A Documentary Analysis of Australian Multicultural Policy under the
Howard Government
By SHEN Jingjing
A Thesis Submitted
to the School of English and International Studies
Beijing Foreign Studies University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Master of Arts
in the Program of Australian Studies
Supervised by
Professor XIA Yuhe
November, 2008
i
Acknowledgements
I owe my sincere gratitude to many people who have helped in various ways with the
development of this thesis. To begin with, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my
supervisor, Professor Xia Yuhe, who is always available for consultation and advice
throughout the research process. Her insightful guidance helps to shape and refine the topic
and methodology of the thesis and is worthy of my greatest appreciation.
I am also heavily indebted to the Australia-China Council for its financial support,
without which it would have been impossible for me to undertake research in Australia. In
retrospect, the trip to Australia opened my eyes to the rich repertoire of scholarly works in the
area and greatly deepened my understanding of the research topic through live experience,
which hopefully is demonstrated in the thesis.
I also want to extend my warmest thanks to Professor Ann Curthoys, Dr James Jupp and
Professor Marian Sawer for their tremendous academic and moral support during my stay at
the Australian National University. Their critical suggestions and enlightening comments
enabled me to get the most out of my research and practically turned the arduous task of
thesis-writing into an enjoyable process.
My heartfelt thanks also go to the faculty members of the Australian Studies Center of
BFSU—Professor Du Xuezeng, Professor Li Youwen, Professor Colin Mackerras, Dr Ann
Aungles, Professor Dai Ning, Professor Chen Lanfang and Professor Gan Huiting, for their
thought-provoking lectures given during my postgraduate years, which have paved a sold
foundation for the design and conduction of my MA project.
I am equally grateful to my friends and classmates for those valuable insights acquired
through group discussions and their generous help of various kinds.
Last but not least, my special thanks are held for my parents, especially for my beloved
mother, whose unfailing love spurs me up in my pursuit of an academic career.
ii
Abstract
This thesis aims to analyse the significant evolution of the multicultural policy under the
Howard government and explore its meaning under the twin frames of globalization and the
changing Australian political culture. Australian multicultural policy has been an established
public policy addressing the consequences arising from an ethnically and culturally diverse
population for the past thirty years. It is not only concerned with the metaphysical
conceptualization of national identity, citizenship, equality and so forth, but also leads to
practical government actions, as reflected in the institutional embodiments and the series of
services, programs and legislations introduced over the years.
This research is informed by rich scholarship on the contending notions of ethnicity, the
interplay between ethnicity and nationhood and voluminous discussions of different modes of
ethnic governance. By reviewing the publications displayed on the website of the
Commonwealth Department of Immigration and Citizenship, I have collected all the key
policy papers launched by the Howard government, which cover the time frame from 1996 to
2007 and clearly demonstrate the incremental development of the major planks of
multicultural policy in this era. In addition, National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia
(1989) introduced by the Hawke government and Multicultural Australia—The Next Steps—
Towards and Beyond 2000 (1995) supported by the Keating government are also selected for
comparative purposes, shedding light on the continuity and divergence of Howard’s policy
against the historical trajectory.
In accordance with the generic characteristics of policy papers, I will employ
documentary analysis in the form of a combination of discourse analysis and semiotic
analysis with the six selected policy papers as units of analysis. While the discourse analysis
aims to spell out the interacting discourses of the multicultural policy under the discursive
groupings of national identity, social justice and productive diversity, semiotic analysis
focuses on the technical side of the making and legitimation of meaning, drawing attention to
typical rhetorical devices, manipulative frames of interpretation and communicative strategies
in public persuasion.
The comparative study between representative documents of the previous Labor
governments and the series of policy papers launched in the Howard era demonstrates a
distinctive policy departure from the progressive course of multiculturalism toward a civic,
conservative model of ethnic governance. As my findings indicate, the refocused multicultural
policy attaches great importance to basic structures, core values and civic duties, highlights
the potential economic gains from migrants, but virtually eliminates the plank of social justice,
which used to be the policy priority for previous governments.
This new version of multicultural policy is contextualized in the dramatic
iii
transformations of the Australian political culture and intertwined with other key issues such
as economic reform, gradual weakening of the welfare state and the general backlash against
progressive social movements encompassing groups such as the Indigenous peoples, feminists,
environmentalists and trade unions. The refocused multicultural discourses correspond with
the ascendant ideologies of economic rationalism and social conservatism, reflecting and
contributing to the mounting influence of the neo-conservatives from the perspective of ethnic
governance. On the one hand, the new discourse of national identity neatly fits into the
conservative ideology by constructing the hierarchical order between the core culture and
minority cultures. On the other hand, the demise of social justice and the utilitarian perception
of cultural diversity are tied up with market-oriented economic reforms, indicating the
government’s shifting interests from minimizing the existing barriers of language, culture and
prejudice to maximizing cultural dividends through diversity management strategies.
The significance of the refocused multicultural policy is manifold. For one thing, it
signifies the predominance of the civic-nationalistic paradigm over the pluralist one in the
policy area of ethnic governance. For another, it is part of the broader intellectual debates on
the future course of liberal democracy in Australia and is closely related to the fierce
contestations of fundamental notions like democracy, justice and equality. Despite the current
centrality of rationalist and conservative ideologies, the exploration for the proper mode of
governance will be an open-ended process, which requires responsible political leadership,
evidence-based policy debates, a nuanced understanding of both sides of arguments and the
healthy engagement of all sectors of the society. In view of the challenges of globalization and
the breakdown of broad consensus, ethnic governance will remain to be an important policy
area which reflects, informs and inspires the theoretical exploration and democratic
construction in Australia.
Key Words: multicultural policy, globalization, Australian political culture, ethnic
governance
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Contents
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... ii
Abstract .....................................................................................................................................iii
Chapter One: Introduction.......................................................................................................... 1
Chapter Two: Literature Review ................................................................................................ 4
2.1. Conceptualization of Ethnicity..................................................................................... 4
2.2. Nationhood and Ethnic Governance ............................................................................ 7
Chapter Three: Methodology ................................................................................................... 13
Chapter Four: Findings............................................................................................................. 17
4.1. On National Identity................................................................................................... 18
4.2. On Social Justice ........................................................................................................ 28
4.3. On Productive Diversity............................................................................................. 34
Chapter Five: Discussion ......................................................................................................... 38
5.1. Globalization .............................................................................................................. 38
5.2. Australian Political Culture ........................................................................................ 40
5.2.1. Economic Rationalism ..................................................................................... 41
5.2.2. Social Conservatism......................................................................................... 44
5.2.2.1. Rightward Shift of Political Spectrum ................................................... 45
5.2.2.2. Populist Media........................................................................................ 48
5.2.2.3. Conservative Intellectuals ...................................................................... 50
Chapter Six: Conclusion........................................................................................................... 53
Works Cited.............................................................................................................................. 56
v
A Documentary Analysis of Australian Multicultural Policy under the Howard
Government
Chapter One: Introduction
The eleven-year Howard era is a unique period in Australian history, which has
profoundly reshaped the long-established Australian tradition and dramatically changed the
socio-political landscape of the nation. While the overturning of the “Australian settlement”
and the quickened pace of free-market reforms simultaneously generated golden economic
records and grave concerns over growing inequalities, the inward-looking view of the national
identity and the political apathy toward minority-right issues resulted in the mythical divide
between the grassroots and the “cultural elites”. In short, the Howard era is fraught with
complexities, contradictions and myths, the understanding of which relies on nuanced
analyses of specific policy areas rather than broad, self-righteous verdicts. Due to the limited
scope of my research, this thesis is not intended to pass general judgment on the gain and loss
of the Howard government. Instead, it aims to investigate the specific site of the multicultural
policy of this period and explore the meaning and significance of its evolution in the larger
context of the changing Australian political culture.
Australian multicultural policy has been an established public policy addressing the
consequences arising from an ethnically and culturally diverse population for the past thirty
years. It seeks to answer the difficult question of how people of different ethnic and cultural
backgrounds may live together equally as citizens within a democratic state. It is not only
concerned with the metaphysical conceptualization of national identity, citizenship, equality
and so forth, but also leads to practical government actions, as reflected in the institutional
embodiments and the series of services, programs and legislations introduced over the years.
Multiculturalism as an umbrella term encapsulates political, economic, social, and cultural
dimensions of ethnic governance and provides a convenient avenue to approach the broad
area of minority politics.
Despite the consistent use of the “multicultural” tag, the specific discourses of the
multicultural policy have been evolving over time, subject to the influence of the prevailing
governmental culture, academic critiques, public opinions as well as international relations.
Generally speaking, apart from a few setbacks in the 1980s, the pre-Howard era witnessed the
gradual expansion of the policy ambit from piecemeal service provisions to serious
considerations of structural reforms. Admittedly, the proposed vision for multicultural policy
under the Keating government already verged on the pluralist model, anticipating a
reconstruction of the national identity capable of accommodating multiple social identities.
The progressive course of multicultural policy saw a sudden reversal under the Coalition
government. In fact, as early as 1988 when Howard was still the Leader of Opposition, he was
strongly opposed to the notion of multiculturalism, as captured in his comment, “to me
multiculturalism suggests that we can’t make up our minds who we are or what we believe in”
(Markus 81). His proclaimed hostility toward both Asian immigration and multiculturalism
1
caused such uproars that he was soon replaced by Andrew Peacock as the party leader. This
bitter experience understandably strengthened his dislike of the multicultural policy and
minority politics in general. After assuming office in 1996, Howard substantially reduced
funding in multicultural programs and dismantled key institutions such as the Office of
Multicultural Affairs (OMA) and the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population
Research (BIMPR). At the normative level, he pointedly avoided the “M” word in his speech
and insisted that it not be used in the joint parliamentary resolution rejecting racism which
was passed in 1996.
However, as a very astute, pragmatic politician, Howard was adept in modifying those
policies that proved detrimental for his career. Aware of public pressure and the importance of
ethnic votes, he finally decided to continue the multicultural policy and established his own
institutional bodies—the National Multicultural Advisory Council (NMAC) and the Council
for Multicultural Australia (CMA) to work out a new policy framework. A series of policy
papers were launched since 1997, effectuating the step-by-step reorientation of the
multicultural policy. They were respectively Multicultural Australia: the Way Forward (1997),
Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness (1999), A New Agenda
for Multicultural Australia (1999) and Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity (2003). As
my findings indicate, the refocused multicultural policy attached great importance to basic
structures, core values and civic duties, highlighted the potential economic gains from
migrants, but virtually eliminated the plank of social justice, which used to be the policy
priority for previous governments.
All these changes marked a significant shift of policy conceptualization from the quasipluralist model of ethnic governance toward the civic-nationalistic one under the Howard
government. It should be noted that this new version of multicultural policy was
contextualized in the dramatic transformations of the Australian political culture and
intertwined with other key issues such as economic reform, gradual weakening of the welfare
state and the general backlash against progressive social movements encompassing groups
such as the Indigenous peoples, feminists, environmentalists and trade unions. While social
conservatism reinforced the hegemony of the Anglo-Celtic tradition and crystallized it in the
refocused national identity, economic rationalism established the ascendancy of the market in
resource distribution and thereby delegitimated the claims of minority groups arguing for
proactive government actions. The ideologies of social conservatism and economic
rationalism formed the two pillars of contemporary Australian political culture and were
justified by the meta-narrative of globalization.
Therefore, the significance of the revised multicultural policy goes beyond the site of
ethnic governance and points to the fierce contestations of fundamental notions like
democracy, justice and equality, which lead to ongoing, open-ended and often tumultuous
public debates among all sectors. This thesis aims to explore in depth the changing
orientations of Australian multicultural policy in the Howard era and to spell out their
ideological importance under the twin frames of globalization and Australian political culture.
It argues that the multicultural policy of this period has deviated from its progressive course
2
and fit into the neo-conservative agenda of social control and economic engineering. In
accordance with the generic characteristics of policy papers, I will employ documentary
analysis in the form of a combination of discourse analysis and semiotic analysis. While all
the key policy papers launched by the Howard government will be included as samples,
National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (1989) introduced by the Hawke government
and Multicultural Australia—The Next Steps—Towards and Beyond 2000 (1995) supported
by the Keating government will also be selected to provide a comparative base.
The structure of the thesis is as follows. Chapter Two is a review of theories on ethnicity
and nationhood, aimed at providing a framework to analyse the different modes of ethnic
governance grounded in various theoretical positions. While Chapter Three will explain in
detail the methods employed, Chapter Four will present my findings under the thematic
groupings of national identity, social justice and productive diversity. In Chapter Five, the
major findings will be contextualized in the broad political environment and connected with
other significant issues of the day. Finally, the conclusion will reaffirm the correspondence
between the shifting multicultural discourses of the Howard era and the profound
transformation of contemporary Australian political culture, and revisit the current debates of
the future direction of democratic governance in Australia.
3
Chapter Two: Literature Review
This research is informed by rich scholarship on the contending notions of ethnicity, the
interplay between ethnicity and nationhood and voluminous discussions of different modes of
ethnic governance, all of which have significant bearings on the evolution of Australian
multicultural policy. To facilitate my analysis, I will categorize the myriad theories into two
sections: the conceptualization of ethnicity and various modes of ethnic governance flowing
from different theoretical understandings of nationhood.
2.1. Conceptualization of Ethnicity
Ethnicity is one of the key sociological categories and an element of human identity
which plays an important role in social life. In its broadest sense, ethnicity is a social given
derived from ancestry and relates to important aspects of shared cultural heritage and
characteristics that include “language, tradition, attachment to a specific territory and
collective norms” (Germov and Poole 262). The discussion of the theoretical dimensions of
ethnicity looms large in this thesis, for it profoundly influences the configuration of social
relations at levels of the individual and social collectivities from family to nation-state. The
term “ethnicity” is a newly introduced concept in sociology and was first mentioned in the
English language in 1953 in the Oxford English Dictionary (Glazer and Moynihan I). The
actual working of this concept however stretches back to time immemorial in the form of
tribes and kinship networks. The recorded use of its etymon ethnos in ancient Greek suggests
that it has been historically employed to differentiate “us” from “them”, which dichotomy is
further amplified in nationalist movements.
Ethnicity is often used interchangeably with race as the tool of analysis, although some
argue that the former is more concerned with the cultural, while the latter puts greater
emphasis on biological attributes. The term race has tended to lose currency in intellectual
circles with the demise of racist ideologies predominant in colonial times. However, in the
United States, race is still used as one of the basic tools for classification. The situation in
Australia manifests more complexity, for the term race specifically refers to the Indigenous
population while the term ethnicity is invoked in the discussion of immigrants of minority
backgrounds. According to Stephen Castles and Ellie Vasta, the dichotomy of race relations
and ethnic relations does not really hold water, for both groups have been subjected to similar
processes of racialisation as the means of controlling them and subordinating them to the
interests of the dominant group (Castles and Vasta 6). Despite varying forms and effects of
such processes, the underlying ideologies, practices and interests are essentially the same.
Therefore, the distinction of the two terms merely serves the official strategy of “divide and
rule”. While acknowledging the parallel working of racism in cases of Indigenous peoples and
non-European migrants, Ann Curthoys rejects the simplistic equation of these two groups
under Edward Said’s framework of Orientalism. She argues that the universalistic approach
tends to “suppress the differences between various others and especially the different ways in
which they are known” (Curthoys 30). Her view is supported by David Pearson, who from the
perspective of global history perceives the Indigenous peoples and later immigrants as two
4
sources of pluralism with different socio-political significance (Pearson 5). When it comes to
this thesis, the use of ethnicity and race will be flexible, mediated through the specific
contexts involved and the general pattern of intellectual debates. Ethnicity will be used in its
broadest use, not excluding the discussion of Indigenous peoples. However, special attention
will be paid to demonstrating the triangular Anglo-ethnic-Aboriginal relations advocated by
Ghassan Hage (Hage, “The limits of anti-racist ideology” 79).
Ethnicity/Race is an interdisciplinary subject, which attracts the attention of
anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, historians and political scientists. The useful
collection by Rex and Mason (1986) entitled Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations includes
Weberian, Marxist, anthropologist, pluralist, rational choice, symbolic interactionist and
identity theory approaches (Castles, “The Racism of Globalization” 19). Premised on different
schools of thought, these approaches significantly overlap and can be subsumed into the more
traditional paradigm of primordialists and instrumentalists. The former view ethnicity as an
“inescapable cultural given, unchanging and unchanged” (Germov and Poole 265), reifying
the essential components of self-identity such as blood, speech, custom and common
historical experience. Scholars in this camp differ in their respective emphases on certain
primordial elements. For example, van den Berghe’s argument verges on biological
determinism, which defines ethnic groups as big inbreeding families and the extension of
kinship system (van den Berghe 360). In this sense, ethnicity is an inborn attribute, grounded
in one’s blood and posing unsurpassable barriers to the outsiders. Other scholars like Clifford
Geertz give a more sophisticated account of the “primordial attachment” by drawing on a
balance sheet of both biological connections and cultural factors. As Geertz notes in “The
Primordial Ties”, “These congruities of blood, speech, custom and so on, are seen to have an
ineffable, and at times overpowering coerciveness in and of themselves” (Geertz 41-42). All
these accounts demonstrate strong essentializing tendencies, which are in collision with
postmodern theories of fluid hybridity. However, applied on a contextual basis, they are
particularly helpful in explaining the origin of nation-states, the highly emotive, irrational
behaviors of nationalists and the expression of new racism in contemporary settings.
On the other hand, instrumentalists reject the fixed and static perception of ethnicity,
comprehending it as “a social, political and cultural construct for different status groups”
(Holmes et al 163). They deny the objective basis of ethnicity and are keen in uncovering the
hidden social, political, economic interests achieved through the mobilization of ethnic
identities. Fredrik Barth certainly falls into this school when he proposes that ethnicity is a
means of social organization (Barth 13-14). Ethnic identities continuously evolve through a
variety of political, social and economic forces and undertake a process of selective
appropriation, blending and discarding of various elements within the symbolic repertoire.
The negotiation of ethnic identity in turn sets the boundary of the community, and is
prerequisite for the emergence of group consciousness and subsequent community formation.
