Multiculturalism; are they still trying to sell this pup? Can anyone recall mass protests by people demanding more multiculturalism? Raising this topic periodically would indicate that it hasn't been the outstanding success that we were told it would be. I think we should demand our money back.

To those who consider multiculturalism to be bad somehow, can I ask, does that mean you dislike this country? Because it's included a gamut of cultures for a long, long time now. In fact it's been one of the defining features of the country from the beginning.

So to suggest multiculturalism is a bad idea...wouldnt that be saying that Australia sucks, and always has?

People should exercise extreme caution when positing that Australia has always been multicultural. If that gains wide acceptance it will kill off the ‘White Australia’ policy. Disappearing with the term ‘White Australia’ would be racist and xenophobe (those two words can’t exist along with multiculturalism). Just think how upset the Trotskyites would be. They would only have access to a few barbs with which to abuse us; imperialist, colonialist and convicts. Maybe they could hammer us with an accusation of national Rachmanism.

"Howard is a cultural imperialist. He sees white, western culture as superior to all other cultures, and hasn’t the generosity of spirit or imagination to appreciate the benefits of other world-views"

Is that the culture of democracy, justice by rule of law, human rights, equality of the sexes, freedom of religion, economic growth through encourgaging enterprise, providing aid to others (e.g. 1 Billion to Indonesia, generoisty of spirit!), encouraging sport for health life styles, etc etc.........

Western "white" culture may not be fully perfect and there are bad points (as in any culture) but really can any one argue it is not worthy as the one culture to aspire too?

Does that make me rascist? Or just a philosophical-ist?

Not at all Spendo... Australia developed a recognizable culture which was quite stable up to the outbreak of WW2 and only after that did we open our doors to non traditional ethnic sources of migrants.

PROTESTS ON THE DOCKS.
There were people who protested on the docks in those days who, from their thrones in glory are probably saying "We told you so" for the very simple reason that the word 'Multi'-cultural is used to describe once 'mono' cultural Australia.

NOT 'MULTI' but CITIZENS
As I've argued in other threads, we don't need the word 'Multi' to be connected to Culture in Australia, we have a culture and the only word we need to focus on is..CITIZENSHIP.

BLENDED NATION.
In the process of becoming good, well informed citizens, there will be an inevitable osmosis of cultural habits which the predominant culture picks up from the newby's which are seen to be of value, and specially so as people from various ethno/cultural backgrounds intermarry.

RACIST BARRIERS.
The only true barriers to inter-marriage and cultural/racial blending are 'racist' ones. Only those who believe they are ethnically or culturally superior will resent the idea of marrying someone from a different culture. Some may refrain for reasons of a personal and practical nature, such as the inability to cope with too much difference, and this is understandable. But the 'in principle' disagreement with the idea of cultural/ethnic blending is plain racist.

BRING A PLATE, BARRACK FOR THE TEAM.. AND MARRY MY DAUGHTER. (she's cute)
Yes, lets have social interaction, lets be friendly to all, but don't let us put barriers to marriage in the way of our offspring who happen to love each other.

Emma,

This is really good stuff but was Fraser our last "liberal" prime minister? Ok, he might be a liberal or semi bolshevik now but whether he was a liberal PM we judge by his actions during his period in office. He was pretty bad in those days!