ROTFLMAO....

Excuse me?

It seems Rainer your read but fail to comprehend.
[Deleted for flaming.]

To define....

That's precisely the problem, your either one way or the other.

Australian or not.

Being Australian means you eat pies, speak English, love this country.

Migrants don't do that?
Under 'assimilation' elderly relatives were told to 'shuttup'by commuters on public trains when speaking another language. They quickly learnt to assimilate.
Luckily for my parents they migrated under 'multiculturalism' and my mother was provided with services such as English classes, Migrant resource centre to help her find work whilst learning the language, and other community contacts to help her start a new life. She also quickly learnt English
She doesn't think Australians are really racist, but my elderly relatives do. They still don't speak Greek in public. How sad

Multiculturalism is more than a policy, it is an ideology. To believe that anothers cultural rights are equal to yours, even in your country. Other bloggers have pointed out to me that 'MultiC. is dead anyway', maybe it is, like most discourses they change over time.

Do we really want to walk down the 'assimilate' avenue again? Conform or perish. Concealing it as patriotism will not do any good either. The debate is not about Culture vs. Patriotism (the debate over that is old too - we can maintain Hybrid self-identities) Let's make the debate about how we are going to go about this 'Australian values' business...without compromising our diversity and tolerance

A country without that, is not worth living in for me.

Well not that I can see the comment you are commenting about anymore Jules, but I think it may have been about me providing a definition for Culture. (How is that flaming?)

But this topic is about the Australian culture something it seems you have avoided commenting on.

The POLICY of Mutliculti is not an ideology, it's a social experiment, otherwise it's effects would be theoretical and not physical. English lessons were provided under Integration. No need for Multiculti. Most migrants didn't even support it. Didn'y you know that?

Most people my parents and grandparents came across, wouldn't have told yours to "shut up"... you like Snout seem to hang your beliefs on small incidents in their lives. Or things that aren't or weren't as widespread as they make out.

So, if you'd like to address the topic, I'd be only too happy to debate it.

Mult. began as a political policy, but it's intentions were very much ideological. It was not only building infustructure to cater for different cultural considerations (such as the services I mentioned previsouly) but it was promoted as a way of thinking in education institutions, children were taught to accept differences, primarily cultural differences.
The ideology of this political policy was an attempt to progress from the society where children were taunted at schools because of cultural differences, because that was the environment everywhere else too.
You can minimise the ideological effects of political policies such as 'assimilation' in fact you can pretend they never happened. People weren't racist in Australia to migrants, in fact they still aren't. Heck did Cronulla even happen?

Your right the point isn't trying to define political policies, ideological ones or their effects for that matter.
The point is, what is Australian culture?

To me its a young culture with a strong colonial past. It is a very much an Anglo-Australia, and the prescence of this Imperialism still battles on in todays politics. I admire the strength of Anglo mainstream culture, I suppose it is remnants of the resiliance of their ancestry.

I think about the Indegenous Australians, and how they have been completely forgotten, their experiences hardly remembered, their religion discussed like a fairy-tale story ( 'The Dream time') Their connection with the land not understood, and hence their place within Australian identity is left hollow.

t800 do not preach to me that you know migrants who did not want multiculturalism, I do too. I know migrants that are racist also that doesn't mean anything.

I have previously mentioned that the most migrants I know, will not return to their country of birth, they love Australia.

That is the Australian culture to me.

So what is Australian culture?

I have already mentioned how surprised I was 44 years ago to find so many men wearing suits and ties in century heat. Nothing much has changed in that respect. For business, partying, even calling the footy, why dress like you're going to a cool climate funeral? So much for the oft-mentioned individuality!

My first wife looked great in a string bikini. She could wear it to a council pool in the north of England without incident. 44 years ago, I was told she would be ordered off the beach if she dared to dress like that. Well, she wore it anyway. Were we integrating, or bucking the system?

I didn't smoke, or drink beer. But I loved how cheap the wine was. Hey, wait a minute, wine's for Europeans isn't it?

Our favourite restaurant in Leeds, Yorkshire, was Italian. We went to a good Chinese place as well. Great, we could eat that kind of food here too.

So who represents Australian culture? Surely not John Howard, meanness personified. How about Tony Abbott? Personal religious beliefs before representational impartiality. I could criticise some from the other side too, but enough of politics.

I've lived in inner city, suburban and outer-suburban Perth and Fremantle. Also Port Hedland, Dampier and Darwin. And I've travelled on business and worked in the bush all over WA and NT. I've met lots and lots of great Australians from a whole variety of racial and cultural backgrounds. Not all spoke much English, but so what, we got on fine.

What I don't appreciate [and I think this is the real issue] is being told what to do, or not do, from an illogical, unsubstantiated, often religious point of view. But for many who, even in egalitarian Australia, consider themselves to be our betters, it's considered OK to push some of the more narrow-minded Christian stuff down our throats. Then the same people scream blue murder if some of the Muslim migrants try to emulate them.

Quiet here since yesterday!

T800
What is nonsubstantial about the point that the Howard govt supports one group of Australians (EB) who don't integrate, but criticises another group (immigrants) for not integrating. What about the double standards, T800?

And I thought that the word “wowsers” also has a lot of relevant substance :+)

You may call Multiculturism ‘dead’- but monoculturism sounds like something prehistoric.
If you are arguing for a monocultural country, then you are fighting for something that does not exist anymore in developed, democratic Western countries.
You are glorifying something that only exists in a number of countries of which, ironically, the cultures you seem to be rejecting. You are copying the values from the very cultures that you bag. How funny!

Why do I value multiculturalism/interculturalism?
Because I value freedom of choice. Why would I want one group to dictate another group how to live? Why do you want that, T800? Do you like dictatorship?

Multiculturalism is here to stay, whether people like it or not.

Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear enough: I am not against integration, but integration doesn’t mean people should have to give up their own culture.
There may be some aspects within a culture that will have to go in Australia when these aspects don’t fall within Australian law, but why should whole cultures have to go? There is so much to gain and learn from all these cultures.

Equal relations between Australia’s many different cultures are just as valuable as equal relationships between individuals. There is so much focus on cultural differences- there are many cultural similarities as well we can use as a basis. For instance, simply- we are all people with rights, no matter what background we have come from.

As BOAZ says, social interaction is important. This is all about exchange. Teaching each other and learning from one another, finding common interests, sharing ideas etc. We have lots of space within Australian culture (whatever that may be, exactly, to embrace other cultures as well.
Much to learn we all still have!