The decade-long crusade by the Liberal government to undermine and destroy multiculturalism is coming to a close. I missed this little move by the government when perusing the SMH article about Howard’s cabinet reshuffle:
Mr Andrews will become the new Immigration Minister.
Mr Howard said he would rename the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
“The whole purpose of immigration is to recruit more people to the broader Australian family,” Mr Howard said.
What’s in a name you may ask? Personally, I don’t think one should read too much into portfolio and ministry name changes without considering the substantive changes it may represent. In any case, whether it’s called multiculturalism or being friendly, tolerant, accepting, hospitable, etc. – I personally don’t care. It’s the idea that counts.
I’ve always been sceptical about government’s (former Labor and current Liberal) association, in terms of policy, between immigration and multiculturalism. Beyond a causal relationship – cultural pluralism and, hence, the need for multiculturalism are a result of immigration – any other association between immigration and multiculturalism is a political strategy. So what is the Howard government’s strategy?
Howard was famously ousted from the Liberal leadership in 1988 (I need to check the date) because of his seemingly discriminatory remarks about Asian immigration. Compare this to his pro-multicultural stance in the 196 election campaign. Compare this again to the many remarks he has made about refugees, immigration and integration. The people got duped by Howard and the Liberal party on multiculturalism. Howard softened his stance on multiculturalism in the ’96 campaign because, like in many other areas, he was simply following Keating’s position and, therefore, making it a non-issue. In the end, the ’96 election became a choice for voters between keeping and not keeping Keating. As has often been said of this election: Howard did not win, Keating lost.
This point probably shouldn’t be overstated too much because of the large swing towards Liberal in that election that can’t be explained purely by discontent with Labor. Howard succeeded in campaigning on Labor’s coat tails, winning the election and then setting his own agenda for the next 10 years. Howard’s anti-immigration views never changed in ’96 – he merely hid them from view for political expediency.
Children overboard, “queue jumpers”, anti-Muslim sentiment, Cronulla Riots and Pauline Hanson all happened on Howard’s “watch”. “Mushy multiculturalism” Costello calls it. Howard agreed. Once the actual idea of multiculturalism was discredited as more of that posturing, reactionary “political correctness”, after the Howard government put to bed all former policy related to the promotion of multiculturalism, all that is left is to change the name. Go to the website for the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and then click the link to the section on Multicultural Affairs – you will be taken to Andrew Robb’s personal home page on the website. The Department doesn’t even have any web pages dedicated to multiculturalism any more. Robb is the junior minister for the Immigration portfolio and he specifically looks after multicultural affairs. He is multiculturalism in Australia at the moment! The Department seems to have washed it’s hands clean of this dirty idea inherited from dirty Labor governments and that dirty, pesky, crazy small “l” liberal, Malcolm Fraser.
If Andrew Robb is multicultural policy in Australia at the moment, let us consider his position in relation to the idea and its practice. Today, on his website, there is the following news:
- Outcomes from the Public Consultation on the Merits of Introducing a Citizenship Test
- National centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies
- Australia to Introduce Citizenship Test
The Citizenship Test – recourse to immigration policy modelled on the White Australia policy of the first half of the 20th century. A farce, basically. The test is going to comprise, among other things, questions about national culture and values. As if this is requisite knowledge for political membership in Australia. When I say political membership I mean membership of the polity – a bearer of rights and obligations, a participant in the political process. National culture and national values do not have to form the basis of a political culture and political values – this was the point of multiculturalism and the undoing of the White Australia policy that preceded it!!! A political culture (e.g. democracy) and political values (e.g. tolerance) can be practised independent of one’s own culture. This is not to suggest one’s own culture should be depoliticised. Rather, we need to agree on ways in which we talk about those things that are important to us (of which national culture and values may be but one issue) and how, what and why we should do about these things. The Citizenship Test is this government’s way of trying to exclude people from becoming part of the political process who are likely to “disrupt” it based on differing worldviews. In other words, the government believes that consensus cannot be achieved through deliberation and disagreement, but through similarity and familiarity. The more the people are like each other in certain respects (e.g. culture), the easier it is for government to just do its thing because the responses will be more predictable. This is not a reason for Citizenship Tests and social engineering – it’s an excuse from a government that breeds fear and is too lazy to seriously confront serious issues in cultural matters.
The National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies is another way in which the government is playing its hand at social engineering. Do not be fooled by the independence of this centre – while it may be housed in three of our universities, it’s purpose, according to the government is clear: to train imams locally. In other words, the government is trying to create imams in the model which they believe best suits the government’s desires for the practice of Islam in Australia. While the independence of universities in Australia (for the large part) is to be admired, the changes in their funding models are politicising and rationalising important administrative functions that, in the end, adversely affect their independence in the fields of research and teaching. I’m pretty sceptical about this initiative, because while it might seem like the promotion of study into a religion whose presence in Australia is a result of immigration, it’s purpose is not about furthering understanding and providing a space for different cultural practices, beliefs and views.
Even Mr Robb’s comments on the recent Big Day Out flag controversy defends the unequivocal sacredness of the Australian flag without considering how the flag is used and interpreted in various practices. In other words, Robb and everyone else’s criticisms of BDO’s request to Sydney fans to leave their Australian flags at home is a defence of the racism that hides behind patriotism. It is a far from nuanced approach or understanding of cultural practices. Not to suggest that every flag-bearing patriot is a racist, but almost all racists are “patriots” (I use this term very loosely because I don’t think patriotism is bad…but that’s for another day). Mr Robb’s elevation of the flag over and above more pressing concerns, such as the racism and anti-social behaviour behind it, provides cover for any sort of discriminatory action so long as it is patriotic and bears the Australian flag. You would think that given his portfolio responsibilities in multicultural affairs that he would at least attempt to make some sort of statement about the presence of undesirable “patriotism” (e.g. Cronulla Riots and complaints of being harassed at the Big Day Out by flag-bearing racists). But, alas, no. Why? Because multiculturalism had died in the eyes of this government in 1996. Today, the last nails are being hammered into its public policy coffin.
