The Cheryl Lacey Show
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The Cheryl Lacey Show
IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURALISM - The Past The Present And The Future
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Australia's identity has brought benefits and challenges and an uncertain future.
Editor of the book Immigration and Multiculturalism - The Past The Present and The Future, Chetan Mahadik shares insights from her role as editor and the essays provided in this Connor Court Publication.
Australia has long been considered a multicultural society and a nation that celebrates immigration. It has certainly brought great success to Australia, but it's also brought its challenges. Chetna Mahardik is the editor of a new publication, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Past, Present and Future, published by Connor Court Publishing. She's here with me today on the Cheryl Lacey show where curiosity meets courage. And we're about to have a conversation about multiculturalism and what it means, not just for you, but all of Australia.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Cheryl. I'm really pleased to be here.
SPEAKER_00Being an editor of a book as opposed to being the full author, what was it like, the experience for you?
SPEAKER_01Um, so I uh the publisher of this book, wanted to put together a book on uh multiculturalism and immigration. And uh they knew of my work from the time when I worked at the IPA, it's a public policy think tank. And uh they felt that um I'm a migrant, but I did not always follow the orthodoxies of um, you know, the left-leaning narratives around racism against about multiculturalism, about um, you know, uh just Australia in general. And uh so he reached out to me. He first reached out to me saying if I would be interested in contributing an essay, and I was like, absolutely, and I sent in my essay pretty quickly. So he read the essay, which was a mix of my personal experiences, but also a lot of data and then some analysis. And uh they got back to me saying if I was interested in editing this collection because they felt that I was taking a very open-minded attitude to the to this subject, which can be quite contentious with you know people having very set positions, um, and that uh I might bring something new. And uh I got into it because I felt that um I felt that my experiences of living in Australia didn't always match the media narratives I hear as a migrant, and I wanted to explore that more and I wanted to learn the history. So I came into the project very much with this idea that I'm gonna learn a lot. And with the help of the publisher, we reached out to a lot of people. We always knew we wanted to have a mix of critiques, we wanted to have history, that was very important. Um, we wanted to have critiques, but we and we wanted to have proponents of multiculturalism. We wanted to bring those perspectives together and then let the reader decide.
SPEAKER_00Well, you've certainly done that. You have quite an extensive and quite a variety of contributors, which we'll get into.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But back to your point about your perspective, that's really where it begins, isn't it? It's it's being aware that we do have different perspectives, and you do refer to an Indian parable regarding the elephant and the six blind men. Perhaps you can start with that as well.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So the introduction starts with uh the introduction that I have written uh starts with a parable. It's an Indian parable of um six blind men and an elephant. So six blind men encounter an elephant for the first time, and they only have their sense of touch to figure out what this beast is. And one holds the trunk, one holds the legs, one holds the tail, one the body, and all of them decide that what they're touching is the elephant, and then they start arguing with each other. Right. And the the the learning from it is that the truth is more complex than we we always assume. We may hold a part of it, but in order to understand the whole, we really have to bring all those perspectives together. And I think that I start with this because I wanted people to get a sense that this project is about trying to bring different perspectives together and let them uh fight with each other, let them contradict, even contradict each other, but the reader will get a full picture, and that's what I tried to do.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and you've certainly done that at beginning with essentially uh what multiculturalism is, and that also unfolds throughout the book, doesn't it? Given those different contexts and the history, of course, the political sway back to federal right through to present day. You also use the term pluralism, so let's compare the difference between the two. How would you define both multiculturalism and pluralism?
SPEAKER_01Um, pluralism is just that we allow many different uh ideas, many different um attitudes uh to live together or to exist together, but we do not try to present um, we allow them to integrate with each other as well. I uh that's what I would say, that we allow them to fight with each other, we're allowing them to have a conversation with each other, but the way multiculturalism has come to be practiced. Now, I do want to make that distinction of how it was originally conceived and how we have come to practice it, it's very much that uh everybody is just allowed to live their lives. But if they come in contradiction with each other, we have no solution.
SPEAKER_00So that's an interesting one.
SPEAKER_01So you idea that we can all just live a parallel life.
