Building social cohesion

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Darug people, the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to elders past and present.  I also acknowledge the fine work of the University of Western Sydney, particularly Dr Sev Ozdowski, in putting together this conference. It’s most timely; it concerns a very important national conversation that we should be having right now. 

I’d like to focus my remarks on on three set of issues. One concerns our record of social cohesion and the reasons for Australia’s success in that area. The second set of issues concerns how we best combat racism, especially the role of legislative protections against discrimination. The third set of issues concerns that of values and leadership. 

Two incidents of racism

I’ll begin, however, by reflecting on two incidents last week.  The first incident, which many of you will be familiar with, concerned Dawn Fraser and her comments about tennis player Nick Kyrgios. Dawn Fraser said that Nick Kyrgios should go back to where his parents came from; those remarks were directed also at a fellow tennis player Bernard Tomic. 

In the response to those remarks, we saw a number of things.  One was perhaps the reflection of generational attitudes concerning immigration or the place of migrants in our society.  That was certainly my first response in hearing of Dawn Fraser’s comments. I didn’t think we should presume in the first instance that they were a reflection of some deep seated personal racist animus against migrants.  They probably just reflected a generational attitude that people had in how you might respond to people with certain backgrounds. 

But we also saw with that incident an overwhelming response.  There was a public outcry. Very shortly after Dawn Fraser made those remarks, she offered an unreserved apology to Nick Kyrgios and his family.  That is a reflection of the progress that we’ve made as a society.  Ten, twenty, thirty years ago you may not have seen such a public outcry; you may not have seen such a public apology.  The fact that that was offered, it shows that the vast majority of Australians don’t believe that it’s appropriate to tell and tell people that they should go back to to where they’re from. 

The second incident concerns something that happened last Friday night. It was brought to my attention by a staff member at the Australian Human Rights Commission. This staff member is blind.  Last Friday night she took a taxi ride home; at night she generally finds it a  challenge to navigate her way back into her apartment.  On this occasion last Friday night, the taxi driver was kind enough to get out of the taxi and to escort her back to the apartment. 

About ten minutes later, this staff member’s brother entered the apartment in a flustered and agitated state. What had happened was that the taxi driver had parked in another resident’s car spot. According to her brother, the resident who owned the spot had gone down and tried physically to remove this taxi driver from his seat – and the actions were accompanied by all sorts of racial epithets. There was some property damage done to the taxi.  The windows were damaged, glass was smashed. The staff member’s brother told the neighbour that he was going to call the police, which ended the situation.

Now, I tell you this story as well just to remind all of us that such a violent incidence of racism still occur. While there is a new generational form of racial prejudice and discrimination today embodied by that category of so called casual racism, this shouldn’t leave us under any apprehension that more extreme and violent forms of racism still occur. 

Building social cohesion

On combating racism, it is essential that we think about the challenge of building social cohesion.  They’re like two opposite sides of the coin. Quite often, we think of racism as something that inflicts harm on individuals personal health or wellbeing.  There’s also, of course, an important and profound social cost when it concerns racism. Whenever there is an act, whether it’s covert or overt, whether it’s to do with prejudice or attitudes or physical violence, an act of racism undermines the sense of assurance that all members of our society should have. Assurance about their freedom to live their lives with decency and with equality.

We have many threats today when it concerns race and social cohesion.  Many of them Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas has already catalogued. We are seeing – based on the community response that I get through my work – a rise in the abuse and harassment of Muslim and Arab Australians. This is particularly so amid rising community anxiety about national security.  We see as well reports of rising anti-Semitism.  We see a concerning rise in anti-Chinese sentiment. 

And we see extremist organisations being active in ways that we haven’t seen for a very long time.  While these groups have only marginal public support, it is concerning is that they are coming out in public and not confining their activities underground. 

But let me turn those to to some of the good news – because there is there is good news to to be told. Australia’s history as a nation of immigration, particularly since the end of the Second World War, is a genuine national success story. Very few countries have been able to conduct programs of mass immigration and not encounter significant social discord or fragmentation.  In every decade since the end of the Second World War, Australia has taken more than 1 million migrants. Look at the results: a widespread acceptance of multiculturalism; a celebration to multiculturalism.

We do not have periodic outbursts or outbreaks of civil unrest or rioting, whereas that is quite common in many other liberal democracies. The children of migrants outperform the children of native born Australians when it concerns education and employment. Eighty percent of those who arrive in Australia as migrants become Australian citizens within a decade.  These are all signs of the success that we have had in maintaining social cohesion. 

There are a number of reasons that we can pinpoint for why this success has occurred.  The first concerns the nation building character of our immigration program and our multiculturalism.  In the years immediately following the Second World War, this was articulated very explicitly in terms of ‘populate or perish’.  Over time, the rationale has changed; nonetheless, that nation building dynamic has always been there.  Immigration is is there to strengthen our economy.  It’s there to enrich our country.  It’s something that is about building Australia into a bigger and better country. 

There’s the nature of our migration intake as well.  Since the late ‘70’s, there has been an emphasis on skilled migration and English proficiency among migrants.  This goes some way to explaining why migrants have generally, on average, enjoyed very good labour market outcomes. 

And there has been political leadership on all this. Traditionally matters of migration and matters of multiculturalism have not been the subject of political contest.  There has been agreement that too much has been at stake to subject these matters to the usual rough and tumble of partisan politics. 

Multiculturalism and racial discrimination legislation

There is another reason for our success, namely, concerning multicultural policy. All of the success that I’ve mentioned happened by accident or happened organically.  It’s been a matter of design in part.

