Public Address - Club Politique (Home)

Two Ways | Mar 30, 2005 19:38

Thanks to those who responded to the last post with questions and challenges to my interpretation of Australian multiculturalism. And, for those of you who were concerned, I also worry about getting too far into cross-Tasman slanging when talking about this kind of thing.

What should be stated from the outset then is that as far as migrants go, Australian multicultural policy has been eminently successful. At one point the Australian population had something like 40% of its total population born overseas. That is a huge number by anyone's standards, and the lack of noticeable ethnic conflict is a testament to the strength of the policy and implementation.

But as I say, there were some good points raised in relation to last week, and they made me realise that the old diversity issue does remain a very real problem in some people's eyes. So while I'd like to harp on about diving Nineteenth Century shipwrecks and having my fins nibbled by seals over the Easter break, I'll spare you all this and recover a few points.

The first of these is that while I criticise the 'We're all Aussies' point of view, it's worlds better than what it replaced, 'White Australia'. In a nutshell, the former is a inclusive policy, while the latter is exclusive. Effectively, anyone is welcome to assimilate and become Australian. But White Australia obviously excluded people for no reason other than their ethnicity (even Southern Europeans were regarded as 'unassimilable').

The real problem I have with multiculturalism isn't that it is a policy of assimilation, more that it's all too often considered a policy for diversity. And this is by proponents and opponents alike!

What this issue boils down to is the difference between public and private politics. When put into practice, the ideology of multiculturalism clearly indicates that people's private lives can be as diverse as the range of human culture and society itself. As long as the individual doesn't do anything the host community considers intolerable or 'repugnant', everything is on the table. Wear what you like, eat what you like, speak how you like etc.

But, and there's always a but, to make this type of society work, the political sphere has to maintain a 'core' that is standardised and culturally neutral. Normally, this is called, 'civic nationalism'. The main idea being that the national identity is formed around things you can generate catch-phrases for, like 'shared values', and 'productive diversity'.

Here in Australia, these "neutral" values are actually represented by Anglo heritage and institutions, to which all current and future migrants are expected to conform and contribute. And that's the kicker, it's only neutral in regard to not being enforced. The policy says, in layman's terms, 'we have an Anglo country, blend in, make a contribution, and maybe things will change a little'.

As a policy it's actually very open, liberal and tolerant. It also closely subscribes to what one reader points to as Will Kymlicka's ideas on minorities and minority rights. Also, my own study has indicated that while it is in reality conforming to assimilation, the migrant presence in Australia fundamentally has effected Australian nationality, the demise of 'White Australia' being a direct outcome of the migration of diverse cultural minorities to the country. In other words, while blending in, migrants simultaneously changed the ay Australians view their own nationality.

OK, so here's the problem I was facetiously trying to get at in last weeks post. For migrants, multiculturalism is both good and necessary, it allows them to participate in political life, if they adopt majority ways and values, and tolerates their differences, as long as these remain private and not political. 'The majority' is of course the old Anglo culture, which undeniably dominates the political sphere. While people with Greek or Italian names may enter politics, they inevitable act like mainstream Anglos in public.

Many authors indicate that this type of behaviour proves that 'civic' or culturally neutral nation-building is in fact a myth, a point I agree on. But, in regard to migrants I don't really have a problem with it. You can't have dozens of cultures and their value-systems all making equal demands over a political system, it just wouldn't work. But, it is fair to allow people to practice their own cultures in private, the parameters of which include things like festivals and holidays.

The core issue is using this type of system to integrate indigenes. And sorry to the reader who thought 'indigenes' to be jargon, IMHO if MS Word accepts it unequivocally, it's officially common parlance. Anyhow, multiculturalism is a system specifically intended to assimilate. If you're very precious about your culture not being given political voice, then why are you living in a foreign country? The issue with indigenes is that, especially in the Australian case, they didn't ask for a foreign system to be introduced, and they don't have anywhere else to practice it.

Australia is currently dominated by a Government that is directly contributing to the assimilation of indigenous people, while paying lip service to diversity. Aboriginality (the identity of Aboriginal people) is under direct threat from current policies regarding indigenous communities. Personally, I see the demise of ATSIC as the most recent step in a historical progress towards the eventual disappearance of Aboriginal culture and identity from Australia, and I lay the blame directly at the feet of a Government ideologically opposed to fostering and supporting difference.

