Stresses and strains are beginning to show in Australia’s multiculturalism. Does its framework fit a fast-changing social landscape marked by cascading (dis)Information and sharpening polarisation?

In the 1970s, Australia took a great leap forward by dismantling the White Australia policy and adopting multiculturalism. In just 50 years, this has contributed to Australia’s global reputation as a melting pot where varied traditions coexist. That is a far cry from the days when, along with South Africa, it was viewed as an apartheid nation. Its economic and social dividends are evident in every facet of Australian society.

Australia has so far avoided the culture wars that are erupting in the United States and Western Europe. However, populist socio-political trends there, amplified by social media, are also influencing sectional lobbies in Australia. Some echo the sentiment expressed in the UK in 2023, when then-Home Secretary Braverman declared, “Multiculturalism has failed. People are living separately.”

Australia is not yet at that crossroads, but the warning signs are clear. Perceptions at the street level are often more potent than objective truths in shaping public sentiment. The mass rallies and occasional clashes in the 31 August marches against immigration provide a foretaste of what may come.

These are symptoms that reflect developments, some of which can be controlled, while others are beyond control.

Thus, international developments are sowing seeds of discord in Australia. The ongoing conflict in Gaza, for instance, has fuelled rising antisemitism and Islamophobia locally. Recent pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protests have demonstrated the danger implicit in the heightened sentiments against the ‘other’.

Simultaneously, domestic challenges are emerging as newer immigrants bring ideological and religious baggage from their homelands. Tensions between groups such as Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, rooted in historical conflicts from their countries of origin, are beginning to surface on Australian streets.

And then there is Racism, a persistent undercurrent among sections of Australia’s white denizens. Australia’s history is no stranger to internal divisions—earlier waves of immigration, such as those involving Protestants and Catholics, post-war Greeks, Italians, and displaced European Jews, or later Slavic groups, also brought tensions.

Documents held in the National Archives describe local disquiet about the arrival in 1947 of some 700 displaced refugees on the SS Misr and a bunch of “so many Jews, of so many swarthy dark-skinned southern Mediterranean, un-British, un-Australian, unsuitable aliens”.

Yet such tensions were largely contained. How? By the uncomfortable reality, often avoided in politically correct discourse, that these earlier immigrants were white, albeit of different hues, sharing a broad cultural and racial familiarity with the Anglo-Celtic majority.

Today’s immigrants are mostly brown, even black, and this visible difference is amplifying racism in some quarters.

A striking example of this disparity is the public response to the granting of asylum to Bosnians, fleeing the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. They were primarily Muslim (“Bosniaks”). Labelled as “refugee elite,” they were perceived as having high resettlement potential due to their European background. The public reception was positive. Nothing was heard from Pauline Hanson.

Contrast this with the scrutiny faced by non-white immigrants today, and a troubling pattern emerges. Pigmentation often trumps religion in shaping public attitudes toward newcomers. They are not called “New Australians”, a moniker that has applied to European immigrants since the 1950s.

The expanding reach of these three factors is swelling unease about multiculturalism.

At its core, multiculturalism was intended as a two-way street—a social contract where the host nation embraces diversity and, in turn, immigrants retain their cultural identities while coexisting with, and potentially adopting, the prevailing Anglo-Celtic values.

This contract is being increasingly adjudged lopsided. The core problem is that Multiculturalism is perceived to have become a one-way street. The new immigrants are viewed as ‘takers’, not ‘givers’.

Take the Indian diaspora, for example. It boasts the highest median income, a clear indication of its significant economic contribution to the nation. Yet, as documented by the ABC, protest flyers on 31 August singled them out: “More Indians in five years than Greeks and Italians in 100. This isn’t a slight cultural change, it’s a replacement, plain and simple.”

Why? Because Indians, with the advantage of speaking English (and the highest median income among ethnic groups), are asserting themselves in the national economic milieu. One would think that this would align with the Australian ethos. But, in fact, it masks the yawning cultural and linguistic gap between Indian behaviour and Australian ways. Bernard Shaw’s remark about the Anglo-American relationship, “two nations divided by a common language”, is, conservatively, tenfold applicable to differences between Australian and Indian mindsets.

In effect, the economic dividend of multiculturalism is indisputable, but the risks of erosion of social cohesion should also be considered.

Mouthing platitudes will no longer do. Neither will band-aid solutions such as appointing Ambassadors to combat Antisemitism and Islamophobia, which, as Jillian Segal’s Antisemitism Report demonstrates, inadvertently deepens divisions rather than fosters co-existence.

After 50 years, multiculturalism should not be considered untouchable. Defence and Foreign policies have undergone multiple White Paper reviews; ten since 1976. Why should multiculturalism be exempt from scrutiny?

An objective, holistic review of Multiculturalism is overdue: to address its impact on social cohesion, economic equity, and cultural integration; its real and perceived ‘excesses’; and the legitimate concerns of the “old colonial” population, First Nations communities, and newer immigrants.

In 1983, the Hawke-Keating government launched the National Economic Summit to achieve a broad stakeholder consensus for economic reforms, culminating in the Prices and Incomes Accord. It transformed Australia.

The Albanese Government must take a similar bold initiative to ensure that Multiculturalism remains a vibrant, inclusive force rather than a policy whose use-by date has expired.