Hamlet says:"Multiculturalism is more than clothes, food, dance and film. It is acceptance of the major differences. Australia has been a multi-'racial' (in as much as 'race' can be defined) place, but multi-racial and multicultural are two different things."

Indeed. The way we use the term "multicultural" is really quite misleading. Australia's vast ethnic diversity exists within a single agreed common culture, firmly based on a British core. Being part of this common culture has nothing whatever to do with the genetic differences some people choose to call "race".

The things often described as our "multicultural" differences – foods, private religious beliefs, sports, languages used in the family, and so on – are precisely those factors that do not cause conflict provided the agreed common culture, its values and its legal framework are adhered to.

Acceptance of diversity on that level is simply part of our mainstream, British-based culture.

For those who are all a-lather about supposed the supposed invention in Australian culture of gang rapes by groups of young Muslim men, I offer the following:

* Anita Cobby
* Janine Balding
* Leigh Leigh
* The infamous Ingham (Qld) gang rapes of the 1970s
* The Bulldogs (well all of them except a certain Hazem El Masri)
* Etc etc etc

But lastly

* I suppose the gang rape by military personnel in Wagga Wagga reported on this morning's news must have been perpetrated by one of the Muslim platoons?

I can't believe some of the garbage I read in these forums.

About the crime etc.
I've always thought that religion tends to just bring out whats on the inside in people. Good people will use their religion to motivate themselves to do good things. For example, help and feed the poor. Bad people will find loopholes in their religion to justify their behaviour. (I know "good" and "bad" are very black and white terms, but they are for a simplistic explanation).

About multi-culturism.
From my experiences, I've always thought that we should encourage intergration rather than multi-culturalism. People want to immigrate here because of our attractive values and attitudes (Although John Howard wants to get rid of them at the moment with these 'anti-terrorism laws', but thats another matter). Race and Culture should be irrelevant, what should be relevant is whether people have a values framework which supports democracy, tolerance, free speech and respect of others. I know plenty of Aussie-Chinese and ABCs(australian born chinese) who are some of my best friends, and as aussie as you and me. I know others who, as others have been saying, have no interest in our culture. This should all be taken care of at the immigration application point.

I think this would keep wat is good and unique about Australia, as well as allowing that diversity and variety in which keeps our culture interesting and progressive.

Hullo, Scooper9. I thought you said that you were not going to talk to me anymore?

The information that 70 Australian girls were gang raped by Muslim race hate rape packs was obtained from Australia’s national newspaper, (The Australian), and Sydney’s two local newspapers, the right leaning "Daily Telegraph" and the left leaning "Sydney Morning Herald." Would you like me to give to the dates?

If 70 Muslim girls were gang raped by Anglo Saxon men, and if those rapes were ongoing to this day, you and Mahatma Sitting Duck would be claiming that this is proof positive of how racist Australians are. But when the race hate rapes occur the other way, you fall all over yourself trying to find an angle to deny the obvious.

You claimed that there were more rapes on the NSW North Coast than in Muslim areas. Uh huh. The nightclubs where girls are routinely getting their drinks allegedly spiked by Muslims like Adel Samadi and Chebil Djait are not noted for being in Muslim areas. But thank you for admitting how Australia’s suburbs are becoming racially segregated. Now, let’s look at the North Coast of NSW. Is there not large aboriginal communities on NSW’s North Coast? And are we all not confronted about stories of children getting raped in aboriginal communities? Are not these rapes so bad, that aboriginal children as young as six are now being screened for sexually transmitted diseases? But you kinda forgot to mention that, right?

And guess what? Driving home from work yesterday afternoon and listening to 2CH on the radio, came the news of another gang rape of a 17 year old girl involving “five brothers”. Police asked the magistrate to deny bail because they feared the five would “flee the country.” You can not join the dots but most Sydneysiders can.

Redneck- you made the point that there are 'muslim hate rape gangs' in Sydney, with the express implication that Muslims seem to be responsible for a whole lot more rapes, gang or otherwise than Anglo Australians. I responded with a report from BOSCAR which states that areas of Western Sydney compared to other parts of the state rank lower for rape than others, and somehow we now move onto talking about Aboriginals. So keeping those stats in mind where are these 'muslim hate rape gangs' you speak of?

As for your figure of 70 gang rapes- Kate Gleeson writing in the same article I left for you before writes "the figure of 70 gang rapes is alarming. But it seems to relate to a police statistic concerning 70 sexual offences in Bankstown that was later clarified by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. In August 2001, the Bureau released a media brief that clarified the figure of 70 sexual offences investigated in Bankstown for the month of June 1999. The media brief stated that 70 instances of sexual offences were reported to Bankstown police in June 1999 and that 'these offences were not committed by a gang..they were mainly committed by a single indivdual who has since been charged...".

No one denies the existence of rape Redneck, and how terrifying it is. However as I have demonstrated with reference to evidence that 'gang rape' is not culturally specific and that your notion of 'muslim hate rape gangs' is a mere fallacy

Good one, scooper9. But one of the problems I've noticed in these forums is that some of the most strongly opinionated and vociferous participants in these 'debates' simply ignore reliable and verifiable data in favour of any factoid they can glean from populist media or the Internet (or even worse, some sacred text or another), that suits whichever loopy agenda they're trying to push.

Personally, I try to ensure that anything I write here has a strong basis in reasonably current academic and scientific sources, in addition to what I pick up like anybody else in the media and by active participation in society. It would be really great if more people learnt how to acquire knowledge by being a little more discriminating about their secondary sources like the media, and a little less discriminating about primary sources, like the actual people about whom they have these extreme opinions.

Go out and meet them. The biggest problem we have is ignorance, not only about reliable information, but also about each other. I've spent a lot of time over the years in very diverse cultural situations - in Australia, Asia, and the Pacific - and these have only enriched my life and perspective.

Many of the views that are expressed here infer a paucity of actual experience of other cultures and people, that apparently leaves too many people open to the kind of xenophobic moral panic that we are apparently experiencing.