Demise of Multiculturalism

Has multiculturalism really been scrapped or are all the unwanted flotsam and jetsam of this planet who have been arriving into Australia still going to receive the massive amounts of taxpayer’s money which they were getting to make sure they retained their identity?

Of course Australians were the only group that did not receive these grants and if we complained about the loss of our identity then of course we were racists, bigots, racial supremists and whatever else they could dream up to keep us quiet.

 

Contact you Member of Parliament and ask, if in order to scrap multiculturalism, will these grants to ethnic groups now be scrapped. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

How its practical outcomes killed off multiculturalism



12feb07

Sydney historian Keith Windschuttle, in The Wall Street Journal Asia, on the success of Australian assimilation


FOR some time now, Australia's political parties have struggled to find common ground on multiculturalism. The Labor Party pursued it most enthusiastically, with one former Labor minister, Barry Jones, admitting it became "a tremendously important element" in building up a long-term, non-English-speaking political constituency for his party. The conservative Liberal-National Coalition responded more to older Australian values that stressed national cohesion more than diversity. The irony is that mainstream Australia was doing just fine integrating its various, diverse ethnic groups.

Studies by Monash University's Bob Birrell showed that by the end of the 1990s only a minority of second-generation marriages of persons of Asian descent in Australia were to someone from their parents' country. Only 6 per cent of Australia's Indian community married within their ethnic group, as did only 16 per cent of Australia's Chinese community. Without the help of intellectuals and multiculturalist policymakers, ordinary Australians have been rapidly creating a successful multiracial country.

This general trend toward assimilation is a point too often missed by defenders of multiculturalism on the Left, who are still eager to find examples of old Australian xenophobia and racism in every corner

The only non-European immigrants who have posed serious problems as a group have been those who embraced multiculturalism most enthusiastically. Lebanese Muslims have stuck stubbornly to their own communities. A full 74 per cent marry other Lebanese Muslims. This pattern fulfilled the community-building objective that Lebanese political and religious leaders worked for, but by isolating their constituents from the rest of Australia it produced more social problems than it solved.

What finally put paid to multiculturalism wasn't an academic debate about its philosophical underpinnings or some grand Left-Right struggle, but its practical outcomes. Coupled with the revival of Islamic jihad and fanned by some highly provocative misogynist statements by their religious leaders, the comparatively closed Muslim communities came to be seen by most Australians as a problem in their midst. The London Tube bombings in July 2005 and the riots by Muslim youth across France in October and November of that year demonstrated outcomes that many critics of multiculturalism had predicted.

With the central rationale disproved and its inherent drawbacks so visibly on show, the demise of government enthusiasm for multiculturalism was only a matter of