1995 Global Cultural Diversity Conference Proceedings, Sydney
The Evolution of the Policy of Multiculturalism in Australia 1968-95
Emeritus Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki AO CBE FASSA
Department of Sociology, Australian National University, Australia
Multiculturalism, a term transplanted to Australia from Canada in 1973 by the then Minister for Immigration, Al Grassby, is not a monolithic ideology and has ever since been subject to misunderstanding and confusion. Multiculturalism seen as an ideology puts premium on pluralism and diversity, the giving of respect to different values and cultures for the sake of enriching Australia. It is about the possibility of reconciling the need for the rule of law, for legitimate authority which in a political democracy is ultimately based on support and consent of the people, with the preservation of ethnic groupings. Multiculturalism is about management of ethnic diversity. Its concerns are with pluralism and equality.
The Evolution of Multiculturalism: Ideology and Policy
The origin of the ideas that later coalesced in the ideology and practice of multiculturalism in Australia had their point of origin several years before Al Grassby "discovered" multiculturalism during his official visit to Canada in early 1973. But in Canada the term multiculturalism designated no more than official programs of cultural maintenance unveiled by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in October 1971. The official policy was defined as "multiculturalism within a bilingual framework" in response to the deliberations of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 1963-69. In its fourth and final report the commission recommended that the cultural contribution of the "other" (i.e. other than the English- and French-speaking) groups be given special attention and support.
In Australia, however, the origin of what later became known as "multiculturalism" was at first linked with the issues of equity in the emerging critique of Australian society during the late sixties and early seventies. Many examples come to mind: Ronald Henderson's first poverty survey in Melbourne (1970); the surveys of immigrants conducted at the Research School of Social Sciences of the Australian National University and the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Australia; the publication of James Jupp's Arrivals and Departures. At the same time there were the first public manifestations of assertive self-confidence in a number of ethnic communities, Greeks, Italian and the Jews, where Walter Lippmann played a leading role.
All of these developments were closely monitored by two people whose work was destined to be of decisive importance in establishing a conceptual link between equity and cultural pluralism: Jean Isobel Martin (1923-79) and Peter Richard Haydon (1913-1971). In early 1966 Jean Martin was invited to take the Foundation Chair of Sociology at La Trobe University where much of her teaching and research work was concerned with the disadvantages experienced by migrants during and often well past the initial settlement period. Jean's work caught the attention of Sir Peter Haydon, secretary of the then Department of Immigration since November 1961.
Haydon's coming to Immigration meant a strong intellectual stimulus to the department. He was willing to question many of the assumptions governing selection and settlement policies that had been introduced during the early fifties. It was Haydon who in 1964, with the agreement of his Minister Hubert Opperman, drew up proposals for modification of the established policy which would allow non-Europeans with temporary residence permits to gain resident status after five years; and even more dramatic was the proposal for non-Europeans abroad to be able to apply for residence on the basis of their suitability as settlers and their possession of qualifications positively useful to Australia without any quota system. Although the acceptance of these proposals by Cabinet had to wait until 1966, the credit for what was the historic modification of the White Australia Policy must belong to Haydon.
Similarly Haydon was less than enamoured of the "numbers game" conception of immigration policy arguing against some of the interests which found it cheaper to maintain their operations on a labour-intensive rather than capital-intensive basis. He was acutely aware that by 1966 a third of Australia's manufacturing labour force (not to mention the construction and transport industries) were overseas-born and an increasing proportion of them were unskilled people from Greece, Turkey and Lebanon.
These considerations led Haydon to put in motion major studies designed to review existing selection and settlement policies. These included Professor Borrie's National Population Inquiry, studies into the educational handicap of migrant children trying simultaneously to master English and to keep up in school generally with Australian children, and a series of studies into social, cultural and economic consequences of immigration also under the sponsorship of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
In every one of these studies Jean Martin played a leading role and this was quickly recognized by Haydon. Her contribution continued after Haydon's death in 1971 and culminated in the 1976 report A Decade of Migrant Settlement (Australian Population and Immigration Council, Social Studies Committee, J.I. Martin, Chairman) and in the book The Migrant Presence (1978).
