The Turnbull government’s ‘Post-multiculturalism’ multicultural policy

ABSTRACT

The Turnbull government presented Australia’s fifth national multicultural policy statement in March 2017. This article analyses the policy statement and argues that it represents the most significant change to Australian multicultural policy in four decades. Among other things, it abandons the language of government responsiveness to cultural diversity that previously defined Australian multiculturalism. The 2017 policy amounts to a new form of post-multiculturalism—different from earlier conservative, neoliberal and centre-left versions—in that it seeks to ‘mainstream’ multicultural policy on the grounds that Australian multiculturalism has succeeded in its intended task. While a mainstreaming strategy of this sort is, I argue, theoretically consistent with Australia’s liberal nationalist approach to cultural diversity, the institutional and attitudinal conditions that it presupposes are yet to be fully realised in Australia. More multicultural work needs to be done before this kind of post-multiculturalist approach is practicable.

特恩布尔政府于2017年3月发布了澳大利亚第五个多元文化政策陈述。本文对之进行了分析，认为它代表了四十年来澳大利亚多元文化政策上的重大转变。转变之一，该文已不再谈论政府响应文化多样性了，这种文化多样性一直定义着澳大利亚的多元文化主义。2017年的这个政策具有了后多元文化主义的新形态，与此前保守的、新自由主义的及中左的版本都不一样——它寻求“主流的”多元文化政策，理由是澳大利亚的多元文化主义已大功告成。笔者认为，该主流策略固然 在理论上与澳大利亚自由民族主义的文化多样观相一致，但它所预设的制度上和观念上的条件在澳大利亚并未完全实现。在这类后多元文化主义实行之前，还有很多多元文化的工作需要完成。

KEYWORDS:

• Australian multiculturalism
• Turnbull government
• liberal nationalism
• neoliberalism
• post-multiculturalism

Acknowledgements

An early version of this paper was presented at the Australian Political Theory and Philosophy Conference, University of Sydney, February 2018. I am grateful to Keith Banting, Jisuk Han, Andrew Jakubowicz, Tariq Modood and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on drafts of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Geoffrey Brahm Levey is an Associate Professor in Political Science, UNSW Sydney. He works in the areas of liberal and multicultural political theory.

ORCID

Geoffrey Brahm Levey http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5803-5658

Notes

1 See Article 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), and the Canadian Multicultural Act (1988).

2 Walsh (2014) interprets Howard’s cultural nationalism as serving neoliberal goals by making them palatable to the masses. In my view, this account misses how fundamental cultural nationalism is to Howard’s identity and politics (see Johnson 2007).

3 For a summary of state government multicultural policies and initiatives, see Joint Standing Committee on Migration 2013, 107–117.

4 This policy range is far from being universally recognised as ‘multiculturalism’. For example, the Multiculturalism Policy Index (MPI) developed by Keith Banting, Will Kymlicka and others at Queens University in Canada limits multicultural policy for immigrant minorities to group-differentiated rights and affirmations in legislative acts (MPI 2018). That definition would exclude a large part of the multiculturalism project in Australia.

5 On the neoliberal version of multiculturalism, see Kymlicka 2017. In the Australian context, see Walsh 2014.

6 They include the Strong and Resilient Communities Grants Activity, National Community Hubs Program, Living Safe Together program, National Settlement Framework, Skills for Education and Employment (SEE) program, and Settlement Language Pathways to Employment and Training (SLPET).

7 This is why another meaning of ‘post-multiculturalism’, as multicultural ‘business as usual but without advertisement’, does not fit the Turnbull government’s approach. Vertovec (2010), for example, associates post-multiculturalism with greater emphasis on social cohesion and avoidance of the word multiculturalism along with a continuation of multiculturalism policies in practice. Arguably that scenario describes the Howard government’s last years. The Turnbull government’s multicultural policy is formulated as if multiculturalism’s work is complete and there is no need for policy responsiveness to diversity. Its program emphasis was on enhancing migrants' social and economic participation in isolation from their cultural backgrounds and identity. And its rhetorical emphasis was more on the importance of ‘inclusion’ and a sense of belonging (which accentuates the perspective of the individual) than on social cohesion (which accentuates a societal perspective).

8 As do, for example, cultural nationalists, and Québecois ‘interculturalists’ (Bouchard 2011; Taylor 2012).

9 Turnbull earned the ire of Indigenous Australians also in summarily dismissing The Uluru Statement from the Heart, the outcome of a national process of deliberation on suitable Constitutional recognition for and by Indigenous Australians. The situation of Indigenous Australians warrants separate analysis.