Advancing Community Cohesion Conference – Western Sydney University
16 July 2015
Michael Pezzullo
Secretary, Department of Immigration and Border Protection
Social cohesion in Australia
E&OE
The Australian national story is one fundamentally of settlement – from its distant indigenous origins; the British foundations of our modern nation; followed by waves of immigration thereafter, over more than two centuries.
The early colonial story is a remarkable story of historical development. Within a century of our early colonial origins, Australia would become one of the richest nations on earth in terms of income per head, and a mature society which was able to achieve nationhood by way of the federation of the colonies in 1901, without war, strife or commotion.
The early modern Australian story was part and parcel of the global expansion of the British Empire. The British in the 18th Century were ‘the Romans’ of their day, and our continent was settled by an Empire that was ascending to its heights.
What did these ‘red–coated Romans’ ever do for us? What, other than giving us:
- Parliamentary democracy
- Representative government, commencing with self–government in the 1850s
- The rule of the common law and an independent judiciary
- Our public institutions, including the architecture of executive government
- The separation of the parliament, the courts and the executive government
- The freedom of speech, belief, faith and ideas
- The English language
- The settlement and farming of the land, and the building of our cities
- The foundation of our modes of cultural expression, which have of course evolved distinctly and independently.
These were, and remain, the foundational elements of our social and political order – a British system of national governance with Australian characteristics.
We would, however, never have become a more complete commonwealth had we clung to the original conception of Australia as being ‘Britain beyond the seas’. For many years, Australians saw themselves as either ‘British’, or as members of the global family of ‘the white race’. As we know, one of the first acts of the new Commonwealth Parliament in 1901 was an act to
restrict immigration, and in its application it was described as the ‘White Australia’ policy.
Can we imagine what would be our standing in the world, if today my Department was required to oversee an immigration programme which was designed to ensure that Australia remained ‘White’, with all of the racial discrimination that that would require? For all of the beneficial inheritance that is ours as a result of the act of British settlement in 1788, we would never have become the modern Australia of today without the dismantling of ‘White Australia’, and the reversal of discrimination in immigration (which was only finally achieved in the early 1970s).
Moreover, we would never have become the modern Australia of today had we not undertaken the remarkable programme of managed mass migration and settlement after the Second World War, when the Department of Immigration was established (on 13th July 1945), and we celebrated its 70th anniversary earlier this week.
Looking ahead however,
engagement with the world is taking the place of ‘settlement’ at the heart of the Australian story. Engagement and mobility in the world at large, and specifically in the region around us, will increasingly be what defines our national story. Globalisation is of course driving this engagement and mobility – it creates the pressure to engage, and the platforms from which to engage.
Australians are fully embracing these platforms and opportunities of engagement and mobility. We stride confidently in this globalised world. We travel, work, invest and study overseas, we engage in partnership with companies and individuals around the world, and we do so through every imaginable technological device and system, and we trade with anyone who will buy our goods or sell us theirs.
Equally, we now welcome all to our shores, subject only to their observance of our laws and identification with our values. People from all over the world come to Australia to holiday, work, study and engage in commerce. Some, of course, come to settle here and commence new lives (around 190,000 will do so this financial year).
It is always going to be the case that we were, and therefore will always be, a ‘settler nation’. The indigenous heritage, the British foundation of social and political order, and the multicultural diversity of our immigrant society will always define Australia. But we should increasingly reframe our national self–understanding through speaking more of engaging with the world, and not just settling our land.
For my Department’s part, we are assisting in this national endeavour by re–framing how we see our role. We are going through the most far–reaching change to our role since we were first established in 1945, as a result of the post–war reconstruction planning that had taken place during the war years. Yes, assisting our colleagues in the Department of Social Services with migrant settlement will be an ongoing element of our work, but the mission of mass migration that was set for the department in 1945 has been long accomplished. More than settlement, our departmental mission now is:
to protect Australia’s border and manage the movement of people and goods across it. This mission matches the ‘global engagement’ national model, which I contend is replacing the ‘settlement’ national model.
This new mission came into effect on 1st July 2015, when the new integrated Department of Immigration and Border Protection came into being, which includes as an integral element the Australian Border Force. The department is now responsible for immigration and citizenship (but not settlement services or multicultural policy and programmes), customs and border protection, and Australia’s maritime security.
In keeping with the ‘global engagement’ national model, our vision is to be Australia’s
trusted global gateway. On occasions, at times of heightened threat such as caused by terrorism or pandemics, we will need to act as the gatekeepers and as necessary protect our borders by all lawful means. But the daily default operating mode of the Department will be to act as the conduit of Australia’s engagement with the world around us, whether for the purposes of trade, travel, or migration – for time limited purposes, or for tomorrow’s settlers.
Multicultural societies such as Australia challenge the very idea that citizens of a nation–state have to share a singular identity which is grounded in tribe or ethnicity; faith or creed; or even historical culture. Often in the past, ‘the state’ has been tied in a nexus with ‘the nation’, where the latter has been sometimes been defined along ‘blood’ or ‘race’ lines. As I said earlier, the Australia of earlier times was defined in these terms and this conditioned public policy and programmes, until the 1970s.
