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Media

National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia

Issues

The challenge of maintaining harmonious community relations in a multicultural Australia has many dimensions, but there are four main areas of concern:

  • The concept of multiculturalism itself is poorly understood. As a domestic public policy - concerned exclusively with relations between existing Australians - it is often confused, by both the Australian and overseas born, with the totally separate policy of immigration.

    Consequently, those Australians who wish to see a reduction in the rate of immigration tend to be hostile to what they believe to be multiculturalism.

    Yet surveys indicate that there is widespread support for the specific goals and measures which are the basis of the Government's multicultural policies e.g. 89% of Australians now recognise that government and community organisations need to take more account of the diversity of the population, and the same percentage believe that all Australians should have the chance to learn English and another language.

    The message is clear. There is a need to communicate more effectively the actual meaning and content of multicultural policies.

  • At the centre of the ambivalence which Australians feel towards multiculturalism is the fear of separateness and division. While 95% of people believe multiculturalism is a fact of Australian life, and 77% regard the policy as necessary if people from different backgrounds are to live together in harmony, there remains concern that multicultural policies should not promote 'ethnic ghettos'.

    For example, whereas only 24% agree that Australia would be better off if ethnic groups kept their own way of life, 91% believe that all Australians should be able to maintain and share their individual cultural heritage. in other words, there is overwhelming support for the maintenance of cultural traditions providing they are shared with the rest of the community and that they become part of Australian life.

  • If this sharing process is to occur, Australia's cultural diversity needs to be reflected in the mass media and cultural institutions. In mirroring and shaping our cultural and social reality the media, for example, have a significant responsibility for the state of community relations and the degree to which we value the cultural traditions of different communities.

    The image of Australia portrayed on commercial television, for example, is overwhelmingly one of cultural homogeneity, coloured by occasionally engaging but nonetheless simplistic stereotypes.

    The effect can be to devalue the self-esteem of huge segments of the population, and to alienate them from the mainstream of Australian life.

    It also leaves the bulk of the population unacquainted, unfamiliar, uncomprehending and ultimately uneasy about the contrasting reality they experience in their daily lives.

    The same effects are produced when other media and our cultural institutions - museums, galleries and libraries, for example fail to express the diverse totality of the Australian experience.

  • Finally, it is important to recognise that the community relations issue is not simply a problem between mainstream Australia and its cultural minorities. There is quite properly concern about relations between and within ethnic groups themselves - and a concern that can be heightened by sensationalist reporting of the views of unrepresentative extremists.

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