The Australian way to the Future

Amidst all the passion and confusion which have, so far, surrounded the national debate on multiculturalism, the one missing but vital link in the chain of its evolution has suddenly been discovered.

This revelation - that the multiculturalism which has been evolving in this country is a peculiarly Australian phenomenon - seems to have flooded some unenlightened minds with sudden light. Like St Paul on the way to Damascus , they had a new vision and were instantly converted. This was no longer any multiculturalism; it was our very own, homegrown variety. So, whereas before their conversion multiculturalism was seen as a potential threat to the prevailing monoculture, it was now embraced by the monoculturalists with the energy and enthusiasm of eager converts to a new cause.

Well, as they say, it is better late than never! And now that we are all, more or less, agreed that Australian multiculturalism is a unique Australian experience, let us examine its historical development to gain a better perspective of its future course.

Briefly, numerous Aboriginal tribes inhabited our island continent for over 40,000 years before British colonists terminated their long land tenure. These gentle, peaceful people had developed a spiritual affinity with their ancestral land but their ancient culture was ruthlessly crushed by the colonists who imposed their own alien culture, with the consequent loss of identity which still afflicts the Aboriginal psyche. Belatedly, their unique culture is now being recognized and woven into the multicultural fabric of modem Australian society.

The major European seafaring and trading nations at the time, namely the French, the Dutch,

the Spaniards and the Portuguese, had located this new continent before the British, but because of its barren and inhospitable landscape, they sailed on, seeking greener pastures in South East Asia and the Pacific. The task of establishing a European settlement fell to the British, more by accident than design. With the loss of the American colonies, British prisons were overflowing with felons and a new place, as far away as possible, had to be found for them. Australia was chosen and so, it came to pass that the First Fleet with its wretched human cargo set sail for Terra Australis.

From these inauspicious circumstances, the Australian nation was born but the seeds of the future multicultural society were sown years later when gold was first discovered in Western Australia and Victoria, attracting settlers and fortune-seekers from all over the world.

But, by far, the biggest historical event, which transformed the country and enabled multiculturalism to develop to its present stage, was the Second World War. The rapid advance of the Japanese armed forces and the imminent threat of invasion jolted John Curtin, the Australian wartime leader, and his fellow Australians, out of their complacency and misguided belief in the invincibility of the British Navy. John Curtin took the historic and courageous decision to turn to the United States for help and the rest, as we know, is history. Post-war, Curtin and his Cabinet realized that the ultimate protection was to populate the empty continent and the patriotic slogan of «Populate or Perish» was used to open the doors of the country to Western Europe , reversing the previous traditional policy of restricting the entry of «foreigners».

The first mass wave of post-war migrants were war refugees, or «displaced persons» as they were euphemistically labeled then. They came from Central and Eastern Europe and were followed by other successive waves of Southern Europeans from Italy , Greece , Cyprus , Malta and later Spain , Turkey and the former Yugoslavia . Northern Europeans began also to migrate, along with large numbers of British migrants who were attracted to Australia by the financial incentives offered by the Australian Government.

Then there was influx of migrants from Egypt and other countries of the Middle East , followed by a new wave of migration from Latin America . In the seventies the Liberal Prime Minister, Harold Holt, began dismantling the elaborate barriers of the White Australia policy which had kept Asian migrants out. People from Sri Lanka and India began trickling in and after the Vietnam war all remaining forms of discrimination were abolished by the Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, allowing a large number of Vietnamese refugees to settle in Australia .

Let me explain, in passing, that I am neither an academic theorist nor an armchair critic. I am an ordinary migrant with 51 years of multicultural experience under my belt, having landed in this country in 1948. And my multicultural credentials are impeccable; I was born a British subject, of Greek Cypriot parents, in the Egyptian city of Alexandria , where I attended Greek and French schools and the British Academy of Commerce, a pretentious name for an unpretentious English business school. I arrived in Australia before the demise of the British Empire and had the opportunity to observe my adopted country before it shed its colonial image of a sleepy Pacific outpost of the mighty British Empire . I also witnessed, first hand, the amazing transformation of the country as the huge waves of migration rolled on relentlessly. I saw the nascent nation growing out of its resentful adolescence and acquiring the emotional maturity to sever the parental nexus, which had tied it to «the mother country» for the best part of two centuries. Over a period of fifty years I witnessed some 130 different ethnic groups pouring into this vast island continent from every comer of the planet. The colonial past has faded into the mists of time and now lives only in the books of history. A new, vibrant, dynamic society has arisen in its wake and the amazing wonder of this visionary social experiment is the way these diverse and disparate ethnic groups managed to live together in their new country without friction or conflict. When one considers the old, traditional enmities between Greeks and Turks, Jews and Arabs, Croats and Slavs, Catholic and Protestant Irish, to name a few, and how quickly the people buried their hatchets in Australian soil and rose above their religious bigotries and racial hatreds, one is overwhelmed with the sense of the miraculous. I believe this is one aspect of our multicultural society that has not yet gained universal recognition. I also believe this magnificent achievement of social engineering could serve as a model for other societies and I, therefore, posit this question: If 130 odd ethnic groups can live harmoniously on an island continent in the Pacific, 'why can't they live as harmoniously in other parts of our planet?

There in lies the value of our social experiment:

we can lead the world by our example. We can demonstrate that the ideal of the brotherhood of man can work in a free, tolerant and compassionate society; and that this is the way of the future for all societies as we boldly move into the third millennium and a future filled with promise and potential.

Lawrence Darrell

Reproduced with the permission of the Editor
of LOGOS Journal  Melbourne