The blind spot in Australia’s multicultural laws

As global tensions spill over into everyday life, WA can lead the way in recognizing harms that don’t come as events, he writes Carl Gopalkrishnan.

FOR A LONG TIME, multiculturalism policy has assumed that social tensions arise close to home, between neighbors, within communities, or through isolated incidents of prejudice. The answer was to encourage compliance, participation and contribution. This work is still important. But it was built for a world where conflicts were largely local and slow-moving.

That world has changed. War, geopolitics and global cultural conflicts now reach directly into daily life through media, politics and public language. They shape how people are read and treated long before any event occurs.

But our civic instincts have not caught up. Instead, we invoke a familiar mandate – “park the war at the door” – and claim that it is management.

This sentence sounds logical. Even generous. But he is asking people to do something impossible; removing meaning, identity, and fear from daily life as if they were external baggage. It does not reduce tension in practice. It turns inside and becomes inflamed.

What happens next is usually not malicious. It is the confusion, the anxiety, the inherited narratives and the sheer speed with which global events are currently circulating. Security debates and foreign policy positions are made public, but their social aftershocks remain largely unacknowledged. The pressure is felt and people are left to manage it on their own.

For many culturally and religiously diverse Australians, belonging is shaped less by formal rights than by whether public narratives allow them to navigate society without suspicion, explanation or self-censorship. The question is whether our multicultural laws can recognize harms that do not come as an event-harm that accumulates through policy environments and public narratives, quietly teaching some people that they will always be read with suspicion.

This blind spot is important because multiculturalism is not experienced in principle. It is happening in workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, faith spaces, and civic forums. Although defense and foreign policy fall outside the scope of multicultural law, the language used to discuss them does. When national security narratives dominate public opinion, certain identities are subtly coded as risks rather than participants.

I became more wary of this loophole when applying for Western Australia’s proposal. Multiculturalism Act. Translating lived patterns into legislative language clarified what the law currently sees and what it misses. Existing principles of respect, justice, inclusion and diversity as strengths remain intact. The problem is that they are designed to respond to actions and decisions, not narrative conditions that silently shape behavior and trust over time.

Freedom of expression remains a fundamental democratic value. Disagreement and opposition are not problems to be solved. But public language carries weight, and governments have a responsibility to understand how words, policies and silences extend beyond the realm of official policy, especially in times of heightened global tension.

Consultations on the proposed legislation began in November and will conclude this February. That’s why participation is important, especially for those who tend to assume it won’t happen. Consultation is not just about convincing the government; It is an opportunity to decide what pressures we are prepared to allow communities to absorb privately and what responsibility the law should bear.

This blind spot is not unique to Western Australia. Different versions of this are happening across the country, as debates about security, immigration and social cohesion blend into daily life. When multicultural law fails to acknowledge such oppression, people begin to manage it informally in workplaces, schools, and community spaces, without the language or authority to name what is happening. Over time, this situation wears people out. Participation is shrinking, trust is weakening, and governments are losing the relationships and informal information networks they rely on to understand what is really going on inside communities.

Western Australia has a chance to do something pretty significant. Not by claiming that conflict can be parked on the doorstep, but by acknowledging how it actually comes. WA is often seen as a backwater in the national debate. In this case, it could be a precursor to how multicultural management can evolve based on how people actually live, relate, and co-create culture, without panic or denial.

Carl Gopalkrishnan is an Australian artist and policy practitioner with many years of experience in multicultural policy, social cohesion and community engagement.

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