There’s no going back: Don’t blame multiculturalism for social woes

A citizenship ceremony at Sydney Olympic Park on February 21. Picture: Jeremy Piper

“It will no doubt be appreciated … that as we have no real racial problems, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration.”

Those were the infamous words of Thomas W. White, the Australian delegate to the Evian conference in July 1938 that was convened to try to solve the growing plight of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.

White was a World War I hero and trade and customs minister in the Lyons government.

According to Jewish historians, he treated the Jewish delegates with “utter contempt”.

The Lyons government bluntly refused to increase the immigration quota.

Robert Menzies, Sir Earl Page, Stanley Bruce and Thomas White in London in April 1938.

Curiously, among the few people to take issue with Australia’s rejection of Jewish refugees was a delegation of Aboriginal Australians to the German embassy – perhaps the Australians who really understood racism in 1938.

It is a familiar refrain, the idea that a large-scale immigration program is “importing a race problem”.

We hear it today amid the clamour about social disintegration. That “a race problem” was once a refrain that kept persecuted Jews out of Australia is an uncomfortable fact of our history. However, anyone who came here from a non-Anglo-Celtic background before World War II was only too aware of the “race factor”, as was my own Italian father who grew up in Australia.

After World War II, with a population of only seven million, Australia realised belatedly the necessity of accepting more immigrants from diverse backgrounds – although not too diverse, as we had a White Australia policy. British immigrants were always given preference and generously assisted passages.

The “ten-pound Poms” arrived in droves. Unfortunately, many of them went back in droves.

Ten Pound Poms, as depicted in a TV series, arrived in Australia in their droves.

People from continental Europe, especially survivors of the war, were not so anxious to return to the country of their birth. The same applied to people escaping communism.

Whatever one thinks of today’s multicultural immigration policy, there is no getting around the fact that Australia has to be an immigrant country. With a declining birthrate and a stagnating economy, we need immigrants. Immigrants bring ambition.

In my own family on my father’s immigrant side we have produced in one generation 16 grandchildren and more than 30 great-grandchildren, all of us productive and well educated.

Four of my cousins could not speak English until they went to school, but they all have university degrees and entered the professions. Some started businesses.

“Ah,” I hear you mutter, “but they were the ‘good immigrants’ ” – meaning the ones who didn’t have any help, like special English language classes. However, I speak from experience when I say multiculturalism, which gave all cultures and ethnicities an equal standing in the project that is modern Australia, has been a great boon.

In my family I have a daughter-in-law from a Croatian background, a Japanese sister-in-law and an Iranian-Australian niece. The old European immigrants have been replaced by Asian immigrants, who are just as ambitious and just as keen to get ahead as any of the older immigrant groups.

What is more important, unlike older generations who were called, “wogs”, “refos” or, more kindly “new Australians”, the good thing about multicultural policy has been that no one feels intimidated to act or think just like everyone else.

However, now the children of the multicultural generation of immigrants are widely perceived as not becoming “real” Australians, especially Muslims after the Bankstown Hospital nurses’ incident. Muslims are perceived as not blending into the “melting pot”.

The Bankstown Hospital nurses incident has blurred our perceptions of Muslims. Picture: Nikki Short/NewsWire

But is this true of all Muslims? Can multiculturalism be blamed?

In the past, some commentators became too distracted by insignificant issues such as the wearing of the hijab.

But some of the criticism of the imams, especially at the notorious Lakemba Mosque, is serious cause for reflection, perhaps on the scope of character within immigration policy rather than just multiculturalism or religion.

The brouhaha over the Israel-Gaza conflict and attacks on Jewish property and entities has opened the door to serious criticism of immigration into Australia of some Sunni imams, trained in Egypt, stirring up their congregations with virulent anti-Israel propaganda, which is really anti-Jewish.

We must remember that we don’t know who was behind many of the serious attacks against Jews or where they are coming from. This type of terrorism is meant to destabilise society.

This is not the first time Australia has experienced social dislocation or violent demonstrations. It is not the first time people waved objectionable flags and chanted ugly slogans or painted things on churches. But it is the first time synagogues have been burnt and we don’t know yet whether the culprits are homegrown or manipulated from elsewhere.

However, it would be wrong to use the current furore to abolish our multicultural immigration policy. We have an ethnically and religiously blind immigration policy and a civilised nation can do no less.

Anyway, thankfully there is no going back to the days of cultural isolation. Multiculturalism is in our heads, our hearts and, for most of us, our genes.