Access and Equity Annual Report 2000

1995 Global Cultural Diversity Conference Proceedings, Sydney

Criticisms of Multiculturalism

Foster & Stockley and Matheson

Foster and Stockley in Australian Multiculturalism, 1988, complain that multiculturalism has, in a number of institutions, had virtually no effect on the attitudes and practices of the dominant group in Australian society. They say at p. 243,

"To illustrate, language assistance via bilingual personnel and materials is available in courts, hospitals and in particular employment settings or educational programs. By the same token, however, this kind of assistance does not extend to everyday contact with the police, the local doctor, school or in the workplace. Multiculturalism has had undoubted benefits in situations of crisis (admission to hospitals, court proceedings, placement in ESL classes in language centres for new arrivals) but it has had much less impact when it comes to individuals negotiating such social exchanges as workers' compensation, signing hire purchase contracts or, parent-teacher interviews".

Of course it is true that everyday contact situations such as the police, school, law and medicine will show up shortcomings. But does anyone expect apocalyptic change? More relevant is the fact that there have been changes for the good in these areas though the pace has been too slow. Police training, for example, is much improved in this regard and police forces have put in place some valuable new programs, following a number of nationwide conferences.

The authors cite the media as an illustration and say that SBS has been marginalised and has a small audience. There are two matters to consider here. The first is that SBS is still seen as a remarkable service and is so described by envious overseas commentators. As to its low ratings, the then head of SBS Brian Johns commented at a conference in 1991 at Melbourne University:

"The single most galling thing is to hear repeatedly how small the SBS audience is. It does not matter how many times we point out that reception problems mean that we have less than 60% of the potential audience there is in Sydney and Melbourne, or that McNairÿAnderson surveys are well known to underestimate the number of our viewers. We are still hit with jibes that SBS only has one part of the audience, and they are Carlton and Balmain trendies.

So please bear with me while I provide some results from two recent Newspoll surveys. According to these polls, some 2.4 million people, one in three people living in our television service areas watch SBS at some stage during the week; and 14% of those polled began watching SBS in the previous 16 months. Nor did the survey support the idea that SBS is perceived as elitist. As the media publication Communication Update pointed out in its August issue:

Only a tiny minority (6%) agreed that SBS was 'for people with a better education than me'; less than one quarter (22%) agreed that 'SBS is mainly for people who like culture and the arts'. Slightly more (30%) agreed that is 'mainly for people from other countries'.

Any of Melbourne's three new Sunday newspapers would dearly love to have such figures.

Another, perhaps more constructive line of criticism, comes from Alan Matheson, a longtime supporter of multiculturalism, who says, "The focus on "cultural diversity", with its concern for "under-standing and tolerance", is a diversion. It is a focus which refuses to come to terms with public policy, with the issues of justice and equity, and with the role of the state in the politics of resource allocation. But the agenda definition and explanation should herald the end of an era. This takes the debates of the past two decades and sets the parameters for the future. Multiculturalism in the 1990s is about policies and politics. It is about responding, about programs, about action, about resources. It is about a rejection of "ethnic equalling multiculturalism".

There is some force in an argument that without resources and programs, and no political push, the multicultural policies and objectives in the National Agenda will not be achieved. But an aggressive campaign to increase intervention or to press for widespread affirmative action programs may undermine the progress already made. Such programs are in any event contrary to the spirit of the National Agenda. A majority of the public remains somewhat sceptical of the term multiculturalism and of that portion of the policies which involve separate ethnic organisations. As time goes on, there will be less scepticism. This is not to say that there should not be special attention given, for example, to chronic unemployment and associated disabilities in, say, the Vietnamese community, but it is doubtful whether an aggressive agenda of the kind which Matheson has in mind would succeed in securing the broad support necessary for ultimate success.

Matheson is justified in criticising the slow pace with which many of the policies of the National Agenda have been implemented. This is especially true of those relating to access and equity.

Professor Zubrzycki

Another source of criticism of the current scene from proponents of multiculturalism comes from ProfessorÿGeorge Zubrzycki. (see for example the interview recorded in The Age of 19th March 1994 and, more recently, The Australian on 8th April 1995). He has raised several concerns. The first relates to demonstrations such as those relating to Macedonia which have been staged with the special intervention of politicians. There is some weight in this concern but the effects of these events should not be over-emphasised. There will always be demonstrations in a democratic Australia over events overseas and that would be so whether we have a policy of assimilation or a policy of multiculturalism. The critical question is not whether demonstrations occur but what they lead on to, in particular, whether they are driven by an agenda that is clearly contrary to Australia's interests, and whether they lead to violence and whether they are a breach of the principles of the National Agenda.

The second concern expressed by Professor Zubrzycki is that relating to grants to ethnic organisations.