I'd like to harp on about how the New Zealand policy of biculturalism is better, but that's a job for another post, probably centring on this foreshore issue. FYI, I'm packing in this Australian gig and moving back to godzone. So, some time next week I'll run a few interviews with some people I know and try find some good oil for you.

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One Way | Mar 22, 2005 17:15

If you boil down 'race relations' in Australia it pretty much starts to look like a simple divide between two types of policy approach, the "We're all Aussies" and the "Inter-Ethnic Ghetto Chaos Hell of Terrorist Apartheid". What took me the longest to twig to was that multiculturalism, the Great Nemesis of racists everywhere, is actually a form of "We're all Aussies".

No… really. As an ideology multiculturalism is at its most basic a moral justification for tolerance of difference and nothing more. Philosophically the argument goes:
i. People are different.
ii. Difference is only a big deal if you make it one.
iii. Don't make difference a big deal and,
iv. it will eventually 'go away'.

Australian multiculturalism operates exactly along this line. Essentially it's a 'live and let live' system that kind of ignores difference unless it makes things difficult for people (such as racial vilification), in the expectation that the melting pot will eventually smooth out the mix inter-generationally. And in many respects this is true, the melting pot does work. Although legend has it that immigration officials during the 70s and 80s preferred the term 'de-wogging'.

The key to making this work is to not officially endorse any minority group. If you do that, then they have claim to means to permanently entrench themselves (hence the ghetto fears). So in practice, you can permit Chinese festivals and the like, but you don't form a 'Ministry of Asian Affairs', because this would acknowledge and potentially perpetuate their difference. In short, while the private lives of citizens may be culturally diverse, their public (i.e. political) lives are not.

I write this because the only indigenous bureaucracy of any note in Australia's history, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), was officially terminated this past week. And exactly why this has occurred is not too difficult to fathom.

As I may have mentioned before, ATSIC was hardly without its problems. Set up as a vehicle to bunch federal funding on Indigenous Affairs after the proliferation of programs and grants initiated during the 1970s, the Commission inherited all the prejudices and problems of its disparate bureaucratic forebears. Burdened with a learning curve like a figure eight, corruption, under-funding, mainstream bigotry and general ignorance, and of course a few mighty dodgy Commissioners, ATSIC was effectively ensured of never surviving.

I saw it as important though because ATISC was without doubt an effort to have indigeneity entrenched in the bureaucracy, and diversity used as a guiding principle of Indigenous Affairs. As a step towards real self-determination by Aboriginal people it was an actual step, and not a cacophony of vocal largesse.

Since taking office in 1996 Howard's Government has consistently worked to have ATSIC removed from the bureaucratic landscape, via the systematic removal of key programs like health care, and squirmed uncomfortably when placed under political pressure by Commissioners. And naturally, the biggest issue taken up by ATSIC was the demand for Howard to say 'sorry' for the treatment of the Stolen Generations.

For those who came in late, from the 1880s to the 1970s, Aboriginal children were systematically taken from their parents. This was for various reasons, sometimes legitimate, but by far the most common justification was to destroy traditional Aboriginal lifestyles. Anyhow, it's a woeful period of Australia's history that I like to harp on about, so if you're curious go to the archives, or read The Way We Civilise by Rosalind Kidd.

With ATSIC bringing deliberate and specific pressure to bear on Howard for an apology, something he saw as likely to result in compensation payments, the magic word has never appeared. The details of this issue aside, the interesting fact is that despite Howard declining the issue, it refused to go away while ATSIC kept referring to it.

In other words, ATSIC was pushing a political agenda not of Howard's liking, and more particularly not of his own making. Now, I'd think, 'oh, this is an indigenous issue' and treat it with due importance, but Howard seemed to treat the demands as 'unAustralian', and there's the catch. As a body of policy Indigenous Affairs is, like multiculturalism, largely about turning an ethnic minority into dinky-di ockers. Aboriginal people seem in the current policy environment to have little recourse but to culturally assimilate into the majority and leave their indigeneity as a private identity.

So for those at the back, Aboriginal people are welcome to become Aussies, but Aboriginality, the thing that makes them Aboriginal, is to be left off the political agenda. And well off the political agenda. Well off like five day old prawns off.

And I worry about that. With Senators like Vanstone, the Minister for 'Outsiders', making statements welcoming the end of the "sorry saga", it seems that any independent voice for Aboriginal people has been finally dealt the coup de grâs in favour of an appointed council of Howard-friendly 'advisors'. And I see Aboriginality dying a little more every day.

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