“A political culture (e.g. democracy) and political values (e.g. tolerance) can be practised independent of one?s own culture.”
– well, no. That’s a false distinction. It assumes its own conclusion.
For example, it’s quite impossible to believe in democracy (laws made by the people or their representatives) and at the same time in a divine code of laws which is established in a sacred text and cannot be altered by human action. The Law of the Excluded Middle makes it impossible to sincerely believe in both because they’re mutually contradictory.
In fact, it’s impossible to “tolerate” (accept as legitimate) positions with which one really disagrees, because they go to the fundamentals of what’s tolerable and what isn’t. At seventh and last, politics is about coercion — what behaviors the State will forbid and punish, and what it will allow. You cannot both forbid and not forbid something.
(And of course being tolerant of those who aren’t tolerant back is merely an invitation to be salami-sliced to death; you compromise, they don’t, and eventually the balance goes from 50-50 to 0-100.)
Exemplia gratia: are women who don’t wear a hijab ‘uncovered meat’ who invite and deserve rape… or are they not?
There’s no way to square this circle. It’s an either-or question.
The fact of the matter is that incommesurable value systems cannot communicate; they can only fight. People with incommesurable values cannot live together without either fighting, or being subject to very heavy and intrusive coercion to control their speech and actions.
Hence, a high degree of _fundamental_ cultural consensus is a precondition of a society where people don’t settle political questions by killing each other _en masse_.
This is particularly true in a democracy, which requires the minority to accept political defeat. That will only happen if the issues involved in politics are not the ‘basic’ ones, the ones for which people will fight rather than submit. And to work well democracy also requires a substantial degree of ‘family feeling’, a gut conviction that everyone or at least the decisive majority in the electorate is ‘one of us’, part of a shared community of historical experience and values, people who may be our political _opponents_ but are not our _enemies_.
Hence the “one man, one vote, once” phenomenon when democratic institutions are imposed or tried in states without the necessary degree of consensus and communal identity. One side wins an election and the other reaches for its guns, or one side wins and then makes sure it never stands a chance of losing by abolishing or subverting elections altogether. Algeria over the past decade comes to mind.
That doesn’t mean individuals cannot switch their national identity — after all, your culture is not like your skin color. Your culture is more like your clothes, which you can change as you will.
As a French minister once put it, “To become French is to acquire a new past, one in which your ancestors were Gauls.”
But it does mean that if you emigrate to another country, particularly to one with substantially different customs and values, you should be prepared to make substantial changes and to see your children make even more. You’re changing a fundamental part of your self, of your collective identity.
I might add that a democracy belongs to its citizens; they, and they alone, have the authority to set policies. That includes immigration; who will be allowed entry, and on what conditions.
Emigration is a right; everyone has a right to _leave_ their country of residence.
Immigration is a privilege, not a right. If you want to reside in a country, you have to meet the conditions that country sets; if you’re not willing to do that, then, to be blunt, you should bugger off.
Furthermore, Australia is not really a “culturally plural” country in any meaningful sense, unless you attach deep significance to a preference for pasta rather than overdone mutton as a cultural signifier, which would be to indulge in the fetishism of small differences… and Anglo-Celtic residents of Oz have been rather drastically revising their culinary culture anyway of late. For which, thank the deity of your choice.
Cultural differences come in many different degrees, and as Marx pointed out it requires a rather large difference in degree to become a difference in kind. It’s agreement on the fundamentals that matters.
94% of the Australian population are of European descent; about 75% are of British descent; of the 6% who are neither, the majority are Chinese and other East Asians who have shown a considerable willingness to assimilate, as is shown by their swift (two to three generational) adoption of English as their primary home language and by their high degree of intermarriage.
And this assimilation goes right on whether the official doctrine of the government is integrationist or not, as it does in America. Assimilation (always a two-way process) is what naturally happens when people meet, provided they’re not kept separated by some form of social or religious apartheid. A rather small proportion of the American people are now of English descent, as opposed to a majority in 1776, but the country has become not one iota more “multicultural” in the past 250 years. Rather the reverse, if anything.
The only real problem of ‘cultural difference’ is currently with Muslims. This is of course not a ‘racial’ clash — Islam, like Christianity or Marxism, is an ideology, not an ethnic group, and many Muslims (Lebanese, for example) are common-or-garden-variety white people indistinguishable from Italians.
It’s an _ideological_ clash. Some ideologies are just flat-out incompatible with each other. Islam is awkward that way because it’s not merely a set of religious beliefs or moral norms; it’s a detailed blueprint for a government, a set of civil and criminal laws, and even a tax code. And that blueprint is not compatible with contemporary Western concepts of liberal democracy.
Does that mean that it’s impossible for a Muslim to be a good citizen of a liberal democracy? No; it does mean that it’s difficult — problematic, to coin a word. He (or she) has to supress large chunks of the Islamic tradition to be such a citizen.
It also means that a country with large numbers of believing Muslims is going to have tremendous difficulty with democracy in general and liberal democracy in particular. The proof of that is before our eyes, and to deny it is to deny the plain evidence of our senses.
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