Multiculturalism in Australia
Encyclopedia
Multiculturalism in Australia has a special cultural status.

Many similar policies were put in place, for example the formation of the Special Broadcasting Service
Special Broadcasting Service
The Special Broadcasting Service is a hybrid-funded Australian public broadcasting radio and television network. The stated purpose of SBS is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect...

. While the White Australia Policy
White Australia policy
The White Australia policy comprises various historical policies that intentionally restricted "non-white" immigration to Australia. From origins at Federation in 1901, the polices were progressively dismantled between 1949-1973....

 was quietly dismantled after World War II by various changes to immigration policy
Immigration to Australia
Immigration to Australia is estimated to have begun around 51,000 years ago when the ancestors of Australian Aborigines arrived on the continent via the islands of the Malay Archipelago and New Guinea. Europeans first landed in the 17th and 18th Centuries, but colonisation only started in 1788. The...

, 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.

According to the census more than one fifth of the population were born overseas. Furthermore, almost 50% of the population were either:
  • born overseas; or
  • had one or both parents born overseas.


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

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 to 118,000 in 2003-04. During the 2004-05, total 123,424 people immigrated to Australia.

Of them, 17,736 were from frica], 54,804 from Asia, 21,131 from Oceania
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...

, 18,220 from United Kingdom, 1,506 from South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

, and 2,369 from Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

. 131,000 people migrated to Australia in 2005-06 and migration target for 2006-07 was 144,000.

In 2008-09 about 300,000 new migrants are expected to arrive in Australia, the highest number since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

National Multicultural Festival

The national Capital city
Capital City
Capital City was a television show produced by Euston Films which focused on the lives of investment bankers in London living and working on the corporate trading floor for the fictional international bank Shane-Longman....

, Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory, often abbreviated ACT, is the capital territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and is the smallest self-governing internal territory...

, has developed a tradition of the National Multicultural Festival
National Multicultural Festival
The National Multicultural Festival, held annually in Canberra began as a one-day event that was started by the ACT Ethnic Communities Council in 1980....

, held over a week in February. Additionally, Canberra has numerous other inter-cultural events, such as the Thai Food Festival held at Wat
Wat
A wat is a monastery temple in Cambodia, Thailand, or Laos. The word "wat" means "school".- Introduction :...

 Dhammadharo, 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. However, it came to mean the rights of migrants within mainstream Australia to express their cultural identity
Cultural identity
Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, identity politics....

. 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
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...

 Labor
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 government in 1973, further official national multicultural policies were implemented by Malcom Fraser's Liberal
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...

 Government in 1978. The Labor
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 Government of Bob Hawke
Bob Hawke
Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke AC GCL was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia from March 1983 to December 1991 and therefore longest serving Australian Labor Party Prime Minister....

 continued with these policies during the 1980s and early 1990s, and were further supported by Paul Keating
Paul Keating
Paul John Keating was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 1991 to 1996. Keating was elected as the federal Labor member for Blaxland in 1969 and came to prominence as the reformist treasurer of the Hawke Labor government, which came to power at the 1983 election...

 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.

Role of indigenous people

Prior to settlement by Europeans, the Australian continent was not a single nation, but hosted many different Aboriginal
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

 cultures and between 200 and 400 active languages at any one time. 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
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, were the earliest people that were not native to the continent to live in Australia. Dutch colonisation (see New Holland
New Holland (Australia)
New Holland is a historic name for the island continent of Australia. The name was first applied to Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman as Nova Hollandia, naming it after the Dutch province of Holland, and remained in use for 180 years....

) 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.

The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 was the first act of Australian Federal parliament, also known informally as the White Australia policy
White Australia policy
The White Australia policy comprises various historical policies that intentionally restricted "non-white" immigration to Australia. From origins at Federation in 1901, the polices were progressively dismantled between 1949-1973....

. 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
Anglo-Celtic
Anglo-Celtic is a term used to describe people of British and Irish descent. The term today is mainly used outside of Britain and Ireland, particularly in Australia but also in Canada, New Zealand and the United States, where a significant diaspora is located....

, 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
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, the Netherlands, and the former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

.

Howard government

The election of John Howard
John Howard
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....

'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
One Australia policy
One Australia was the immigration and ethnic affairs policy of the Liberal-National opposition in Australia, released in 1988. The One Australia policy proclaimed a vision of "one nation and one future"...

