Pericles wrote: "But face it, what we are seeing today is absolutely no different to what has happened in every generation since 1788."

Not true. What we are witnessing today differs profoundly from previous experiences for a number of reasons.

Firstly, current immigration numbers are unprecedentedly high by historical standards. While our politicians don't like to talk about it, the reality is that Australia is presently engulfed in the largest wave of immigration that it has ever experienced.

Secondly, unlike previous waves of immigration which were almost exclusively from Europe, today's newcomers are from far more diverse backgrounds. So, not only are they arriving in much greater numbers than previous arrivals, they are also far more ethnically and culturally divergent from the host population than the immigrants of yesteryear.

Whereas former waves of immigration demographically strengthened Australia's European majority, the present influx is doing the opposite. Indeed, by the end of this century Australia will have become in large part an Asian society in which Australians of European ancestry will have become a minority - a drastic immigration-induced revolution in the nation’s character that will dwarf the changes brought by earlier waves of immigration.

Moreover, this unprecedentedly large and diverse foreign influx is occuring at a time when the very notion of a common Australian culture to which immigrants should assimilate has come under fierce and sustained attack from multiculturalism - a doctrine aimed at totally redefining the basis of our national existence. Australia's national culture is not being merely augmented as you suggest; it is being completely torn down in favour of newly-arrived, mainly non-Western immigrant cultures.

"As in the past, there is no reason to suddenly change our mind as a country, and in doing so become insular, inward-looking and fearful."

By your reasoning, homogeneous countries such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Iceland, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan must all be "insular, inward-looking and fearful" places because they haven't embraced mass immigration and multiculturalism.