Introducing the Multicultural Framework Review
I am delighted to release the report of the Multicultural Framework Review, Towards Fairness - a multicultural Australia for all, the first major examination of the state of our Australian multiculturalism in a generation.
The three eminent Australians who comprise the Review’s Panel, Dr Bulent Hass Dellal AO, Ms Nyadol Nyuon OAM and Ms Christine Castley, have produced a powerful and comprehensive report that will inform the work of government for years to come.
To write their report, the Panel travelled the length and breadth of the country. They listened to Australian voices in schools, sports and service clubs, places of worship, the arts, culture and business.
They heard from a host of diverse community and First Nations organisations, all tiers of government, and more than a thousand ordinary Australians. They published messages about the Review in 35 community languages and received 126 submissions - nearly a sixth of the total received - in languages other than English.
In conducting such a comprehensive Review, the Panel understood a fundamental truth about contemporary Australia.
Our multiculturalism is no mere policy document. It thrives in our communities: in our work places, our institutions, our sports grounds, our streets and homes. In our churches, mosques, synagogues and temples. It’s who we are.
I often reflect on the fact that when the post-war immigration program began just after World War Two, Australia was a country of seven million people, 90 per cent of them of British and Irish descent. It was institutionally racist through its formal embrace of the White Australia policy.
Today, we welcome people from all over the world, and invite them to become citizens and enrich our society and nation, as 7.5 million migrants in the past 75 years have done before them.
No other country has achieved such a transformation so peacefully, and in the space of an average life span. This is what my ministerial colleague, Chris Bowen, once called “the genius of Australian multiculturalism.”
Yet the Review rightly finds no room for complacency. Success did not happen overnight or through good luck, but is the fruit of deep thought and hard work by many, over many years.
In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters and overseas conflicts have put Australian society and our multiculturalism under strain.
To both build on our achievements and address the challenges of our current moment, the Albanese Government commissioned the Multicultural Framework Review.
The launch of the Review last year marked a half century since a landmark paper by the then Immigration Minister, Al Grassby, which introduced the idea of a multicultural society into public debate.
Mr Grassby observed that while Australians had created “one of the most cosmopolitan societies on Earth,” the voices rising up from migrant communities seeking a stronger place in the nation could not be ignored.
It’s an insight that still resonates today. After the Albanese Government came to office, we heard concerns from migrant communities and others that multicultural policy had come to be seen as a subset of national security policy.
One of our early acts was to shift the Multicultural Affairs team in my own department away from the counter terrorism and foreign interference area into the Immigration Group. This move expressed the importance the Government attaches to a multicultural policy that embraces those who have settled in Australia rather than focusing on who we want to keep out.
The Multicultural Framework Review renews and reinterprets Mr Grassby’s paper for our times. Among many important insights, it notes the vital role of education, English language learning and effective translation services in ensuring that all Australians can enjoy the benefits of this country.
It challenges standard perceptions that the home of multiculturalism lies in the suburbs of our big cities by pointing to the increasing cultural diversity of regional, rural and remote Australia.
It finds that successful multiculturalism starts with greater understanding and celebration of First Nations peoples, who for at least 65,000 years have sustained many cultures on this continent, and built trade and cultural connections between groups and with neighbouring peoples in Asia and the Pacific.
It calls on governments and all citizens to actively combat racism, which is still experienced by far too many Australians. Of the top ten themes identified in submissions to the Review, second on the list were experiences of discrimination and racism.
The Review recognises that our vibrant arts and culture industries, including its culturally diverse practitioners, have a significant role in defining and developing a shared Australian identity.
It charts a Roadmap to invigorate our multicultural democracy by proposing ways to strengthen institutions, represent all peoples in Australia's cultural life, and ensure universal access to public services.
And it points to the unique role of young people in shaping our multicultural future.
I invite you to look at the 100 artworks made by children and young people and displayed in the report’s online gallery. These works provide lively, optimistic and many-coloured depictions of our multicultural society, and what belonging looks like to these young Australians.
The Multicultural Framework Review, while sounding an important caution that multiculturalism is always a work in progress, provides powerful grounds for optimism that our extraordinary achievement not just endure but continue to evolve so that everyone really belongs.
I invite all Australians to read the report and the Government’s response, and to contribute to this vital debate about Australia’s future.
Former Minister for Immigration Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, the Hon Andrew Giles MP.
Multicultural Framework Review - Government Response.
