This week, under the theme Everyone Belongs, Australia is celebrating its annual Harmony Week. We are all reminded and rightly so, that during the past 70 years for example, Australia has successfully managed to welcome and integrate more than 7.5 million migrants.

We are told that in the state of Victoria we have people from almost 320 different cultural backgrounds, who speak 290 different languages. The tone is celebratory, the three tiers of government in Australia, directly or indirectly, organise special events in recognition of our successful multicultural model and… ethnic bureaucracies, ethnic community leaders, ethnic concerts, ethnic costumes, ethnic food and ethnic people, including the relevant leadership of the land, talk about the need for inclusiveness, acceptance of cultural diversity, etc.

Even though multiculturalism has been the official policy of Australia for the past 50 or so years…

We still have the ethnic, cultural and linguistic minorities doing most of the talking every year during Harmony Week. Not the dominant in every way cultural group, but the politically, culturally, financially and institutionally weak, minority communities. They are the ones who define themselves in terms of the official norms of the land. This is fine, as long as we also have the dominant cultural group and its institutions, addressing the same issues from their own perspective.

Why is it for example, that during Harmony Week, we do not address issues of representation and power in Australia? Why is it and we do not have people from the dominant community talking about their own interpretation of harmony, inclusion, diversity, etc?

Why is it that government policy nowadays, is only celebratory and superficial, when it comes to defining multiculturalism Down Under?

Why is it that Australia is by far, still a monolingual country?

Why is it that we still celebrate Harmony Week and other Cultural Diversity events, by promoting harmless “caricatures”, for example, ethnic costumes, ethnic recipes, etc…

Why is it that during last year’s Australian Labor Party campaign for the federal election, the multicultural policy of the now governing party of Australia could only be found under the name of its now minister for Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles? You had to run a google search in order to find the relevant policy, as covered in a brief article by the Australian edition of The Guardian! There was no multicultural policy content on the website of Labor! We are talking about the party which changed the face of Australia, by adopting a multicultural policy under the reformist Whitlam Government…

Why is it that the relevant Policy Committees of Australia’s mainstream political parties no longer produce any multicultural policies? Why are they run, most of the time, by the “sidekicks” of powerbrokers? People who work for various MPs, ministers, etc?

Why is it that the mainstream media are talking about branch stacking, in a simplistic manner, only when it comes to members of the Turkish or the Indian community?

Why is it that mainstream Australia, governments, politicians, institutions, etc, treat our culturally diverse citizens as being part of a “herd”, whose political behavior for example, is heavily influenced by ethnic community leaders, church or secular leaders? When this is not the case for the established communities, for example.

Why is it that well-established ethnic communities like the Greek community, no longer critically engage in the wider multicultural debate in Australia?