To further reveal the artificial nature of ethnicity and to explore the conflation between
ethnicity, nationalism and citizenship, Benedict Anderson raises the notion of “imagined
communities”, which builds on the dichotomy of friends and enemies and is demonstrated
through patriotic emotions and the blind willingness to sacrifice oneself for the collective
5
good (Anderson 15). The modern construction of identity is achieved by history-writing or
story-telling about a given community. More recently, it relies on the spread of new media
technology like radio, film, TV, internet and other channels (Bessant and Watts 260).
In a broad sense, Marxist and neo-Marxist theorists represent a significant ramification
of the instrumentalist school. Prioritizing the means of production as the fundamental tool of
social analysis, Karl Marx relegates the notion of ethnicity to the sphere of falseconsciousness, which for him only serves the political ends of dividing the working-class
solidarity. This line of argument is developed and modified by neo-Marxists of various
schools, within which figures like Marie de Lepervanche, Jock Collins and Andrew
Jakubowicz stand for distinctive Australian voices. In her article “From Race to Ethnicity”, de
Lepervanche argues that “ethnic behavior everywhere has to be associated with patterns of
economic, political and cultural dominance” and comes to the conclusion that “there are in
fact no ethnics; there are only ways of seeing people as ethnics” (de Lepervanche 34). Terms
like “new proletariat” and “underclass” also seek to spell out the class character of ethnics and
its correlation with class politics and industrial relations (Jupp, “Ethnic Politics in Australia”
11; From White Australia to Woomera 34).
Jock Collins’ major work Migrant Hands in a Distant Land provides a multifaceted
analysis of the ethnically based class relations by applying the labour segmentation theory to
the Australian labour market. He contends that the Australian labour market is segmented
along two key axes: country of birth and gender. The first segment consists of Australian-born
men and immigrant men from English-speaking countries, while the immigrant women from
non-English-speaking backgrounds comprise the “bottom of heap”, disproportionately
concentrated in the blue-collar manufacturing sector (Collins 78-86).
Such multi-factor approaches reflect the prevalent trend of post-colonial studies, which
are marked by the integration and realignment of key social categories. As McCall notes,
“Configurations of inequality emerge from the reality of multiple paths of economic
development and conflicting outcomes for the same path, with no single path promising lower
inequality of all kinds” (McCall 58-59). Integrated researches with multiple variables are also
carried out by Jean Martin, Ruth Fincher and Marie de Lepervanche, who explore the
ideology of gendered racism and the contradiction between social reproduction and
production (Jordens 61). The detailed findings of social disadvantages arising from particular
facets of identities give rise to identity politics, which refers to the social movements
organized around the oppressed and victimized identities to fight for recognition and assert
their legitimate interests in a polity (Stokes 6). However, severe problems undermine the
mobilization of identity politics. Firstly, the power of interpreting what counts as the
“authentic” identity is largely left in the hands of the dominant group. Consequently, the
general power frame remains unchanged. Secondly, the politics of difference goes counter to
the liberalist spirit of individual contract with the state. In this context, collective claims are
often viewed with suspicion and considered inimical to national cohesion.
6
2.2. Nationhood and Ethnic Governance
The review of theories on ethnicity may shed light on the evolving interplay of nationstate and ethnicity and provide useful analytic tools for the categorization of various modes of
ethnic governance. The nexus between the state and the core national group is a fascinating
topic for the primordialists and is reflected in the twofold meaning of “nation” itself. On the
one hand, nation is comprehended in terms of state, referring to “a political system based on
secular principles, capable of regulating economic and political relations and change” (Castles,
“The Racism of Globalization” 37). On the other hand, a nation refers to “a community of
people sharing a defined political or geographic territory, unified by common language,
culture or traditions” (Anderson 164). The linkage of ethnicity and nationalism is reaffirmed
by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, who argues that a “nationalist ideology is an ethnic ideology
which demands a state on behalf of an ethnic group” (Eriksen 118). Similarly, Anthony Smith
explores the ethnic origins of states. By examining both ancient kingdoms and the rise of
nation-states in the nineteenth century, he suggests that “ethnie” forms the core of national
identity and lays the foundation for later nationalistic movements. Even in cases where
common origins are not authentic, he maintains that they are so central in nation-building that
the invention of them is indispensable (Smith 12-15, 19).
Such concession makes his position very close to that of Benedict Anderson, who
proposes the definition of nation as “an imagined political community—and imagined as both
inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson 15). While uncovering the nature of nation-states
as cultural artifacts, which result from “the spontaneous distillation of a complex ‘crossing’ of
discrete historical forces”, Benedict Anderson nevertheless acknowledges their compelling
power in creating profound emotional bond comparable to that of religion in the Middle Age
(Anderson 14). The sense of nationhood is constructed by searching for primordial
connections which bind a group together against outsiders and by naturalizing such bonds
through discourses of “nation as familial relations writ large”. In this framework, race and
ethnicity serve as powerful configurations not for their authenticity, but for they appeal to the
eternal, primordial sense of collective belonging, which is capable of “turning socially
constructed image” into “timeworn myth” (Greig et al 165).
In the globalizing world, it is almost an impossible mission to sustain a mono-ethnic
state, which is composed of a single ethnic group of undisputed common consanguinal origin.
In Europe, Americas and Asia, there are no racially “pure” or homogenous states of one single
ethnic group. However, as the primordial theories show, the impulse toward a nation-based
state is always strong, even in those Western democracies which officially espouse the civic
identity. In Borders: Frontier, Nation and State, Hastings Donnan and Thomas Wilson claim
that the great fiction of world politics, which has guided the actions of poets, priests, peasants
and patriots since the nineteenth century is the aspiration that every nation has the right, if not
the destiny to rule themselves in their own nation-states, on their own territory (Donnan and
Wilson 6-7). Only the scarcity of land, natural resources and wealth deters such dreams from
coming true. Despite the seeming legitimacy of “emotional bond”, the adoption of ethnic
affinity as the defining feature of a nation-state has its dark side, serving as a handy criterion
to draw the line between “insiders” and “outsiders”. The magic sensation of fraternal
7
solidarity felt at nation-defining moments could be easily rechanneled into xenophobia and
racism, which legitimate the most atrocious actions under the cloak of patriotism, such as
genocide, exclusion, dispossession and subjugation of minorities. The ubiquity of racism
expressed via the vehicle of nationalism is acknowledged by Benedict Anderson. In the
Chapter “Patriotism and Racism”, he comments that nationalism manifests the nearpathological character with its roots in fear and hatred of the Other and its affinities with
racism (Anderson 127).
In The Civic and the Tribal State: The State, Ethnicity and the Multiethnic Diversity,
Feliks Gross distinguishes two types of states: one based on common descent, and the other
on territoriality, attributing the former to the ancient Greeks and the latter to the Roman
Republic. He goes on to create the dichotomy of the civic state and the tribal state, two labels
with strong emotive connotations (Gross xi). While the civic state is an association of free
citizens of a shared territory irrespective of origin, religion, ethnicity or culture, the tribal state
usually fuses religion, ethnicity and the political system into one single principle and attribute,
hence exhibiting a high degree of exclusiveness incompatible with equal rights. This view is
endorsed by Castles and Davidson, who put it in jargons like ius sanguinis (law of blood) and
ius soli (law of soil). Different modes of governance are underpinned by these two competing
principles and oscillate between two ends in different socio-historical contexts (Castles and
Davidson 85).
As acridly pointed out by Feliks Gross, the tribal, nationalistic answer to a multiethnic
state is simple but brutal: mass expulsion of ethnic minorities, various ways of discrimination,
massacres and exterminations (Gross 75). In Australia, cultural homogeneity used to be
achieved through two forms of boundary-marking—the restriction of entry to the outsiders
and the subjugation of the “outsiders within”. Both forms have had real policy impact in
Australia, with the former embodied in the Immigration Restriction Act at the outset of
Federation and the latter directed at the Indigenous population ranging from violent
suppression to forced assimilation. The desirable white nation was in its shape in 1947 when
non-Europeans other than Aborigines were measured by the Census as 0.25 per cent of the
total (Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera 10). Highly manipulative policies of control
enabled Australia to become one of the “whitest” countries in the world outside northwestern
Europe.
However, in the post-colonial era, blatantly discriminatory policies are no longer tenable
in democratic states. In their place are subtler forms of policies grounded in the same
nationalist tradition of exclusion and exploitation. Most approaches of control fall into the
categories of assimilation and differential exclusion (Castles and Davidson 60). Assimilation
dictates that all migrants shed their home culture and adopt the monocultural identity of the
host society. In its early days, it also carried strong racist connotations, for the final stage of
assimilation usually meant the disappearance of any characteristics which would mark off
individuals from the rest of the society. It was based on this principle that many nonEuropeans were denied entry for their perceived “inassimilable” physical appearance (Jupp,
From White Australia to Woomera 20). Assimilationist practices were the rule of the
8
nineteenth century Europe and were theorized into the model of “melting pot” in the new
settlers’ societies, notably in the US. As many critics point out, assimilation policy in effect
reinforces racism. It proceeds from the assumption of cultural superiority of the host group,
implicating that migrant cultures are “at best inferior and undesirable, and at worst, positively
dangerous and threatening” (Li and Cockayne 239). Put differently, assimilation hierarchises
cultures and legitimates the destruction of the lesser ones as a precondition for equality. The
demise of the assimilation policy came about with the mounting criticism of its “cohesive and
unacceptable” nature and the awareness of its impracticability.
In the similar vein of difference control, differential exclusion means that immigrants are
only accepted within strict functional and temporal limits, as laid out in the “guest worker
system” adopted by many Western European countries. This model was developed in
Germany and Switzerland in the 1870s as a way of recruiting and controlling foreign workers
during industrialization and saw wider use in the post-1945 Europe. The migrants are
welcome as short-term workers rather than long-term residents. The principle of ius sanguinis
restricts naturalization of foreign immigrants and their children, leading to the marginalization
of seven million permanent inhabitants in Germany (Castles, “The Racism of Globalization”
25). Underlying both policies is the impulse toward the nation-based state. The immigrants
will be either absorbed into an unchanged national community or sent away as soon as their
labour is no longer needed. Cultural diversity is to be contained as a temporary feature of the
society.
Often raised in polarity with the ethnic model is the civic model, which is based on
universalistic principles embodied in the social contract between the state and the abstract
individual. In theory, the separation of the domains of nation and state marks the transition
from the ethnic one to the civic one, though it should be noted that the relationship between
the two is never as clear-cut as theorists would like to suggest. The realization of such
separation is premised on the secular interpretation of the state and more significantly on the
institution of citizenship, which lies at the very core of both democracy and civic national
identity in the constitution of a multiethnic state.
The shift of national bond from the ethnic paradigm to a territorial-political one is
conditioned in the fundamental division between the public and private spheres of the state.
The state and the government act legitimately solely within the public sphere, while enjoying
no authority within areas defined as private. As Bhikhu Parekh observes, the modern state
abstracts away its citizens’ class, ethnicity, religion, social status and so forth and unites them
in terms of their subscription to a common system of authority, which is similarly abstracted
from the wider structure of social relations (Parekh 181). Members of the state may be
divided along ethnic, cultural and other lines, but these differences are politically irrelevant
and do not detract from the fact that they are one people granted with equal rights.
Analyzed at the formal level, the civic model represents a unique achievement of the
Western civilization, for it eliminates personalized rule and replaces it with an impersonal
system of government in which the citizen is subject only to the authority of law. However, it
9
is not without its limitations, one central to the discussion being its preoccupation with
political and cultural homogeneity. All its citizens are expected to privilege their political
identity over other identities and to relate to the state under the identical prescriptions of
rights and obligations, therefore precluding the possibility of differential treatment based on
individual or group differences. Realizing its deep homogenizing essence, Parekh refers to it
as the civic-assimilationist model. He argues that the difference between assimilation policy
and citizenship policy is that the former insists upon the unqualified allegiance to the
mainstream culture, which encompasses all areas of life, while the latter puts more emphasis
on those factors leading to the unity of the political community, including “its public or
political values, ideals, practices, institutions, mode of political discourses and selfunderstanding” (Parekh 200). While the public realm represents uniformity, the private realm
represents diversity, which is tolerated within strictly defined boundaries. The origins of this
view go back to Lock and the founding fathers of the American republic; and it has been
restated with modifications by Habermas in the discussion of constitutional patriotism.
The analytical divide of ethnic and civic models should be understood in relative terms
so as not to erase their commonality. Despite the presumed neutrality of the civic structure,
the concept of the modern state is the product of history. It reflects and registers the political
consensus prevailing at a given point in the development of Western civilization and hence is
not free from inbuilt biases, prejudices or unfairness when seen in a new historical context.
Therefore, the compulsory allegiance to the established model may run the risk of suppressing
those minority groups, who could not enjoy substantive equality despite the promise of formal
equality. These concerns led to the American Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and
propelled serious thinking and implementation of the pluralist model from the 1970s.
Pluralism or multiculturalism is a very recent concept in the realm of ethnic governance.
Its philosophy burgeons from the “master frame” of Civil Rights movement spanning the
1950s to the 1970s. The Civil Rights era saw the coalescence of a series of movements,
mobilizing the African-Americans, Native Americans, women, ethnic minorities,
homosexuals, environmentalists and the Anti-Vietnam War New Left in a collective struggle
for the expansion of civil rights. Although the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the US still explicitly
referred to individual citizens, subsequent legislation and programs implemented affirmative
action which promoted the categorization of collective rights groups (Pearson 130).
Multiculturalism stems from the spirit of the turbulent sixties and is built upon the
acknowledgement of the gap between formal equality and substantive equality. While the
traditional liberalism as inbuilt in the assimilationist-civic model deduces from the premise of
atomized individuals, who are unaffected by the historical trajectory of power system and
social identities, multiculturalism recognizes that “by treating each individual citizen in the
same way (formal equality), inequality can be reproduced because of the different attributes
individuals and groups possess” (Greig et al 218). Substantive equality could only be secured
by differential treatment—by providing additional help to those disadvantaged due to their
cultural differences or by means of affirmative action (Hunter 1999).
10
Castles and Davidson improve T. H. Marshall’s sociological analysis of citizenship and
devise five interdependent types of citizenship rights, which are indispensable for the
realization of substantial citizenship. The first type is civil rights, which emerged in the
eighteenth century as “negative rights”: individual freedom from unlawful infringement on
private property, personal liberty and justice by the state. These were supplemented from the
nineteenth century by “positive political rights”, through which the active citizen could take
part in political decision-making. In the twentieth century, social rights developed, through
which citizens were guaranteed a basic standard of economic and social wellbeing, either
through the right to work or through welfare provision (Castle and Davidson 104). Gender
rights and cultural rights were added to the package in the late 1960s as part of the identity
politics aimed at rectifying inherent biases of the universalistic system and redressing the
social disadvantages experienced by minority groups. As Parekh notes, the politics of
recognition is part of a wider and nuanced theory of justice, with the crucial understanding
that “unlike liberties and resources, recognition cannot be individually enjoyed or centrally
distributed and calls for a more complex conception of justice” (Parekh 211), one based on
collective rights. In the ideal pluralist model, cultures constantly encounter one another both
formally and informally in the private and public spaces. A common culture can emerge and
enjoy legitimacy only if all the constituent cultures are able to participate in its creation in a
climate of equality. The fluidity determines that the formation of a common culture is an
open-ended process subject to disputes. The political aim of the pluralist model would be
substantive equality with the recognition of difference. A typical differential approach is
recommended by Kymlicka, who distinguishes the native national minorities from ethnic
minorities arising from individual and familial immigration and calls for different rights and
entitlements for these two groups (Kymlicka 10-11).
Multiculturalism and the politics of collective identity represent a novel stage in the
development of civil theories. It rejects the narrow interpretation of the nexus between state,
society and individuals and seeks to create a more fluid, multifarious political system capable
of accommodating difference. On the one hand, it establishes solidarity among marginalized
groups and challenges to pluralize the dominant culture. However, viewed from another
perspective, it poses real threats to the traditional national identity and has a tendency of
violating the individual-based social contract, as the pejorative term “rent-seeker” suggests.
Practical difficulties in implementing the multicultural theory in policy terms and the fragile
balance between unity and diversity render it the easy target of both progressive and
conservative critics, the campaign of the latter resulting in the resurgence of the
assimilationist-civic model in Western democracies since the 1980s.
The above literature review aims to bridge the theories of ethnicity with those of
nationhood, and attempts to provide a rough idea of different modes of ethnic governance
grounded in various theoretical positions, which will serve as the framework for the following
discussion of Australian multicultural policy under the Howard government. However, as
Feliks Gross points out, those categories of analysis in fact overlap with each other, and it is
difficult—if possible at all—to divide them into “pure”, sharply separated types (Gross 18).
Despite the proclaimed policy tag, practical policies are always products of consensus,
11
drawing on various philosophical sources to cope with the most pressing problems of the day.
Civic-assimilation policy may incorporate some specialist services or programs, albeit in an
extremely limited fashion. Similarly, multicultural societies also strive to forge a strong sense
of common belonging among its citizens, for otherwise they cannot act as united communities
with collectively binding authority. As will be shown in the later chapters, the multicultural
policy under the Howard government tilts so heavily toward the nationalistic-civic end that it
virtually loses its political salience as a pluralist policy. Therefore, a gradational, contextual
approach is more proper than an oppositional one in policy analysis, for it allows room for
innate contradictions and loopholes and is conducive to a nuanced interpretation of the hybrid
assemblage functioning in real life. It is particularly useful in deconstructing practical policies
into multiple layers, comparing them with the concrete implementation measures, and finally
locating them in the spectrum of political models. In accordance with such an approach,
discourse analysis and semiotic analysis will be the chief methods employed in the thesis.