We should separate race or cultural identifiers from the political order of the nation–state, and especially from how the nation–state organises the standing of its citizens before the law, and the rule of law; the balance of power as between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary; how public policy decisions are made, enacted, implemented and overseen; and generally how power is distributed and balanced.
In a liberal democracy such as ours, these should not be matters of national political ideology or religious direction, as is the case in one–party autocracies or theocracies.
Following Georg Hegel and other like–minded political philosophers, as citizens we live our lives in
civil society, where we are recognised, respected, protected and empowered to live as we please, within the law. This is the sphere of our private lives, our beliefs, our customs, traditions and practices, our family lives, our network of friendships and social connections, and the domain of commerce and work. Civil society is the ultimate expression of our relational character as human beings.
It is
the State (in Hegel’s usage, which means more than ‘the government’) which produces and enforces the framing rules of these civic associations, and acts as their guardian and underwriter. The State is the realm of public institutions, and collective decision–making through the rule of deliberation, debate and reason. A properly formed and functional State creates the space for civil society, and the freedoms that come with civil society, without dictating how it is that we should live (subject only to law). The State’s most important function is to protect civil society.
It follows that one of the functions of the State, at least in a world of sovereign nation–states, is to mark out the territory of the State, protect that territory and manage its borders.
Absent this right of control and capacity for control, there is no State, and hence no civil society within the State.
It also follows that within the sphere of the State, we should avoid a confederation of separate communities, however defined, whether by religion, ethnicity or other orientation.
Diversity and modes of cultural expression, which belong to the sphere of civil society, should always be subjected to the rules of civic association, which find their expression in the structure and framework of the State. As such, diversity cannot and should not be a policy end in itself, but rather should be seen as a legitimate expression of the human reality that our identity as individuals, and as social beings, is not bequeathed or dictated by the State, but is grounded in our personal experience, outlook and ancestry, which are located in civil society.
This is a very different model compared with the earlier and now out–dated idea that settlement should lead to ‘assimilation’, where settlers were expected to dissolve their historical identities into the ‘national culture’ of their chosen countries.
Today, we have come to accept after nearly 40 years of practice in the multicultural space that in the sphere of the State we nurture and engender social participation, shared national values and community solidarity, while being mutually respectful and tolerant of our diverse identities, as expressed in civil society. Our policy emphasis in terms of diversity and social cohesion should be on continuing to ensure that Australians respect one another regardless of our cultural, racial or religious differences, and that all can participate equitably in Australian society, with a full appreciation of the rights and responsibilities that come with membership of that society.
Taking these ideas of ‘civil society’ and ‘the State’ together, we can conclude that the nation–state cannot be an arbitrary construct which is a geographical zone which happens to be inhabited at any one time by randomly selected individuals who lack any prior connections and social relationships. It is not a blank slate that can be completely re–made every generation. The very idea of the nation–state implies continuities in terms of our common public identity, and the durability and strength of our institutions, as well as expectations of mutual regard, trust and recognition, and allegiance.
We are perfectly entitled to inhabit and live relationally in sub–national networks of identities which are located in civil society – at any one time, we are members of a family and a clan, a locality and a region, an ethnic group, most likely a religious group or a faith (of some description), a profession or a trade and so on.
Increasingly, we also inhabit and live relationally in supra–national networks of identities, especially in a world of globalised production, labour mobility, study and travel. Think for instance of research scientists from many countries collaborating on a common scientific problem, assisted by modern means of communication, travel and data exchange, of which their predecessors could only have dreamt. As global engagement, mobility and communications increase, so will the reach and diversity of our sub–national and supra–national identities.
But for so long as nation–states represent the fundamental building block of the global order, we need to acknowledge that for all of the legitimate sub–national and supra–national identities that Australians can and do express as members of civil society, we still owe allegiance to a common political order which, in Australia’s case, has been built over more than two centuries of national development.
Australia has a positive story to tell the world in relation to strong social cohesion, well–supported multiculturalism and a long tradition of orderly migration which has typically had strong levels of public confidence and support.
Of course, we have to be mindful of the issues which this conference is engaging, including: on–going issues in some quarters with racism and discrimination; signs of negative attitudes towards Australians of Muslim faith; lower levels of social cohesion in areas of higher migrant concentration; and, of course, disengagement, marginalisation and potential radicalisation of some young Australians.
We have to be especially alert to the long–term trends which are the consequence of globalisation, and transnational mobility and communications: with high levels of mobility amongst skilled migrants, and increasing levels of temporary migration, our traditional settlement–based model to migrant integration will have to adapt. Earlier periods of isolation from family, friends, culture and language compelled migrants to integrate. The ‘global engagement’ national model which has been brought about by globalisation could, if we are not careful, perversely see the accelerated emergence of virtual transnational communities which are built around ancient bonds of race, ethnicity, religion, language and so on, and a parallel disengagement from Australian civil society. At the extreme, such virtual communities could see a fraying of allegiance to the nation–state.
We have to be watchful of these trends, without in any way being alarmed. We have a cohesive civil society, which is built upon a foundational social and political order which is durable and resilient, and which protects and enables that cohesive civil society. The best thing that we can do is to ensure that we have an active dialogue on these issues and that we manage them self–consciously, as we are doing at this conference.
