Death of multiculturalism

The left's pursuit of diversity is destroying our social fabric

Just because a convicted terrorist was photographed waving a black Islamist flag on the Harbour Bridge doesn’t turn everyone who marches for Palestine into a Jihadist.

That would be as ridiculous as suggesting Bob Carr is a paid-up member of the Axis of Evil because he decides to join Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in the VIP enclosure of a Chinese military parade.

Yesterday’s March for Australia was different, however. To take part was to admit guilt by association with the neo nazi nut-bags who were said to be behind it.

“This brand of far-right activism grounded in racism and ethnocentrism has no place in modern Australia," the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Anne Aly, said last week.

Character assassination has been multiculturalism's modus operandi for decades. Geoffrey Blainey's timely warnings in 1984 about emphasising separateness and the dangers of breaking Australia's historical thread with British tradition were greeted with threats of violence, prompting the police to request the removal of his name and address from the public telephone book. John Stone's criticism of immigration policy in the 1980s attracted a similarly indignant response.

Doubtless, some joined the chorus of condemnation four decades ago who might now regret it. Refusing Blainey and Stone's invitation to debate was an opportunity we should have taken, for the mistakes of the last four decades cannot be easily undone.

Yet we can, and must, engage in an open debate about the size and composition of our immigration. Dispassionate discussion won't be easy, for this is not primarily a dispute over policy. It is what Thomas Sowell describes as a clash of visions, a profound disagreement between people with different assumptions about how the world works.

On one side is the view that cultural discrimination is not only permissible but necessary to maintain social cohesion. It is coupled with the belief that our cultural traditions are worth upholding, not least because they work.