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Chapter Three: Methodology
This thesis is aimed at providing an in-depth analysis of the multicultural policy
developed under the Howard government through the combined strength of discourse analysis
and semiotic analysis. By reviewing the publications displayed on the website of the
Commonwealth Department of Immigration and Citizenship, I collect all the key policy
papers launched under the Howard administration, which cover the time frame from 1996 to
2007 and clearly demonstrate the incremental development of the major planks of
multicultural policy in this era. They are respectively Multicultural Australia: the Way
Forward (1997), Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness
(1999), A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia (1999) and Multicultural Australia: United
in Diversity (2003). In order to highlight the shifting policy emphases during this period,
National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (1989) supported by the Hawke government
and Multicultural Australia—The Next Steps—Towards and Beyond 2000 (1995) introduced
by the Keating government are also selected for comparative purposes. The choice of these
two policy papers is based on their significant political standing. While the 1989 Agenda is
the most well-known document with bipartisan support, Multicultural Australia—The Next
Steps — Towards and Beyond 2000 (1995) is a pivotal reassessment of the 1989 Agenda
undertaken by the National Multicultural Advisory Council (NMAC). It made vigorous strides
toward the progressive goal of multiculturalism and only failed to materialize due to the
defeat of the Keating government in the federal election. Given the fact that it was launched
by the then Prime Minister Paul Keating, the 1995 reassessment enjoyed the de facto status of
an “agenda”, which justified its inclusion in the sampling frame (Jupp, From White Australia
to Woomera 89). On the one hand, all the key policy papers of the Howard years are included
here to trace the entire process of ideological reconstruction regarding ethnic governance
since 1996. On the other hand, representative documents of the previous Labor governments
serve as a crucial site of reference, shedding light on the continuity and divergence of
Howard’s policy against the historical trajectory. The availability and comprehensiveness of
the samples may partly satisfy the requirement for validity and reliability.
In accordance with the generic characteristics of policy papers, I will employ
documentary analysis in the form of a combination of discourse analysis and semiotic
analysis with the above six pieces as units of analysis. Discourse analysis and semiotic
analysis are intimately related analytical tools, whose boundaries are extremely difficult to
draw. Both draw on the rich repertoire of intellectual traditions and are applied in various
social domains with contextual differentiations in terms of theoretical stances and
methodological emphases. Discourse as a key concept in comprehending power is proposed
by thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard and Nietzsche, who argue with diverse
emphases that man is simultaneously the subject producing discourses and the object
receiving and enacting the same discourses (Daudi 65). According to Foucault, power is
closely linked with the production of knowledge through “endlessly repeated play of
domination”, which sanctifies specific ways of thinking about human and social relations.
These “regimes of truth” are collectively referred to as discourses (Foucault 150). Foucault’s
13
view on discourse manifests some similarities to Althusser’s concept of ideology, which
according to the latter, functions through the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) such as legal
and political institutions, schools, the family, the church, the media and many others and helps
to maintain the hegemony of the ruling class (Althusser 139). However, such common ground
should not prevent people from understanding the significant conceptual shift from ideology
to discourse and the essential difference between the two.
The meaning of ideology ranges from the relatively neutral understanding of “system of
ideas” or “worldviews” to the more contested notion of “false consciousness” (Johnson,
Governing Change 12). The central message out of myriad definitions is that ideologies are
coherent bodies of concepts, values, and symbols incorporating conceptions of human nature
and prescribing technical arrangements for social, economic and political life, which are the
natural extension of conceptual systems. Compared with the notion of ideology, discourse is
more closely related to a particular social area such as family, gender, race and science, and
by producing a set of statements within or across ideological frameworks, serves to define,
delimit and circumscribe the proper content and means of expression in that area. It can be a
variant of a particular ideology or an assemblage of various ideological elements directed at a
given field. Unlike the overblown, hegemonic system implied by the term ideology, the
concept of discourse is more in tune with the postmodern challenge of plurality and
recognizes the existence of diverse competing discourses within the same social domain.
Gunther Kress summarizes the relationship between ideology, discourse and text as follows,
“the systematic organization of content in discourse, drawing on and deriving from the prior
categorization of this material in an ideological system, leads to the systematic selection of
linguistic features in a text” (Kress 30). In Governing Change: From Keating to Howard,
Carol Johnson retains the use of both terms, but prefers the concept of discourse in policy
analysis for its flexibility of cutting through diverse ideological positions and its direct
bearing on actual practices which government implements (Johnson, Governing Change 16).
Johnson’s understanding of discourse is particularly useful here, for multicultural policy
exactly represents a multifaceted field which incorporates miscellaneous ideological elements,
subsuming and oscillating between different variants of liberalism and conservatism.
However, I have also observed the use of ideology as the conceptual description of
multiculturalism in works of Andrew Jakubowicz and Mark Lopez. With the recognition of
the blurred boundary between discourse and ideology, I define multicultural policy as a series
of interacting discourses grounded in multiple ideological structures. The choice of the term
discourse also aims to highlight the interactions between fields of belief and practice, as
reflected in the substantive political actions guided by multicultural discourses.
The study of discourse saw conspicuous development in the early 1970s, which was
reflected in the orchestrated output from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, linguistics,
semiotics, poetics, psychology, sociology and mass communication. As Teun A. van Dijk, the
general editor of Handbook of Discourse Analysis puts it, researches on various phenomena of
language use, texts, conversational interaction and communicative events are all integrated
under the common label of discourse analysis (van Dijk xi). This view is supported by Gill
Seidel, who devises a typology of orientations in political discourse analysis, which includes
14
paraphrasing, rhetorical studies, semiotics and many others (Seidel 43-44). In this thesis,
discourse analysis will be defined in its narrow sense, focusing on the ideological
underpinnings of discourses produced in the field of ethnic governance and examining the
framing devices, discursive practices and the normalizing process involved in consolidating
unequal power relations. It aims to challenge the established power order organized through
discourses by demonstrating its contingent nature, analyzing its rules of formation and
exposing its social and political effects.
At the methodological level, a macro-textual, top-down model will be employed to
analyze those policy papers (Nunan 83). Rather than reduce the text into syntactic diagrams
and decode every semantic unit involved, I will adopt a thematic approach, identifying the
interacting sets of discourses under the general groupings of national identity, social justice
and productive diversity. A chronological view will be adopted to investigate the cumulative
construction of the above discursive groupings, exploring how the successive policy papers
build on, modify and reinforce each other to fulfill partisan aims glossed over by claims to
universal validity. Efforts will be made to expose the gaps between principles,
recommendations and implementations, to highlight the framing devices in policy formulation
and to demonstrate the significant deviations of Howard’s policy from that of the preceding
Labor governments within each policy sphere. Finally, I will analyze the fundamental
ideological basis of these new discourses through intertextual reference to other key issues of
the day and locate their roots in the meta-narrative of Australian political culture.
While discourse analysis will be the chief method employed in this thesis, semiotic
analysis complements discourse analysis at the micro-textual level by exploring the way
discourses are constructed, ideologically rooted and persuasively operate. As Pertti Ahonen
suggests, semiotics started with very limited circles of people interested in signs and
meanings. It became a major approach in cultural and literary analysis in the late 1960s and
gradually gained popularity with social and political scientists for its strength of unraveling
the interplay between power and meaning (Ahonen 1). Widely acknowledged as the founder
of semiology, Saussure establishes the systematic relationship of meaning and linguistic
structure through the concept of the sign, in which the signified and the signifier are
arbitrarily related. He remarks that although the signifier “may seem to be freely chosen”, it is
actually imposed on its users, for “the language is always an inheritance from the past” which
its users have “no choice but to accept” (Saussure 71-72). The notion that a sign is arbitrary a
priori but ceases to be so a posteriori points to the binding force of social and cultural
conventions. Once a sign and its embodied meaning are established, they are reified and
crystallized through tradition and take on a primordial force of self-perpetuation.
For the contemporary semioticians, social contexts, myths and power relations are
structured in a way analogous to the construction of language. They are interested in exposing
the contingency of social and political conventions and deconstructing the totalizing discourse
which claims to hold the truth and thereby pretends to act as a unifying force. Unlike
discourse analysis which sets up the structure of my findings, semiotic analysis will be used
where applicable, focusing on technical side of the making and legitimation of meaning. It
15
draws attention to typical rhetorical devices, manipulative frames of interpretation and
communicative strategies and evaluates their effectiveness in public persuasion. Presumed
tacit agreement, figurative speech, semantic choices and semiotic contexts are all commonly
employed tactics in political communication, which will be the main objects for analysis. In
sum, the combination of discourse analysis and semiotic analysis precisely suits my purpose
of studying the ideological significance and tactical construction of discourses which
constitute the broad domain of multicultural policy under the Howard government.
In the final part of this chapter, major limitations regarding methodology should be noted.
Firstly, multiculturalism as I have observed, comprises a series of interrelated discourses
covering nearly every significant aspect of contemporary society. For convenience of analysis,
I have categorized those discourses under the thematic groupings of cultural, social and
economic spheres, which division also accords with the structure of policy papers. However,
the tripartite structure tends to create an impression of discrete, mutually exclusive categories,
thereby deemphasizing the interdependence of those spheres. I will remedy this deficiency in
the chapter of discussion by reconciling the three spheres under the broad framework of
Australian political culture.
Secondly, I would have enlarged the sampling frame to include the policy papers and key
official reports introduced under the Whitlam and Fraser governments but for the prescribed
scope of this thesis. Although the 1989 Agenda of the Hawke government and the 1995
reassessment of the Keating government are effective in showing the significant deviation and
dilution of Howard’s policy, the policy papers of the initiating period of the 1970s could have
facilitated my analysis of the entire evolutionary process, hence presenting a much stronger
case. Moreover, the series of Access and Equity Annual Reports issued by the Howard
government are not included as samples but used as substantive evidence in my analysis, for
they are more concerned with the implementing side rather than lay out the fundamental
principles of the policy.
Finally, “discursive trap” seems to be an inescapable problem faced by scholars engaged
in discourse analysis. Reading and interpretation are political acts which involve “continual
transgression of knowledge” (Dant 126) and unavoidably result in the creation of new
discourses due to particular social-positioning of the agent. However, as Carol Johnson
indicates, “rejecting claims that one’s own position is somehow ‘neutral’ or ‘outside’ of
ideology, does not involve rejecting the possibility of critique” (Johnson, Governing Change
14). Although complete objectivity is unattainable, sound arguments can be made with solid
evidence and an ever-present consciousness of one’s own ideological position, which I will
strive for in this thesis.
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Chapter Four: Findings
A comparative study between National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (1989),
Multicultural Australia—The Next Steps—Towards and Beyond 2000 (1995) and the series of
policy papers launched during the Howard era demonstrates a distinctive policy departure
from the progressive course of multiculturalism toward a civic, conservative model of ethnic
governance. While the Hawke-Keating package gives considerable recognition to the
collective claim of ethnic minorities and supplements its abstract principles with substantive
initiatives, the latter collection of papers reflects a decisive return to the civic model based on
the totalizing entity of the “national community”. With an implicit denial of the legitimacy of
identity politics and the abolition of major multicultural institutions such as the Office of
Multicultural Affairs (OMA) and the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population
Research (BIMPR), multicultural policy of this period largely loses its political salience as a
public policy addressing the diverse needs, especially those of the disadvantaged along the
axis of ethnicity.
Given the thrust of economic restructuring starting with the Hawke government and
deepened under the Keating government, it should be noted that the economic value of human
resources is a persistent theme in all these papers. However, as the following findings show,
the realm of economic efficiency under the Labor governments is actually a combination of
the utilization of human resources and humanistic considerations of removing barriers for the
realization of such economic potentials. When it comes to the Howard years, the economic
preoccupation of “capitalizing on the linguistic and cultural skills, business networks and
market knowledge of a diverse workforce” takes precedence and virtually becomes the
fundamental raison d’être of diversity. The transformation of multicultural discourses is
taking place under the ideological upsurge of economic rationalism and social conservatism in
the Howard years and is to be further spelt out under the discursive groupings of national
identity, social justice and productive diversity.
As defined in the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia, multiculturalism
encompasses two layers of meanings. In a descriptive sense, multicultural is simply “a term
which describes the cultural and ethnic diversity of contemporary Australia” (Commonwealth
of Australia, National Agenda vii), a result of the post-war immigration program addressing
the issues of national security and industrial reconstruction. Interestingly, in order to achieve
the greatest consensus on current demographical diversity, policy drafters often refer to those
data dating back to the colonial time to prove the existence of an established tradition of
diversity, consisting of Indigenous peoples, enormous varieties within the group of “AngloCelts” and the sporadic influx of migrants of different ethnic backgrounds since the middle of
the nineteenth century (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 2). As demonstrated by
submissions received from NMAC’s consultative process, the descriptive side of
multiculturalism and the cosmopolitan nature of the society are generally acknowledged and
viewed positively by most Australians (NMAC, Toward Inclusiveness 37). It is
multiculturalism at the level of public policy that excites discords and is constantly reviewed,
17
modified and re-created.
4.1. On National Identity
The discourse of national identity enjoys a centrality in the conceptualization of
multicultural policy, for it prescribes the boundary and nature of a multi-ethnic polity and
defines the power relations between different ethnic groups by setting out their respective
rights and obligations under the liberal-democratic contract. As commented by Carol Johnson,
issues of identity and difference have been quite crucial in recent Australian political
discourse, given the prominence of issues such as inclusion/exclusion, the “mainstream”,
“special interests” and “political correctness” (Johnson, Governing Change 14). According to
critical linguistics, discourse does not merely reflect social processes and structures, but
affirms, consolidates and reproduces existing social structures (Teo 11). A discourse of
national identity essentially involves the allocation of national space to different cultures and
the establishment of a power order within the given political community. In the Australian
context, it is reflected in the constant negotiation of the core culture, Indigenous cultures and
migrant cultures in both public and private spheres. The discourse of national identity decides
on the symbolic value of each cultural constituent and provides the philosophical basis for
legitimate government actions regarding ethnic governance, therefore having an immediate
impact upon the social and economic dimensions of the multicultural policy.
The profound transformation of the discourse of national identity in the Howard years
can not be truly understood without a review of the conceptions of the previous Labor
governments. Compared with the integrationist national picture presented by the Howard
government, the options offered by the Hawke-Keating governments were more conducive to
the symbolic representation of minority cultures. Although the National Agenda and the 1995
reassessment by no means sought to challenge the predominance of the charter group, they
accorded much more national space to the minority cultures and opened the possibility of
their increasing involvements in the creation of a new national culture. As James Jupp put it in
“Immigration and National Identity: Multiculturalism”, National Agenda for a Multicultural
Australia represented a “strong endorsement of multiculturalism” but for a few caveats
introduced in response to the rancor of immigration debates in 1988 (Jupp 135). The
reconstruction of national identity from a multicultural perspective found its best reflection in
the consideration of the option of a Multiculturalism Act, which would not only acknowledge
the special status of Indigenous peoples in Australian life, but also give legislative force to the
expanded policy requirements for Commonwealth departments and agencies (Commonwealth
of Australia, National Agenda 48). A fluid view of national identity was manifest in the
declaration that “it is the vigor of our diversity, and the degree of interaction between different
cultures, that contributes so much to the uniqueness of the Australian identity today”
(Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 5).
Recognizing the importance of multicultural input in national construction, the
government raised multicultural curriculum reform as “an issue of national priority” and was
highly supportive of the communication strategy aimed at giving expression to the
multicultural and multilingual character of Australian society. For example, the government
18
maintained the Special Broadcasting Service as a discrete entity, extended its television
coverage to Darwin and six additional non-metropolitan centers and guaranteed its budget in
real terms for three years (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 47-49). In the
similar vein, it increased funding for ethnic public broadcasting from $0.688 million in 198788 to $1.138 million in 1988-89 and increased that for Aboriginal public broadcasting from
$100,000 to $250,000 in the same period (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 47).
As part of the National Agenda initiatives, the Commonwealth promised to provide resources
to cultural institutions such as libraries, galleries, museums and archives to reflect cultural
diversity in their collections and practices (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 49).
Unlike the policy model promoted by the Coalition in which harmonious community relations
were solely premised on the conformity of minority groups to the core structure, the National
Agenda recognized the responsibility of mainstream institutions to facilitate diversity and
warned the danger arising from the homogeneous portrayal of Australian image and simplistic
ethnic stereotypes in the media (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 46). A broadminded perception of national identity guaranteed better appreciation of individual cultural
rights. As specified in the National Agenda, “Fundamentally, multiculturalism is about the
rights of the individual—the right to equality of treatment; to be able to express one’s identity;
to be accepted as an Australian without having to assimilate to some stereotyped model of
behavior” (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 15).
While the National Agenda rested itself on the safe ground of political consensus,
Multicultural Australia — The Next Steps — Towards and Beyond 2000 represented a bold
move toward a new national phase based on cosmopolitanism. Contextualized in the High
Court’s epoch-making Mabo decision and the sweeping impact of globalization, the NMAC
under the Keating government charted out a more radical course for the continuing evolution
of Australian identity (NMAC, The Next Steps vii). The concept of deep diversity was
embodied in the opening sentence, “Cultural diversity is not an abstract concept in Australia,
it is our experience as a nation” (NMAC, The Next Steps 1). In spelling out the principles of
multiculturalism for the new millennia, the Council proposed an “inclusive vision”
distinctively different from that of the subsequent Howard era:
As a nation we have become more hospitable to people of different backgrounds. Ethnic and
indigenous communities are valued not only for their folk culture of culinary arts, dances, crafts
and so forth, but also for their framework of ideas, beliefs, values and knowledge (NMAC, The
Next Steps 3).
Founded on a reshaped national identity which positively incorporated minority
experiences, the reassessment symbolized a revolutionary change of the power order between
different communities. A tripartite structure was laid out with the Indigenous peoples
representing the “first nation” of communities, “whose needs and interests warrant special
consideration, especially in view of the application of principles of self-determination”
(NMAC, The Next Steps vii). The hierarchy between the British culture and minority cultures
was jolted with the statement that “equal weight needs to be given to encouraging the things
we have in common, the preservation and sharing of our differences and the benefits attained
19
from them, and openness to cultural change and development” (NMAC, The Next Steps 8).
Accordingly, the Council dropped the phrase “within carefully defined limits” which used to
circumscribe the dimension of cultural identity in the National Agenda.
In sharp contrast to the inward-looking mindset of its counterpart in the Howard era, the
Council under the Keating government enthusiastically advocated symbolic restructuring of
the national image. In line with Keating’s big picture, it recommended that multicultural
principles, together with the recognition of the unique place of Indigenous peoples, be
embodied in any possible revision of the Australian Constitution and in the design of a new
national flag (NMAC, The Next Steps 8). Regarding communication strategy, the Council
underlined the special responsibility of public broadcasters such as the SBS and the ABC in
“reflecting Australia’s cultural diversity in programming and in employment practices and
outcomes” and urged the privately owned media to do likewise (NMAC, The Next Steps 14).
