Australian Rights

Multiculturalism Myth

by Pino Migliorino, Chairman of the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia. [SOURCE]

"In the past few days, critics of cultural diversity have been celebrating German Chancellor Angela Merkel's proclamation that multiculturalism in Germany has failed. Now we have commentators in Australia who are using this to announce the funeral of multiculturalism.

Authors such as Pallavi Jain have gone as far to suggest that it is the responsibility of all immigrants to assimilate.

In Australia, we thought that we had arrived in a place far, far away from policies such as assimilation which, as we well know, created such a lot of angst in our history. The notion of assimilation tainted our history of interaction with the First Australians as well as with our early immigrants.

Story continues below In this country, I believe that we do not want to walk backwards towards a history for which we have apologised.

In 1989, we showed international leadership and created a National Multicultural Policy, the principles of which are still relevant. We then retreated from this vision and began a discourse about integration rather than about dialogue, which, similar to the principle of assimilation, implies that one side has more rights than the other simply because they were there first, or what is worse, because they are superior.

Multiculturalism comes in many guises and some are not even based on the equality of all cultures, which is the soul of a truly multicultural vision. Germany, like some other European countries, has never seen itself as an immigrant culture. If Merkel says multiculturalism is the cause of what she perceives as Germany's social failure, I would suggest that it is the lack of a truly multicultural policy that is the cause of ever deepening social divides in Germany and other European countries. To suggest that we should learn lessons from Europe is to ignore the completely different histories of countries such as Germany and of Australia. It is also to ignore the regional contexts of European countries when compared with Australia.

In our region there are key regional alliances and countries that look upon our political stance on diversity with growing consternation. We have had troubling incidents with India, including the arrogant way in which sections of our media dealt with the Commonwealth Games. The troubles have continued with significant drops in international student numbers from India and the subsequent losses to the Australian education sector. We need to build our relationships with countries in our region, many of whom have populations that have different religions, such as Islam, which have been openly attacked by some European politicians.

If there is a lesson to be learnt from the European experience it is that policies that are based on unequal perceptions of cultures and communities do not work to create a cohesive nation. Demanding assimilation, or even integration, from people who do not share the language, culture and religion of the dominant group sets up many sections of the community to experience disempowerment and marginalisation. We all know, even with rudimentary knowledge of history, that this creates social unrest and fragmentation.

The global movement of population, including the international labour market and the situation with refugees and asylum seekers, presents many challenges to existing nation states. We are forced to deal with beliefs and customs that are sometimes alien to our own. However the answer to that is not to simply impose our view on vulnerable groups.

This is a grotesque interpretation of the concept of human rights.
Jain's article speaks about balance. I think that the balance is not achieved by adjusting migration numbers. The balance is one of attitude. It is the balance that the existing nations all over the world, including Australia, have to find in creating equal dialogues between all its cultures and communities. It does not mean that any side has to passively accept what is proposed to them. At the very least, we have to be able to accept that we all have the capacity to learn new things and to change.

Australia has not had a national multicultural policy since 2006. We need a national policy to ensure that we recognise that culture is not a costume that people can discard without it creating deep and enduring distress for individuals and communities."