Australia is a multicultural nation. If you disagree with this assertion or want a society that is monocultural or one that has the power to impose the dominant (or subservient) culture's fundamental mores onto others - then you have identified a major cultural difference (given that multiculturalism is a basis of Australian culture)and thus have once again reaffirmed our multiculturalism.

Moreover, the posts above indicate that a lot would never agree to, among other things, monoculturalism or the cultural mores of certain others - so once again we remain multicultural.

Cultural exchange can be healthy for society. If you doubt this, just go to any monocultural place and point out some wrong-headed idea. Monocultural societies tend to maintain their homogeneity with fascistic methods or through information control. That is because no matter how hard rulers stomp- difference will always arise. I love and embrace multiculturalism - it is Australian to the core. I find it ironic that settled Australians expect immigrants to accept our ways and yet are adopting monocultural ideas that immigrants are often fleeing from.

Multiculturalism has at its core "life choices". These need not be directly ethnic based, religious based, politically based or related to popular orthodoxies. For instance: A dedicated tennis player makes different life choices to a bass guitarist in an punk band. The tennis player dressed in pretty white uniform will wonder around his local sports store without any questions; the punk will be viewed with suspicion and stopped at the door for a bag check. The prejudice experienced by the punk is wrong but at least he is helping to discredit stereotypes. In Australia we can stir up prejudiced straights (larrikin behaviour) and that is a beauty of multiculturalism.

In some monocultural countries the tennis guy and the punk would both be arrested because women aren't allowed to play tennis and tattoos and punk hairdo's are against their God’s monocultural idea – so you are offending God (not the local Islamic/Christian behaviour management crew) . In Australia we can freely make these life choices - we can be individuals - multiculturalism is good.

Ronnie Peters: "Australia is a multicultural nation. If you disagree with this assertion or want a society that is monocultural or one that has the power to impose the dominant (or subservient) culture's fundamental mores onto others - then you have identified a major cultural difference (given that multiculturalism is a basis of Australian culture)and thus have once again reaffirmed our multiculturalism."

Multiculturalism is a basis of Australian culture? That's strange because I always assumed that Australian culture was predominantly influenced by its British origins. In fact, your statement is downright contradictory. If multiculturalism is a reality, then there is no such thing as "Australian culture". Rather, we are simply "the colony of every nation on earth" as well-known professor Geoffrey Blainey put it.

Despite their trendy phrases and utopian razzmatazz, multiculturalists fail to comprehend that a level of homogeneity and integration is necessary in order for a society to be functional and harmonious. While a society does have an absorption capacity for immigrants from other cultures, the huge influx of people from diverse cultural backgrounds, in combination with multiculturalism, is forcing Australia down the path of cultural and ethnic segregation. As the more rabid multiculturalists will happily admit, multiculturalism is a disincentive to integration as it explicitly fosters division between ethnic and cultural groups, between "old" and "new" Australians. Migrants are encouraged to cling to their old cultures and nationalism, thereby bringing many of the problems and prejudices attached to their old homeland with them.

Let us hope that common sense prevails and that Australian policymakers follow the lead of the beleaguered Dutch in repudiating multiculturalism before this divisive policy can cause any further damage.

Banjo, With that post you still wonder why people here don't take you seriously and don't want to engage with your stupid ideas.

Why? Its because we've been there done that too many times before. You're a social and cultural dinasaur roaming around trying to find people who will keep you comfortable with the ridiculous theories about race and racism.

You can rabbit on to me all you like. You've got nothing to offer and to be quite frank this response to you is more than a generous offering of my time and patience.

I always find it amazing that those who are intellectually challenged never think they are. Grow up Banjo, theres a world out there you know nothing about.

Peace.

Ronnie Peters

You are talking about individuality. The right to dress in an individual way or to adopt a certain lifestyle. That is not the crux of the problem with multiculturalism. What causes ethnic cleansing and wars is separation of bloodlines. (tribalism).

The wearing of the Muslim robes is seen and rightly so as a symbol of tribal segregation by the muslims. It actively prevents them from being at one with Australian society because it acts as a barrier to muslim women being approached by men who arent muslim and so they have little hope of ever being anything but a muslim tribe whos first loyalty will always be to their tribe and not the rest of Australia.

Brain Drain,

I think a lot of the very stupid believe it is complex,( including academics) when in fact it is very simple. That’s because they have got their heads stuck up in the intellectual eather somewhere where they use scientific ideaology to justify their utopian views of the world. As an example of this I remember a few years back scientists saying that the leaves of trees don’t absorb water to survive. I thought at the time, what rubbish! why would they not be capable of using every means they have to survive in dry times? Recently they made a statement saying that their research now tells them that leaves do aabsorb moisture.

Albert Enstein was kicked out of the hallowed halls of high learning for daring to disagree with the accepted ideas of some of the professors.

Academics invented the phrase ethnic cleansing because it would offend their academic sensibilities to mention the word tribe. Ethnic cleansing is territorial tribal massacre.
Tribes don’t exist up in the intellectual eather , they are too superior and intellectual to be tribal that’s only for lowly natives running around in jungles with spears.

The river of life runs along at the biological level not up in the academic mystical towers

Sharkfin: No your assertions are wrong. I am talking about multiculturalism - one's and others’cultures.

A punks’ culture is different to a health-nut tennis player. They have sufficient differences in the way they live and life choices to be regarded as having a different culture. You have been making ethnicity the marker for difference rather than true difference. True punks’ culture is probably more different then a lot of immigrants’ culture.

Oligarch: Among others, British culture, Indigenous culture, Irish culture, German culture - all these bring their own culture to the mix. They are many and thus must help comprise a multicultural society.

It is offensive that you disregard the other cultures that have and do contribute to this country's greatness. Your assertion that British culture is dominant doesn't negate the others. There is no contradiction in my statement.

We have a fundamental difference in belief in regard to whether or not Australia should be multicultural or monocultural like Islam. I embrace multiculturalism - you reject it. That goes beyond individualism. We are not just arguing over different but fundamentally opposing cultures. We hold different positions on cultural foundations. Thus we are multicultural.

Also I hold that multiculturalism is a culture in itself – I can’t see how it can be otherwise. A multiculturalist plus a monoculturalist is more than one - hence multicultural. Or are you saying that monoculturalists aren’t British and thus don’t count?

You accuse me of being contradictory whilst complaining that you don’t want Australia to continue to be multicultural but at the same time asserting that one culture dominates Australia. A true contradiction.

You are confusing culture with law. Multiculturalism must respect the established law of this nation. How could it legally not?

I share the concern that when introducing other cultures such as Islam we multiculturalism advocates must not allow cultural mores of those cultures to override our own established fair and just laws. I also say hold firm to our right to individual culture and support our right to choose an other culture. I love the way multiculturalism enables itself and the individual.