Multiculturalism in Australia, which has been based on a social compact that said people were free to pursue their cultural and religious beliefs provided they abided by the law, has been under serious threat since Hamas’ invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 last year, a new report from the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) argues.
The events of that day and the subsequent protests have caused “bitter political division and polarisation,” the report says.
“Far from fostering social cohesion and the civic virtue of tolerance, multiculturalism appears to have encouraged cultural separatism and helped fan hostility between different sections of the community.”
The report notes that after breakaway Labor Senator Fatima Payman announced the formation of The Muslim Vote “it was denounced ... as an insult to Allah” by an Islamist Muslim cleric, who went on to describe Muslim members of Australian parliaments as “apostate” and said they sought a different form of power that would enshrine sharia as the dominant form of law in Australia.
“Declarations such as this openly and directly challenge the political, legal, and social norms of this country. They also call into question the viability of the compact upon which Australian multiculturalism has always depended,” writes one of the authors, Director of the Centre’s Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society program Peter Kurti.
Diversity Being Used to Foment Conflict
Multiculturalism and the promotion of diversity was originally intended to counter the “whiteness” of Australian society that was a legacy of its founding, Kurti says.
“[But] diversity is now being deployed not only to assault any Australian norms with which it is deemed to conflict, but also to foment conflict between Australia’s ethnic communities.”
The past 60 or so years of multiculturalism have been broadly successful, he says.
“Most of us think it’s been good for the country, and most of us want it to continue.”
But the decisive defeat of the Voice referendum suggests “popular enthusiasm for diversity might be on the wane,” and Australia may be about to see “the emergence of a form of post-multiculturalism.”
That isn’t something that today’s political leaders are equipped to handle, Kurti said.
“The danger is that the leaders on whom we must depend will fail to grasp the critical role government must play in enforcing duties of shared responsibility and mutual tolerance. And if that is the case, Australian multiculturalism will inadvertently, and perhaps inevitably, sink from damage of its own creating.”
Damien Freeman, a fellow of the Robert Menzies Institute at the University of Melbourne, believes “diversity alone is not going to achieve social cohesion,” but that “social cohesion is not going to be derived from sameness” in an increasingly diverse country either.
No Place For Government in Promoting Social Cohesion
The challenge of promoting social cohesion in contemporary Australia is something that must be met by using the resources of society, not the state, Freeman argues.One way that might be achieved is what he calls “Toryism”: “The idea that we belong to small institutions, such as families, through which we are connected to larger institutions, such as countries. These are institutions that we naturally belong to, as opposed to groups that we choose to identify with because of shared identity characteristics.”
“Strengthening such ties of belonging would anchor social cohesion in a shared sense of feeling at home in one’s society,” he said.
Jonathan Cole, Director of the Centre for Religion, Ethics, and Society, argues for what he calls a “cultural-free market” in which the government has little to no role.
“The purpose, and if not the purpose, then the effect, of the government’s intervention ... in matters of culture and diversity is to subsidise languages, customs, and religious beliefs and practices that otherwise might struggle to survive and thrive in a genuinely free market of culture,” he writes.
Doing so “entails yet another instance of the growing reach and scope of the state (intrusion) into the natural operations of social life,” he said.
Absent government intervention, people would still be free to retain and maintain their cultural and religious practices and to pass them on to their children.
“It just means that they will not receive government financial support, and hence taxpayer subsidies, to do so.”
The only role for government is the promulgation and enforcement of criminal law to protect Australia’s social cohesion from politically- and religiously-motived violence, and anti-discrimination law to protect people from the effects of prejudice, such as discriminatory hiring and firing decisions.
However, the inevitable long-term result of immigration is assimilation, Cole argues.
“It has been so for millennia and remains the case everywhere on the globe, including in Australia,” he said.
Bryan Turner, Professor of Sociology at the Australian Catholic University and emeritus Professor at the City University New York, contends that multiculturalism must also contend with populism, the Australian form of which is more akin to America’s than Europe’s.
“One common feature of populism is that it is occurring in countries that have low and declining birth rates, where the labour market has depended on migration. When the labour market was attracting guest workers, the fear of diversity did not trouble populists,” he said.
“When society appears to depend on migrants with allegedly higher birth rates, populism flourishes,” he continued, which represents “a challenge to liberal values regarding diversity and inclusion.”