This goes to some of the conversations that have been occurring at this conference about the exceptional character of Australian multiculturalism.  Indeed, what multiculturalism has meant here in the Australian experience is very different to the multiculturalism that is referred to in Europe or elsewhere. Multicultural policy is not merely symbolic, but also muscular and practical in nature. 

I’ll give you a quick illustration. I spent some years in England conducting research in political philosophy. When I explained to my English counterparts that multiculturalism as policy in Australia meant very practical things – having migrant resource centres where new migrants can get information about how to get a Medicare card, how to enrol their children in school or get information about how rubbish is collected in their local neighbourhood – they were surprised. They didn’t have anything equivalent in the UK, notwithstanding an ostensible British commitment to multiculturalism.  Those very basic things that we take for granted as part of the multicultural experience are not necessarily things that occur in other national contexts – underlining just again how unique and peculiar our experience of multiculturalism has been. 

The legislative backbone to this multiculturalism has taken the form of the Racial Discrimination Act.  This Act this year celebrates its 40th Anniversary.  It was passed in 1975 by the Parliament as the first federal piece of legislation concerning human rights and discrimination. 

It’s interesting to reflect on the peculiar history of this legislation. In America the idea of racial equality was one that came about because of a concerted civil movement, because of a result of a comprehensive struggle, because of voices like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. It was accompanied by a grandeur of rhetoric: the notion of a nation coming to fulfil a certain dream.

In Australia, we did not have such momentum behind the passage of racial discrimination laws. Yes, there was a Freedom Ride in 1965 that was instigated by Charles Perkins, which revealed for the first time in many respects the kind of segregation that existed in many towns.  We had a boycott of the touring Springbok party in 1971, and in response Joh Bjelke-Petersen in fact declared a six-week long period of state emergency in Queensland. But for the most part there wasn’t just kind of broad civil movement. 

Nonetheless, the law has had profound effects. Before 1975, if you went to a bar and you weren’t served because you were black or because someone did not like the colour of your skin; if you were denied a room in a hotel because you were Chinese – there was nothing that you could do.  You could not claim that the law was even on your side.  The Racial Discrimination Act changed this. 

Over time there were additions made to the law. The most profound addition was made in 1995 when racial vilification provisions were introduced to the law.  These provisions made it unlawful to do an act that offends, insults, humiliates or intimidates another person or group of people because of their race. This is the provision of section 18C of the Act, which has been the subject of much debate in recent times. The effect of having such provisions in our discrimination legislation, though, is this; it says to people that you cannot inflict mental harm on others and believe that you can get away without some consequences.  It says that you should be able to hold others to account if you have been subjected to discrimination or vilification. 

Contrary to what some people say, you can’t be prosecuted and you can’t be convicted under the Racial Discrimination Act. That's because the law is a civil law.  It means only that someone can make a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission which then attempts to conciliate the matter. To give you a sense of how the law works, the vast majority of cases never reach court.  Less than 3 per cent of cases last year, for example, reached court.  The majority of more than 60 per cent of complaints are successfully conciliated by the Commission, reflecting the educative and civil nature of the legislation we have against racial discrimination. 

Values and leadership

Having a law in place isn’t, of course, sufficient to combat racism. Here’s where values and leadership enter the picture.

Not least, the value of citizenship has been central to our success in maintaining cohesion.  Citizenship is a relatively new concept in the Australian political and legal culture.  Prior to 1948, there was in fact no category for citizenship in Australia.  Those who were members of Australian society were subjects of the British crown; they were not citizens.

We have here a clear reflection of how central citizenship is for the Australian national story when it concerns immigration. In a country where we have cultural and ethnic diversity, it is in the rights and responsibilities of citizenship that we find our common ground. As Professor Andrew Markus and Professor Peter Shergold have said, multiculturalism has been articulated expressly in terms of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

We are, at the moment, having a debate about citizenship – about whether citizenship should be revoked in some circumstances.  We should have a very sober and calm deliberation about any changes to our citizenship regime.

Currently, one can have citizenship ceased or revoked if one fights with the armed forces of a foreign country that is at war with Australia.  If there is going to be an expansion of the categories of conduct which enliven a cessation of citizenship, it should be confined to those forms of criminal conduct that are commensurate with serving with the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. If there is to be an expansion of the circumstances in which citizenship can be revoked, it has to be accompanied by safeguards as to due process for Australian citizens. 

Let me make two other points very quickly about values and leadership values.  Leadership is connected with the language that we use in our political debates about counter-violent extremism, community harmony, social cohesion, multiculturalism. We need to be very careful about how we use these terms, because the last thing we would want to do is to pathologise multiculturalism: to think of multiculturalism only as a response to violent extremism and forget that there is in fact a positive aspiration of nation-building that is at the essence at our multiculturalism. 

In talking about national security, let’s also remember that we are best placed to fight any threat through national unity as opposed to social division. We also need to ensure that the leadership that we have on such matters is expressed at all levels of our society. Yes, through our political leaders and our elected representatives; but also at the grassroots levels of our communities.

I want to conclude on this note about the response of communities to questions of race and social cohesion.  Last week I had the pleasure of catching up with two individuals who had stood up to racism in public places.  One, Stacey Clark, responded in a Sydney train carriage to a woman who was abusing a Muslim couple. Another, Jason Cias, intervened on a Melbourne train carriage after a group of tradesmen began vilifying (again) a group of Muslim passengers. Jason would end up being punched in the face, and getting injured. But when asked would he do it again, he answered the only thing he would change was to have said something earlier.

In the examples of Stacey Clark and Jason Cias, we have demonstrations of the goodwill in our community and people’s increased willingness to confront racism. That, for all of us, should be a source of some cautious optimism as we navigate what will be very tricky waters ahead on matters of social cohesion.