 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
Pauline Hanson
Pauline Lee Hanson is an Australian politician and former leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a political party with a populist and anti-multiculturalism platform...

 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
Anglo-Celtic Australian
Anglo-Celtic Australian are citizens of Australia with British and/or Irish ancestral origins.-Demography:From the beginning of the colonial era until the mid-20th century, the vast majority of settlers were British or Irish...

 themes, such as "mateship
Mateship
Mateship is an Australian cultural idiom that embodies equality, loyalty and friendship. There are two types of mateship, the inclusive and the exclusive; the inclusive is in relation to a shared situation , whereas the exclusive type is toward a third party...

" 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
A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services
A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services is a publication of 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...

 was a publication of the Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau
Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau
Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau is an agency of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs of the Government of Australia...

 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. The first edition covered Buddhist, Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

, Islamic, Jewish and Sikh
Sikh
A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism. It primarily originated in the 15th century in the Punjab region of South Asia. The term "Sikh" has its origin in Sanskrit term शिष्य , meaning "disciple, student" or शिक्ष , meaning "instruction"...

 faiths with participation of representatives of the various religions. The second edition added Christian, Australian Aboriginal
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

 and Torres Strait Islander religions and the Bahá'í Faith
Bahá'í Faith
The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories....

 to the list of religions was published in 2002.

Intellectual critique

One of the earliest critics of multiculturalism in Australia was historian Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey AC , is a prominent Australian historian.Blainey was born in Melbourne and raised in a series of Victorian country towns before attending Wesley College and the University of Melbourne. While at university he was editor of Farrago, the newspaper of the University of...

, who wrote that multiculturalism threatened to transform Australia into a "cluster of tribes". In his 1984 book All for Australia
All for Australia
All for Australia is a 1984 book by Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey. It criticizes Australian immigration policy and the direction in which it is shaping the nation...

, 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."

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. 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. 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, 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.

Critics associated with the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University
Monash University
Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....

 have argued that both Right and Left factions in the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 have adopted a multicultural stance for the purposes of increasing their support within the party. A manifestation of this embrace of multiculturalism has been the creation of ethnic branches within the Labor Party and ethnic branch stacking
Branch stacking
Branch stacking is the act of recruiting members for a branch of a political party for the principal purpose of influencing the outcome of internal preselections of candidates for public office...

.

Following the upsurge of support for the One Nation Party
One Nation Party
One Nation is a far-right and nationalist political party in Australia. It gained 22% of the vote translating to 11 of 89 seats in Queensland's unicameral legislative assembly at the 1998 state election and made major inroads into the vote of the existing parties...

 in 1996, Lebanese
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

-born Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage
Ghassan Hage
Ghassan Hage is a Lebanese-Australian academic serving as Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne. Professor Hage has been a very high-profile contributor to debates on multiculturalism in Australia and has published widely on the topic...

 published a critique in 1997 of Australian multiculturalism in the book White Nation. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from Whiteness studies
Whiteness studies
Whiteness studies is an interdisciplinary arena of academic inquiry focused on the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of whiteness as an ideology tied to social status...

, Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

 and Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...

, Hage examined a range of everyday discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...

s that implicated both anti-multiculturalists and pro-multiculturalists alike.

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

See also

  • Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)
    Special Broadcasting Service
    The Special Broadcasting Service is a hybrid-funded Australian public broadcasting radio and television network. The stated purpose of SBS is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect...

  • 2005 Cronulla riots
    2005 Cronulla riots
    The 2005 Cronulla riots were a series of sectarian clashes and mob violence originating in Cronulla, New South Wales and spreading, over the next few nights, to additional Sydney suburbs....


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
    Geoffrey Blainey
    Geoffrey Norman Blainey AC , is a prominent Australian historian.Blainey was born in Melbourne and raised in a series of Victorian country towns before attending Wesley College and the University of Melbourne. While at university he was editor of Farrago, the newspaper of the University of...

     (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.
    Andrew Theophanous
    Andrew Charles Theophanous is a former Australian politician. He was an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1980 to 2000, and an independent member from 2000 to 2001...

    (1995), Understanding Multiculturalism and Australian Identity, Elikia Books, Carlton South, Victoria. ISBN 1 875335 04 8
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