Understanding Multiculturalism and Australian Identity
By Andrew C. Theophanous
Elikia Books
1995, 466 pp., $16.95 (pb)
James Vassilopoulos
Theophanous attempts to write the definitive book on multiculturalism. Instead, he drowns in his own rhetoric.
This book is ostensibly a history of multiculturalism from the early 1970s, through the '80s under prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, to the present. Theophanous's "vision" for Australia is a grab-bag of "multiculturalism with social justice", "Australian identity", "egalitarianism" and "citizenship", with a smattering of social justice. None of it is very illuminating.
Theophanous was minister assisting the prime minister and cabinet when Keating was PM. Therefore, his ideas have to be analysed in the context of Labor's role in implementing the neo-liberal austerity policies which, despite its "multiculturalism" project, caused much suffering for migrants and indigenous people in Australia.
Some of the historical detail in this book is useful. For instance, Theophanous describes how in 1986, when Hawke tried to force a merger between the ABC and SBS, a public backlash forced a retreat. The same happened when Hawke tried to cut funding to the English-as-a-second-language program.
Theophanous correctly describes PM John Howard as a consistent racist. He omits to mention, however, Labor's role in promoting a white, racist Australia.
The White Australia policy was one of four core planks in the formation of the ALP and, while formally removed in the 1970s under Gough Whitlam, it has shaped Labor (and Coalition) policies ever since.
Theophanous is also dismissive of any left critique of multiculturalism which raises the issue of class. He states, for instance, that funding for multicultural programs is no less important than for social programs.
It is wrong to counterpose the two. Teaching migrants English is just as important as providing education for all. The point is that the ALP governed neither for migrants (the majority of whom are working people), nor for the working class as a whole.
Theophanous' call for multiculturalism with social justice is hollow when we recall Labor's anti-social justice record during the 1980s and '90s. It cut immigration (buying into the argument that migrants cause unemployment), introduced a six-month wait for migrants to receive welfare payments and, despite international and domestic condemnation, preserved one of the most inhumane refugee detention systems in the world.
With regard to social policy, the ALP introduced the lower "youth dole", privatised major public assets, cut thousands of public sector jobs and ended free education.
Simultaneously, Labor's accord with the ACTU ensured, by containing wage increases, that some $25 billion was transferred from the pockets of working people to big business each year.
There is no doubt that "multiculturalism", as far as it went, was an improvement on Labor's openly racist White Australia policy. But rather than being a product of the "genius of Whitlam", the policy change had more to do with the gains of the 1960s protest movements which raised anti-racist consciousness in the Australian population, and with the ALP's campaign to secure the electoral support of migrant communities.
In the end, multiculturalism gave some crumbs to a select few in the largest and best organised migrant communities. It thereby coopted their leaderships and smoothed the way for the continued implementation of the public funding and wage cuts that hurt migrants so badly.
By de-mobilising the workers' movement and not tackling wage differences between migrants and non-migrant workers, the ALP left the space wide open for Pauline Hanson and other populist racists to gain support.