Editorial. Government priority must be community cohesion and democracy

The anti-democratic ranting of extremist Muslim clerics in western Sydney shows what is at stake if the nation’s multicultural experiment is allowed to run off the rails. As we reported on Wednesday, radical preachers and the extremist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir have attacked Australia’s democracy as an insult to Allah and warned their followers to boycott elections. The comments were made in sermons in southwest Sydney where a new campaign, The Muslim Vote, is seeking to strengthen the electoral demands of Muslim voters in the wake of violence in the Middle East.

On one level it is reassuring to know that radical elements that want a world governed only by religious doctrine and sharia law are not interested in exerting their views directly in parliament. But they are nonetheless potentially influential, as Muslims are being asked to decide their votes on ethnic or ideological lines. Given the high tensions being stoked by the war in Gaza, it is necessary for the federal government to revisit the issue of whether Hizb ut-Tahrir should be proscribed as a terrorist organisation, as it has been in other countries. At the very least, preaching anti-democratic sentiments and telling others to break the law by not voting is against the foundations on which our peaceful society is based.

It remains to be seen what success The Muslim Vote will have in its attempts to coral Muslim voters away from the major parties. The experience in Britain has been instructive. Campaigning by The Muslim Vote in Britain was instrumental in the Conservative party’s poor electoral showing in terms of seats despite Labour securing a relatively low voter turnout of support. In Australia, it is the Labor Party that has the most to lose if a concerted campaign by Muslim interests is successful in splitting the primary vote in seats held by high-profile Labor ministers.

Debate about the possibility of a new religious-based political movement or party comes as the federal government is being asked to redefine how as a nation we manage and develop the multicultural push that was started 50 years ago by Labor immigration minister Al Grassby. A new review of Australian multiculturalism has called on Anthony Albanese to make a statement in parliament reaffirming the commitment of the Australian government and our nation to multiculturalism. It also wants Peter Dutton, in a spirit of bipartisanship, to affirm a similar commitment to multiculturalism. Wisely, the review panel has declared that “commitment to democratic values is an obligation placed on all Australians no matter their background or how they arrived at calling Australia home”. It says it is a value we all accept by virtue of citizenship, which makes us all civic equals.

Some of the other recommendations are more questionable. The review panel says government should establish a multicultural affairs commission and commissioner, and a stand-alone department of multicultural affairs, immigration and citizenship, with a dedicated minister. It says the Department of Home Affairs, through government and non-government consultation, should launch an immediate review of citizenship test procedures, including considering providing the test in languages other than English. It also has recommended a “formalised and expanded role” for SBS and the ABC to assist mainstream commercial media and the arts to “steer away from token representation of global and cosmopolitan diversity to actual community representation and engagement”.

The bigger role for government is to ensure that greater multiculturalism does not come at the expense of community cohesion. This must start with restating our commitment to democratic values and the responsibility of all citizens to understand what this means and to participate. The outbreak of secular mischief by Muslim clerics proves the point.