SPEAKER_00Right. Okay, so with multiculturalism, where does that sit?
SPEAKER_01No, so I would say that originally the idea with multiculturalism was another thing defining multiculturalism, and it's always been so from the official policy, is that we have to celebrate all diversity. That people are allowed to live the way they want to live, they have their different ways of life. We should celebrate, we shouldn't just um just tolerate it, we should celebrate it. All differences are good, but in Malcolm Fraser's conception of it, and Malcolm Fraser really was the one who created our official multicultural policy, there was a certain sense of national shared values. And he didn't see culture in contradiction with national values. He thought we could all celebrate our cultures, but they will not come in contradiction with what our unified national values have to be. And this is a position also I want to emphasize that started getting criticized pretty much from the 80s. People did start questioning that is that necessarily so.
SPEAKER_00And it's interesting you mentioned Fraser because that was one of the areas that really resonated with me in looking at the book. He talks about shared fundamental values. Yes. What that does is it comes into issues around faith, it comes into issues around belief. Uh certainly, you know, we can have a very narrow view of multiculturalism and think of things like traditions and foods and things like that, but we know it's much deeper than that.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that he got it right when he said that we could have a framework of shared fundamental values?
SPEAKER_01Yes, we can have a shared fundamental values, but we need to be very comfortable saying that. We have to be comfortable saying that, say for example, rule of law. Rule of law, that we are all equal under the rule of law and the law applies equally to everyone, regardless of background. That is a shared fundamental value. If it is a shared fundamental value, which I do think it is a shared fundamental value, then the whether that's a government, whether that's a leader, whether that's a migrant group, they all have to buy into it. I think somewhere along the way, the discussion about the shared fundamental value just got lost, and all we were left with with multiculturalism was a celebration of culture, which is what you were saying, is that you know, food and and you know how we live. But that that fundamental values that we have, and like I use the example of rule of law simply because how of recent events where certain communities have felt that um, you know, say even the protests that we have been seeing uh in the country, um, certain communities have felt like their grievance must um must overtake civic order. If civic order and civic virtue and civic debate is of shared fundamental value, certainly certain communities have decided that that doesn't may not apply to them.
SPEAKER_00That's that's true too. However, what he also says, Chetner, is that we he really wanted to insist that there is a core area of common values. So, what's the difference between fundamental values and common values?
SPEAKER_01Fundamental value would be something that um that defines uh how we and society interact with each other. You know, it is fundamental to um you know, if we are to say that the rule of law is important, it actually really controls every individual's actions. When we say common values, I do think common values are negotiable. They can they can be negotiated and they can change with time because you know there's a commonality to it, and we all get to have a say in it. But the fundamental value I would say, and you know, I I wish that our leaders would define that for us and hold strong and true with them.
SPEAKER_00Well, you're asking for something that I don't think we're ever going to see there, Chitna. It's when you talk about the law, and I don't disagree at all. I I think what is lawful and what has become legal are two different things. So let's stay with the lawfulness, what's lawful? And that comes back to fundamental principles and first principles in particular, and I certainly agree with you the importance of the law, and yet we have something like not being able to define a woman any longer, and that is sitting within an element of the law that's gone as far as the high court. So, um, how does society say, well, we have these common values, but we have these laws that can be whatever someone chooses?
SPEAKER_01I think I think the fact that the law exists doesn't mean that the law cannot be changed. But the truth is that the law applies equally to everyone. We can have bad laws, but the bad laws then have to be challenged and changed. And I think that you know that's what the women's rights movement in Australia is trying to do. They're trying to change the law. But what they're not doing is just break the law.
SPEAKER_00So the difference between having a law and following that law and breaking that law comes back to multiculturalism, the way people view the elephant. So if you've got if you have a society that has different ethnic groupings, yeah, and their fundamental values are different to ours, suggesting, and I think you are, that it's the law that is the most important element for any uh ideology to survive. So multiculturalism's existence and success is entirely dependent on a law that treats everybody equally.
SPEAKER_01I think that law, yeah, I do think that the equality under the law is absolutely important. And I think that uh sometimes it's hard because you know you can have marginalized communities in your society, and it can it's tempting to change the law so that we can, you know, lift them up. But I think in the long run it creates divisions and it creates differences. The differences get baked into the law, and those that's harder to change or than it is when we allow culture, society, governments, institutions to do that job.
