1995 Global Cultural Diversity Conference Proceedings, Sydney

Multiculturalism and Australian Identity

Senator Jim Short
Shadow Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs and Assisting the Leader on Multicultural Affairs, Australia

Before getting into the subject matter of my remarks, let me say how much I regret that the Australian Government has chosen to play domestic party politics in its choice of Australian-speaking participants at this important conference attended by so many distinguished visitors from overseas. Even before the recent defeat of the Coalition State Government in NSW I was one of, I think, only three non-Labour politicians invited to participate in the deliberations of the conference in a speaking or chairing capacity.

Now I think I may be the only one. That contrasts with a minimum of 15 such appearances by Labour Party politicians or ex-politicians. It is ironic, and sad, that this has occurred with a conference that is billed as the Australian Government's centrepiece contribution to the UN International Year of Tolerance, a word that, in Australian idiom, is roughly translated as a fair and equal go for all.

The irony becomes even greater when I remind you that it was a non-Labour Government, the Coalition Government of 1975,1983, that introduced most of the post-arrival, or settlement programs that still today underpin Australia's multicultural policies, programs, that have made the actual operation of Australia's cultural diversity the envy of most other nations.

Such partisan actions by government run the considerable risk of causing a backlash in the Australian community against the very cultural diversity within the framework of a cohesive, unified Australia, that the existing government professes to espouse and which has always been at the heart of the policies of the Liberal Party.

This conference is being held at a time which many Australians feel is one of uncertainty and confusion about where Australia is heading as a nation.

Many commentators take this one step further and assert that Australia has a national identity crisis, and that somehow that is the result of what is called multiculturalism, which in turn they equate with what we call cultural diversity. Many Australians feel this means a loss of what they have seen traditionally as a recognisable Australian identity. For example, in his last public speech that great Australian the late Sir Paul Hasluck said, "Personally, I can scarcely recognise in Australia today the characteristics which I thought were native to Australia in 1950".

I want to test some of these assertions today and put forward a couple of my own. To do so we need to define some of the terms we use, in particular "multiculturalism", "cultural diversity", and "national identity".

This is a very sensitive area of public policy. It rouses the passions, and widely- differing views. I think part of the reason for this is that these terms mean different things to different people. Some people don't think that matters. I do, because discussions on these matters frequently get derailed through the participants being on different definitional trains.

No more so is this the case than with the word multiculturalism. Professor John Hirst has talked about soft multiculturalism and hard multiculturalism. By "soft" multiculturalism he means a word descriptive of the attitudes long displayed in Australia towards migrants, tolerance, and a satisfaction and acceptance in seeing migrants participate fully in Australian life. By "hard" multiculturalism he means a view which insists there are grave shortcomings in Australian society which can only be corrected by government support for migrant cultures.

Former NSW Premier Nick Greiner defines multiculturalism as "the capacity to accept difference, to tolerate difference and uncertainty."

I note also the view of the distinguished scholar John Gray in his Latham Memorial Lecture that "multiculturalism is in truth the negation of cultural diversity .... because it .... aims to embalm the dead or dying vestiges of overwhelmed or occluded traditions and preserve their remains as public spectacles."

Depending on which of these descriptions of multiculturalism you choose, your attitude towards the concept will be very different indeed. And to confuse the issue even more, no less a person that Professor Zubrzycki, arguably the father of multiculturalism in Australia, has told us the word "multiculturalism" has passed its use-by date.

Similarly, confusion can exist with the term "cultural diversity". It is becoming increasingly common to equate, almost automatically, "cultural diversity" with "ethnic diversity". The Australian Minister for Ethnic Affairs did so consciously, publicly, at a function I attended just the other evening. He is by no means alone in so doing. But again, of course, there can be a world of difference between the two, depending on your definition.

And so too does the term "national identity" provoke differing interpretations. Indeed, is there such a thing as national identity, or are we so different in so many ways that the concept is meaningless? I guess we would all have different views, some widely different, on what goes to make up our national identity. The noted Australian author, David Malouf, for example, believes "we should for a time suspend the attempt to define our Australianness in terms of qualities or national characteristics, which are notoriously difficult to identify....and try describing it instead in terms of experience: that part of our experience that as Australians we hold in common.", that it is community of experience that holds us together. That "we are capable of living with multiple and contradictory views, which does not limit our capacity to speak of our experiences as communal and shared."

