Australia is the proof multiculturalism works

Australia’s history, economy and global achievements show that multiculturalism is not a weakness but one of the country’s greatest strengths, writes Wayne Hawkins.

THE CLAIM is that no multicultural society has ever been truly successful.

True harmony, they tell us, requires a common heritage, a common ancestor, a single thread running through the national fabric. Look at Japan, they say. This is what works.

This is a seductive argument. It is also empirically false. And we don’t have to look far for evidence; we are in it.

Australia is home to 27.6 million people. more than that 32 percent of us were born overseas and nearly half of Australians have at least one parent born in another country. We speak more than 300 languages. By the standards of monoculture advocates we should be fragmented, directionless and unmanageable.

Instead, we are one of the most stable, prosperous and punching above our weight countries on Earth.

Ours Number of Nobel laureates per capita It leaves behind countries that are many times our size. Life-saving medical breakthroughs around the world – bionic ear, cervical cancer vaccine – It came from Australian laboratories, many staffed by people or children of people who came here with nothing but talent.

Ian FrazerHe was born in Glasgow, developed the HPV vaccine that protects millions of women worldwide from cancer, and emigrated to Australia in 1981. Our Olympic medals put countries with ten times our population to shame. Our cultural exports, our diplomatic outreach, economic resilience throughout 2008 Global Financial CrisisWhile the rest of the developed world caved in, none of this happened, no matter who we were. It happened because of him.

When someone tells you that no multicultural society has ever been successful, ask them what they call it.

The Japan comparison also deserves closer examination because it does too much work in this argument and does not stand up to scrutiny. Japan is held up as a model of monocultural harmony. But Japan gave us KFC on Christmas Eve – The result of the fast food marketing campaign in 1974 was so successful that it became a national tradition.

Japan has absorbed baseball, whiskey culture, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and wholesale Western fashion, making them distinctly Japanese, and no one calls it a cultural failure. Japan is not a sealed vault but a masterclass in cultural trust and selective adoption.

And it still ranks poorly for press freedom, LGBTQ+ rights and criminal justice protections, which Australians would find worrying if proposed here. Being organized is not the same as being free.

The deeper problem with the monoculture argument is that it’s not really an argument. This is a feeling disguised as politics. This feeling is real; many Australians feel displaced, uncertain and left behind. This sentiment deserves to be taken seriously.

But it’s not because of the Vietnamese family who runs the corner bakery or the Sudanese nurse who works the weekend shift at the local hospital. This is because of 30 years of policy decisions that have hollowed out wages, inflated housing beyond reach, hollowed out regional communities, and left the benefits of the resource boom in the hands of a handful of shareholders rather than the people who own the land from which it came.

Multicultural Australia did not create regional economic anxiety. Negative gearing worked. He made privatization. There was wage suppression. There was a sovereign wealth fund that did not exist.

Direct your anger upward, where it belongs.

The claim that no multicultural society can be successful also has a fundamental historical problem.

The United States built the dominant economy and cultural power of the 20th century on mass immigration. Canada consistently ranks among the countries with the highest quality of life in the world. Roman Empire At its peak was a multicultural project; This was not a flaw of his, but a feature of his success. Medieval Moorish Spain produced breakthroughs in mathematics, medicine, and philosophy precisely because of the clash of cultures within it.

The claim only works if you define “successful” in a way that excludes every instance that refutes it.

Australian identity is already a synthesis. The culture people seek to preserve includes tea from India, football rules from Ireland and England, wine traditions carried over from Europe, a pub culture built largely by Irish Catholics, and a spiritual relationship with this land that increasingly stems from 65,000 years of Indigenous tutelage. There is no pre-immigration Australian culture to return to. It never happened.

What we have instead is something rarer and harder to build: a society that takes the best of what people bring, turns it into something new, and gets better and better at it. Twenty-seven million people. Three hundred languages. One of the most successful nations in the world.

The evidence is not theoretical. Here. This is who we are.

Wayne Hawkins owns the Crisp N Sweet bakery and cafe in Claremont, Tasmania, and is an independent candidate for the federal seat of Clark at the 2028 Election.

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