^ A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police (1st ed.). National Police Ethnic Advisory Bureau. 1999. Archived from the original on 16 March 2003. http://web.archive.org/web/20030316104007/http://www.apmab.gov.au/guide/religious/religious.pdf. 
18. ^ A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police (2nd ed.). Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau. 2002. Archived from the original on 19 June 2005. http://web.archive.org/web/20050619070219/http://www.apmab.gov.au/guide/religious2/religious_guide.pdf. 
19. ^ Blainey, G. (1984). All For Australia, North Ryde, NSW: Methuen Haynes (ISBN 0-454-00828-7)
20. ^ John Hirst, Sense and Nonsense in Australian History, Black Inc. Agenda, Melbourne (ISBN 9780977594931)
21. ^ Ibid, page 22
22. ^ Ibid, page 23
23. ^ Ibid, page 22
24. ^ Ernest Healy (1993), 'Ethnic ALP Branches - The Balkanisation of Labor,' in People and Place Vol.1, No.4, Pages 37-43
25. ^ Ibid, p.37
26. ^ "Hage, G. (1997) White Nation: Fantasies of White supremacy in a multicultural society, Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press (ISBN 1-86403-056-9)"
27. ^ Greg Clancy (2006), The Conspiracies of Multiculturalism. The Betrayal that Divided Australia, Sunda Publications, Gordon, New South Wales. ISBN 0 9581564 1 7
28. ^ Ibid, Ch. 11

Further reading

• Allan, Lyle (1983), 'A Selective Annotated Bibliography of Multiculturalism', in Social Alternatives (University of Queensland), Vol.3, No.3, July, pages 65–72.
• Blainey, Geoffrey (1984), All For Australia, Methuen Haynes, North Ryde, New South Wales. ISBN 0-454-00828-7
• Bostock, William W. (1977), Alternatives of Ethnicity, Cat and Fiddle Press, Hobart, Tasmania. ISBN 0 85853 030 9
• Clancy, Greg (2006), The Conspiracies of Multiculturalism. The Betrayal That Divided Australia, Sunda Publications, Gordon, New South Wales. ISBN 0 9581564 1 7
• Hirst, John (2005), Sense and Nonsense in Australian History, Black Inc. Agenda, Melbourne, Victoria. ISBN 9780977594931
• Lopez, Mark (2000), The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945-1975, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Victoria. ISBN 0 52284895 8
• Sestito, Raymond (1982), The Politics of Multiculturalism, Centre for Independent Studies, St Leonards, New South Wales. ISBN 0 949769 06 1
• Theophanous, Andrew C. (1995), Understanding Multiculturalism and Australian Identity, Elikia Books, Carlton South, Victoria. ISBN 1 875335 04 8