I don't know why so many people seem to think that multiculturalism means rejecting or denying British heritage. Multiculturalism means you're free to embrace your heritage(s) - all of them. Or, as our Prime Minister put it as recently as this week, words to the effect that being Australian doesn't require you to give up the place in one's heart for your "mother country", if you so desire.

So multiculturalism means that British heritage may be admired, celebrated and respected as one amongst the many to be found here. And as we all know, British cultures wasn't the first on the island. :0)

Now, that hardly amounts to a "denial" of the role of the British government in developing the Australian nation, or a "denial" of the importance British heritage in the psyche of many, but not all, Australians.

And what, Leigh, is so "undemocratic" about a multicultural policy that allows all Australians to cherish their respective backgrounds?

Multiculture is as dead as the DoDo's, it just hasn't had the decency to disappear.
All it has achieved in this country is tribes doing tribal things. There is nothing in it to bind us, it is opposite ,it divides us and in the long run it will lead to real trouble when those who come from a violent, belligerant background want that background to be the norm here. Because that is the only thing they understand.
I am thankful for the good Australia I and my children grew up in. Unfortunately the next descendants will not have it as good. It has been spoiled .Such a shame.

So, the usual disagreeable patronising nativist rants from the great gatekeepers of Angloceltic Australia on OLO, Leigh, Keith, Sage, hells angel, …and the rest of you who haven’t yet laced up your Romper Stomper boots. Go for it, guys, put in the boot! Agnes Tay may not be Muslim or Middle Eastern but, hey, she’s a woman, and she has a Chinese surname, and there are four of you and just one of her, so she’s fair game !

You are not just bullies, guys, you are ignorant:
1. None of you responded to Agnes’ clincher demographic fact: “But what are we being asked to assimilate into? The 2001 census reports that 65 per cent of Australians have non-Australian ancestry. The majority of us have an “ancestry”, a cultural history through our parents which is non-Australian.” . Well ?

Ghassan Hage was right about you guys (in OLO and NM a few weeks ago) – you are not a majority , you are an out-numbered, assimilationist xenophobe minority, and your only asset is that your spiritual inspiration is the master of rat-cunning, our present PM . Were Howard not feeding your juices, you would be like Daleks with the power switched off, whirring round in ever-decreasing circles. The fact is, most Australians already ARE multicultural - it is not a theory or doctrine or ideology, just a genetic fact of our great country. (part 1 of 2)

(part 2 of 2)
2. All of you, like your Grand Wizard, are now trying to run Australia on the politics of fear; to make every person who hasn’t quite “passed “ into your little self-selected Anglo-Celtic club feel afraid that they haven’t made it, that they may not yet quite fit in.

But folks, don’t be scared, because you see, these guys are bluffing! When you subtract everyone they want to make feel a little scared - not just the Muslims, and not just darker-skinned people indigenous to Australia or from the Indian subcontinent, but East Asians as well, and hey, why not Greek and Italian and Spanish European Christians as well ? (read Ezequiel Trumper in New Matilda to see what that last group really think of Leigh’s and his mates’ impertinent claims) …You see, folks, when I add up all of these groups, and their many friends and relations of whom I am proudly one - hey, WE are the majority and Leigh and his mates the minority ! But relax, guys, I won’t hurt you, because I believe in the rights of minorities in a plural democracy.

3. And you just don’t get Australian history. We never were a harmonious Anglo-Celtic society here. We were in tension from the beginning, between aborigines and settlers, Anglos and Celts, Tykes and Prods …you cannot understand Vinegar Hill, the squatting and land issue, the Eureka Stockade, the bushrangers, the anti-conscription movement, the Labor movement, White Australia, aboriginal massacres, stolen children … without factoring in those tensions. Don’t hold up a golden age before multiculturalism, Leigh -it never existed.

Thanks, Agnes, for a dignified and interesting piece – and I apologise for Leigh, though I know he hates me to. Hang in there – our ideas will win, because they rest on truth and decency. (And, I knew and liked both your parents, Alice and Eugene ).
Tony Kevin

Let's look at the really best thing about multiculturalism - all the great ethnic foods that we can now find in our various restaurants. How many Greek, Italian, Thai and Mexican restaurants existed in your neighborhoods 10 or 15 years ago?

Our dining habits have changed enormously as these various cultures have come into our society over the past couple decades.

There was nothing wrong with having people from many cultures coming here.The problem was with the laisse-faire airheads who ran immigration.There was no quality control,nor standards of behaviour that were expected of newly arrived people.

As soon as we try to implement any standards,the loopy left scream discrimination.