This article was originally published in Australian Financial Review on or about 4 October 2024 and was written by the author in their capacity as a contributor for that publication.
It has been republished on the IPA website with permission. The views expressed are those of the author alone.
Even multicultural societies need some shared values. The Liberals feel confident they are defending them.
Given that museums are full of things past their use-by-dates, it seems appropriate that Arron Wood, a candidate in the upcoming elections for Melbourne’s lord mayor, has promised to build, if he’s elected, an “Intercultural Museum” to “celebrate the city’s multiculturalism”.
According to Wood: “I think at a time when people are trying to divide us, when people are seeking division, this museum … really says we are proudly multicultural … We are one here in Melbourne.” It’s not clear how a museum helps Melbourne’s Jewish community, some of whose members are reluctant to wear a kippah in public.
Few Melburnians, Jewish or not, who dare venture to the city centre on a weekend and who can’t avoid seeing and hearing protesters cheering for Hamas and Hezbollah, would come away thinking “We are one”.
Like so many ideas from the 1970s, “multiculturalism’ felt good, and everyone was doing it. But it was an idea of a time and place, and the world and Australia have changed in the past half-century.
Multiculturalism assumes three things.
First, that migrants to Australia and their children would leave behind the enmities of the places from which they came. Second, that the allegiance of Australians would be to each other, regardless of identity, and specifically irrespective of race or religion. Third, that Australians adhered to an agreed set of shared values, including freedom from threats of intimidation and violence.
For Dutton himself and his party, the countries of the West are facing a truly ‘civilisational moment’.
The scenes witnessed around the country after October 7 last year reveal those assumptions no longer hold.
The Albanese government’s invention of the roles of “special envoy to combat Islamophobia” and “special envoy to combat antisemitism” is not a sign of multiculturalism’s success. It’s an admission it’s failed.
Rather than confront and deal with the challenge of Australia’s collapsing social cohesion, some would instead construct museums, while others prefer to ignore what’s happening.
Labor’s assistant minister for citizenship and multicultural affairs, Julian Hill, is in the latter category. This week, he made the extraordinary comment that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is “obsessed” with the Middle East. “At every turn, Peter Dutton is obsessed with the Middle East, not middle Australia – on any day that he can pour petrol on the fire and disrupt community harmony and profit from international conflicts. He doesn’t want to talk about the cost of living, doesn’t want to recall parliament to deal with the housing bill stuck in the Senate. It’s all about the Middle East.”
Hill seems to be almost begging Dutton to stop asking why the country’s foreign policy appears to be one of abandoning support for the Middle East’s sole democracy. If Hill was proud of Australia’s actions at the United Nations and thought it was winning votes, he’d have no problem with the Coalition talking about it. Maybe Hill would prefer the Coalition to be talking about what the ALP might do to negative gearing.
Middle Australia can be thinking about more than one thing at a time. It’s impossible to ignore both rising grocery prices and the mayhem in the country’s capital cities.
Labor’s fear is that when it comes to the Middle East, antisemitism, and the defence of Australia’s culture of tolerance, what Dutton says aligns with the values of middle Australia more closely than the utterances of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
On the Indigenous Voice to parliament, it was Dutton, not Albanese, who spoke for the views of most Australians. Significantly, the opposition leader also spoke for the 37 per cent of Labor voters and the 81 per cent of voters for the non-major parties who voted “No”. Meanwhile, the prime minister spoke for the 86 per cent of Greens voters who voted “Yes”.
Liberals aren’t often united on culture and values. When Tony Abbott attempted to repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, his cabinet rebelled. On religious freedom and the Voice, there have been dissenting views from the party’s left. But in support of Israel and the fight against antisemitism, Liberal MPs are unified behind Dutton.
Unlike the Labor Party, the Liberals’ foreign policy positions aren’t determined by political calculation. There’s no seat Liberals are targeting to win from Labor because of their stance on the Middle East. For Dutton himself and his party, the countries of the West are facing a truly “civilisational moment”.