In the closing section of the report, four recommendations were made to publicize a
multicultural future to the whole community and the world, including fully incorporating
diversity in nation-defining moments like the Centenary of Federation and the Sydney 2000
Olympic Games, implementing a national project of multicultural history and thoroughly
reforming the collecting institutions, such as libraries and museums (NMAC, The Next Steps
44-47). All these initiatives significantly differed from the subsequent integrationist
philosophy of the Howard administration and anticipated a reshaping of the national identity
based on diversity.
However, the progressive course stopped short at the defeat of the Keating government
in 1996 and was violently steered into the conservative direction. Recognizing the overriding
importance of national identity in shaping collective imagination and influencing substantive
public policies, the Howard government set out to rewrite multicultural policy by creating a
new discourse of national identity. This discourse was marked by drastic erasure of pluralistic
elements and the naturalization of a nationalistic-civic articulation of national belonging. In
the newly created power order, the hegemony of the core culture was consolidated, which was
flanked by a practical reconciliation with the Indigenous peoples and the auxiliary role of the
minority cultures under the collective label of cultural diversity. The key themes of this
discourse were as follows: (1) Multicultural policy would move from a migrant-oriented
phase to a more inclusive phase marked by a common vision; (2) It would give due emphasis
to national interests and civic duty, which required an overriding commitment to core values,
principles and institutions; (3) Australian multiculturalism had its deep roots in the tradition of
Australian democracy; (4) The relationship between multiculturalism and citizenship should
be strengthened and viewed as symbiotic and complementary; (5) Cultural diversity should be
understood as a unifying force for all Australians; (6) The emphasis of cultural identity
programs would move from cultural maintenance to mutual understanding and social
cohesion. These themes complemented each other in a concerted aim of ensuring the
supremacy of the core-culture-based national identity and playing down or writing off the
importance of minority cultures in the public sphere. I will proceed to trace the incremental
buildup of this discourse and its related themes in the successive policy papers launched by
the Howard government and observe how they interact with each other and converge toward a
20
conservative rewriting of the national identity.
The very beginning of discursive shifts under the Howard government was marked by
the formulation of the Issues Paper Multicultural Australia: The Way Forward (1997). As
suggested by the title “The Way Forward”, the aim of this paper was to initiate change and
reset policy priorities. Despite its proclaimed aim of inviting community discussions, the
central direction of policy change was prescribed in a top-down fashion through the message
of Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Philip Ruddock and the response of the
Council Chairman Neville J. Roach, who reiterated that “the Council’s primary task (is) to
recommend a framework aimed at ensuring that cultural diversity is a unifying force”
(NMAC, The Way Forward 3). Such stipulation served to delimit the trajectory of policy
discussion, frame the questions to be asked and pre-determine the course of policy
transformation.
Around the central aim of “unity”, aforementioned themes were hammered away with
slightly different wording and constituted the essential content of the Issues Paper. After a
brief review of the past achievements of multicultural policy, the paper proceeded with a
section on “changing emphases”, which underlined the policy transformation from a
“somewhat migrant-oriented focus to a more inclusive whole-of-community focus” (NMAC,
The Way Forward 7). The theme of inclusiveness was spelt out at two levels. At the surface
level, the civic model was promoted as the ideal mechanism to accommodate difference. A
series of core values, principles and institutions were identified as essential constitutive
factors of the civic identity and perceived as “strong enough to unite Australians from all
backgrounds”, including “‘a fair go’, mutual respect, egalitarianism, parliamentary democracy,
the rule of law, freedom of religion and expression, equality of opportunity and the rejection
of bigotry and prejudice” (NMAC, The Way Forward 4). Moreover, great importance was
attached to the notion that multiculturalism was a mere developmental stage rooted and
circumscribed by Australian liberal democratic tradition. As explained in the section, “Basic
principles underlying multicultural policy”, Australia’s development into a successful
multicultural society, “far from being a departure from Australia’s traditions, is one of its
finest achievements” (NMAC, The Way Forward 11). The hierarchical order of the overblown
democratic tradition and the deflated multiculturalism deprived the latter of its distinctiveness
and independence as a governing philosophy. Tentatively raised in The Way Forward, this
theme was considerably sophisticated in later reports with the added anchor of citizenship.
It should be noted that the espousal of universalistic civic values at a deeper level
betrayed a covert obsession with nationalistic concerns. The juxtaposition of universality and
ethnic specificity was reflected in the description of the core values, “(These basic principles)
are, in one sense, timeless but in practice they derive from Australian experience” (NMAC,
The Way Forward 11) and “have a special ‘Australian’ quality” (NMAC, The Way Forward 4).
The mystification of an essentialist tradition which was in fact the sediments of sociohistorical experiences of the charter group pointed to the inevitably assimilative implications
of the civic model. The contradiction between the equalizing civic standards and their deep
cultural assumptions was captured in this very Issues Paper, but was normalized rather than
21
problematized, “law is not simply a matter of legislation; ultimately it is a matter of
morality—of values and standards” (NMAC, The Way Forward 11). The recognition of the
cultural underpinnings of the “common structure” but yet the unwavering insistence on its
primary value delivered a strong nationalistic message. The privileging of the core culture and
the pretension of its neutrality logically led to the devaluation and suppression of its opposite,
as expressed in the theme of cultural diversity.
In all these policy papers, the discourse of cultural diversity was characterized by
political platitude and lack of substance. Multicultural Australia: The Way Forward defined
the changing emphasis of cultural identity programs as “moving from helping migrant
communities to maintain their cultural practices to encouraging all Australians to understand
each other better and to share their heritage” (NMAC, The Way Forward 7). Governed by the
dialectic of inclusion and exclusion, community participations were contained at the microsites of cultural activities, such as food, arts, social interactions, language and religion and
excluded from the realm of public decision-making. As the Council put it, “not all community
standards and values are or can be enshrined in legislation” (NMAC, The Way Forward 11);
and social cohesion was “about diversity within a common structure” (NMAC, The Way
Forward 11). The difference-blind rhetoric of “encouraging understanding among all” was a
deliberate attempt of maintaining the unequal power relations between the official and
unofficial cultures, which demanded the voluntary subordination of the latter groups for the
totalizing aim of “national unity”.
In the ensuing papers such as Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards
Inclusiveness, A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia and Multicultural Australia: United
in Diversity, the discourse of national identity was officially endorsed and vigorously
advocated. Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards Inclusiveness was a
report to the Minister which recommended on the policy and implementation framework for
the 21st century. It built on the Issues Paper Multicultural Australia: The Way Forward and
formalized the discourses conceived in it. The supremacy of the discourse of national identity
was well reflected in its sheer length, the large percentage of recommendations relevant to it
and the government’s readiness to accept those recommendations. While Chapter Two
“Australian Multiculturalism: Towards Inclusiveness” epitomized the discourse of national
identity flowing from the Issues Paper, the central message permeated throughout the report
and gained a compelling force through the strategy of over-lexicalization.
As Peter Teo observes, over-lexicalization results when a surfeit of repetitious, quasisynonymous terms is woven into the fabric of discourse, giving rise to a sense of “overcompleteness” (Teo 20). In this report, terms like “inclusiveness”, “social cohesion”,
“unifying force” and “social harmony” were invoked wherever possible, pounding out the
desired message and effectively thwarting the possibility of dissenting interpretation. As in the
Issues Paper, the Council Chairman’s message set the politically correct trajectory of policy
formulation, “the primary thrust that the Council is advocating for multicultural policy over
the next decade is ‘inclusiveness’” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 6). The report went on to
specify the theme in the section “Multiculturalism for All Australians”: “Multiculturalism in
22
its inclusive sense is crucial to our developing nationhood and Australian identity” (NMAC,
Towards Inclusiveness 15). However, instead of proffering a pluralist reading of inclusiveness,
which implied equal value and participation of all cultures in the composite of national
identity, the Council singled out the special status of the charter group:
Australians whose origin is wholly or partly from Great Britain and Ireland can take special
pride in their heritage, for its substantive contribution to the development and success of
Australian society. This is exemplified in the underlying philosophy and principles and the
essential components of Australia’s democratic system, which is the foundation on which our
society has been built, and in our special social values of mateship and a fair go, which contribute
so much to community harmony (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 15).
Such elaboration drove home the conservative connotation of “inclusiveness”. Rather
than providing a leveling ground where every culture enjoyed an equal footing in the evolving
nationhood, the message of “inclusiveness” aimed to ascertain and legitimate the dominance
of the core culture in national imagination. The downgrading of the importance of ethnic
minorities in policy targeting was accompanied by the foregrounding of the Anglo-Celtic
group and its culture, whose ethnic nature was diluted via the claim to neutrality in the civic
paradigm.
Admittedly, the prescribed aim of forging “inclusiveness” was fully embodied in Chapter
Two of the Council report, where the crude themes of national identity in the Issues Paper
were refined into coherent arguments. Responding to the question as to the continued use of
the term “multiculturalism”, the Council decided on its maintenance and suggested prefixing
it with the adjective “Australian”, whose presence was a constant reminder of the
preeminence of the national community based on Anglo-Celtic traditions. At the normative
level, a new definition for multiculturalism was introduced:
Australian multiculturalism is a term which recognizes and celebrates Australia’s cultural
diversity. It accepts and respects the right of all Australians to express and share their individual
cultural heritage within an overriding commitment to Australia and basic structures and values of
Australian democracy (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 42).
It is interesting to observe how the Council tried its best to achieve the maintenance of
the term “multiculturalism” and the actual elimination of all its radical potentials. In order to
ensure that the scope of “celebrating cultural diversity” was not unduly enlarged, the Council
cautioned immediately after the proposed definition:
While Australian multiculturalism values and celebrates diversity, it is not an ‘anything
goes’ concept since it is built on core societal values of mutual respect, tolerance and harmony,
the rule of law and our democratic principles and institutions. It is also based on an overriding
commitment to Australia (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 42).
The strategy of over-lexicalization was assiduously employed, as indicated by the
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subchapter “A Vision for Australian Multiculturalism”, which sought to provide “the ultimate
goal and guiding rational for multicultural policies” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 44):
A united and harmonious Australia, built on the foundation of our democracy, and
developing its continually evolving nationhood by recognizing, embracing, valuing and investing
in its heritage and cultural diversity (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 43).
The marginal status of community cultures in the grand construction of nationhood was more
than evident in this vision. Cultural diversity was reduced to a negligible appendage, at best
enriching the core culture at its discretion and at worst representing the clamorous “selfinterest” which should give way to “national interests” and “community obligations” (NMAC,
Towards Inclusiveness 44).
The power order was further buttressed through the revision of multicultural principles,
with “civic duty” overriding all other three dimensions, namely “cultural respect”, “social
equity” and “productive diversity” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 17). The restated
principles served to crystallize the spatial divide of cultural expression. While the core culture
in its institutional and legal forms took on the superior status of national culture, to which
every citizen owed his or her allegiance, diverse ethnic cultures were accepted as part of
everyday life and framed at the level of individual experience. Diversity was valued not for its
symbolic status in the national culture, but for its practical use in promoting productivity, as
captured in the dimension of productive diversity. The utilitarian perception was well
indicated in the report: “(Our democracy) does not seek diversity in our society as an end in
itself; rather it welcomes and values diversity as a great cultural, social and economic
resource” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 45).
Moreover, the hierarchical relationship between multiculturalism and Australian
democracy was fully developed, contributing to a conflation between the concepts of
citizenship and multiculturalism. As stipulated in the report:
The freedom that our democracy guarantees gives space for the cultural diversity in
Australian society, so it is our democracy and our expectation that ‘citizens’ respect and adhere to
its principles that are the key ingredients of a unifying Australian tradition which Australian
multiculturalism retains (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 52).
Although it should be admitted that democracy indeed provides the soil for the
emergence of multiculturalism, the over-simplified nexus between the two suggested by the
above quotation is no more than a reassertion of the ascendant Anglo-Celtic tradition and a
denial of the philosophical independence of multiculturalism in guiding policy directions. It
does not give due acknowledgement to the multifarious faces of democracy in its evolution
and the ever-present challenges posed to it in balancing freedom and equality, which conflict
is all the more salient in the globalizing age. By constructing the dichotomy of the “timeless”
democracy and a “transient”, “dependent” multiculturalism, multiculturalism loses its longterm sustainability as a governing philosophy, which has “outlived its purpose” and is only to
24
be phased out (Galligan and Roberts 14).
The challenge to the theoretical status of multiculturalism effectuates its conflation with
and gradual replacement by the concept of citizenship. In the section “Multiculturalism and
concepts of ‘citizenship’”, the Council enthusiastically promoted the expanded concept of
citizenship, which was seen as “the bond or glue, consisting of shared membership in a
political community” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 47). Although the Council conceded
that “this expanded idea of ‘citizenship’ does not negate the place and role of Australian
multiculturalism” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 47), the explanation was indeed selfdefeating. With the infusion of citizenship essence under the multicultural label, the latter was
reduced to hollow commitments to the abstract principles of civic obedience and participation
and was tantamount to a restatement of Australian political values.
A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia marked the official embrace of multicultural
policy by the Howard government. It confirmed the main elements of the 1999 report and
more importantly provided the government’s responses to each recommendation raised by the
Council. The point-to-point responses ranged from “supported”, “supported in principle” to
“noted” in relation to specific recommendations involved, characterized by hollow rhetoric
and lack of action. Generally speaking, recommendations in this area could be divided into
three categories. The first category was concerned with the reconstruction of the multicultural
discourse and its communication to the public, which comprised an absolute majority of all
recommendations put together. Recommendation 1, 2 and 4 recommended the continued
adoption of Australian multiculturalism and its renewed definition. Recommendations that
were particularly relevant to the discourse of national identity included: recognizing the
foundations of multiculturalism in Australian democracy; stressing the balance between the
rights and responsibilities of all ‘citizens’; emphasizing inclusiveness; adding the prefix
‘Australian’ so as to emphasize its unique Australian character; and emphasizing the value of
Australian citizenship and establishing its connection with Australian multiculturalism.
Elucidated in Recommendation 3, 6, 10, 18, 19 and 20, all of them were readily approved by
the government in A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia. Among all others,
Recommendation 10 suggested that “future multicultural policies and strategies give high
priority to the notion and promotion of inclusiveness” and elicited the highly supportive
response of “strongly agreed” from the government (Commonwealth of Australia, New
Agenda 14).
Moreover, Recommendation 5, 8, 9, 11, 14, 23 and 32 highlighted the importance of
political communication to promote the revised version of multicultural strategy through civic
education, outreaching strategy and public showcasing at nation-defining moments such as
the Centenary of Federation, Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and Paralympics (NMAC,
Towards Inclusiveness 83-92). While the Howard government held no objection to those
recommendations directed at promoting new policy priorities, it withdrew its support from the
more controversial ones which demanded the incorporation of diversity in meaningful
national moments, not even with the renewed focus of “inclusiveness”. Government response
toward “highlighting the transition of multiculturalism in Centenary celebrations” was
25
“supported in principle” (Commonwealth of Australia, New Agenda 14); and it slipped into a
mere “noted” for Recommendation 23, which argued for adequate Indigenous and ethnic
representation in the preparation of the Games (Commonwealth of Australia, New Agenda 23).
The government’s apathy was well reflected in its response to Recommendation 8, which
petitioned for the continued input into the future development of the “Discovering
Democracy” program to ensure an appropriate emphasis on the meaning and value of
multiculturalism (Commonwealth of Australia New Agenda 12-13). The Discovering
Democracy program was started in June 1997 by Dr David Kemp, the then Minister for
Schools, Vocational Education and Training and endorsed by the Ministerial Council for
Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). The program was intended
to lay the foundations for ongoing civics and citizenship education across a range of
educational sectors: schools, higher education, adult and community education, and
vocational education and training institutions. A website was established to promote the
officially endorsed version of Australian history and disseminate knowledge about core
principles and political and legal systems underpinning Australian democracy. It was obvious
that the Council sought to incorporate the refocused multiculturalism into the official platform
of civic education and thereby to secure its status as a mainstream policy. Unfortunately, the
recommendation’s obvious alignment with the government stance on civic education did not
result in a firm commitment. The response was a lukewarm “supported in principle”
(Commonwealth of Australia, New Agenda 13). Although the government added that “any
future program would include appropriate emphasis on the meaning and value of
multiculturalism”, a brief look at the “Discovering Democracy Units” found an overwhelming
emphasis on British history and formal civic institutions but nothing at all about cultural
diversity (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, “Discovering
Democracy Units”).
The second category comprised only two recommendations (12 and 13), but was
probably the most progressive part of the report. Influenced by the progress of reconciliation
movement in the late 1990s and the pending 1999 referendum on an Australian Republic, the
Council held a particularly enlightened view in relation to the Indigenous policy. In the
section “Reconciliation and multiculturalism”, it stressed that “Australia’s multiculturalism
will remain fundamentally flawed until we have effected meaningful reconciliation between
indigenous and all other Australians based on mutual respect” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness
55). The NMAC was keen to support the cause of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation
(CAR) and called for government commitment in this area. In view of the coming referendum
on a new Constitutional Preamble, the Council recommended the inclusion of the recognition
of “the diverse backgrounds of the Australian people, including such acknowledgement of the
unique status of our indigenous people” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 57). The presence of
such a progressive recommendation in an overall conservative policy document indicates that
an “inclusive view” of national identity is unachievable without the proper consideration of
the special status of the native group. It supports Kymlicka’s theoretical differentiation of the
first national group, host group and the later migrants and aims to translate it into practical
policy.
26
Government response to these two recommendations was a blend of pragmatism and
political tactic. While it provided an extra $2.4 million in funding to CAR on consultation
process, it never cleared up its attitude toward CAR’s proposed national strategies for
reconciliation. Moreover, it lost no time in warning the NMAC that “reconciliation and
multicultural issues must not be inappropriately intertwined” (Commonwealth of Australia,
New Agenda 15-16). Regarding the issue of writing cultural diversity into the new preamble,
the government was generous in lending its support in rhetoric, for by the time the New
Agenda was launched, the referendum on the preamble in conjunction with the referendum of
Australian Republic had already been held with both proposals unapproved. The government
was assured that the expediency in airing support would not be substantiated into practical
policy.
