Julia rows against tide of common sense

LET'S get this straight. Labor minister Chris Bowen is the one trying to revive the failed multicultural experiment, not the Coalition's immigration spokesman Scott Morrison.

It is the Gillard Government, not the Abbott-led Opposition, which is out of step with British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Dutch deputy Prime Minister Maxime Verhagen and the Council of Europe, the protector of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is Labor, not the conservatives, who want Australians to pay migrants to maintain their customs and traditions when they come to this nation. Listening to Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday attempt to make political capital out of a press report based on an anonymous claim that Morrison had canvassed his shadow cabinet colleagues about capitalising on electorate fears of "Muslim immigration", "Muslims in Australia" and Muslim migrants' "inability to integrate", was like listening to an ear-splitting dog whistle to the Green-Left. As she shrilly trumpeted her confected outrage, one might think the Opposition had proposed something scandalous - but there is no evidence to support that. Gillard had merely gone into overdrive to smear Morrison on the basis of some unsubstantiated press gallery gossip about a purported and utterly deniable discussion conversation rumoured to have taken place within shadow cabinet. The reports didn't name a single source and not one of the dwindling band of soft-Left MPs who used to rally around the disaffected Petro Georgiou put their hand up to own this bit of nonsense - though Mal Washer, Judy Moylan and Russell Broadbent would have lost nothing by going public. The shadow cabinet meeting at which Morrison did not make the fabricated comments took place last December. It surfaced this week because Labor comprehensively has lost the debate on border protection and multiculturalism. Merkel addressed the question of failed Muslim migration last October 16 when she stated the obvious, saying: "Immigrants should learn to speak German." Nearly 16 million people of non-German background, three million of them Turks, live in Germany, whose population is about 82 million. Merkel says the concept of "multikulti" has "utterly failed". Her remarks followed publication of a book by Left-leaning Social Democrat banker Thilo Sarrazin in September in which he accused Muslim immigrants of being reluctant to integrate and cited statistics showing young Muslims were most likely to fail in school and end up on welfare or turn to crime. Cameron branded multiculturalism a failure on February 6. He urged a "more active, muscular liberalism" whereby equal rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech and democracy were promoted. "A passively tolerant society says to its citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values," he said. "A genuinely liberal country does much more. It believes in certain values and actively promotes them." Sarkozy joined the chorus last Thursday declaring multiculturalism a failure. He said: "We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him." France, which last year banned the full veil, would not tolerate "a society where communities coexist side by side," he said. "If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome." Dutch deputy PM Verhagen declared on Monday the multicultural society had failed. "The Dutch no longer feel at home in their own country and immigrants are not entirely happy here either," he said. Simply, he wants the Dutch to be prouder of their country like people in the US who first say they are American and then say where they came from originally. The Council of Europe, one of the least likely organisations to turn against a kumbaya concept like multiculturalism, made its position clearly known in an interview with the Financial Times. Thorbjrn Jagland, secretary-general of the council, said multiculturalism allowed parallel societies to develop within states. "This must be stopped. It is also clear that some parallel societies have developed radical ideas that are dangerous. Terrorism cannot be accepted." Jagland said the European leaders had opened an "important debate" that needed to be pursued. "We must be careful that we do not misunderstand multiculturalism, because diversity of cultures is desirable," he said. "But we need to focus on what will hold our society together." All three had based their arguments on a European identity shaped by the common values and fundamental rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. This included rights such as equality between the sexes and opposition to forced marriage. "We should not accept attitudes and behaviour that contradict this," he said. Jagland said recent events in North Africa had shown the dangers of allowing Europe's stand on human rights to be diluted by a tolerance of cultural or ethnic differences. "Upholding human rights is a security issue. When you don't have human rights, you get instability in society," he said. The Government's view as described by Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration Kate Lundy is that "it's about that lovely integration that has made multiculturalism such a success" ... whatever that means. Labor has not only noisily revisited the dismal and divisive multicultural policy, it has resuscitated the moribund multicultural council and promised to establish a national anti-racism strategy. It doing so, it is sending the signal that the ALP believes Australians are racist and newcomers need government protection. That we are the problem, not those who refuse to learn English and render themselves unemployable, those who cling to tribal culture, those who reject Western culture and values. This is Labor's strategy to win the ethnic vote now, just as the discredited Al Grassby sought to do for Whitlam nearly 40 years ago. The zombie of multiculturalism must be returned to the crypt where it belongs.