I mention these different views because we can all too easily assume that we are all on the same wavelength on concepts such as this when in fact not always is this the case by any means.

Having said that, I would like now to put forward how I interpret and understand these terms and concepts. Let me start with "national identity".

I think there are certain characteristics about Australia, and certain institutions which, taken together, do enable us to discern an Australianness, an identity if you like, that distinguishes Australia as a nation and its inhabitants as Australians, despite our different backgrounds, including ethnic racial or religious backgrounds, different tastes and beliefs. It is the combination, the mix, that is the distinguishing feature, rather than the existence of any of the particular components of the mix.

The elements I would identify include:

• an egalitarianism, with no discernible class structure;
• an essentially non-discriminatory attitude towards one another so far as racial, ethnic, national or religious differences are concerned;
• a strong belief in fair play and a fair go;
• a basic friendliness and outward-goingness (not to be confused with extroversion, which is not a characteristic.)
• tolerance;
• a dislike of pretence and arrogance;
• a healthy scepticism of authority;
• a self-deprecating sense of humour;
• despite our appearance of political apathy, a strong belief in liberal democratic political traditions (ours is, after all, one of the longest unbroken democratically elected parliaments in the world.);
• a basic stability and security in our major institutions;
• a concern for a total quality of life rather than measuring standard of living solely in material terms.

We often forget that the Australia of 100 years ago was a world leader in several important respects. Australians then enjoyed the highest material living standards in the world. We had adult suffrage. Our concept of democratic governance and the elected parliamentary process was already deeply ingrained.

It is because of this commonality of underpinning, characteristics that virtually all Australians exhibit, whatever their racial, ethnic or other backgrounds may be, that we are able to sustain the extraordinary degree of cultural diversity we enjoy.

Some of these characteristics have endured throughout our history. Others have developed over time. Some of this has occurred as a result of a natural evolution. Nothing remains static and totally unchanged in life. Some of the development has been the inevitable result of successive waves of immigrants throughout our history, including in particular the last 50 years.

We have seen an inevitable, and very beneficial, interaction between newcomers to Australia and the more established Australians. The newcomers have impacted on the Australia they have joined, whilst they have in turn been influenced by those existing Australians with their institutions, values, and practices.

John F. Kennedy, in his book A Nation of Immigrants, said "The interaction of disparate cultures, the vehemence of the ideals that lead the immigrants here, the opportunity offered by a new life, all gave America a flavour and a character that made it unmistakable. There is no part of our nation that has not been touched by our immigrant background. Each wave of immigrants has left its own distinctive contribution to the building of the nation and the evolution of American life." I think Kennedy's words have real relevance to Australia.

The bottom line of this interaction and reaction is the progressive development of a way of life, a set of values, and an institutional base that are uniquely Australian. They are not static. They will continue to change, to develop, to evolve, to be shaped, as circumstances change, as time goes by, as the new communities become older established communities, as still newer communities emerge.

This is the essence of cultural diversity in the fullest meaning of the term. Cultural diversity goes beyond ethnic diversity, important though the latter is. The overall culture of any nation, or community, is shaped by more than its ethnic composition. Other factors play profound roles too. I refer in particular to the enormous changes in family structures, in the role of women in society and, in particular, in the workplace in the nature of work and job security, in attitudes towards sexuality and the stability of marriage, to name just a few of the more obvious.

Over the past 20 to 30 years these factors arguably have had a more significant impact on the nature and character of Australia than has the immigrant intake, important though that intake undoubtedly has been.

These are the main reasons the noted Australian social researcher Hugh McKay, has identified what he calls our existing Age of Anxiety. McKay adds another factor, and that is multiculturalism. As he correctly says, Australia has always been a multiracial nation, and Australians have seen and understood Australia as multiracial. The term "multicultural Australia" has developed only in the last 20 years or so, even though governments in the 1950s and 1960s pursued many policies which in today's terminology unquestionably would be considered to be multicultural policies.