Professor Zubrzycki said that whilst governments must continue to provide affirmative action grants to immigrant groups who are in their first stage of settlement in Australia, mainly refugees who may have suffered torture or come from war-torn countries, they should be careful about how long affirmative action grants should be maintained with long-established groups. He said:

"We should be very careful about when it should stop. By maintaining it indefinitely and promoting it on a large scale I think we are doing harm. We are doing harm by allowing politicians to use this system for their own electoral advantage and by promoting fragmentation."

If Professor Zubrzycki is referring to grants for FECCA or Ethnic Community Councils which are essentially advocacy groups, one can understand the concern, at any rate so far as it relates to the way politicians seek to use such grants. Even so, this is a very small part of the funding involvement, almost all of which goes to welfare and like service organisations. If he is referring to ethnic organisations supplying a service in the same way as so many voluntary agencies do in the Australian community, the criticism is too widely cast. It would mean that a Polish or Italian community group could not seek funding to do that which a Catholic or Uniting Church group is funded to do, such as, for example conducting a nursing home for its elderly citizens. The reference to affirmative action is in any event misplaced for, as already discussed, it is not affirmative action to be funded to provide a service which the client would be able to seek from a mainstream agency.

It appears that Professor Zubrzycki's real objection is to the way in which government or more particularly politicians may use grants to advance their own political ends. But that is not peculiar to ethnic welfare organisations. In any event, on the whole such welfare organisations have not been active in a party political sense. They have not, for example, endorsed or publicly supported parties at election time.

The third concern expressed by Professor Zubrzycki relates to the continuing use of the word multiculturalism which he describes, in The Australian of 8th April 1995, as clumsy and pompous. Whilst the word multicultural was needed, the noun multiculturalism, he says, has outlived its purpose. It is not really a criticism of multiculturalism as a philosophy for managing diversity or as a set of policies to seek to use a different descriptive label for such policies. Labels are very important in creating perceptions. The view has considerable force and it is one which I share. That is not to say that one should abandon the use of the word overnight, much less discard the policies which are in place. Rather I have the view that as the core principles of multiculturalism are more and more accepted, there will be less need to use the word. The ideal to work for is that cultural diversity will be so much accepted and so much part of the fabric of Australian society that it will be unnecessary to use the word multiculturalism other than in describing its historical development and role.

For similar reasons I expressed the hope some years ago that by the end of the decade both the word multiculturalism and the word ethnic will be largely unnecessary.

Critics Concerned about Loss of Identity

The last area of criticism relates to that significant portion of the Australian community which is supportive of the particular objectives of the philosophy of multiculturalism but is generally uneasy about a sense of loss of national identity and purpose. The concern here is that multiculturalism emphasises rights rather than obligations and presents a real risk of diversity without unity.

This fear was certainly justified in relation to some of the early rhetoric of multiculturalism. It is markedly less so since the National Agenda settled the basic principles in language which is moderate and which has attracted considerable acceptance. Nonetheless, there is a continual challenge here which must be addressed if the policies and principles on the National Agenda are to be so generally normalised and accepted as to eventually merge into the fabric of Australian life.

The challenge is to continue to find the shared values in our cultural diversity. It is not an easy task, for there is a natural tendency to observe the differences rather than the common values. Moreover, there will need to be preparedness to recognise that there are features of the cultural baggage which newcomers bring with them that violate human rights or are otherwise unacceptable. The challenge is not one peculiar to Australia but has an international dimension. This was illustrated recently when the President of the Czech Republic, Havel, on a visit to Australia, spoke of a multicultural civilisation of the world which would find the shared spiritual values of all cultures. This would be a powerful weapon he said in preventing the return of totalitarianism.

One further point on this matter of national identity in Australia: it would be fallacious, as some do, to speak as though there was a long settled sense of national identity which has been displaced by multiculturalism or similar philosophies which recognise the continuing diversity of our cultures. The history of Australia does not, except perhaps for short periods, demonstrate any such clear national identity.

Moreover, it is fallacious to see the new cultures of our migrants as being responsible for the erosion of a traditional Australian culture. Far and away the most destructive factor has been the materialist junk culture imported from the U.S.A., largely through films and television.

Finally, whilst there needs to be recognition of our continuing cultural diversity, there needs also to be acceptance that there is a core culture which, though open to modification, nonetheless occupies a central place, or, put in another way, forms a very large part of the river into which all cultures flow. This traditional Australian life is invariably described with the imagery of the outback and bronzed drovers squinting across brown lands to a distant sunset. It is an imagery which has less and less impact on urban dwellers, especially newcomers from densely populated centres in Asia. But there is in fact much in the outback story that could provide a bridge inviting these newcomers to be part of this continuing story. For the outback illustrates the common values of innovativeness, of pioneering and adjustment to change, of family solidarity and of persistence and endeavour. All these are values that are at the heart of the immigrant ethos. It needs those with the gift of imagery to bring these common values to life.

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