Multiculturalism in Australia
[8] Makassan trepangers (along with shipwrecked Dutch sailors) made contact with Indigenous Australians along the northern coast of Australia during the 17th and mid-18th centuries, although this did not lead to permanent settlement.
As the twentieth century progressed and the number of migrants from the United Kingdom became insufficient to meet labour shortages, immigrants came increasingly from other parts of Europe, such as Italy, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, and the former Yugoslavia.
[13] The Labor Government of Bob Hawke continued with these policies during the 1980s and early 1990s, and were further supported by Paul Keating up to his electoral defeat 1996.
"CALD" (or Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) policies continue to be implemented at all levels of government and public service, such as medical support systems which cater specifically to non-English speaking residents.
[19] According to the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia in 2014, the Australian Government was concerned with three broad policy areas: cultural identity, social justice, and economic efficiency.
[25][26] By 1973, the term "multiculturalism" had been introduced, and migrant groups were forming state and national associations to maintain their cultures, and promote the survival of their languages and heritages within mainstream institutions.
It "is a ministerially appointed body representing a broad cross-section of Australian interests that provides independent and robust advice to Government on multicultural affairs, social cohesion and integration policy and programs".
[28] The earliest academic critics of multiculturalism in Australia were the philosophers Lachlan Chipman[29] and Frank Knopfelmacher,[30] sociologist Tanya Birrell[31] and the political scientist Raymond Sestito.[32][when?]
[33][34] Prime Minister John Curtin supported White Australia policy, saying, "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race".
Prime Minister Stanley Bruce was a supporter of the White Australia Policy, and made it an issue in his campaign for the 1925 Australian Federal election.
I think those ideals might well be stated as being to secure our national safety, and to ensure the maintenance of our White Australia Policy to continue as an integral portion of the British Empire.
[37]Labor leader H. V. Evatt said in 1945 at the United Nations Conference on International Organization: You have always insisted on the right to determine the composition of your own people.
These included the policies of Prime Minister Bob Hawke, a proponent of multiculturalism while at the same time promoting a citizenship campaign and stressing the common elements of our culture,[41] and anti-multiculturalism statements by Prime Minister Howard, who aroused the ire of multiculturalists who thought that he was suggesting closing down Italian restaurants and prohibiting the speaking of the Italian language when he proposed no such thing.
The authors responsible for versions of the ideology were also principal actors in the struggle to advance their beliefs and make them government policy".
Contemporary public opinion polls implied ... in the general population, a widespread resentment, or a lack of interest, of the kinds of ideas advanced by multiculturalists. ...
Howard had long been a critic of multiculturalism, releasing his One Australia policy in the late 1980s which called for a reduction in Asian immigration.
[citation needed] Rather than official multiculturalism, Howard advocated instead the idea of a "shared national identity", albeit one strongly grounded in certain recognisably Anglo-Celtic Australian themes, such as "mateship" and a "fair go".
Drawing on theoretical frameworks from Whiteness studies, Jacques Lacan and Pierre Bourdieu, Hage examined a range of everyday discourses that implicated both anti-multiculturalists and pro-multiculturalists alike.
[47] Others have asserted that the emphasis on notions such as 'Identity, citizenship, social cohesion and integration' serves more as a catchphrase rather than pragmatic attempts to address the given issues.
[50] Harmony Day was established in 1999 by the Howard government, to promote a singular and unifying notion of Australian-ness within multicultural policy.
