The Australian Human Rights Commission's report into the freedom of religion and belief in 21st century Australia report was released this week, after a year of research and nationwide consultations. Race Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes explains that it is not a list of recommendations but a survey of listening 'to the voices of the community'.
It documents a rich array of multiple opinions in the religious sphere, and argues that 'beliefs, religious, anti-religious or a-religious, may contribute to defining a person's identity'. No surprise then that it is awash with terms such as 'multicultural Australia', 'pluralist Australia' and so on.
Quite a few respondents strongly objected to multiculturalism. In fact, the concept of 'multiculturalism' has changed over the last decade or so, and needs some unpacking, in light not only of the report, but also of several other recent noteworthy occurrences.
One was an interview with the French politician Marine Le Pen that appeared in the Australian press earlier this month. The headline was 'Multiculturalism is a myth', and in the article Le Pen argued that true multiculturalism ends in war.
The second was Harmony Day on 21 March. Its purpose, as envisaged by the Council of Multicultural Australia when proclaiming it in 2002, was 'to promote a harmonious Australia, built on democracy and the development of our evolving nationhood by embracing our heritage and cultural diversity'. Beautiful words that you can't t really argue with, but neither do they call a spade a spade.
Multiculturalism, Australian identity, immigration and ethnicity are concepts that are frequently and intensely debated in the Australian environment. The ABC's Q&A discussion on multiculturalism in February provoked many comments on the program's online forums.
Googling the words 'multiculturalism' and 'Australia' produces over one million entries. Add any other related keyword and the count increases. Furthermore, the entries seem to widen the possibilities of interpreting the meaning of multiculturalism rather than defining it more precisely.
This is not surprising. The concept of multiculturalism has a very muddled history.
In the 1970s, the then immigration minister Al Grassby announced the 'Multi-Cultural Society for the Future' as a way to address the social inequities of immigrants from a non-English speaking background. He knew he had borrowed a term from Canada, where it was used to unify the English and French speaking populations. Hardly a model for Australia, which didn't have that problem.
Since then the term 'multiculturalism' has been redefined or rejected depending upon the particular persuasion of the various stakeholders at the time or the political willpower in Canberra. Numerous commissions and councils were established to advance or redefine the concept.
Prime ministers accepted, rejected, or changed it (John Howard: multiculturality). Multiculturalism, as many historians and commentators observed, was a concept forced upon the Australian population without ever being fully defined or explained, apart from some lofty and flowery sentences.
Well known immigrant writers such as Lolo Houbein and Andrew Riemer never accepted the term and the explanation of it. Many recent immigrant/refugee authors often leave out any reference to it. They seem to be far more busy with what is actually happening in our daily lives.
Consider this. Last year, my family and some friends met in a park for a Sunday barbecue. While we were enjoying ourselves, suddenly a group of men among us separated to a spot at a remove from the rest of us. I asked the woman next to me what they were doing: they were Muslims, and they were praying. 'How beautiful,' I said. I was unfamiliar with this gesture among Western Muslims.
Suddenly the men were back. They switched on the radios, and we all listened to and argued about the cricket scores.
Multiculturalism in Australia is not a stark concept with separations based on ethnicity, religion or language, as Le Pen and some respondents in Innes' report would suggest.
We do not have a parliament of factions, alliances, or voting blocs based on ethnicity, religion, colour or race. Neither are we inclined to celebrate multiculturalism once a year on a day proclaimed by a government that never was able to tell us exactly what they meant by multiculturalism.
Rather, the Australian populace itself has, over time, defined exactly what multiculturalism means.
Recent commentators, such as the eminent former politician Petro Georgiou, when discussing multiculturalism, have picked up on this popular movement and, in getting away from the term itself, acknowledge that what the population tries to practise from day to day is cultural diversity.
John, a former journalist and academic, wrote his PhD and carries out research on immigrant and refugee memoirs. He is the deputy director of the Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography at La Trobe University.