Danny Nalliah's article criticises multiculturalism without actually defining it. A bit like throwing mud into thin air and expecting it to stick somewhere.

Fantastic article. I must add that the 'racist' card is definitely a tool to bully, vilify and denigrate white australians. Ignore Irfan by the way, he is a typical example of my point if you look at his previous posts.

While not necessarily agreeing with everything in the article, I think Danny's point that it would be "unfair that some immigrants would push towards Australia becoming like their country of origin" is a fair one. We enjoy freedoms in Australia not experienced in a lot of other countries because of religious or political ideologies. So we must not be afraid to take a stand against those who wish to undermine such freedoms.

One half of my family immigrated from Italy, the other from England, and both have settled themselves here, defining themselves as Australian. The non-English speakers have learnt English, and although one of my grandmothers makes spaghetti 14 times a week and my other grandmother regularly listens to the BBC, they are both fully integrated into the Australia way of life. I think this is a good model.

Mr Nalliah, I liked this paragraph:

"“Multiculturalism” is a tool that can be used to destabilise a nation. Australia welcomes people from all over the world. All who choose to come to Australia should be willing to become Australian. It is unfair that some immigrants would push towards Australia becoming like their country of origin. The government cannot and should not bend over backwards to trade the Aussie way of life for other ways. The current zeitgeist across Sydney’s beaches of ethnic rivalry has made it unpleasant for many immigrants and Muslims in Australia who want to live peaceful lives."

Well said, Danny Nalliah. I don't think Australians are the discriminating type. I myself am a dark-skinned immigrant like yourself (originally from East Africa). Having lived in a number of different countries before coming here, I have to say that I don't take seriously those who breathlessly despair of Australia's racism, recognising that such attitudes stem from people's ignorance and their never having seen the real thing. For example, having lived in England as a child before coming here (14 years ago), I can tell you that the (lower-class) English discriminated against people like you with alacrity and often little compunction (the derisive term “Paki” is one you would have come across a number of times had you lived there, and physical attack would not have been out of the question).

In Australia, however, discrimination offends against our fair-go sensibilities, and our commitment to egalitarianism does not easily lend itself to notions of innate superiority. Thus, two of the most cherished values held by Australians stand as a bulwarks against the possibility of racism. (While we may have a handful of real racists here, their existence should be interpreted in an Australian context, and so understood to be not an extreme representation of a bubbling, underlying sentiment held in check by our progressive elite but simply as representing a handful of freaks who stand as outstanding aberrations in a society committed to the aforementioned values of egalitarianism and a fair go.)

I've mentioned here before what Keith Windschuttle observed about Australian attitudes towards multiculturalism. He said that Australians are in favour of "soft" multiculturalism as opposed to "hard" multiculturalism. The former is the sort which implicitly calls for assimilation while allowing for gradual and comfortable acculturation by immigrants, while the latter is the balkanising, segregating, ghetto-creating sort celebrated by ABC and SBS progressive types. Naturally, Australians are far less comfortable with the latter form of multiculturalism.

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Indeed, I believe the Pauline Hanson affair was merely an inarticulate expression of many people's concern with "hard" multiculturalism. The concern demonstrated by many Australians gave the Asians a hint and prod as to what they should be doing, and ever since then they have been rapidly assimilating. They have thereby eliminated the disquiet which Hansonism represented, and Australians are now far more “relaxed and comfortable” with Asians than before their concerns were allowed to be (inarticulately) expressed.

This brings us to the problem of the fracas in Sydney. What this situation reveals is the Achilles heel of multiculturalism, where some immigrants may not abide by the implicit understanding that their arrival here is conditioned on their intention to eventually assimilate. Muslims are proving to be an immigrant group that is reluctant to assimilate if not downright opposed to it. This raises serious questions with the whole multicultural experiment, and Australians are quite right and justified to begin to question and debate its suitability if its only going to be of the "hard" variety which nobody but ABC and SBS folk want.