Finally, the last category of recommendations (15, 16, 17, 30 and 31) called for political
leadership in upholding multicultural policy and the establishment of a central coordinating
agency responsible for policy formulation, implementation and central coordination across all
levels of government. With an implicit reference to the negative impact of the One Nation
Party and the tenuous commitment of the Coalition, the Council urged all responsible political
leaders not to “lend support to or confer any political respectability or credibility on
individuals or parties that espouse policies that violate the spirit of the Joint Parliamentary
Statement of 30 October 1996” (Commonwealth of Australia, New Agenda 16), a Statement
made to reaffirm Australia’s non-discriminatory immigration policy. Furthermore, it referred
to the political consensus enjoyed by the National Agenda and urged in Recommendation 17:
All Parliamentary parties throughout Australia, particularly those in Government and
Opposition, (should) seek common ground in relation to multicultural policy and avoid political
point-scoring that would send wrong signals to the community and might damage community
harmony (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 86-87).
It is not surprising that both recommendations would fall on deaf ears and only elicited a
curt reply of “noted” without further comment. Although the Council for Multicultural
Australia (CMA) was established as recommended, its composition indicated an
overwhelming conservative influence with strong representation from business, law and
finance but none from unions or directly from the Federation of Ethnic Communities’
Councils of Australia (FECCA). The great majority of CMA members were of European
origin, quite contrary to the government promise that “the membership must be representative
of the cultural diversity of the Australian community” (Commonwealth of Australia, New
Agenda 29).
Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity was issued by the government in 2003 to
update the New Agenda. While reinforcing the central aim of “inclusiveness”, it wrote off all
concerns for cultural diversity. The four principles of multicultural policy were delineated as
follows: “responsibilities of all, respect of each person, fairness for each person and benefits
for all” (Commonwealth of Australia, United in Diversity 6), articulated either in the context
27
of an undifferentiated bloc of “All Australians” or at the level of the abstract individual. This
referential system served both to strengthen the notion of the “imagined community” in the
public sphere and to deny the legitimacy of group rights by confining the discussion in the
private sphere.
The only substantial strategy in this policy paper was the continuation of Living in
Harmony initiative, which was extended by the government for a further four years from 2002
with an annual provision of $3.5 million (Commonwealth of Australia, United in Diversity 7).
The DIMA described this program as “a proactive, non-confrontational initiative dedicated to
increasing the already high levels of social cohesion and tolerance of racial, religious and
cultural diversity that exists in Australia” (Ho 4). Since 1999, Harmony Day occurs on 21
March each year and aims to celebrate Australia’s success as a diverse society united by a
common set of values. Those Harmony Day activities flowing from the “Community
Harmony” strategy are organized in a “pasta and polka” fashion, taking various forms such as
school assemblies, classroom activities, luncheon parties, parades and artistic events. For
example, Monaro Family Support Service of Cooma in NSW organized its 2008 Harmony
Day celebration in the local park with presentations from people of different ethnic
backgrounds, exotic food donated by diverse restaurants, dance performances from India,
China and Thailand and multicultural fashion parade. Local school children and community
groups were invited to take part in these activities (DIAC “What’s on”). As James Jupp
commented, Harmony Day activities were “reminiscent of the days of the Good Neighbor
Council with gaily dressed ‘ethnics’ and local politicians and councilors praising the lack of
tension and conducting citizenship ceremonies” (Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera
116).
With the core culture placed at the apex, the discourse of national identity under the
Howard government ticked the clock back to the integrationist era when minority cultures
were marginalized and objectified in the national construction according to the will of the
governing group. The symbolic transformation of national order profoundly impacted upon
other policy areas, as reflected in the revised discourses of social justice and productive
diversity.
4.2. On Social Justice
Social justice used to be the mainstay of multicultural policy, which arose in response to
social equity problems facing migrants in the late 1960s and 1970s. However, Australian
traditions of social justice existed long before the age of mass immigration and were a
combination of the Catholic, Labor and Liberal strands of political thoughts which have
predominated throughout the 20th century (Jupp, “Access and Equity” 4). The high points of
social justice as a governing philosophy in Australia lay between the post-war reconstruction
era of 1945 and the defeat of the Keating government in 1996, grounded in a consensual
agreement between politicians, public servants and the electorate that the main object of the
government should be the creation and maintenance of social equality, although views were
divided between the options of equality of treatment and equality of outcome. In the
multicultural setting, social justice encompassed not only the usual repertoire of civil, political,
28
economic and social rights, but also cultural rights to maintain and transmit one’s cultural
identity (Parekh 211).
The discourse of social justice was formally proposed in the National Agenda for a
Multicultural Australia and substantiated in Multicultural Australia — the Next Steps —
Towards and Beyond 2000. Social justice, as defined in the National Agenda sought to
“eliminate those inequalities which derive from cultural, racial, religious or linguistic
difference” (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 19). Its convergence with the
concept of equality of outcome was indicated in the Objectives of “Social Justice”,
“Ultimately, this should be reflected in similar group outcomes” (Commonwealth of Australia,
National Agenda 21). The discourse of social justice constituted the major content of both
policy papers under the Labor governments, elaborated in sections like “participation”, “basic
rights”, “social justice” and “language and communication”, and partially discussed in
sections like “economic efficiency” or “human resources”. Both documents were “frank and
fearless” in identifying existing barriers of language, culture and prejudice which “cause and
reinforce an unequal distribution of resources and power” (Commonwealth of Australia,
National Agenda 9) and proposed concrete measures to cope with those problems. The
acknowledgement of attitudinal barriers and systemic discrimination opened possibilities for
structural reform, albeit in “an incremental and evolutionary process” (Commonwealth of
Australia, National Agenda 16).
Very much approaching the model of political pluralism, the Hawke government set as
one of its objectives to “promote equality before the law by systematically examining the
implicit cultural assumptions of the law and the legal system to identify the manner in which
they may unintentionally act to disadvantage certain groups of Australians” (Commonwealth
of Australia, National Agenda 17). As a crucial part of structural reform, the Access and
Equity (A&E) Strategy was designed by the National Population Council in 1985 and ratified
by the Review of Migrant and Multicultural Programs and Services in 1986. As James Jupp
points out in the Access and Equity Evaluation Research (1992), access and equity should not
be understood simply as a management approach to the practical problems of servicing
immigrants; it represents mechanisms for the effective implementation of what might
otherwise remain abstract formulations (Jupp, “Access and Equity” 3). The concept of A&E
implies that “all who are entitled to a public service should face no barriers which render their
situation inequitable to others so entitled” and “should be equally likely to receive it if
eligible” (SCCA 4.5). While the concepts of A&E might be equally applied to other groups
such as Aborigines, the disabled, the elderly or women, the main target group for A&E
initiatives has been that of non-English-speaking background (NESB), and the main agency
for monitoring and developing policy under the Labor governments was the Office of
Multicultural Affairs (OMA), which was set up within the Department of Prime Minister and
Cabinet in 1987 (Jupp, “Access and Equity” 1). Under the mandatory reporting system
instituted by the OMA, Commonwealth departments and authorities were obliged to prepare
A&E Plans “which not only identity barriers to access but also indicate measures to remove
them” (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 23). Despite complaints from senior
managers in different departments regarding the “external imposition by a central agency”,
29
the catalytic effects of A&E strategy in sensitizing public service culture were widely
acknowledged by ethnic communities (Howard et al 257-8).
The National Agenda strengthened this strategy by requiring portfolios to produce a
second round of three-year A&E plans, widening the scope from immigrants to all those
facing barriers of race, culture or language and considering incorporating it into legislation as
part of the possible Multiculturalism Act (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda 24).
Other key initiatives contained in the National Agenda regarding social justice were as
follows: the establishment of National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition (NOOSR), a
major community relations campaign to ensure better appreciation of diversity, a wide range
of specific A&E initiatives costing $2.9 million over three years, a package of English
language measures and a series of significant reviews on Post-School English, interpreting
provisions in the courts and on legal reform (Commonwealth of Australia, National Agenda x).
The pace of structural reform surely quickened in the Keating era. Compiled into two
volumes, Multicultural Australia — The Next Steps — Towards and Beyond 2000 was
characterized by its comprehensive academic input and concrete supporting evidence. While
Volume One summarized the major recommendations in various areas of multicultural policy,
Volume Two organized convincing arguments based on sound research findings. The wide use
of past researches helped to locate the specific problems involved and infuse substance into
the recommendations.
Along with the general vision of “reflecting diversity in the major public institutions and
processes” (NMAC, The Next Steps 12), the report distinguished the Indigenous Australians
from people of non-English-speaking backgrounds and disaggregated data by professional
categories to bring out a sharper focus. For example, regarding participation, the report
pointed out that “people born in non-English speaking countries are significantly
underrepresented among journalists, announcers, film, television and stage directors, authors
and actors and are only half as likely to participate in sport as the Australian-born” (NMAC,
The Next Steps 11). In line with these findings, pertinent recommendations were offered,
urging for enhanced media employment opportunities for qualified people of non-English and
Indigenous backgrounds (Recommendation 14-16), as well as a full cognizance of Australia’s
culturally diverse character in sports funding (Recommendation 19).
Regarding service delivery, the Council candidly drew attention to the deficiencies in
mainstream service delivery, such as “inadequate community liaison and information
dissemination, delays in accessing interpreters, staff insensitivity to cultural differences
among clients, inadequate collection and use of ethnicity data in planning and evaluation and
so forth” (NMAC, The Next Steps 24). Accordingly, it recommended the Commonwealth
government to develop national standards for A&E, establish a national system to monitor and
review its implementation and direct funding according to outcome (NMAC, The Next Steps
24). Although not in favor of Affirmative Action policies in the form of quotas, the Council
was highly supportive of equal employment opportunity principles and strategies for
achieving a more multicultural Australian Public Service (APS), especially at middle and
30
senior management levels (NMAC, The Next Steps 13).
In addition, the Keating report attached great importance to the long-term effect of
research upon policy-making and proposed specific research directions such as a public
inquiry into the assessing processes of overseas qualifications (Recommendation 28), an
inquiry into the nature and conditions of the “unofficial” labour market (Recommendation 34),
research on the profile of English as a second language need in school system
(Recommendation 38), an assessment of the progress made by tertiary institutions in
incorporating cultural literacy in professional disciplines (Recommendation 42), as well as indepth exploration of the potential use of information technology in achieving multicultural
objectives (Recommendation 17, 18, 26 and 29). The critical examination of policy
inadequacy, proactive government initiatives and the frequent use of inquiries and reports for
policy development characterized the discourse of social justice under the Labor governments,
which was significantly eroded under the Howard government.
A coherent discourse of social justice was non-existent in the multicultural policy of the
Howard era. In its place was a watered-down version of social equity with lip-service paid to
a “fair go” and equality of opportunity. The gradual dismantlement of this dimension started
with the Issues Paper, which shifted the emphasis from “the rights of clients and how to help
them overcome the language and cultural barriers they faced when seeking services or
entitlements” to “practical measures by service providers to address the needs of clients from
diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds” (NMAC, The Way Forward 7; Towards
Inclusiveness 35). The change in wording corresponded with the mainstreaming thrust
promulgated in the discourse of national identity and in effect removed the necessity of
critically examining the “possible barriers” in the public service culture. The rationale for the
changing emphasis was found in the criticism of the “rights and privileges given to migrants
but not available to other Australians” under the multicultural policy (NMAC, The Way
Forward 10). The 1999 NMAC report confirmed the changing meaning of social justice
proposed by the Issues Paper and clarified that “our society does not guarantee equal
outcomes” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 12). To avoid the progressive associations of
social justice, the Council deleted it from the revised multicultural principles and replaced it
with “social equity”, which change was welcomed by the government.
Framing itself in the conservative discourse of “special interests”, the Council adopted a
very apologetic tone regarding special service provision and its related costs. Despite its view
that “funding per se is not a central issue, provided justification and accountability standards
are met”, self-defense and exoneration of responsibility became the marked features of the
new discourse of social equity. Firstly, the Council explained that multicultural programs were
in fact good investment, producing dividends in the form of “a fair, stable and harmonious
society which is increasingly able to reap economic rewards from the domestic and
international opportunities its diversity offers” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 18). Secondly,
the Council set out to delimit the ambit of multicultural policy, drawing a conceptual
distinction between settlement and multicultural strategies. It claimed that while settlement
services were consistent with the overall principles of multiculturalism, special costs incurred
31
should not be attributed to multiculturalism (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 66). Furthermore,
additional costs in interpretation and translation should not be included in multicultural
auditing, for they were incurred for standard service delivery. Dividing the budget of the
Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) into broad categories of
immigration, settlement and multicultural affairs, the Council came to the satisfactory
conclusion that “only $10 million can be ascribed to multicultural affairs, amounting to only
1.8% of the total budget” (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 67). Compared with Labor
governments’ spirited advocacy of their achievements in enhancing social justice, it was
indeed a curious development for the Council to disclaim its former functions and desperately
justify its actions against attacks.
Finally, the Council expressed its willingness to be subjected to public scrutiny and
raised three main criteria of assessment for multicultural programs, respectively “need”,
“benefit to Australia” and “social justice and equity”. The juxtaposition of “social justice and
equity” reflected the Council’s illusory expectation of retaining the traditional policy tag in a
changing political environment. The only vestige of the Labor era was ruthlessly excised in
the New Agenda for Multicultural Australia under the rhetoric that since “there is some
duplication in the criteria ‘need’ and ‘social justice and equity’, the government has decided to
merge them into a criterion called ‘need and social equity’ along with the new criterion of
‘benefits to Australia’” (Commonwealth of Australia, New Agenda 22).
The ensuing New Agenda saw the virtual removal of the plank of social justice. The low
profile of this dimension was reflected in Philip Ruddock’s opening message that “future
multicultural policy should emphasize its relevance to all Australians and focus on strategies
to maximize the benefits of cultural diversity” (Commonwealth of Australia, New Agenda 4).
Accordingly, neither social justice nor social equity was included in the “Plan of Action”
announced by the government, nor were they listed as policy priorities of the coming Council
for Multicultural Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, New Agenda 9-10).
Recommendations in this area decreased to a pitiful number and significantly deteriorated in
quality. The most important one among others was Recommendation 24, which urged greater
representation of cultural diversity in all sectors, especially on advisory bodies and boards,
management and workforces involved in the delivery of services and community contact
(NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 90). The government agreed in principle but rejected any
possibility of quotas. Its initiative stopped short at establishing a register of qualified
Australians from diverse backgrounds and drawing decision makers’ attention to the presence
of such candidates (Commonwealth of Australia, New Agenda 23). Such laissez-faire
approach revealed the government’s reluctance to interfere with the status-quo and its
deliberate neglect of the Council’s argument that “acceleration of the use of our culturally
diverse people will not occur if it is left entirely to market forces” (NMAC, Towards
Inclusiveness 90).
The disparity of government promise and actual implementation was also obvious
regarding language funding. In Recommendation 28 and 29, the Council called for the
continuation of government support to English language tuition for adult migrants and to
32
other language programs such as the National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian
Schools (NALSAS), Priority Languages and Community Languages (Commonwealth of
Australia, New Agenda 27). Although the government indicated its support to all of them, in
2002 it prematurely ended the annual subsidy of $30 million for teaching Asian languages in
schools. Eventually the major language groups such as Italian, Greek, Arabic and Chinese
developed their own commercial media without public funding (Jupp, From White Australia
to Woomera 93).
In the 2003 government statement Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity, the
dimension of social justice was partially restored due to the uproar of refugee issues but only
defined at the implementation level of “Access and Equity”. However, without top-down
commitment, such rhetoric by no means resulted in a reversal of the general trend. The total
allocation for settlement, citizenship and multicultural programs in 1998-99 only numbered
$159 million (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 127). In addition, Parliament passed legislation
requiring “all migrants, except refugees and humanitarian entrants to wait two years before
they are eligible to receive payments, including unemployment payments”. Since access to the
full range of labour market services was linked to eligibility for social security payments,
newly arrived migrants were disqualified from immediate access to the full range of
government employment services, which threshold doubled their disadvantages in the
workplace (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 68).
At the implementation level, A&E in the post-OMA era was governed by the rhetoric of
the Charter of Public Service in a Culturally Diverse Society, which summarized seven
principles: access, equity, communication, responsiveness, effectiveness, efficiency and
accountability (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 119). A performance measurement framework
was devised in 2000, built around the five key roles of the government: Policy Adviser,
Regulator, Purchaser, Provider and Employer (DIMIA, 2004 Access and Equity Report 11).
Each role was further split into several performance indicators; and agencies were assessed as
meeting a performance indicator where they reported one or more relevant strategies under
the given category. In the year 2007, Accessible Government Services for All replaced the
Charter as the new guiding framework but was reverted to the “Access and Equity” name in
2008 with its structure intact. The new framework streamlined the reporting process, but its
basic method was consistent with the previous version.
The biggest problem of the new A&E strategy lay in its lack of critical reflexivity. The
feedback from the 2005 review of A&E strategy demonstrated a lack of confidence in current
reporting as a tool to assess actual performance. Of key concern was that the Department of
Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) relied too heavily on agencies
to report accurately and comprehensively on their performance, merely selecting best practice
examples to meet relatively basic Access and Equity reporting requirements (DIMA, 2005
Access and Equity Annual Report 12). As the DIMIA admitted in its 2004 Annual Report, it
did not verify the accuracy of reported information or the scope of its coverage. Agencies
were assessed as well performed if they were able to provide two strong examples (DIMIA,
2004 Access and Equity Annual Report 9). As a result, almost all agencies were assessed as
33
meeting all applicable performance indicators in 2004 and 2005 (DIMA, 2005 Access and
Equity Annual Report 5).
Under the rosy picture were a series of unsolved problems, which were only revealed in
the overdue community consultations on accessibility of government services in 2005-06
organized by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC 9-10). The lack of
central coordination, ineffective assessment framework and the absence of critical researches
comparable to those of the Labor era resulted in the decentralization of settlement issues,
which was featured by uneven performance among and within different State and local
governments. As vaguely admitted by the DIMA after a review of the A&E strategy
undertaken in 2005, the level of commitment to Access and Equity in some areas “seemed to
be inadequate, resulting in limited capacity for response to emerging community concerns”.
In view of the wrong perception that “Access and Equity was primarily a DIMIA program”,
the department urged that all agencies must take a greater leadership role “to ensure the
impacts of cultural diversity are considered at the forefront of policy and programme design
and implementation” (DIMA, 2005 Access and Equity Annual Report 12).