SPEAKER_00Well, the law is created by government, isn't it? Statutory law. So we're up against we're up against that whole political cycle, aren't we? And that's an interesting element of your book as well, because you talk about the White Australia policy essentially being in place since Federation in 1901. Then the book moves through the different eras of change, and particularly, you know, starting uh with the end of the Second World War and the immigration that took place, predominantly Europeans. So we had the White Australia policy, and then there was a European movement, yes, it wasn't a full-scale migration of people from all over the world. So there was a gradual introduction. Do you think do you think that was of benefit to Australia?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I I think that definitely, I think um what happened, and so so in the 1940s, it was Arthur Caldwell, a Labour Prime Minister, who came up with this this policy, uh, this slogan, populate or perish, to really sell this idea that Australia, just in order to survive, needs more people. And even it just in terms of its its security within the region, it needs more people. And uh first, I think this program first was directed at uh British, British people, um, but they were not able to attract the number of people they wanted, so they expanded it to the European people, to people displaced because of the Second World War. A lot of Jewish migration happened at that time. So, and then they opened it up, and um I think it was in Robert Menzies' era, but there was definitely this idea of assimilation that they will assimilate into our society. Um, so that's when the Greeks, Italians, people of Slavic backgrounds, Jewish people, they came to Australia in a big way. And uh I think the the I think that what Robert Menzies managed during that period, and all through this period, we did have the white Australia policy, but it was slowly being dismantled, allowing society to slowly absorb the changes that were have around them. But uh the economy was able to absorb them, wages remained high, social cohesion was, you know, it it it it stood, it stood that test. And by doing that and by showing the people that, you know, this is not the boogeyman, that we can do this, he was able to get a bring the country along to a position where White Australia policy was dismantled and it was dismantled without without much um rancor. And it was it was uh finally dismantled by uh I think the last vestiges were removed by Whitlam, but really a lot of work had already happened before that. Well, the interesting including bringing in Asian students to Australia under the Colombo Plan, which happened for the first time and in Menzies' government. Um, and you know, that's something like even today, you know, universities are bringing in students from all over the world.
SPEAKER_00It was certainly a worldwide movement, wasn't it? Uh particularly as you said, the university students. And Canada was central to the introduction of multiculturalism and in the 70s as well. And that whole uh impetus around what we have now is this globalist and globalism uh agenda that many will say. So certainly multiculturalism was a big part of that, and and this mass migration between countries. There are benefits to this, but there are also problems. And one of the benefits in the earlier era after the Second World War was that they brought in people to work in the construction sector from England. Yes. So housing certainly wasn't an issue because people came in job ready and construction took place. That's not happening today, and that's just one example. So, you know, in our conversation, he will ebb and flow a little bit, but I think that multiculturalism and immigration should go hand in hand in our conversations. That seems to me.
SPEAKER_01Um I think that yes, multiculturalism is a policy adjacent to immigration. If you do not have a whole if we had never embarked upon an immigration policy which invited people from many different cultures into the country, I don't think we would have been having this discussion about multiculturalism, or there wouldn't have been a need for multiculturalism. So definitely, multiculturalism is a uh policy adjacent to immigration. But um but but but multiculturalism is not a necessary condition for immigration, there can be other ways. Before uh multiculturalism became the official policy, we still had migration in a big number happening, but we do not have any official multicultural policy. But the idea was that people will come here and they'll absorb this way of life, and that's when the Greeks and Italians and you know, uh like you know, Jewish people, they came here and they did make a good life.
SPEAKER_00Were you talking three million people in a 10-year period, 1949 to 1959?
SPEAKER_01Oh no, it was it was 2.2 million people in 20 years, right?
SPEAKER_00Okay, oh the end of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 20, 16 years between 1949 and 1966, so roughly.
SPEAKER_00Okay. About 15 years. That must be my error in uh your introduction. I thought it said three million people.
SPEAKER_01So interesting. Oh, okay. I'll have to check.
