15 Results

Scott Morrison committed the Coalition to building an era of “post-multiculturalism” in Australia. But it’s more dog-whistle than serious critique of the failings of migrant integration.

It’s more than 12 years since the last attempt to amend Australia’s constitution, the ill-fated republic referendum of 1999.

Multicultural communities in inner-Melbourne Labor electorates were given the biggest building grants in the lead-up to last year’s state election, according to the Victorian Multicultural Commission’s annual report. Zhou Yao reports.

Crikey readers have their say.

“Multiculturalism” — the word has become so overlaid with multiple meaning it now has virtually none at all.

Multiculturalism is not a failed idea, says former PM Malcolm Fraser. He welcomes Labor’s re-embrace, but in this piece for Crikey he condemns his former Liberal Party for creating a climate of fear on the issue.

It is only when people want to build mosques, start community groups, etc, that the question of what a culture is becomes urgent.

German chancellor Angela Merkel is pro-immigration and pro-integration, but she heads a centre-right party with its fair share of scaremongers on the issue. So did she actually mean to say that multicultural policies have “utterly failed”? asks Charles Richardson.

Former prime minister John Howard has dumped on “multi-cultural” continental Europe, “irrelevant” UN veto nations and the Islamic world while lauding the moral superiority of the English speakers in a speech in Washington. Harley Dennett reports from Washington.

From Afghan refugees to Indian students, race issues have hit the headlines questioning Australia’s multiculturalism. But can a new official Cultural Diversity Statement, penned with the help of Don Watson, help address institutional racism?

Malcolm Fraser opened the door to Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s and championed a larger Australia through immigration. Here, in an extract from the new Fraser biography, he remembers the birth of multiculturalism.

After years of trying to claim that it isn’t just an ethnic channel, SBS are now trying to push their multiculturalism as a reason for why their national funding should continuing. Too little too late? asks David Ingram.

Rudd’s choice of nominees for his Multicultural Advisory Council reflects a good mix of academia, sport, professional experience and grassroots activism, writes Irfan Yusuf.