Multicultural policy the start of our issues with migrant integration

OFFICIAL multiculturalism changed the national tone because it encouraged migrants to identify with their “ethnic” culture on a similar level to their commitment here, writes JOHN MASANAUSKAS.

1950s picture of migrants arriving in Sydney, Australia by boat.

WHEN my Lithuanian parents migrated to Australia in the early 1950s there was no official policy of multiculturalism.

Migrants were expected to integrate or assimilate, and in return they were given the opportunity to participate fully in the life of the nation through citizenship, education, sport and countless other avenues.

On the whole, these new arrivals took up the chance with relish and contributed greatly to Australia’s post-war development.

But they also had the benefit of living in a pluralist democracy, so no one stopped them building community centres and staging the occasional festival to maintain a link with their ethnic homelands.

The main point is they were generally made to feel welcome and they relatively quickly became Australians because the place was so easy to adapt to.

There were tensions and ups and downs, of course, as you would expect with the scale of migration experienced in those decades, but overall the migrants mixed in well with the general population to produce a harmonious society.

And by the end of the 1960s, the so-called White Australia policy was abandoned, allowing the settlement of non-Europeans.

But in the 1970s, the unwritten policy of assimilation was junked and replaced by multiculturalism — a word that has stirred perhaps more controversy than any other in recent Australian history.

Official multiculturalism changed the national tone because it encouraged migrants to identify with their “ethnic” culture on a similar level to their commitment to Australia, and all cultures were more or less considered equal.

That change had no immediate consequences because European communities were fully committed to Australia, and they practised their “multiculturalism” on weekends, if at all, almost as a hobby in the form of folk dancing, eating weird food and the like.

But multiculturalism has become more problematic as Australia has tried to absorb cultures and religions that differ from our European foundations.

Many of those newer migrants are not content to practice their cultures just on weekends — they are devotees to their ethnic or religious identity, leaving little room for an Australian sensibility.

I am not saying they shouldn’t have the right to identify that way in a democracy, but their actions will have consequences for social cohesion — look no further than the Islamic jihadists who want to wreak havoc on societies they hate.

Supporters of official multiculturalism argue the policy has been responsible for maintaining community harmony by “managing” cultural diversity.

I disagree.

My view is the main factor in maintaining harmony has been the quality of Australians to be tolerant of new arrivals and offer them a fair go as long as they are prepared to be Australians and embrace our democratic values.

So it is somewhat jarring to the average Australian when Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews tells an audience celebrating the end of the Islamic fasting period Ramadan he has no truck with the concept of migrants joining “Team Australia”.

“There is instead a celebration that when people come to our nation with a different story … they’ve NOT got things to learn, they’ve instead got things to teach all of us,” he said in July.

The recently-released Mapping Social Cohesion report by the pro-multicultural Scanlon Foundation found two-thirds of Australians agreed they should do more to learn about the customs and heritage of different ethnic and cultural migrant groups.

But a similar high percentage said people who come to Australia should change their behaviour to be more like Australians.

And despite decades of multicultural propaganda, it was surprising that more than half of Australians disagreed with the proposition that ethnic minorities should be given Australian Government help to maintain their customs and traditions.

Retaining your foreign culture with the support of the state is a central tenet of multiculturalism, but most Australians don’t buy it — in fact, they believe new arrivals should change so they can fit in.

The Scanlon survey also found 85 per cent of Australians agreed multiculturalism had been good for Australia, but all that showed was most people were comfortable with people from different backgrounds being here.

The survey results which challenge multiculturalism should be a wake up call to politicians and others who seek to emphasise the nation’s diversity at the expense of strongly promoting unity.

In an age of terror, much of it homegrown, we should dump official multiculturalism as a policy and rebadging it as integration.

Migrants should be funded to help them integrate, especially the teaching of English, but no public money should be spent on trying to maintain their cultures here.

Multiculturalism is a clumsy word that never caught on and which is distrusted by many ordinary Australians. Scrap it.

JOHN MASANAUSKAS IS THE HERALD SUN CITY EDITOR

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