This article is timely and apposite.
What a mockery of sense it is to make a high degree of competence in English a component of sucessful migration.

I suggest that we throw the Prime Minister of the country right now, unless he can go on The 7.30 Report and discourse on African migration philosophy in Swahili or Bantu.
Not happy, John?

We are not born with language skill; it is a learned thing.
All that language barriers achieve with migration is to provide the nation's non-thinkers with a useful prop for their xenophobia.
Also, we're being snowed with the favourite issue of our time - "terrorism".
It's a handy phrase to repeat over and over, to ensure that arms and repression forces get a biger slice of the financial cake.

One of the best things that we can do for fairness and equality is to place OURSELF in the shoes of the prospective migrant.
Could we hack it for permanent entry to another country?
I doubt it, so we just keep on striving to exclude fellow humans from ours!

Peter van Vliet is right to expect responses to his article to reveal outright hostility to the concept of multiculturalism.

Some of will be personally abusive. After all, van Vliet is the Executive Officer of the Ethnic Communities' Council of Victoria; therefore, we'll have the dog squad barking about vested interests, the multicultural industry and taxpayers' money.

Some of it will betray abyssmal ignorance of the meaning of the concept and how it plays out in communities, employment, schools and other places where Australians interact. These critics will invent all sorts of demonic 'isms' that they will define as Multiculturalism and then set about demolishing their own inventions.

Some of it will be manifest an hysterical fear (real or contrived) of difference and make false connections to such phenomena as Islam, terrorisim, national security and race. And, of course, we'll have conspiracy theorists telling us that 'Multiculturalism is designed to destabilise Australian culture for ideological purposes'.

Encouraged by the Howard Government's dumping of the word 'Multiculturalism' from the title of the Immigration Department, some will hail the imminent end of Multiculturalism.

However, readers should not confuse the volume of the anti-multicultural noise with any clear analysis of the policy.

Australia is demographically a multicultural society and most Australians understand that that reality cannot be changed without ethnic cleansing and mass deportations. Many Australians actually rejoice in the diversity and say that diversity has made Australia a better place to live.

What is harder for many Australians to grapple with is how Australia should respond to cultural diversity. Clear-headed reflection will show us that Australian values and culture are under continuing development and negotiation through democratic processes.

Australian values and culture are not a fixed and final product to be transmitted to the young and the newly-arrived or to be inspected in a museum display case. In a democracy these matters are debated maturely in an on-going way and are never finally resolved. You would hope that OLO would be a site where that mature debate is furthered. I suspect irrational hostility will prevail. That's a pity.

Just so that we know that you are all fair dinkum about the xenophobia bit, let us have a well reasoned treatise from someone explaining the immigration and citizenship policies of the Japanese. I haven't read any accusations of xenophobia there from any our multiculturism supporters.

And having migrants speaking fluent english is a bad thing is it? Considering that a lot of us never wanted 'multiculturalism' in the first place, speaking the national language (English) is a good deal. In fact, speaking fluent english is essential in breaking down the barriers towards a more cohesive society, since the advent of a ruinous 'diverse' society (the diversity that costs some 9 billion $ a year to prop up - taxpayers money of course).

Yep, FrankGol, here they come. The usual avalanche of people with the misguided impression that they're the only real good citizens of the nation.

It's odd that those of us happy to live in Australian society the way it is, multicultural, are so often accused of having hatred and loathing for our own country. It's obviously the other way around.

Australia is a high immigration, multicultural nation where many languages are spoken and we're all used to a variety of accents and versions of English. That's just what Australian society is. Yet so many here complain about it. So many xenophobes who want the country to be exclusively Anglo, something it isn't.

Seems to me the intolerant are the ones who loathe Australian society. We need some properly funded programs to help them assimilate to the real Australia.

Is questioning multiculturalism wrong ? Why shouldn't we have a population debate, what is the ideal number of us ? what is an ideal socio-cultural mix ?

I wonder if it may be that as our demography becomes more complex we need to find simpler national symbols to define what an Australian is ? Pledge allegiance to the flag and all that guff ?

If English is our national language should there be any public obligation to provide information etc in other languages ?