The review outcome accorded with the findings of the report A Fair Go for All: Report
on Migrant Access and Equity (1996), which was produced by the Standing Committee on
Community Affairs (SCCA), House of Representatives during the Keating era. In contrast to
the ambiguous tone of the review in Howard years, the Committee report unreservedly
pointed to the disparity between the planning for A&E and its implementation, which was
especially obvious in approaches of the Queensland and Western Australian governments
(SCCA 5.7-5.8). It was equally critical of the actual performance at the local government
level and drew attention to the stark differences in commitment to migrant issues, which
emerged between the two separate parts of one local area council, namely CanterburyBankstown in NSW (SCCA 4.53).
Despite varied degree of frankness, reports under both governments revealed the
piecemeal, “add-on” nature of the A&E strategy, which was exacerbated by lack of funding
under the Coalition. As the Committee report indicated, the inadequate funding and grants on
special programs could lead to the paradox that “if organizations make provision for A&E
they are penalized” for additional costs involved (SCCA 5.13). This observation had even
greater pertinence to the Howard government, which was well noted for its stance against
specialist provision of resources. In sum, the discourse of social justice under the Howard
government lost both its theoretical appeal and policy strength and gradually gave way to the
instrumentalist view embodied in the discourse of productive diversity.
4.3. On Productive Diversity
The discourse of productive diversity arguably demonstrates more continuity with the
Labor policies than the other two themes discussed above. The concept of productive
diversity had its origins in the evolution of multiculturalism as a national policy in Australia.
The term was first used by the then Prime Minister Paul Keating and the leader of Opposition
Tim Fisher at a 1992 conference organized by the Office of Multicultural Affairs. Building on
34
the principle of “economic efficiency” in the National Agenda, it was incorporated in the
1995 report under the Keating government and taken on as one of the policy priorities by the
Howard government. Despite the seeming continuity, a close study of policy papers exposes
significant divergence in policy trajectory under the same tag.
The discourse of productive diversity under the Labor governments saw the combined
emphasis on economic output resulting from managing diversity and humanistic concerns
about social justice rooted in the tradition of social democracy. The twin focuses were well
expressed in the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia:
Effective and efficient development and utilization of our human resources is essential if
Australia’s economic potential is to be realized fully. It is equally important in terms of the
individual’s right to self-expression and economic security (Commonwealth of Australia,
National Agenda 26).
Similarly, in the section of “Human Resources”, the 1995 report pointed out that “important
elements of this agenda must be ongoing efforts to use and enhance the skills and talents of all
Australians, to share equitably the burdens and rewards of change, and to support and
encourage those at risk of being left behind” (NMAC, The Next Steps 28).
The initiatives put forward by the two documents were in alignment with the broad
vision quoted above and heavily tilted toward the equity issues. The initiatives proposed in the
National Agenda included the improved process of recognition of overseas qualifications, a
major review of post-school ESL provision, consideration of an upgraded job-seeker specialist
service, multicultural education and curriculum reform (Commonwealth of Australia,
National Agenda 35-36), most of which were already mentioned in the previous sections. The
same inclination was evident in the Keating report. Apart from Recommendation 31 which
specifically advocated productive diversity principles in management training, most
recommendations within the section of “Human Resources” were aimed at the removal of
barriers to ensure full participation of all employees regardless of their cultural backgrounds
(NMAC, The Next Steps 30). For example, the Council recommended further removal of
restrictive practices in the recognition of overseas qualifications, improvement of employment
opportunities, fairer allocation of resources for vocational education and training, as well as
an inquiry into the problems of the “unofficial market” associated with the textile and clothing
industry in NSW (NMAC, The Next Steps 29-31). The absolute majority of recommendations
related to the concept of social justice demonstrated a policy balance of instrumentalist
engineering and ethical considerations in Labor periods.
In contrast to its Labor predecessors, the discourse of productive diversity under the
Coalition rested on a narrow interpretation of economic benefits of ethnic diversity at work, to
the exclusion of issues such as the proper recognition and advancement of NESB workers.
The Issues Paper proposed the transformation of the economic efficiency area of multicultural
policy from “the disadvantages that many migrants face in the workplace” to “the economic
benefits that can arise directly from a diverse customer base and workforce” (NMAC, The
35
Way Forward 8). The ensuing NMAC report formally proposed “Productive Diversity” as one
of the revised multicultural principles and developed it as “the maximization of the significant
cultural, social and economic dividends which arise from the diversity of our population”
(NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 17). In the section “Diversity Dividends”, the Council
enunciated the potential gains from diversity against the backdrop of economic globalization,
such as competitive edge in service provision, influential global networks and familiarity with
diverse customs, languages and cultures of global and domestic suppliers, partners and
customers (NMAC, Towards Inclusiveness 71).
This perspective was heartily welcomed by the Coalition government and incorporated
into policy priorities in both the New Agenda and the 2003 statement. In the “Plan of Action”,
the government promised to promote diversity management strategies through partnerships
with the private sector in order to improve productivity and performance (Commonwealth of
Australia, New Agenda 9). Although lip service was also paid regarding “removing workplace
impediments”, this aspect was not written into the “Plan of Action”, nor was it reflected in
any recommendations. The only commitment from the government was to launch the
Productive Diversity Partnership Program, which was a cooperative venture between the
Commonwealth, a group of Australia’s foremost business schools and the private sector with
the purpose of developing curriculum material for business education in both the university
and TAFE sectors (Commonwealth of Australia, New Agenda 24). With the restoration of
“A&E” as one of the strategic directions in the 2003 government statement, the discourse of
productive diversity was strictly narrowed down to the “maximization of economic benefits”
without any reference to equity issues, thereby completing the process of discursive shift
(Commonwealth of Australia, United in Diversity 9).
Despite its high profile in the refocused multicultural policy, the discourse of productive
diversity does not have much real policy impact. With the expansion of the private sector, the
implementation of productive diversity strategy will mostly rely on the initiatives of
individual companies, whose specific decisions are quite beyond the regulatory power of the
state, especially so under the current laissez-faire governing philosophy. The devolution of
responsibility results in an ad hoc, individualistic manner of implementation rather than by
any coherent system-wide strategies across companies. As indicated by the national survey of
industries conducted by Santina Bertone, productive diversity was bottom-low on the
management agenda (Bertone, “A Precarious Future” 78). The lopsided focus on productive
dividends confines the relevance of this concept only to those globalized industries, such as
energy, finance, communication and tourism, therefore overlooking the universal message of
equity issues for all businesses regardless of their trading orientation. Moreover, although
most of the company executives surveyed agreed or strongly agreed to statements reflecting
notions of equal opportunity and the value of migrant labour, many went on to report a far
lower incidence of policies and strategies based on such philosophical understandings
(Bertone, “Productive Diversity in Australia” 9). All these evidences point to the limited
policy impact of this discourse and the detrimental effects of a single-minded pursuit of
diversity dividends.
36
The contradiction between the prominence of productive diversity as a policy discourse
and its negligible policy impact not only reflects the government’s disinterest with proactive
action, but also points to its deeper ideological functions. The discourse of productive
diversity is less concerned with generating new initiatives than offering an alternative
perspective of valorizing diversity. For one thing, it solidifies the discourse of national
identity by constructing the minority cultures as national objects to be moved, valorized and
utilized according to a White will (Hage, White Nation 18). For another, with the exclusion of
minority cultures from the national core and the abandonment of the tenet of social justice,
productive diversity has become the primary raison d’être of multicultural policy itself. This
was evident in the framing of those recommendations, which would have been justified on
grounds of social justice in the Labor era but had to be glossed over by terminology of
productive diversity under the Coalition. For example, funding for language teaching and
petition for greater representation of minority Australians in all sectors were all rationalized as
measures to develop “the under-utilized asset” rather than to “promote equality” (NMAC,
Towards Inclusiveness 72).
However, as left-wing scholars point out, there are severe limitations in focusing on the
productive side of the equation. Although there are many benefits derived from diversity, not
all rights can be reduced to tangible productive gains (Hall 19). The ruthlessness of this
discourse manifests itself in dealing with the “uneconomic immigrants”, such as the aging
minority population, migrants of the family category, and most notably with humanitarian
entrants. A detailed examination of the practical impact of rationalist thinking will be
provided in the next chapter.
In conclusion, the documentary analysis of the policy papers launched by the Howard
government and their selective comparison with the key papers of the Labor governments
reveal major discursive transformations regarding national identity, social justice and
productive diversity. The civic-assimilationist expression of national identity becomes the
core pillar of the refocused multicultural policy and is supplemented with the utilitarian view
of productive diversity. The dimension of social justice is chipped away and replaced by the
thin version of Access and Equity, which loses all its critical vitality and largely depends on
the uneven commitment of state and local governments. The new discourses interrelate with
each other and in concert bring about the ideological shifts of the multicultural policy. While
the constructed wholeness of the national community overrides the claims of the “special
groups” and rebuffs the core arguments of social justice, productive diversity strengthens the
divide between the governing national culture and the objectified minority cultures and
provides rationale for the few remaining programs with perceived economic values. The
complementary discourses of national identity and productive diversity squeeze the notion of
social justice out of the public space and effectuate the rewriting of the policy. However,
policy transformation does not take place in a vacuum; nor should it be dismissed as the
whims of a particular government. The reorientation of multicultural policy occurs in the
sweeping tide of globalization and is deeply rooted in the meta-narrative of the changing
Australian political culture. The interplay of the broad ideological framework and the specific
discourses of multiculturalism will be explored in the next chapter.
37
Chapter Five: Discussion
While the findings from the documentary analysis point to the major discursive shifts of
multicultural policy under the Howard government, their significance can only be fully
comprehended when placed in the broader political environment and connected with other
key issues of the day. The changing discourses of national identity, social justice and
productive diversity are symptoms of deeper political, economic and social transformations
which are encapsulated in the umbrella term of globalization and reflected in the evolution of
the domestic political culture. Starting from the perspective of ethnic governance, they are
ultimately concerned with the triangular relationship between the state, market and people and
the contesting notions of democracy, justice and equality. Understandably, the ideological
shifts in all these respects not only impact on the site of multicultural policy, but also propel
parallel changes in other policy areas, which used to derive their legitimacy from the
philosophical underpinnings of pluralism and social democracy.
This chapter aims to contextualize the revised discourses of multicultural policy in the
big picture of globalization and a changing Australian political culture and to explore their
ideological intertextuality with other social areas. It is important to note that the twin frames
of globalization and domestic political culture are mutually dependent, acting upon and
buttressing each other. On the one hand, the meaning of globalization is ideologically filtered
and interpreted by the prevailing political culture. On the other hand, domestic ideological
shifts are often justified and naturalized as the inevitable response toward globalization.
Therefore, the aim of my discussion is not to establish a unidirectional causal relationship
between policy context and content, but to explore how these contexts interrelate with each
other and are deliberately invoked to fulfill particular ideological functions, rationalize certain
policy moves and in turn empower some groups at the expense of others.
5.1. Globalization
Globalization is widely seen as one of the most important determinants of the human
conditions in the contemporary world. It is a long-term process which has affected all aspects
of society—economic, political, social and cultural. The multitude of meanings and uses
ascribed to globalization renders it a difficult concept to pin down, for “the extent and nature
of such processes and conditions are vast, amorphous and highly contested” (van Krieken et
al 31). As Nash defines it, “globalization involves flows of goods, capital, people, information,
ideas, images and risks across national borders, combined with the emergence of social
networks and political institutions which constrain the state” (Nash 47).
While transnational production and trade are not a new phenomenon in human history,
the term globalization refers specifically to the “new world order” emerging after WWII,
which is marked by technological revolution and the formation of a global economy based on
the activities of transnational corporations and international markets for capital, commodities,
services and futures. The deepening economic interdependence gives rise to a proliferation of
supra-national institutions and legal norms, such as the EU, the World Court, the European
38
Court of Justice, the World Trade Organization and many others (Castles and Davidson 4), all
of which circumscribe the autonomy and policy-making capabilities of the state. In the
cultural sphere, globalization is often collated with the development of a homogeneous worldwide culture embodied in the “McWorld” of fast food, computers and MTV (Barber 29).
Globalization also points to the rapidly increasing mobility of people across national borders.
The period since 1945 and in particular since 1980 has been marked by large-scale migration
of all kinds: temporary and permanent movements, labour migrations, refugee exoduses, as
well as individual and family flows (Castles and Davidson 8). The sheer scale of global
migration has dramatically changed the demographical composition and cultural outlook of
the receiving societies, especially with major emigration areas shifting from Southern Europe
to Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. While economic globalization erodes the
domestic control of national economy, global migration undermines the ideology of distinct
and relatively autonomous national culture. All these factors constitute the destabilizing
effects of globalization upon national industrial societies (Castles and Davidson 7).
Despite its tangible properties such as intensified economic internationalization, massive
global migration and the increasing impact of supranational organizations and cultural
industries, globalization is at the same time a discursive concept which shapes reality,
produces meaning and provides justification for a whole range of public policies. As Hay and
Marsh observe, the term has been reified into “a series of often overblown, distorted,
uncritical and seldom defended assertions about the inexorable and immutable globalization
of capital, culture and communication alike” (Hay and Marsh 4).
The manipulative use of globalization as the policy frame is deeply rooted in preexisting
ideological positions and modified in accordance with specific domestic conditions. In the
economic sphere, the rhetoric of globalization is a “godsend” for the New Right, for it
provides a new argument in favor of deregulation, free trade and public sector cutbacks
(Johnson, Governing Change 26). It significantly contributes to the decline of the Keynesian
welfare state and shifts the power from the state to the capital. In the socio-political domain,
the response toward globalization is more multifarious, subject to both conservative and
progressive readings and thereby generating polar-different discourses. Conservatives may
adjudge it as a threatening force, leading to the erosion of national sovereignty and a doomladen picture of “warring civilizations” and therefore requiring the protection of existing
borders and long-standing state institutions. Meanwhile, progressive scholars may detect in
globalization the dawning of a new age promising revolutionary transformation of
conventional nationalistic discourses toward global citizenship and universal human rights
(Castles, Ethnicity and Globalization 131).
In Australia, the polarity of national visions in the globalizing age was epitomized in the
1996 Keating-Howard electoral contention, which in Alastair Greig’s words, was “one of the
moments that encapsulated the historical import of these controversies over inequality and
national identity” (Greig, et al 162). It is interesting to observe how completely different
national conceptions were framed in the same contexts of globalization and economic
restructuring. For the Keating government, globalization provided new opportunities for the
39
amalgam of economic and social identities in a socially inclusive form (Johnson, Governing
Change 47). It advocated a heart-throbbing prospect of national reconstruction comprising the
symbolic reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, engagements with Asia and the break with
colonial ties toward the new Republic. These social issues were indivisibly bound up with
debates over deregulation, opening up the economy to foreign competition and developing
links with Asian economies and in concert presented an outward-looking, cosmopolitan image
of Australia. At the other front, the Howard-led Liberals used the context of globalization for
precisely the opposite end. Adeptly exploiting the fear generated by uncertainty, the Liberal
party stressed the vital importance of national cohesion in a period of risk and change and set
out to reassure the “old Australians” of relaxation, comfort and stability, which were premised
on the continued dominance of the British identity and tradition. The fundamentally different
reading of globalization revealed the turbulent ideological battles underlying the material
reality. The triumph of Howard over Keating marked the symbolic victory of the neoconservative worldview, which crystallized into a new Australian political culture for the 21st
century.
5.2. Australian Political Culture
As analyzed earlier, the meaning of globalization is interpreted and filtered through the
prevailing ideologies in the national setting; and the discursive account of globalization in
turn solidifies the supremacy of those ideologies which coalesce into the national political
culture. According to Dean Jaensch, political culture is “the collection of ideologies, beliefs
and attitudes about the political system and its processes, and relates both to individuals and
to the society as a whole” (Jaensch 19). Traditional Australian political culture was
characterized by the egalitarian ethos and state socialism (McAllister 6) and embodied in
what Paul Kelly called the “Australian Settlement”: White Australia, industry protection,
wage arbitration, state paternalism and imperial benevolence (Kelly The End of Certainty 1-2).
The old Australian tenets met unprecedented challenges in the post-WWII era, which were
summarized by Robert Manne as “two peaceful social revolutions” (Manne, “The Howard
Years” 3). According to Manne, the first revolution originated in the late 1960s and led to the
renegotiation of triangular relations between the Anglo-Celts, the Indigenous peoples and the
post-WWII migrants of diverse backgrounds. Following the revolution of identity was the
economic one, which unleashed the neo-liberal principle of the free market and overturned the
older economic arrangements. The political debates of the 1980s and the 1990s were precisely
premised on these changes, with competing national visions offered to the dazed electorate.
Eventually, the victory of the Howard-led Coalition and its eleven-year reign set the direction
of the evolving national culture and impacted upon the making of public policies in all areas.
As commented by Chris Aulich and Roger Wettenhall, the issues and agendas of the
Howard government have been defined by two principal factors: liberalism in economic
policy and a modern conservatism in social policy (Aulich and Wettenhall 5). The fusion is
characteristic of the neo-conservative leaders represented by Margaret Thatcher in Britain and
Ronald Reagan in the US, who campaigned radical economic restructuring coupled with a
tenacious hold on the established social order. Theoretically speaking, the combination of the
two strains of thought is problematic, for it is based on a watertight distinction of economy
40
and society as substantially separate spheres of life, which can be dealt with completely
different rules (Rundle 15). However, the philosophical incongruity of the amalgam does not
necessarily impair its effective functioning as a political discourse. As the historian John Hirst
points out: the rapid pace of economic and social change during the past thirty years has made
social conservatism an attractive political platform (Hirst Age). For many Australians who
have not prospered in globalization, economic grievances and anxieties are displaced onto the
cultural sphere and develop into a yearning for the mythical “certain” past. In this context,
pragmatism serves to glue the two components together and turns contradiction into political
opportunity. Even Howard’s biographers admit that “there is some irony in the fact that one of
the strongest advocates of liberal economic reforms during the past two decades should reap
the political benefits of the resulting sense of social insecurity” (Errington and van Onselen
223).
