The 2022 Laki Jayasuriya Oration was delivered by Dr Anne Aly MP and titled, Why we need to recalibrate our approach to multiculturalism.

The oration, organised by the University of Western Australia’s Public Policy Institute, honours the legacy of Professor Jayasuriya, who in 1973 was appointed by the Whitlam Government to the Immigration Advisory Council in 1973, and he was one of the key architects of Australia’s Multicultural policy and founded the University’s Department of Social Work and Social Policy.

Given that it is almost 50 years since Al Grassby, the then Minister for Immigration in the Whitlam Government issued a reference paper entitled A multi-cultural society for the future, it is worth reflection on what we have learnt and where we are going.

Our institutions are lagging our lived reality

Our institutions have not kept up with Australia. We should rightfully celebrate the fact that the current federal parliament is the most diverse in history, we must acknowledge that it is nowhere near a reflection the cultural diversity of the Australian population.

From a cultural and ethnicity perspective, over 40 percent of Australians claim a non- Anglo Celtic heritage and 23 percent claim a non-European ancestry. The term ‘European’ did not fully encompasses the peoples of Southern, Eastern and South-eastern Europe in the minds of White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) Australian policy makers.

The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, or what is commonly called White Australia Policy, focused on Asian migration though did not recognise Greeks and Southern Italians, Eastern European, Balkan nations, Lebanese, or Turks as ‘white’. Southern Europeans began to arrive en mass 1949 to fulfil dramatic post-war labour shortages. The White Australia Policy was also the first bipartisan policy passed in the new parliament of the new Federation of Australia inaugurated in Melbourne in 1901, Labor and the then conservative parties which later morphed into the Liberal Reform Party and National Party. An outcome of the policy was the almost complete wiping out of a thriving Chinese business and agricultural sector in Melbourne.

While there has been some success in Greek, Italian, Lebanese, Armenian, former Yugoslavian representation in parliament only 7 percent, or 15 out of the 227 Members of Parliament, have non-European backgrounds. Breaking it down further, just 4 percent of our MPs have Asian heritage compared with 18 percent of the general population.

Our cultural institutions fair much worse. As the former Chair of Diversity Arts Australia, in 2020, I co-wrote Shifting the Balance – an investigation into the diversity of our major cultural institutions.

The insights where staggering:

– More than half of the major cultural organisations had no culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) representation at the leadership level, (or no non-Anglo Saxon Celtic)

– Only nine percent of the 1,980 leaders of our major cultural institutions are CALD Australians.

– Only about a third of the museum and heritage sector and performing arts sector had CALD leaders.

There is significantly more cultural diversity in education, bureaucracy, small-business sector, commercial development and real-estate, medicine, nursing, allied health, welfare and in finance and banking – at least in lower to middle management.

This is likely reflecting the aspiration by non-Anglo-Saxon migrants to do well in business and professional endeavours reflecting their need for security. Consequently, the children of migrant’s study to be teachers, surveyors, and accountants which provide more security than say studying to be choreographers, academics, politicians, musicians, or journalists; and the historic middle-upper-class domination of the Australian cultural sector.

The upper class have the privilege of forsaking economic security for passion, larges, and status – something rarely afforded to migrants and their kids.

The next generation of children born to Greek Australians, Italian Australians, South Asian and Chinese Australians feel more integrated than their parents and have moved into the cultural sector – but often find the barriers described above.

Vestiges of the White Australian Policy remain

In March 1966 under Liberal Prime Minster, Harold Holt – who disappeared in the sea presumed drowned – the official announcement was made to abolish the ‘White Australia’ policy, and non-European migration began to increase. The reality that by then hundreds of thousands of Greeks, Southern Italians, Poles, and other non-Anglo immigrants who arrived to work on the hydroelectric schemes, in factories, in farms, to clean offices, and work kitchens, had made the White Australia policy obsolete.

Much has changed, but much has not. One area that reflects particularly badly on us is the way we still ignore the qualifications of migrants. Research commissioned by Host International and MAX International (an employment agency) found that only one in five skilled migrants have had their qualifications recognised for employment.

While we as a nation are experiencing a skills shortage, many skilled migrant jobseekers reported being pushed into unskilled or low-skilled roles out of necessity. The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre found 35 per cent of migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds were considered overqualified for their jobs, compared to 10 percent of people born in Australia.

This a distinct under-utilisation of talent and wastes valuable economic resources. The authors of the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre finding that the skills mismatch meant the Australian economy was losing out on $6 billions dollars annually.

It’s not simple

Another point to recognise as we reflect on the last 50 years is to accept that there are always tensions within multicultural societies – and we should not be naive about these. I am not talking about the simple anti-migration tropes employed by some politicians, but tensions exist.

We should remember that while most Australians voted in support of legalising same-sex marriage in 2017, 12 of 17 electorates with a majority ‘no’ vote where in and around Western Sydney and with high migration levels.

In this way, the progressive social policies of the majority of Australia came into conflict with the conservative migrant communities. ANU demographer Dr Liz Allen noted, some migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds, “report higher levels of religion [and]… are more likely to hold conservative social views… adopt[ing] higher conservative social views of the world or traditional views about marriage and relationship formation.”

There is also evidence that caste discrimination persists in Australia’s Indian diaspora. As Melbourne-based academic and filmmaker Vikrant Kishore states, “caste goes where South Asians go… Australia is no exception.”

Multicultural communities have many different perspectives, and we should not homogenise or romanticise them. We as a nation – and particularly progressives – must find a way to discuss challenges respectfully.

Ignoring them is both intellectually and politically dishonest and gives fuel to anti-migration voices.

There is no going back

Various political leaders continue to promote an imagined Australian community from the 1950s which was not only majority Anglo-European but had few of the social problems we see today. This simplistic world view overlooks the hundreds of First Nations cultural and linguistic groups, the discrimination faced by many such as the Irish Catholic communities, and the complex migration patterns that included many Chinese.

Today’s households are so diverse in a way that may not been imagined by the then Whitlam Government. Dr Aly described our households ‘multi-cultural’ not just multicultural. In other words, most Australian households are made up of many different cultural groups – meaning multicultural is Australian culture.

In my own work as the Director of the Forrest Research Foundation, I host dozens of the world’s best emerging researchers to investigate everything from DNA Origami, solutions to coastal erosion, food insecurity, securing hydrogen as a future fuel, 3D printing of materials for wastewater treatment and medical implant applications, and novel targeted therapies for cancer.

The social and economic potential is unlimited.

Despite this, parts of our nation persist with anti-migration rhetoric. Almost fifty years since the word ‘multiculturalism’ become mainstream, we should ensure our nation continues to evolve to meet its potential. We are not there yet.

Professor James Arvanitakis is the Director of the Forrest Research Foundation and a regular media commentator