McKay says many Australians have difficulty in coming to grips with multiculturalism. They are confused about what it actually means. They are concerned that it will lead to the loss of values, institutions, processes that are the pillars on which their lives are built. The heading of an article contributed recently to one of our newspapers summed up this concern succinctly. The article was entitled "Feeling Strange in a Familiar Land".

If we do not understand such feelings and address them squarely, we risk a backlash against further immigration, which could have profound and damaging long-term consequences.

The overwhelming majority of new Australians who chose to come here to live did so because they felt that Australia would allow them the opportunity to be free, to fulfil their potential as individuals, as families, as members of society, devoid of the oppression, prejudice, bigotry, constraints, lack of opportunity and hope that beset many of their home countries and that caused them to take the huge step of uprooting themselves and moving to a new life on the other side of the world.

These people want an Australia that glories in the freedom and diversity it affords its residents, but which at the same time respects the core values and the basic institutions that attracted them to Australia in the first place.

We must ensure that the practice of multiculturalism in Australia is directed to the pursuit of the maintenance of those values that have made Australia the envy of most other nations and people: tolerance; a fair go; non-discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion; the opportunity to fulfil one's potential; freedom from oppressive or undue government interference; and to provide security and hope for a better future for our families and their families.

The truly endearing quality of Australia to all Australians, but especially to immigrants, is our liberal political traditions which enable individuals to live their lives in freedom and with choice, without fear or government interference.

So, in conclusion, what of multiculturalism and the Australian identity.

Surely there can be no doubt that Australia is a richly culturally diverse nation, and that a major contribution to this has been the encouragement by successive governments over the past half century to newcomers to Australia to participate fully in the life of their new nation, respecting the values and the institutions of their new nation whilst at the same time leavening those values and institutions with some of the attitudes and practices of their countries of origin, and by preserving, celebrating, and disseminating the values and traditions of their homelands.

Unquestionably, therefore, multiculturalism in this sense has had a defining impact on the Australian identity. Thus this has not been just since the term multiculturalism became the vogue word in the 1970s. It has been the case ever since European settlement commenced in 1788.

The former Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs, established by the Coalition Government of Malcolm Fraser in 1979, but regrettably abolished by the existing Government in the mid-1980s, defined multiculturalism as follows:

Multiculturalism recognises the ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity of Australian society and actively pursues equality of opportunity for all Australians to participate in the life of the nation and the right to maintain ethnic and cultural heritages within the law and the political framework.

It is clear from this concept of multiculturalism, with which I agree, that multiculturalism and an evolving national identity, I stress the word "evolving", can go hand in hand. It not only recognises the legitimacy of cultural diversity. It also welcomes the enriching role it can play within an overall unifying commitment to Australia and to shared common values. One Australia, many cultures. At the same time, it encompasses the "cement'" or "glue" of our basic institutional framework, including in particular our common language.

It is perhaps more difficult to be definitive as to whether, in Australia, with its history of progressive social policy and egalitarianism, multiculturalism is, to use Stepan Kerkyasharian's phrase, "an expression or an agent of social change".

It is certainly true that we live in a world of often bewildering change, and of change at a bewildering pace. Sometimes the rate of change is too much for us, and we get confused and concerned and insecure. In recent years we have seen a major resurgence in support for Anzac Day and its national significance for a growing number of Australians, particularly the young, and regardless of their origins. It may well be that this resurgence owes much to our fear of losing our national identity in the face of such rapid, and often unpredictable, cultural and other changes that so impact on all our lives.

The challenge for us is to build on the past, to nurture and cherish the best elements of the past, evolved, heritages and to use them as a base for incorporation in a new emerging identity that has equal regard and relevance for all Australians. In doing so we must take care to ensure that our encouragement of cultural diversity, in its full sense, is not achieved at the expense of shared values.

---

Next: Global Cultural Diversity Conference proceedings - keynote address day two
Previous: Global Cultural Diversity Conference proceedings - civic pluralism 2