Peta Credlin: Replace multiculturalism with a civic patriotism based on Australian values

Australia needs to discriminate – not on race or religion – but on the basis of the decent ‘live and let live’ values of our community that every migrant is supposed to have agreed to adopt, writes Peta Credlin.

If further evidence were needed that multiculturalism has failed, it’s the wave of Jew-hatred now sweeping the country.

The latest example was the spectacle of hundreds of western Sydney school students, egged on by their teachers, chanting Allah-u-Akbar, in protest against the disciplining of a Muslim activist school counsellor who’d posted in support of the two Bankstown hospital nurses who’d boasted of killing Israeli patients.

As Professor Geoffrey Blainey warned some four decades back, multiculturalism would eventually produce a “nation of tribes”. For most of our history, the vast majority of migrants, including those from India and China, our largest recent source countries, steadily integrated into the Australian community.

They added variety, not conflict.

Police and staff outside of Granville Boys’ High School during a protest in support of Sheikh Wesam Charkawi. Picture: John Feder/The Australian

Earlier waves of people from Greece, Italy and Europe more broadly, worked hard, built businesses and helped build modern Australia into the prosperous and safe place it (once) was.

But, sadly, as the avalanche of anti-Semitism has lately shown, starting with Jew-hating protests, escalating to anti-Jewish vandalism, and now extending to fire-bombing synagogues, all cultures are not equal, and we need to start discriminating in our immigration policy to stop importing ancient hatreds from overseas.

Yes, we need to discriminate – not on the basis of race or religion – but on the basis of our values, the decent “live and let live” values of the Australian community that every migrant is supposed to have agreed to adopt.

It’s way past time to banish multiculturalism as official policy and replace it with a civic patriotism based on an unapologetic commitment to Australian values.

We should abolish the vast array of multicultural grants that just fund ethnic separatism, deport radical activists before they become citizens, and insist that would-be Australian citizens face a much more searching test of their commitment to Australian values.

We still have time but that time is running out.

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Originally published as Peta Credlin: Replace multiculturalism with a civic patriotism based on Australian values