grn, Thermistocles and Boaz,
You all made good points. This author is a complete dill who looks at ethnic diversity through rose coloured glasses. He totally disregards the baggage the comes with some cultures. Australians have been very understanding of various cultures and we have made allowances for them, but what about those that do not reciprocate. Those that do not want to mix with other cutures or respect our social norms. Do we keep on importing them?

He also has a big chip on his shoulder and thinks all appointments are made, or should be, on grounds other than ability. Thats how to acheive medeocracy. The most suitable persons should get positions and to hell with ethnicity, religion, race or sex.

Relax, Leigh, multiculturalism is dead. This has all happened before, during the gold rush. At the end of the rush we had a far more multicultural population than at any time since, but seventy years later it had all boiled down into a monoculture, with one of the interesting features that every otherwise monocultural country town had its Chinese takeaway. Unless the current wave of immigration is maintained, and many are starting to question it because of shortages of resources, particularly water, we can expect the same thing to happen again. Very few Australians recognise the power of our culture; immigrants from all over the world, given a few decades, become genuine aussies with very little social discord. If you ask most immigrants what they want, it is to assimilate into the community whilst retaining their heritage, and this is what we are very good at. The only group it hasn't worked well with are the aboriginals, and they aren't immigrants. I know this is not to the taste of many academics, but you know how highly their views are regarded in the community.

Enamoured though I am of Australia's cultural diversity, I think Andrew Jakubowicz's article is seriously flawed in at least a couple of ways.

Calling for representation in public institutions that is representative of the cultural and ethnic composition of the populace is well and good, but Jakubowicz doesn't say how this enlightened state will occur beyond "from public nominations". He leaves himself open to accusations of positive discrimination that are particularly fraught in the current political climate.

"This equation can only be made to work if large numbers of skilled immigrants are attracted to and retained in Australia."

We are rapidly approaching - if we haven't already reached it - the point where our population and economy are unsustainable at our current levels of consumption of energy and resources. I think that about the only immigrants we should admit to Australia are refugees, and that we should increase facilities for them (and indeed any other Australians) to acquire the skills that we need.

Australia has been a mono culture for many years until the immigrants came. They brought new foods new values and slowly the Australian culture changed.

Some argue that individual cultures must be maintained and cherished and not polluted, while others say that being Australian should be the only culture.

I tend to be somewhere imbetween. If you are of say Greek heritage, then cherish it, maintain your language, religion, and values. Like wise for all other backgrounds.

However, although it is always easier to associate with those of common experiences, if one does not moderate it with the greater population, or the other way round, then insulation, nepotism and distrust are easy traps to fall into.

Australia should be a melding pot of cultural diversity not a monoculture or a series of unrelated cultural islands.

How does Australia "get this inclusion thing working" Mr Jakubowicz? It doesn't.

To begin with, assimilation was a dirty word with the multiculturalists for decades. It was only the detonation of the bombs in London, which finally made them focus upon what the "racists" had been saying all along. Unless immigrants are capable of assimilating into the mainstream, then eventually there will be serious civil strife and even civil war.

People like you are now in a quandary. Assimilation is the antithesis of multiculturalism, but people like yourself are trying to make them both work together. But history shows that humans are far more likely to consider their ethnic or cultural identity to be far more important than any concept of nationalism in a multicultural (read socially ruptured) society. Endless civil wars have reinforced that essential truth.

The intifada of Australians in Cronulla, the bombings in London, New York, and Madrid, the race riots in Britain, the assasination of Pym Portyn, the persecution of Salmon Rushdie, and the resurgence of Nazi sympathies in Europe are portents of things to come.

What made Australia a continental island of peace during the 20th century, when all other European cultures were merrily killing each other off, was that this continent was one nation with one language, and one culture. We were one people.

But as Alanis Morriset once sang. "You don't know what you've got till its gone."

If Napolean was alive today, he would probably thank the multiculturalists for "mapping out a splendid future battlefield."

What drives tolerance is not associated with education, it is largely a product of prosperity. And things are good at the moment. But when the tide of economic prosperity finally ebbs, then the competing tribes in this country will define the territories essential to their own survival. And those territories will overlap.

Redneck, it is a myth that Australia has at any stage of its short life had a monoculture, as "one nation with one language, and one culture. We were one people"

This is pure nonsense. Australia is predominantly a refuge for migrants from overseas, first Europe, then Asia. All the nonsense about a single culture is mere wishful thinking by narrow-minded exclusionists, who wouldn't be able to define that "culture" if you stood them up against a wall with a blindfold and a cigarette.

And if you don't even know that it was Joni Mitchell who sang Big Yellow Taxi (you don't know what you've got till its gone etc.), and not Alanis Morriset (who he?) then hey, what hope is there?