SPEAKER_00Well, between big figures, isn't it? Yeah, well, yes, uh, you know, by comparison to what the population was back then, so it was a massive change to Australia. But with that, we also had support programs, didn't we? So yeah, we certainly had schools that embraced the support of children and also the teaching of English to adults in the evenings, as one example, we don't have that any longer, and I know you also referred to the dictation test in the manuscript where Sir Robert Menzies removed the necessity for that. So, a question: if we're to have a common set of values, or more importantly, a fundamental foundation in this country that has agreed values in principle, then how do we do that when we have so many different languages and the inability for people to communicate freely with one another?
SPEAKER_01When you say uh those are two different things. When you say freely, do you mean that they're simply unable to converse or correct?
SPEAKER_00That the you know, I can't freely converse with someone who doesn't speak English, just as that person from whatever background can't speak freely with me because we don't have the language to do so. So there's a bit of a conflict there with having agreement and certainly trying to work out how we actually do that together.
SPEAKER_01I think that you know, language is absolutely critical. And uh I would like to know a country which is functioning very, very well where they have no common language that everybody subscribes to. Like I come from a very multilingual language country, which is India, but India still has one common language, which is English. So a lot of administration, a lot of communication and correspondence can happen in English, even though the different states and regions have completely different languages. And even with that, there are problems. So, yes, I think a common language is definitely very important to um running the state well.
SPEAKER_00So then you work for the uh Sir Robert Menzies Institute, and it was Sir Robert Menzies that said, Well, we don't need the dictation test. In hindsight, was it much?
SPEAKER_01I think the dictation test it uh pushed people away pretty much at the outset. And there were other problems with it as well, the way it was being uh done. I think the idea that people can learn the language and that it is on them to learn the language is a different thing. Which is what happened when we brought in a lot of we all gave them the services to learn the language, but it was never made um conditional that you don't have to learn the language.
SPEAKER_00You make it very clear and rightly so that we are trying to do what's right by everyone. So if we had a clean slate and we could start over, would we start with multiculturalism in Australia based on what you've learned in editing this book?
SPEAKER_01I think if we have uh so any policy, I think, lives or dies by its leaders and the people who actually are taking it forward. I can come up with the best policy, but it's really about how people choose to use it. So I think that multiculturalism as a policy was put in place at a time when free speech was celebrated and there were no none of these um guardrails that had been put so strictly around what can be said, what cannot be said. And over a period of time, I think free speech has come into more and more of uh pressure of what you can and cannot say. And uh I think that is also what has then impacted how multiculturalism has come to be practiced. So I don't know what multi-how multi how successful or not successful multiculturalism would would be today if we were just allowed to, if we were not discouraged constantly in the name of um um multiculturalism to to not speak our minds or you know uh essentially uh talk about what makes us uncomfortable. I think these conversations can be had civilly. I think civilly or in a civil debate, these things can be discussed and they should be brought up. But you know, I mean, of course, there's a way you present as well that that counts. And so uh, but people should not be discouraged from sharing what makes them uncomfortable. It is through that that true social cohesion is is achieved.
SPEAKER_00And I think Santa Maria is a good example of that, isn't it? In the book, he was quite dogmatic. Tell us a little bit about him and his attitude to multiculturalism.
SPEAKER_01Um, so he was, I mean, you would probably know better than me, but he was a labor-leaning figure, but very influential in uh the public debate. And he has an essay in this where he talks about, yes, I mean, we have people living from different cultures, and we should definitely love them and and uh uh you know and and learn from them, but we have to know that ultimately what is Australian value and culture? How is it that we live here that is equally important? And actually, in a way, we have to give it primacy. And he's very clear about it in his essay. And I think the essay has to be read because he puts it so so simply.
SPEAKER_00And the simple way in which you've just described it as well, we're talking multiculturalism, but this is swinging us back to what Australia is and what Australia stands for, rather than saying, well, we're multicultural, well, that's great, but so are other countries around the world. So, what is it about Australia that makes it unique? Um how would you explain Australia?
