The Australian
Human Rights Commission’s Race Discrimination Commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane,
was in conversation with President of the Commission, Gillian Triggs, last
night. He talked about culture,
citizenship and identity. He argued
that Australia is a relatively socially cohesive place and that he thinks
Australia is perceived as a tolerant country, on the world stage. What amazes me is that considering many
conservatives in Australia provide such a sustained attack on multiculturalism,
Australia has continued to be all soft and fluffy. Despite the conservatives’ assertion of the value of all
things economically productive, white and Christian (a narrow version of what
it means to be Australian; and their attempt to hold these imaginary Australian
values up against that which they consider unAustralian), how has Australia
remained a relatively tolerant country?
The closest
their discussion came to suggest the possibility that Australia could become a
less cohesive nation was in mention of the Scanlan Foundation’s report,
‘Mapping social cohesion’. The report
builds on information gained from the five earlier annual reports, starting in
2007. “In 2013 there was a marked increase
in reported experience of discrimination. The Scanlon Foundation survey asked:
‘Have you experienced discrimination because of your skin colour, ethnic origin
or religion?’ The 2013 survey found the
highest level recorded across the six surveys (19%), an increase of seven
percentage points over 2012.” [1](Andrew
Markus 2013, p.2)
And what I was
unable to articulate last night is whether the speakers thought these attacks
by the conservatives on diversity, for example; the supposed left wing bias in the way
history is taught in school, gays being allowed to marry, asylum seekers, the
value of education that does not doesn’t merely turn us into economically productive
and obedient citizens, and empowerment for Indigenous people that does not
focus exclusively on turning them into productive individualists, are becoming
increasing threats to the social fabric.
If these attacks continue and intensify, will an Australia of the future
be a place that slowly descends into social disorder, and as a result,
contribute to a global move toward the same? Or are these conservative ideas of thought always hanging
around in the background, not any more intense or divisive now than they have
been in the past? Is it
significant that Labor has moved so far right that, from both sides of politics,
we are increasingly seeing simplistic and divisive ideas about what it means to
be an Australian and what is good for the Australian people?
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