It was my good fortune to act as a point of contact between Jean Martin and Peter Haydon. Our conversations over a glass of sherry in Haydon's office extending well past the official business hours, ranged widely over a number of issues which Haydon, more than any single public servant of his generation, identified as challenges of the next decade of Australia's immigration experience. We talked about the plight of migrant children for whom no special provision was being made in Australian schools, about non-recognition of overseas professional and trade qualifications, about those unskilled migrants for whom no prospect of advancement was in store and, above all about the wisdom of persevering with the policies of assimilation which we had inherited from the early post-war days. The outcome of these talks was a request that Haydon put to me to write a wide-ranging review of these problem areas and to discuss alternative approaches to migrant settlement. I did this in a pamphlet entitled "The Questing Years" which, with Haydon's encouragement, was presented at the 1968 Citizenship Convention and which outlined the model of cultural pluralism that "stands for the retention of ethnic identity and continued participation of individual settlers in minority group activities". It implies, therefore, a rejection not only of the attempts to promote an amalgam of cultures but also of any assumptions of Anglo-Saxon superiority and the necessary conformity to English-oriented cultural patterns.
I need not have to tell you that my paper presented at this well-attended gathering of carefully selected members of various community groups, leading public servants from the Commonwealth and the States together with a sprinkling of politicians, fell like a lead balloon. But a beginning had been made and when, two years later, I joined Walter Lippmann as a second "ethnic" member of the then Immigration Advisory Council, pluralistic approaches to migrant settlement were already being ventilated.
The major breakthrough came in 1972 in the Progress Report of the Inquiry into the Departure of Settlers from Australia conducted by the Committee on Social Patterns of the Immigration Advisory Council (J. Zubrzycki, Chairman). The report identified a number of factors which influenced departure of settlers such as the cost of living, inadequate housing for new arrivals, non-recognition of overseas qualifications, the lack of knowledge of English and the absence of the social welfare benefit which would be geared to the needs of settlement. The negative factors, the report concluded, should be countermanded by the readiness to accept settlers by the Australian community.
This acceptance is partly dependent upon a clearer understanding of the role of ethnic groups and their positive contribution to the integration of migrants coming to Australia with many and diverse social, cultural and religious backgrounds.
Ethnic groups often provide people with a sense of belonging which can make them better able to cope with a new society and be more willing to remain than they would be as isolated individuals. Ethnic loyalties, however, need not, and usually do not, detract from wider loyalties to community and country. We therefore believe that migrants should be encouraged as individuals and, if they wish, as groups to preserve and develop their culture, their languages, traditions and arts, so that these can become living elements in the diverse nature of Australian society.
The same general conclusions were repeated in the Final Report of the Inquiry tabled in Parliament in 1973. At about the same time Jean Martin gave her much publicized Meredith Lecture "Migrants: Equality and Ideology" followed in mid-1973 by Al Grassby's address in Melbourne "A Multi-Cultural Society for the Future". Thus multiculturalism was finally unveiled as an umbrella term denoting a set of programs principally concerned with social and economic disadvantages suffered by immigrants. However what was lacking in these pronouncements was a coherent philosophical basis for the management of ethnic diversity.
The first attempt to put together such a philosophical basis was made in the report of the Committee on Community Relations chaired by Walter Lippmann (1975). Two years later came the first formal definition of multiculturalism and its policy guidelines (social cohesion, equality of opportunity, cultural identity) in the report of the Australian Ethnic Affairs Council (AEAC) titled "Australia as a Multicultural Society" (J. Zubrzycki, Chairman). The report became the foundation of two further reports, the first of which was jointly written by the chairmen of the two advisory councils in the Immigration Portfolio: the Australian Population and Immigration Council (APIC, chairman W. D. Borrie) and the AEAC (chairman, J. Zubrzycki). The preamble to the joint APIC/AEAC report stressed the basic political requirement for multiculturalism as an important national policy:
The Councils express a conviction that development of multiculturalism should take place within the framework of existing democratic parliamentary institutions and with due regard to social and political rights and obligations. The statement recognizes that multiculturalism is dynamic, and will inevitably lead to new social patterns and administrative structures and practices. Such innovations need not require the loss of features that are traditional and valued in Australia, nor are they likely to do so. While there is much scope in multiculturalism for fresh and rewarding approaches to social organization, changes should take place in a way that will support and strengthen the democratic system of government ("Multiculturalism and Its Implications for Immigration Policy", 1979).
The second report was presented as a discussion paper on behalf of the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs (ACPEA), an amalgam of APIC and AEAC. The Ethnic Affairs Task Force of ACPEA (J. Zubrzycki, chairman) conducted extensive public consultations and in 1982 presented the report titled "Multiculturalism for All Australians: Our Developing Nationhood" (tabled in Parliament, September 1982).
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