In Praise of a Monocultural Australia

Australia’s first prime minister, Sir Edmund Barton, had very clear ideas on what should be expected of migrants to Australia:

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an Australian and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an Australian, and nothing but an Australian... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an Australian, but something else also, isn’t an Australian at all. We have room for but one flag, the Australian flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the Australian people.”

This admirable clarity among Australia’s leaders lasted for the next 70 years. Even as successive conservative governments quietly dismantled the odious White Australia Policy the Labor Party demanded as the price of forming Australia’s first coalition government in 1901. Then, in 1972, the Whitlam government scraped to power and immediately set about demolishing a century of wise stewardship.

It was Whitlam who first adopted the policy of ‘multiculturalism’. It was sold to us with all the familiar trappings of ‘food and dance’. Even then, though, we should have paid more attention. Because the immediate corollary of a fawning genuflection to foreign cultures was the sneering disdain for Australian culture. A denial, even, that such a thing existed. As if Miles Franklin, Patrick White, Henry Lawson, the Lindsay Family, Barry Humphries, Dame Nellie Melba, Percy Grainger, Johnny O’Keefe, Ray Lawler, Ken Hall, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Howard Florey or Frank Macfarlane Burnet had never existed.

And just who was selling us this ‘multiculturalism’? Whitlam’s Minister for Immigration, Al Grassby. With his trademark hideous ties, Grassby sold multiculturalism like Ronald McDonald sold hamburgers. Yet, for at least 40 years, Grassby was “at the ‘beck and call’ of the Calabrian Mafia”, while his career was, wrote veteran journalist Paul Sheehan, “littered with race-based politics”.

When Pauline Hanson recently called for a return to the sort of clarity that demands that migrants become “in every facet an Australian, and nothing but an Australian”, you could hear the gibbering outrage from Double Bay to Lakemba. Yet, for all the reflexive screeching about ‘racism’, migrants have become some of One Nation’s most staunch supporters. Mauritian migrant, Senator Ralph Babet, outlines exactly why.

My parents came to Australia because the culture was already closely aligned with that of my country of birth, and we recognised that the uniqueness of these shared cultures would provide us with freedoms and opportunities not afforded elsewhere.

I have no hesitation asserting that Australian culture is superior to most others. If I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t live here. But sadly, not all migrants share that view.

Worse, multiculturalism actively encourages their disdain for the nation that welcomed them. As poet Les Murray wrote, under multiculturalism, “the least adaptable are the purest… the narrowest the most multicultural”.

The West made a grave mistake when it embraced moral relativism which then, as a natural consequence, led to cultural relativism.

By rejecting objective truth, we lost any basis for observing that some cultures were preferable to others.

And so, rather than taking pride in our culture, we assured migrants they could live in Australia without ever adopting our culture. Such thinking was regarded as enlightened and progressive. In truth, it has been a disaster; a grave mistake, that destroyed social cohesion and fractured our nation.

Rather than a multi-racial society sharing a wonderful culture of freedom and prosperity, we have become a multi-cultural society that cannot even agree on a flag, let alone on core values.

Previously, migrants came here broadly sharing our values. Now many arrive who not only do not share them but in some cases actively oppose them. All of this traces back to Whitlam adopting multiculturalism as official policy, which Fraser doubled down on: admitting people from cultures at odds with ours and promising they could keep their counter-culture once here.

The result has been exactly what Fraser was warned of, but self-righteously chose to ignore: the formation of tribal enclaves. Certain groups have become contemptuous of Australian culture while demanding respect for their own. Progressives will call this xenophobic. But anyone with eyes can see what is happening in our suburbs and cities and across Europe.

All cultures are not the same. Western culture has been uniquely prosperous, and it is not by accident.

The truth progressives cannot admit is that the West has been built on a Christian foundation.

The sooner we insist those coming to Australia are aligned with our values and embracing of our culture, the sooner we will have social harmony and forward momentum.

Right now Australia is a nation being pulled in many directions and few of them good... If this continues, we will soon be torn apart. The sooner we admit the folly of multiculturalism and unapologetically insist those joining us align with our values, the sooner this country will get back to being the lucky country that made it so appealing in the first place.

And if you are fortunate enough to come and live here, then you are responsible to embrace and promote these values with us.

If you can’t do that, then Australia is not the place for you.