SPEAKER_01That's a really tough question. Um, I have lived in many countries. So I've I mean, you know, I was I was born in Zambia, and um, and then I moved to India where I finished my education and then I worked there for a little while, then I moved to do my master's. So I lived in Denmark, I lived in uh Germany, um, Netherlands, and then a couple of years in the UK, and then moved to Australia because I married somebody who's of who's Australian, and uh like a lot of Australians, he wanted to raise his family in Australia because it has a great way of life, and it and that's why we came here and we have had our children here. Um, and I think that it is this easiness, there's a there's an easiness to living in Australia, and I don't mean like physical easiness, but it was, and in fact, it was tied into our ability to just speak our minds. You know, and uh we did, I do think that there was a there is and was a lot of social cohesion in Australia, but it depends on I think the fact that we have a lot of small voluntary organizations, communities that look after their own neighborhoods, or and we encourage that, we encourage that kind of volunteerism. So I feel like there are these um in Australia, we still um have uh we value the community within which we live, and we are willing to take responsibility of it. And this is something I have seen. Now, that might be true of the UK and maybe I did not live long enough there, but I lived in London, which is a very big city, and you know, that brings with it its own kind of atomization. But certainly in a city like Melbourne, Victoria that I have experienced, I feel people wanting to take responsibility of their own problems and dealing with it, coming together and dealing with their own problems. I'm amazed at the way the fire services work with so many volunteers. And and it's a great way to go about solving a problem which is everybody's problem. You come together, you volunteer, you solve that problem, and you know, uh without without needing somebody else to come in and solve it for you. And I think that is something we should cherish, we should encourage and really hold on to.
SPEAKER_00Chetney, you mentioned community and how important that is, and that goes to Damian Freeman's essay, doesn't it? Because he talks very much about the importance of society rather than the state driving the success of multiculturalism. Let's talk more about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So um he asks, uh Damien asks an interesting question. He says that left has its answer to the problem of multiculturalism, as I as I had previously said, is not that you know uh we just want multiculturalism for the multic uh for multiculturalism's sake. It is one answer, one suggested answer to achieving social cohesion. So if we think that so that multiculturalism has not worked out the way we wanted it to, and it's not delivering the social cohesion, then we if if you call and he considers himself a conservative, he said conservatives have to have their own answer to how then we achieve social cohesion. We can't go back to White Australia policy, it's simply not possible now. So, how do we achieve social cohesion where you already diversity is already a fact of life?
SPEAKER_00It's interesting because he's right, and at the same time, that social cohesion is very much centered around the language that we use. And we did mention that earlier in the interview this morning. When we use terms like multiculturalism, and we don't have that shared agreement, or an object, I like to say a shared objective agreement on its meaning, then we do have an issue. And the same thing applies with democracy. We have, if fair to say, the two major parties, Labour and Liberal, they both talk about the importance of democracy, yet they come from two very different vantage points. Do you think we need a national agreement on, and again, an objective agreement, on the meaning of multiculturalism before we can continue these discussions? And has your book shed shed some light on that?
SPEAKER_01Um I do think that we need to have a discussion about multiculturalism. Where does it become just communities living together? And where uh is it something more than that, which which allows for a superstructure to exist where national values, national culture can um uh can exist and everybody can participate in it? So um definitely I think we do need to have that discussion, but I also feel that perhaps we're being a sometimes I feel that is it that multiculturalism what was always going to fail, or is it that the way we have come to practice is it practice it is failing? And maybe what we need to have is a very clear and open discussion about what sort of society we really want to live in.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think Pauline Hansen has opened the door, speaking more around the issue. The introduction of the term monoculture when I say the introduction, it's not something that's been in the public domain until now for a very long time, yeah. That's correct. I don't know Pauline, I've not met Pauline, but from what we've understood, she certainly wasn't saying white Australia. Uh, some people are accusing her of that. Do you think that her terminology monoculture, in essence, works beautifully with multiculturalism because essentially we would be creating the value systems that Australia is seeking?
SPEAKER_01Um, I think I don't want to put words into Pauline Hansen's mouth. I think Pauline Hansen has to do the job of explaining and putting forth that vision, which I don't think that she has done yet. So I feel that uh it would really be uh unwise of us, and this is what everybody is doing. Everybody is using their own understanding of what they think this word could be, or what this monocultural Australia would be, and placing it on Pauline Hansen that this is what she means. But it is for her to share that vision with us. A word is just a word, and as we have seen, words change their meanings change depending on how people choose to uh to live it.