5.2.1. Economic Rationalism
Economic rationalism is an Australian term in discussion of the microeconomic policy
widely adopted by industrialized Western governments during the 1980s and 1990s. The term
itself gained currency with the publication of Michael Pusey’s work Economic Rationalism in
Canberra: A Nation-Building State Changes Its Mind (1991). Economic rationalism has its
intellectual roots in classical liberalism which is premised on the doctrine of individualism.
According to Andrew Vincent, individualism can be defined as a political and moral doctrine
which extols the value of individual human being. Its application to the economic sphere
implies that the government should only retain minimal functions like maintenance of law and
order, protection of private property and so forth, and refrain from interfering with the market
process (Vincent 29, 41-42). Classical liberalism promotes the notion of formal equality,
which means equal access to the market. The pursuit of substantive economic and social
equality is not encouraged, for that will undermine the mechanism of market forces and in
turn intrude on individual freedom.
The New Right movement in the 1980s built on the basic ideas of classical liberalism
and developed them into the more sophisticated discourse of “public choice”. According to
the public-choice theory, the market, far from being a source of inequality, is the spring of
wealth, which eventually trickles down to everyone. The public sector is repositioned as the
main source of inequity dominated by elite special-interest groups, which manage to capture
the ears of government, politicians and bureaucracies for additional resources (Johnson,
“Anti-Elitist Discourse in Australia” 119). A barrage of criticism is directed against the
welfare state, which is denounced as “uneconomic, unproductive, inefficient, ineffective,
despotic and impinging on freedom” (Pierson 48). Instead, the provision of choice in the form
of a “user-pays” system is privileged over “willed” redistribution as the means toward
personal empowerment and “a fair go” ideal.
In Australia, the founders of the New Right movement were quite diverse in background
and outlook, including economists, businessmen, intellectuals, libertarians and neoconservatives (Errington and van Onselen 68-69). Major think tanks were established to
disseminate the free market gospels, such as the Institute of Public Affairs and Centre for
41
Independent Studies. The Australian Financial Review under Max Walsh and then P.P.
McGuinness as well as the journal Quadrant served as important avenues of the New Right
thinking. A watered-down form of neo-liberalism was implemented under the Hawke-Keating
governments, which aimed to reconcile free market doctrine with social democracy (Johnson,
Governing Change 26). In this model, rationalist policies were complemented by minimal
welfare safety nets to ensure the well-being of the disadvantaged groups. The maintenance of
social democratic objectives was clearly demonstrated by the increasing level of public
expenditure. From 1983 to 1996, social expenditure grew by 58.9 percent in real terms, by
15.8 percentage points as a proportion of total budget outlays, and by 2.5 percentage points of
the GDP (Jamrozik 70).
The subsequent Coalition era saw the quickened pace of economic reform and the further
erosion of the welfare system. Intensified privatization of public assets and services, reduction
of government expenditures in the public sector, introduction of the Goods and Services Tax,
workplace reform and more conditions on welfare beneficiaries all indicated the Coalition’s
firm commitment to rationalist agenda. However, as Carol Johnson argues, the ascendancy of
the market over politics does not mean that the state is disappearing. Rather, state power has
been redeployed from social welfare concerns to the enforcement of the market model.
Market becomes one of the indirect mechanisms through which the government actively
encourages “particular forms of self-regulating and self-managing individuals” and thereby
aligns economic conduct with social and political objectives (Johnson, Governing Change
101-2). Instead of relying on the natural market, proactive policies were required to create a
hegemonic market and suppress those ideas, institutions and practices at odds with the market
ideal.
The ideological implication under the pretense of free-market buildup was manifest in
the 1996 federal budget. The universities which were perceived as the breeding ground of the
“new class” lost about 5 percent of their operating grant over the following two years. The
ABC lost in one year a tidy ten percent (Manne, “The Howard Years” 9). The budget for the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was cut by 6 percent and a special
auditor appointed to keep an eye on spending measures. Funding for the Office of the Status
of Women (OSW) was cut by 38 percent. In the first term alone, grants for women’s groups
were halved; and policy units within various government departments were either abolished
or suffered funding cuts. The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) and the Bureau of
Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research (BIMPR) were simply abolished
(Errington and van Onselen 249-50).
Moreover, dramatic changes swept across the public service with six department heads
and a third of the Secretaries sacked under the new government, which represented the biggest
blood-letting upon any change of government since Federation. Max Moore-Wilton, the
newly appointed head of the Prime Minister’s Department soon announced the plan of further
reducing public service numbers for a leaner government (Kelly, “Re-thinking Australian
Governance” 5). With the combined impact of expenditure cuts and privatisation, it was
estimated that the Commonwealth public service lost 10,000 positions in 1996 and an
42
additional 16,000 in the following year (Manne The Howard Years 9). Although the
bureaucracy experienced renewed expansion in the following years, it was restructured to suit
the highly centralized management style. Under the reinforced principle of “responsiveness”,
power was decisively shifted from the public service to the ministers. Moving away from the
apolitical professionalism of the Westminster system, the overhauled bureaucracy was
dominated by managerial personnel and economic rationalists, who wholeheartedly embraced
partisan agendas. The strengthened government control of the bureaucracy was already under
way in the Hawke-Keating era when permanent posts were replaced by the contract system.
However, the centralizing trend dramatically accelerated and reached the zenith under the
Howard government. As reflected in the Children Overboard incident, public servants could
be “too concerned to please” and went out of their way to court the political will at the
sacrifice of the public interests (Kelly, “Rethinking Australian Governance” 5-6). All the
aforementioned examples pointed to the ideological undertones of the rationalist doctrine and
revealed the partisan purposes covered under the rhetoric of free-market reform.
Apart from direct economic impact, the doctrine of economic rationalism also has
profound social implications. Under the public-choice theory, equality-seekers are reframed as
rent-seekers who in the name of human rights, thrive on the expansion of public sector at the
expense of taxpayers. From the rationalist lens, the society and the common good are
perceived as an aggregate of atomized individuals upon which the neo-liberalist market
system depends. As Michael Pusey’s scathing critique suggests, economic rationalism brings
about a “crisis of the state”, where “societies are threatened by their own coordinative
structures and most notably by an economic steering mechanism”, which tries to “neutralize
the social contexts of program goals in every area” (Pusey 11, 19). The single-minded
obsession with wealth accumulation and the dismissal of empathy in policy-making have
resulted in the demoralization of the bureaucratic culture. Departments that had previously
operated on the basis of more sociological understandings of need and inequality are
increasingly “colonized by the central agency, economic rationalists and their ministers”
(Pusey 147-8). Pusey’s observation found evidence in the Senate report Administration and
Operation of the Migration Act 1958, which identified a pervasive culture of control and
suspicion in the Department of Immigration. Issues raised in the report included: inconsistent
and arbitrary decision-making by DIMA; delays in processing applications or advising
applicants of outcomes; failure to interview protection visa applicants; use of inadequate and
inappropriate interpretation services; a lack of appropriate knowledge, information and
training; questionable quality of information used in decision making; the existence of an
adversarial and hostile culture within DIMA; and restrictions on applicants’ access to legal
advice and assistance (SLCRC 2.4).
Indeed, the practices and policies of the Howard government toward refugees amounted
to a shocking indictment of its liberal credentials. Asylum-seekers without documentation
were put into detention centres in remote locations such as Port Hedland or Woomera, facing
a term of indefinite imprisonment. Even those asylum seekers who were accepted as genuine
refugees were offered only Temporary Protection Visas, which rendered them ineligible for
family reunion and many settlement services like free English tuition. The appalling
43
conditions at the detention centres gave rise to deep mental depression and even suicide
attempts among the detainees and led Louis Joinet, the head of the delegation from the UN
Working Group on Mandatory Detention to exclaim that in the inspection of 40 detention
systems throughout the world, he had never encountered a “more gross abuse of human
rights” than he had witnessed in Australia (Manne, “The Howard Years” 34). The social and
ethical dimensions of economic rationalism bridged it with the key arguments of social
conservatism, which dismissed ethical considerations as fashions of the new class and shifted
the battlefield from the market setting to the national space of identities.
5.2.2. Social Conservatism
Like liberalism, conservatism is a fiercely-contested and chameleon-like term which is
employed in a highly fragmentary, contextualized fashion. It encompasses multiple schools of
ideas, whose meanings simultaneously connect with but yet subvert each other in relation to
specific socio-historical contexts. Andrew Vincent identifies five broad interpretations of
conservatism schematized as follows: aristocratic ideology, the pragmatic ideological position,
the situational or positional view; a disposition of habit or mind, and finally the ideological
interpretation (Vincent 56). Obviously, it is the last category that is most relevant to the
analysis here. Theorized by Edmund Burke, conservatism is an ideology with a prescriptive
content. It is a political philosophy which puts great emphasis on custom, convention and
tradition. In this worldview, the state is a communal enterprise with spiritual and organic
qualities, whose constitution and practices built up over time can reflect “the practical
knowledge derived from experience and adaptation to circumstances” (Norton 24). Therefore,
conservatives are highly suspicious of radical change, consistently opposed to transcendental
ideas of revolutionary implications, such as the progressive view of human nature, equality
and liberty as social goals, disparagement of authority, hierarchy and tradition and so forth.
The deep mistrust of social reform typical in conservatives is well put by Robert Manne in
The New Conservatives in Australia, “there is no single observation more important for
conservative social thought than that which suggests that the most important consequences of
social reform are usually those unintended by their sponsors (Manne, “Intellectuals and Their
Cultural Consequences” xi).
The idea of social conservatism has its unique appeal in the globalizing age, for it serves
to infuse a sense of security and equilibrium for the voters feeling lost in the era of drastic
changes, as John Howard’s catch-cry “relaxed and comfortable” suggests. The theme of
change and uncertainty underlies most of the public discussions in Australia. As Paul Kelly
vividly describes, “Australia’s direction in the 1990s will be shaped by the battle between two
great forces: on the one hand, the ongoing and irresistible globalization of markets, and on the
other, a cry from the people to reduce, even to halt the pace of change, and to regain control
over their lives” (Kelly, The Age of Uncertainty 4). This innate fear of change provides fertile
ground for the rise of neo-conservatism, which finds a quick cure in the counteroffensive
waged against the new social movements. In Governing Change: From Keating to Howard,
Carol Johnson poignantly generalizes the new conservative discourse as “the revenge of the
mainstream”, which aims to reinstall the hegemony of traditionally powerful identities against
the minority groups and to police those Anglo-Celts who do not wish to privilege their
44
identity by denouncing them as “politically correct” (Johnson, Governing Change 40, 42).
With infinite nuances, the central components of the conservative ideology include the
fortification of the “imagined national community”, sanctification of the Anglo-Celtic
tradition, anti-elitism and the condemnation of “political correctness”. The backlash against
social activism is orchestrated by a constellation of groups, such as right-wing politicians,
conservative intellectuals, populist media and others. Admittedly, their respective emphases,
ways of arguing and proposed solutions differ significantly; and their common ground on
social issues does not necessitate a consensus on economic ones, mostly notably in the
populist backfiring on Howard’s economic policy. However, the aggregate effects of their
criticism against new social movements steer the national vessel away from the progressive
course toward the conservative direction. In the following section, I will discuss the
conservative input from three major sources: politicians, populist media and conservative
academics.
5.2.2.1. Rightward Shift of Political Spectrum
Among others, politicians arguably play the most vital role in shaping the national
political culture. The echoes of political debates penetrate into every sector of the society and
reverberate in the academic circle, the media and the general public. In the late 20th century,
the spectrum of Australian political parties has demonstrated an obvious rightward shift, with
the rise of the One Nation at the far-right, the predominance of the liberal “dries” at the
national core and the deeply divided Labor at the left. Given its status as the governing party
for a decade, the Liberal party and its leader John Howard probably had the single most
influence upon the national psyche, as captured by the title of Andrew Markus’s book Race:
John Howard and the Remaking of Australia.
Proudly declaring himself as “the most conservative leader the Liberal party has ever
had”, John Howard significantly contributed to the ascendancy of social conservatism by
creating a language of “unity” and “division”. A dichotomy was established between the
Labor and the Liberal, with the former representing the noisy vested interests while the latter
standing for the mainstream and national interests. In his first “heartland speech” in June 1995,
Howard propounded his “mainstreaming” governing style: “Our goal will be to end the drift,
the division, the favoritism and the peripheral agendas which have been the hallmarks of the
past twelve years” (Howard, “The Role of Government”). In Relaxed & Comfortable: The
Liberal Party’s Australia, Judith Brett gave an incisive analysis of the construction of the
“mainstream”, which was conceived “as the space of unorganized, unaffiliated individuals
formed into a community by their shared experience and allegiance to the nation” (Brett 24).
Consistent with Menzies’ appeal to the “Forgotten People”, the beauty of an anonymous
mainstream lay in its openness to voluntary registration. It was premised on the dismissal of
affiliations to social groups and identities larger than the family and smaller than the nation, to
the exclusion of class, religion, ethnicity, region, gender and race. The Liberal’s campaign
slogan “For All of Us” not only aimed to cultivate a strong sense of collective identity, but
also sought to establish direct connections between the government and the governed.
45
However, as left-wing commentators indicated, the construction of “us” inevitably
invoked the notion of “them”, which comprised all the visible social groups such as trade
unions, feminist groups, environmentalists and those advocating multiculturalism and
Indigenous rights. As Marian Sawer put it, talking a language of unity, “Howard relied heavily
on the construction of divisions, around which such resentments could flourish” (Sawer,
“Populism and Public Choice” 41). The dividing line of “Us” and “Them” and the distinction
of “core” and “non-core” interests were already manifest in the 1996 federal budget and
further revealed itself in government stances on issues like symbolic reconciliation, republic
referendum, trade-union movements, land rights, the Tampa event and many others. Howard’s
deep-seated belligerence toward the minority “Other” was evident in his remark, “I’m the
prime minister who took money out of the ATSIC budget…any suggestion that we have
perpetuated the Aboriginal industry is wrong” (Johnson, Governing Change 43).
Moreover, the rhetoric of unity was complemented with an overriding emphasis on core
values and structures, which represented another facet of social conservatism. The fusion of
liberalism and conservatism was explicitly put forth in another speech:
One great virtue of Australian liberalism is its capacity to offer the blend of conservatism
that is so clearly needed. The times demand that we hold fast to the values and institutions from
our past which have served us well (Rundle 14).
The reification of the “mythical” past was well aligned with the cause of prosecuting the
“special interests” and in particular the “guilt industry”. In the Sir Thomas Playford Memorial
Lecture presented in July 1996, Howard declared that “One of the more insidious
developments in Australian political life over the past decade or so has been the attempt to
rewrite Australian history in the service of a partisan political cause”. His strong opposition to
the so-called “Black Armband view of history” had its practical outcomes. By leaving the
“blemishes” in the historical record, Howard exonerated the present government from any
responsibilities for historical wrongs, either in the form of a formal apology or monetary
compensations. In The History Wars, Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark pointed to Howard’s
selective treatment of history. While the traditionalist symbols such as the Gallipoli must be
kept alive to command respect, alternative memories of radical implications are positioned as
“partisan” and “biased” (Macintyre and Clark 138-9).
In addition to direct involvements in the war of identity, Howard’s calculated
ambivalence toward populist upsurge in effect facilitated the rise of far-right groups, as
represented by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. The meteoric rise of Pauline Hanson took place
in the backdrop of profound economic changes of the 1980s and 1990s, which brought about
widening inequality and produced winners and losers divided between “the city” and “the
country”, “the educated” and “the uneducated” (Manne, “The Howard Years” 5). In fact,
Hanson’s own electorate Oxley was a classic example of the negative impact of economic
reform, which devastated local manufacturing, dismantled key services and caused chronicle
unemployment (Moore 55-56). According to Judith Brett, the electoral success of One Nation
46
was a populist response to the failure of the established political parties to address the needs
of the rural battlers. The two-party consensus on rationalist agenda has produced a new social
cleavage based on class and regional lines (Brett, “Representing the Unrepresented” 31-32).
Murray Goot supported her argument by pointing out that voters for Hanson tended to be
middle-aged males, who were of Anglo-Australian descent, living in regional and rural
Australia, with less formal education and dependent on blue collar jobs (Goot, “Hanson’s
Heartland” 57, 64).
Indeed, the central difference between One Nation and the Coalition government was
that the former was not only against the “privileged” left-wing elites, but also opposed to
economic restructuring which had led to large-scale unemployment, failed businesses, vast
foreign debts and loss of national sovereignty through the sale of national assets. However,
more common ground was found on social issues, about which Hanson had her views
delivered in a highly confrontational fashion. In her maiden speech, Hanson boldly claimed
that “a type of reverse racism is applied to mainstream Australians by those who promote
political correctness”. She condemned the “Aboriginal industry”, multiculturalism and
immigration, announcing that “we are in danger of being swamped by Asians” (Hanson 2, 7).
The social policies introduced by One Nation included zero net immigration, an end to
multiculturalism, the abolition of native title and ATSIC, and opposition to Aboriginal
reconciliation, most of which were in fact radical versions of Howard’s own agenda.
Compared with the calculated style of Howard, Hanson’s speeches were logically flawed, but
emotionally flammable. They were based on “an assembly of grievances” ready to be
unleashed upon the “enemies within”. The 1997 One Nation publication Pauline Hanson—
The Truth provided ill-founded accounts of Aboriginal cannibalism and ethnic crimes, which
were tantamount to group vilifications (Hanson 103, 132). As David Wells’ analysis suggested,
the very vehemence of One Nation was in fact “a generalized anger directed at ideas”, at
abstract concepts of “Aborigines”, “Asians” and the faceless elites. The scapegoat-hunting
mentality was manifest in the irony that the State of Queensland, the heartland of One Nation
had relatively low level of Indigenous population and only limited exposure to non-Englishspeaking migrants (Wells 24). Therefore, the abolition of ATSIC or the reduction of Asian
immigration would not have any immediate impact for the voters there.
