Ancestry counts a great deal in census

IT may have escaped the attention of some readers that it is census time again. If, like me, you insist on an old-school paper form rather than an online version, you may decide to peruse the questions you are expected to answer this year.

The census does not always ask exactly the same questions every time and often contains new ones.

Some, like the ones on unpaid work, I even managed to have a hand in myself; it was part of a campaign to include such a question because, like many women, I have done unpaid work.

In fact for many years it was the only work I did because it is my real life's work.

Aside from the usual stuff about numbers, age, work, family arrangements and so forth, you may notice question 18 is about your ancestry. It has made a regular appearance since 2001.

The question about religion, which caused a bit of a fuss, is optional, but the one on ancestry is not. Apparently we are entitled not to tell the Australian Bureau of Statistics some things about ourselves that are deemed personal but not others that I would have thought of little use to the social planners who can't wait to get their hands on our information.

Religion can be regarded as personal, but it is rather handy to have some sort of idea about the religious affiliation of populations, particularly, for example, in Australia, where about one-third of the school population attends Catholic schools; and, of course, lately we have had a large influx of Muslims. So religion is an important part of the profile of a nation.

We also now have diverse language groups with varying levels of proficiency. Public institutions have to cater for all people. Consequently, the questions on language are important.

But ancestry? I am not saying that we shouldn't care about our ancestry. We certainly do care: a recent exhibition about the Irish in Australia, at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, brought in more than 72,000 visitors in three months, the largest number the museum has had. But, after all, the Irish were the single biggest ethnic group in Australia.

So why does the government want to know about our ancestry? What use is this information? Does it mean you will have a different general outlook and think differently as an Australian if, say, your ancestry is Chinese rather than Irish and Italian, which is mine? Above all, what does this mean for our evolving attitude to multiculturalism?

These are interesting questions that throw up many possibilities, not least of all that it might augur some shift in official government policy about the underlying assumptions of multiculturalism.

That hotly debated term has lately taken on negative connotations, but people should realise that immigrants, who form the basic building blocks of Australian society, still have great faith in it as an idea.

It tends to be a vague idea, a sort of plurality of ethnicity and sense of belonging -- a foot in two camps -- encompassed within a democratic and political Australian identity. Indeed it seems to work best when it is a vague idea, defined by the individual.

In Australia, unlike many places I have lived in, it is related to tolerance on an everyday level: the kind of interaction, or even non-interaction, that we have with our neighbours, who might be Chinese, Vietnamese, Lebanese or whatever.

This sort of interaction is something that stay-at-home suburban mums often have more experience in than most. We are the ones who talk to other women, veiled or not, in the fruit shop.

I am always reminded of my Lebanese neighbour's comment when he noticed I was pregnant again. "How many kids have you got now? Seven? With so many kids you could be Lebanese!"

As for multiculturalism working on an official level, it seems to work best when it is not too official and not taken to extremes. But more importantly it works when it actually tackles the real barriers for immigrants, as practical policy.

A concrete example of what I would call "practical multiculturalism" is the introduction in the 1970s of the English as a Second Language program.

Nothing did more to help Australian immigrant children. It meant they could learn at their age level and pace, and gradually integrate into the mainstream English-speaking classes. In the past, children just picked up English in the playground -- the method my father endured, before becoming the family interpreter at age 10 -- and suffered huge educational gaps as a consequence.

Another area the government would be well advised to tackle is civics education. In the past, most immigrants came to Australia with a vague but touching faith in the values of a British-style democracy. I know that was the case with my Italian grandfather, who promptly became an Australian citizen, despite not being able to speak any English.

However, the influx of Muslims and the real threat of worldwide Islamic extremism means we have to look at this problem head on. If we accept these people in Australia we have to be very clear about how abhorrent this type of action is and what we expect of them.

In the past, we were able to rely on the immigrant ethic: the necessity to put your head down, work hard and keep out of trouble. Immigrants who came to Australia via the normal channels had just as many hurdles and vetting processes as refugees, sometimes more.

Now we need to make sure, by education, that we are not going to be faced with people who use the mantras of multiculturalism to flout the law.

For me, as a product of two cultures who grew up in an Australia riven with dumb race and culture prejudice, the idea that there was an official policy that meant Australia would be more open, more interesting and generally less of an oppressive place to live if you were born in a foreign country has been a good thing. I still think it is a good thing. We have come a long way from the days when my father's neighbours were put in internment camps, even though some of them were citizens; and even in Sydney post-World War II, when he and his brother were frequently told off by irate commuters for speaking Italian on the bus.

The measure for me personally is the decision by my Japanese sister-in-law to live here and send my half-Japanese nieces to my old school.

However, using a hollow mantra of multiculturalism to cover any and every minority preoccupation -- such as introducing sharia law -- or, worse, tacking it on to causes that have nothing to do with cultural ethnicity and everything to do with trying to undermine the underlying Judeo-Christian ethic, such as gay marriage, is complete nonsense.

It degrades the whole concept and it is an insult to those who worked so hard to build a truly multi-ethnic Australia. It is no wonder multiculturalism has lost its credibility, despite question 18.