SPEAKER_00And that that does look problematic, it does, doesn't it? And it does come back to it does come back to not just a conversation, but very, very firm decisions that have to be made by Australians, and perhaps something that does need to be put to a vote at some point in time. Because culture, when we look at the word culture, we're talking about beliefs, and we sh we are free to believe what we choose, but coming back to the law, yeah, beliefs must also be such that they do not harm others, which comes back to the need to have a lawful society. Yeah, are we focusing too much on the beliefs and the feelings and the subjectivity in society when we should be more objective and making sure we have a lawful society?
SPEAKER_01Um I definitely think that uh in recent times, just this idea that the law uh applies equally to everyone has come into question. And I think we are trying to make too many adjustments to maybe the community circumstances or the individual circumstances um to why certain people may not follow the law as with as everybody else does, or why it doesn't it shouldn't be applied equally. Um so definitely this has become a problem. I also think that feelings are hard because how a person feels is so varied. You can have a one person can have um an experience and come out of it fairly fine, and the other person can come out of it feeling terrible. So that really depends so much on the resilience of each individual or you know their uh their past experiences, their personality sometimes. But you know, we can't have a society where you know there's the tyranny of one, that one individual gets to define things for how everybody has to behave. We still do need to have those common common shared shared culture or shared understanding of um of how we live with each other. And I agree that it is something that shifts, it's something that changes, but that change also has to happen through a process of discussion, an open discussion. It cannot happen through stealth, it cannot happen by quietly changing the law somewhere, or just um decide a small minority deciding for everyone, and then saying to question it is a problem.
SPEAKER_00It sounds to me, Chetney, that with your book and its title Immigration and Multiculturalism, past, present, and future, we've tapped into uh past, we've tapped into a little bit of the present. The future is unknown for all of us, and yet this book promises the opportunity for really deep reflection. And your point just then regarding important conversations, they need to start locally, don't they? And with your book, with any luck, these local conversations will start to take shape.
SPEAKER_01I I agree. I also think that uh, you know, for me, like we all read, we all like I have been trying to understand how it is that a society where you know people of different cultures, different religions, different sometimes value systems are coex are coexisting. How what then brings people together? Like, what is it that we must insist upon? And uh, I I don't know if you know of the English philosopher Roger Scruton. He he he was a conservative um English philosopher, and he wrote a book. And one of the concepts he talked about in in context of England was neighborliness, like know your neighbor, make the effort to know your neighbor, make the effort to know your neighborhood, take charge of your neighborhood, love your neighborhood, you know, and I think that it also comes back to building very thick bonds. These are very thick bonds, and we need to have these thick bonds, you know, then it then it'll matter less what the ethnicity of the person is because we have a shared uh community of people, we have a shared neighborhood.
SPEAKER_00Chetna You mentioned that uh you're fairly new to Australia, and therefore a lot of this work with your essays has really shed light for you into what Australia was and what it is today. And you talk about neighborhoods. I'm sure you've heard many, many people saying that you know, growing up in the 50s and 60s and 70s, doors were left open. Yeah, so much of that, yes. Yes, left unlocked in neighborhoods. Kids played until dark, and then they only went home because they were hungry and had to have dinner. So life was different to what it is today, and life will continue to unfold. You mentioned at the very, very end of your book that tomorrow may yet render the great debates meaningless. I don't think that that really is the case with your book.
SPEAKER_01Well, I do end with let's remain friends. I think it is so important, you know, that we don't lose sight, that we at the end share the same country. At the end, we share, you know, we share our citizenship, and and it must mean something. We all still are Australians, and let's remain friends, even if we can have we have to have tough conversations with each other.
SPEAKER_00So respectfully disagree, but agree to remain friends. Yeah, it doesn't get much better than that, Chetna. So, Chetna Maharik, thank you very much for your time. Congratulations again on this outstanding publication Immigration, culturalism, past, present, and future by Connor Court. And it's been a real pleasure to uh have your company today. Same here, thank you.