The impact of One Nation was manifold and extended beyond its fleeting existence. It
represented a successful mobilization of the populist right, which with the tacit support of the
conservative force, facilitated the rightward shift of Australian political spectrum. Although
many extremist, repugnant views of Pauline Hanson were not accepted by the respectable
conservatives, they effectively problematized the minority right issues and naturalized the
conservative discourses of “new class” and “special interests”. Jeff Archer noted the similarity
between Hanson’s ideas and Howard’s cultural politics and drew attention to the latter’s
equivocation over the Hanson phenomenon. Rather than challenge Hanson on principle,
Howard framed the issue in the broader campaign against “political correctness” and claimed
that he welcomed “the fact that people can now talk about certain things without living in fear
of being branded as a bigot or racist” (Macintyre and Clark 139). Admittedly, Howard’s
connivance of Hanson and the Liberal’s decision to give preferences to One Nation ahead of
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Labor in the 1998 Queensland election effectuated One Nation’s rise as a political force. With
the preference decision, One Nation won 11 out of 89 seats in Queensland, thereby gaining
greater momentum across the nation (Kelly, “Hanson” 94).
As James Jupp pointed out, the worst effect of One Nation was that it gave legitimacy to
those who had always opposed to the progressive agenda of the past thirty years. Its message
was overwhelmingly “conservative, assimilationist, reactionary and nationalistic”, but was
given wide publicity in the populist media (Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera 135). The
discursive shift sparked off by One Nation allowed the Howard government to implement
those policies which would have seemed extreme in 1996. In fact, many policies advocated by
Hanson were implemented by the Coalition, such as temporary protection visas for refugees,
the change of New Zealanders’ migratory status, the excision of Christmas Island from the
Australian “immigration zone” in 2001 and the abolition of ATSIC in 2005 (Jupp, From White
Australia to Woomera 133-4).
Amid the prevailing conservative atmosphere, the ALP experienced deep inner divisions.
As Marian Sawer pointed out, the defeat of the Labor government in 1996 was immediately
followed by accusations from within the party and without that special interests were to be
blamed for alienating the electorate. The popularity of One Nation seemed to give credence to
the argument of “the betrayed grassroot”. In Civilizing Global Capital, Mark Latham picked
up the discourses of “special interests” and “new class”, and condemned the so-called “elites”
for creating downward envy (Sawer, “Populism and Public Choice” 44). Likewise, Michael
Thompson complained of the “gentrification” of the ALP since the Whitlam era by the tertiary
educated, “with their contempt for the contribution to Labor of the undereducated” (Dymond
72). Interestingly, most of the right-wing ALP figures tended to find fault with the specialinterest groups rather than question the viability of rationalist economic policies. Western
Labor MPs like Graeme Campbell, Peter Walsh and John Dawkins were highly critical of the
multicultural policy. While Campbell was expelled from the party altogether and joined One
Nation, the other two remained safely within the ALP (Jupp, From White Australia to
Woomera 114-5). The ambivalence of influential Labor politicians on social issues resulted in
serious policy neglect, as reflected in Kim Beazley’s unpreparedness and inaction in the wake
of Tampa event. In the overall conservative environment, the notion of justice lost so much of
its political credence that Clive Hamilton argued that the ALP had failed to represent the ideal
of social democracy (Hamilton 31). In sum, the decade of dominance by the conservative
Coalition, the newly-gained prominence of far-right groups like One Nation and the ineptitude
of the ALP in providing alternative policy platform brought about the rightward shift of the
entire spectrum of Australian political parties.
5.2.2.2. Populist Media
With the rise of conservative political strength, populist media, especially talkback radio,
have come to play a pivotal role in political communication. Admittedly, talkback radio
programs have long provided politicians with a handy platform to communicate with voters.
But the Howard era saw the strategic utilization of radio as the preferred channel over the
more traditional media, which was surely a novel phenomenon (McGregor 78). In a preview
48
of his media strategy, Howard pointed out that “if a politician wants to appeal ‘over the heads
of the gallery’, it must be done through talkback radio or in television interviews” (Errington
and van Onselen 179). As Prime Minister, Howard set up a schedule of regular radio
interviews on commercial “news/talk” stations such as 2UE in Sydney, 3AW in Melbourne,
4BC in Brisbane, 5DN in Adelaide and 6PR in Perth. A close rapprochement was established
between John Howard and Alan Jones, with a nominated staffer stationed in the Sydney office
as a “special point of contact” to facilitate Jones’ access (Ward 24) The active enlistment of
talkback radio in the conservative echelons points to its unique features as a medium of
communication. Talkback radio not only allows politicians to evade close interrogation by
well-informed gallery journalists, but also provides them with unfiltered access to and live
interactions with the listeners. Moreover, compared with the mainstream media such as the
ABC or The Sydney Morning Herald, the audience of commercial talkback radio tends to be
Anglo-Australians, older in age, more conservative in political orientation and consequently
more sympathetic toward the conservative-populist viewpoints. For example, while most
mainstream media were profoundly hostile toward Hanson’s extremist views, talkback radio
did much to boost Pauline Hanson and the establishment of One Nation. As Phillip Adams
and Lee Burton pointed out, nothing gave Pauline Hanson and those speaking for her as much
credibility and comfort as the poll conducted by Alan Jones on 2UE, according to which 98.7
percent of callers were in favor of her opinions (Adams and Burton 217, 227).
However, even if talkback radio does provide a “forum for public debate”, as radio-hosts
have often claimed, it is also a form of entertainment feeding on sensational effects. The
rating-driven nature of talkback radio determines that it gives expression to “grossly
prejudiced and poorly informed personal views” (Lewis 11). The most popular radio hosts
usually rely on highly opinionized styles, giving provocative, simplistic and personalized
views on “policies that are complex, sensitive and potentially divisive in the community”
(Lewis 19-20). In Talkback: Emperors of Air, Phillip Adam attributes the right-wing
ascendancy in radio to the inner dynamics of the medium itself. In his words, the left-wing
commentators are often more willing to admit to complexities and shades of grey in social life;
however, in the entertainment world, “Certainty plays better than complexity. Anger is more
entertaining than reasonableness and blame beats explanation hollow” (Adams and Burton 8).
This view is confirmed by John Laws himself, who said that he was “fully cognisant of the
fact” that he had “sacrificed ratings” for taking a different line from Hanson on Aboriginal
affairs (Goot, “Pauline Hanson and the Power of the Media” 220-1).
The innate need for moral panics fosters a conservative-populist culture in the industry
of the talkback and cultivates a group of “shock jocks” like Alan Jones, John Laws, Howard
Sattler and the late Stan Zemanek, who relentlessly capitalize on the sensational effects of
crimes, prejudices and negative stereotypes and constitute the populist front against “special
interests”. With the hectoring, abrasive style typical of shock jocks, they promote the idea that
ordinary Australians are victims of “tyrannizing” minorities who squander taxpayers’ money
(Marian, “Populism and Public Choice” 39). Minority groups such as Indigenous peoples,
Asians, Muslims and homosexuals are ruthlessly ridiculed and bitterly insulted. While Ron
Casey’s racist remarks on Asians cost him the job, Howard Sattler’s outrageous comment on
49
the death of three Aboriginal children caused only a reprimand from the WA branch of
Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA), which was subsequently overturned by the AJA’s
federal executive (Adams and Burton 39-40). The limited power of media regulatory bodies
and outside agencies such as the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Human Rights
Commission means that most shock jocks could safely disseminate highly biased opinions
without any legal consequences (Mickler, The Myth of Privilege 85).
The populist media represent an important flank of the conservative camp and play a
crucial role in strengthening the “imagined community”. In The Opportunist: John Howard
and the Triumph of the Reaction, Guy Rundle argues that with the decline of intermediate
institutions such as unions, congregations and associations, mass media offer people “the
apparent possibility of both retaining their individuality and participating in the national
community”, which perfectly accords with the liberal message that people are both individual
and indivisible (Rundle 29). This view is substantiated in Steve Mickler’s discussion of the
political role of the talkback. As Mickler argues, the political potency of talkback is not that it
actually “represents” the views and aspirations of the masses, but that it can influence and
mobilize them outside of the electoral process and functions as an extra-party political
leadership of the whole sections of society (Mickler, “Talkback Radio” 102). By setting the
agenda and effectively controlling the views expressed in air, the talkback normalizes the
sectional and prejudicial views of their callers and leads to the distortion and
misrepresentation of the public conversation. However, precisely due to its sway on public
opinion and its obvious ideological orientation, talkback radio is warmly courted by the
conservatives and acquires a newfound political importance in the crusade against the Left.
5.2.2.3. Conservative Intellectuals
Last but not the least, the conservative academics provide intellectual basis for the
rightward shift of the national culture. It should be noted that the beginning of intellectual
criticism of minority politics, especially of multicultural policy far preceded the
predominance of the conservative power. James Jupp identified a series of early critics of
multicultural policy, including Lachlan Chipman in 1980, Geoffrey Partington in 1981, Frank
Knopfelmacher and Raymond Sestito in 1982, Geoffrey Blainey in 1984, David Barnett in
1986 and Stephen Rimmer in 1988 (Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera 102-3). The
major critiques usually combined the twin themes of conservatism and rationalism, accusing
multicultural policy of “creating divisiveness”, “denigrating Australian culture” and “costing
billions of public money” (Roth 27). Indeed, the fusion of rationalist-conservative
perspectives is a common feature of works published in Quadrant or produced by thinktanks
like the Centre for Independent Studies or the Australian Institute for Public Policy and serves
as a frequently employed strategy in the counteroffensive against all left-wing groups ranging
from trade unions, feminists, environmentalists to Indigenous organizations. Given the very
complexity of authors and works involved, I will only sketch two major strains of thought in
the conservative repertoire.
Representing the traditionalist side are academics like Brian Galligan, John Hirst,
Geoffrey Partington and Miriam Dixson. Their common ground lies in the nostalgic view of
50
the homogeneous past and the belief in the vital importance of Anglo-Celtic culture as the
source of national cohesion. In The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity, 1788 to
the Present, Miriam Dixson traces the development of Anglo-Celtic tradition and argues that
it is the core structure and formal equality that constitute the modern, civic model of the state
(Dixson 50). The innate contradiction between the presumed neutrality of civic identity and
its deep-rooted ethnic nature is not treated as a problem but as symbiotic aspects of the
national identity. It is clear that this line of argument is fully incorporated in the revised
multicultural discourses and elaborated into the six themes of the discourse of national
identity discussed in the chapter of findings.
Differing from the moderate tone of the traditionalists, the discourse of the “new class”
represents the other pillar of the conservative critique, which is marked by strong antagonism
toward the “Intellectual Other” branded as the “new class”. According to this discourse, a
growing divide emerged during the 1960s and 1970s between global-oriented cosmopolitan
elites and the parochial battlers, with the former employed in positions of power, such as the
media, universities, schools and the church. The university-educated elites hold different
values on a range of social issues and are successful in translating their ideological agendas
into social policies under the cloak of “public interest” or “equality seeking”. In The Great
Divide: Immigration Politics in Australia, Katharine Betts indicts the new class as “not only
opposed to commercial and bourgeois civilization, but also to the majority of the workingclass” (Betts 88). As Damien Cahill points out, the new class discourse provides a potent
theoretical framework which could accommodate both conservative and neo-liberal views
(Cahill 79-80). It converges with and complements the public-choice theory by positioning
the viewpoints of the left-wing intellectuals as part of the subgroup belief system, which is
devoid of universal validity. By creating the common enemy of “new class”, it also
effectively unites the intellectual Right in Australia, who might otherwise be divided on
economic issues. The traditionalist view of history and the “new class” discourse represent the
most prominent themes in conservative thinking and are readily absorbed into political
conversations.
It is true that not all the conservative intellectuals are directly associated with party
politics. However, once formulated, their theories tend to assume an independent role in the
two-way interactions of academic and political fields regardless of the original intentions of
their authors. On the one hand, the coming into power of the right-wing political camp
facilitates the hegemony of conservative discourses through the power of state mechanism. As
James Jupp noted, conservative intellectuals scored exceedingly well under the patronage of
the Howard government. Blainey became a Companion in the Order of Australia, chancellor
of Ballarat University and chairman of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation.
Stephen Rimmer was appointed as ministerial staffer; and Katharine Betts enjoyed great sales
and publicity (Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera 112). On the other hand, intellectual
debates give shape to the conservative repertoire, from which right-wing politicians look for
lethal weapons. As Stuart Macintyre comments, politics relies heavily on stock phrases, for
political debate is conducted in the staccato of the mass media and a few words have to
conjure up a wealth of meanings (Macintyre and Clark 132). Catch-cries like “political
51
correctness”, “the black armband view” “new class” and “special interests” all originated
from the intellectual circle and were subsequently incorporated into the political vocabulary.
By 1996, a coherent conservative culture had emerged in Australia, with the rightward
shift of the political spectrum, the prominence of populist media in political communication
and the orchestration of conservative intellectuals. Despite their marked differences in aims,
styles and perspectives and their disagreements over economic issues, their shared views on
core values, formal equality and anti-elitism converged into a powerful strength, which
effectively subverted the left-wing interpretation of social policies and transformed the sociopolitical landscape of Australia toward the conservative direction. The discursive shifts of
multicultural policy discussed in the chapter of findings accurately reflected the profound
ideological changes taking place in contemporary Australia from the dimension of ethnic
governance. Justified by the frame of globalization, the reaffirmation of the centrality of
Anglo-Celtic identity and the triumph of market over morality directly led to the rewriting of
multicultural discourses in terms of national identity, social justice and productive diversity
and produced similar galvanizing effects in other social areas.
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Chapter Six: Conclusion
The discussion of the political culture in the Howard era provides me with the
framework to assess the multicultural policy of this period. It is evident that the revised
discourses of multicultural policy correspond with the ascendant ideologies of economic
rationalism and social conservatism, reflecting and contributing to the mounting influence of
the neo-conservatives from the perspective of ethnic governance.
On the one hand, the new discourse of national identity neatly fits into the conservative
ideology by constructing the hierarchical order between the core culture and minority cultures.
While the charter group is automatically perceived as loyal nationals, the burden of
maintaining “inclusiveness” and “unity” is placed upon the minority groups, who are
expected to voluntarily adhere to the rules laid out by the governing group. Filtered through
the ideological lens, key terms like “democracy”, “citizenship” and “social cohesion” have
lost their richness and complexity and are crystallized into narrow prescriptions of social
conformity. The inherently nationalistic preoccupation of the civic paradigm is revealed in the
glorification of the history and tradition of the host group and the punitive branding of the
dissidents as “special interests” and “new class”. As Markus brilliantly puts it:
On the one side are the Australians, a people with an honorable history, who through hard
work have established for themselves a high standard of living and forged a unique culture. In
contrast, the sectional interests, ethnic activists included, are motivated by their own narrow
interests, causing separateness and squandering the public resources (Markus 68-69).
On the other hand, the demise of social justice and the enhanced value of productive
diversity correlate with the philosophy of economic rationalism, according to which market
forces are to be the ultimate and fairest arbiter of the society’s resources. The defensive tone
adopted by the NMAC and the self-defeating distinction of “settlement programs” and
“multicultural programs” fully testify the lethality of the “public-choice” and “new class”
discourses and the decreasing credence of the politics of recognition. Under the rationalistconservative framework, multicultural policy of the Howard era has virtually lost all its
substantive content and political salience and with hindsight merely serves as a transitional
phase toward formal citizenship policies. Symbolically, in late 2006, the federal government
decided to abandon the term multiculturalism altogether and in January 2007, the name of the
Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs was changed into the Department of
Immigration and Citizenship, which by now has not been reversed by the new Labor
government (Roth 1).
The significance of the refocused multicultural policy is manifold. For one thing, it
signifies the predominance of the civic-nationalistic paradigm over the pluralist one in the
policy area of ethnic governance. For another, it is part of the broader intellectual debates on
the future course of liberal democracy in Australia. As Marian Sawer notes, the late 1990s
was characterized by intense intellectual debates over different versions of liberalism and a
53
multiplicity of citizenship discourses. The pluralist citizenship discourse which positively
accommodated cultural and gender difference was severely challenged by the neo-liberal one
premised on citizen duties, mutual obligation and the reduction of state intervention (Sawer,
The Ethnic State 183-4). Admittedly, the newfound prominence of the neo-conservative
ideology has its inbuilt rationality. On the socio-political side, it is true that no matter how
pluralist a society is, national unity and the sense of common belonging are indispensable for
the sustainability of the state. Obviously, the unique appeals of the mythologized tradition and
social stability substantially increase in the age of global uncertainty. On the economic side,
voluminous works and complex computerized models all seek to prove the desirability of free
market in wealth creation and distribution. Rationalist agenda is widely implemented in
leading industrial countries like the US and Britain.
However, these rational elements do not preclude the coexistence of a large measure of
opportunism and irrationality in the right-wing arguments, most notably reflected in the
confrontational discourses of “special interests” and “new class”. It is indeed crucial to
understand their dangerous implications for the future discussion of democratic governance in
Australia. By positioning equality-seeking as the self-serving fabrication of the left-wing
intellectuals, these discourses grossly ignore the empirical evidence which underlies the
philosophy of social democracy and lightly dismiss the metaphysical possibility of the
altruistic side of human nature. The economy-determinist view embedded in these discourses
tends to distract the policy-makers from seeing the material reality of social cleavages and
prematurely end the serious debates over the ethical potentials of the state.
As the chapter of discussion shows, globalization itself can be a discursive strategy
employed to justify preexisting ideological agendas by creating a false sense of inevitability.
Just as Barry Hindess pertinently argues, rather than moving toward a more democratic
political culture as the populist rhetoric suggests, the current anti-elitism is merely the
displacement of the social elites by the neo-liberal elites (Hindess 239-40). The recognition of
the ideological nature of the political culture defeats all presumptions of universality and
immutability. Despite the current centrality of rationalist and conservative ideologies, the
exploration for the proper mode of governance will be an open-ended process which requires
ongoing negotiations and positive contributions of both sides. Indeed, many problems have
already arisen in the transformation of Australian political environment, including the
dehumanization of the bureaucratic culture, the persistent disadvantages experienced by
minority groups, rampant populist attacks of left-wing intellectuals and minority groups and
the newly created social cleavage based on class and regional lines. Understandably, the
current populist mobilization and the construction of a self-interested “new class” may be
potent in winning the game of power and vanquishing the political and intellectual “Others”,
but are probably not conducive to practical problem-solving. Constructive conversations over
the future mode of democratic governance will only result with responsible political
leadership, evidence-based policy debates, a nuanced understanding of both sides of
arguments and the healthy engagement of all sectors of the society. In view of the challenges
of globalization and the breakdown of broad consensus, a constant process of sincere and
open-minded debates based on empirical research will be what is required for the formulation
54
of viable policies for the future.
55
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