Joe Hildebrand: Muslim Vote threatens our peaceful multicultural way of life

Countless people of countless races and religions get along every day in Australia because they put old country ties on the backburner. This is what the half-baked plot for a ‘Muslim Vote’ movement threatens to undermine, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Australia is the greatest place on Earth. And it’s not because of the beaches or the weather or the quarter-acre block in the suburbs that nobody can afford any more.

It’s because of us. More than any other nation on the planet, we have been able to absorb people from all over the world and build a society that might not be perfect but is a hell of a lot better than anywhere else.

The first wave of migration came about 60,000 years ago, the second about 240 years ago, and the frequency has been steadily increasing ever since.

Every one of these later waves has been met with varying degrees of suspicion and scepticism which have ultimately been unfounded.

Take for example the great fear of the “Yellow Peril” which led to the White Australia policy and the cry to “Populate or perish!”

Even as late as the 1980s then-opposition leader John Howard raised concerns about the levels of Asian immigration, which he later recanted.

And no wonder. As prime minister, the Chinese-born voters of Bennelong were among his biggest supporters.

Immigration has transformed our nation for the better: Reuben She (l to r), Tan Gooi Eng and Kaitlyn She at Box Hill in 2017. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Indeed, Howard captured the true essence of Australia when he observed with one of his typically concise truisms that the things that unite us are greater than the things that divide us.

This is as true of racial and religious divisions as it is about political ones. Indeed, it is the fundamental cornerstone of Australia’s success as a truly multicultural nation.

Former PM John Howard recanted his concerns about Asian immigration. Picture: Supplied

The Muslim Vote Pty Ltd director Mouhammed Kanan. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Yes there have been tragedies and travesties along the way. We have had terror attacks and outbreaks of appalling racism and, most recently, appalling anti-Semitism.

But the measure of our cohesion is not that these things have occurred but that they are so rare as to still be shocking.

And, more importantly, that they are condemned as utterly intolerable.

Of course there are those on the left who will say we are intolerably racist and those on the right who say that multiculturalism has failed.

Indeed, in yet another example of the far left and far right finding common ground, both once pointed to the 2005 Cronulla riots as proof of this.

In truth the fact that this event was so alarming and that nothing close has been repeated in the two decades since is proof that both extremes are, as usual, wrong.

But the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We need to be watchful for those who would seek to divide us on the basis of race or religion or any ideology that places a particular cause — however pointless or deranged — above our need to live in harmony with one another.

Normally this would be the sort of hippy-trippy horseshit-slash-right-wing paranoia that I myself would usually be dismissive of, but perhaps not so anymore.

Rich white lefties like to talk a lot about multiculturalism. Most have experienced little of it beyond eating a bowl of pho soup.

In places like southwestern Sydney, however, multiculturalism is not a philosophical concept or political ideal, it is simply life.

Countless people of countless races and religions get along every day. They hustle and they bustle and the language they use would make the most hardened sociology student blush.

The suburb I grew up in once wore as a badge of honour that it was the most multicultural place in Australia, and rightly so. But it wasn’t a place for the faint-hearted.

Multiculturalism is beautiful and robust but it is also fierce and delicate.

These are not the kind of communities where you want to drop a big rock or fire a big gun. Their very strength and cohesion lies in putting new ideologies and old country ties on the backburner for the sake of, frankly, everybody.

And this is precisely what the half-baked plot for a “Muslim Vote” movement threatens to undermine. Perhaps even to overturn.

They try to say it’s not religious, which raises questions about the “Muslim” part, nor political, which raises questions about the “Vote” bit. But it’s hard to see it as a recipe for community harmony.

For one thing, which Muslim sect would take carriage of it and in which seats? Would it be Sunni or Shia and would either vote for the other?

And outside of the Muslim vote — which ranges from maybe a quarter to a third of the seats they are targeting — who else are they getting in on the Palestinian cause? Sydney Uni vegans living in Bankstown?

I don’t know. But I suspect that most struggling Western Sydney families probably don’t want to be dragged into a war on the other side of the world. A war that some have already literally fled.

That seems like a firestarter to me. And I don’t reckon Australia needs that right now.

We are, more than any place on Earth, a migration nation. We are the luckiest refuge that any refugee could hope to find.

Do we really want to turn that sanctuary into a storm?

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