The Roles of Legislation and Public Expectations: Australia’s History of Tackling Cultural and Ethnic Diversity

The Roles of Legislation and Public Expectations: Australia’s History of
Tackling Cultural and Ethnic Diversity
For many years, migration and diversity in Australia have served as one
extensively-studied topic. It is widely believed that changes in immigration patterns
have deeply impacted Australia’s strategies for handling cultural differences. This
situation raises a key question about how legislation and public activities influence the
country’s ways of coping with diverse backgrounds, values, and practices. It is not
hard to understand that resolving this question requires a careful investigation of the
themes of policy responses, as well as public assumptions. With a goal of clearly
explaining Australia’s management of diversity-related matters, this essay explores
the contents of the 1966 movie, They’re a Weird Mob. This essay argues that
legislation and public attitudes have been two powerful factors regulating Australia’s
process of addressing the impacts of ethnic and cultural diversity. By portraying
Nino’s difficult experience of digesting local culture, the director, Michael Powell
calls attention to state policies and the Australian public’s morally problematic act of
forcing immigrants to adopt “Australian” lifestyles. Purnell’s experience of living in
one prejudice-free community reflects that official policies and Australian citizens
have learned to value and celebrate differences in recent decades. These aspects, as
illustrated by this essay, demonstrate the country’s gradual progress regarding using a
multicultural method to driving social development.
An analysis of the movie’s portrayals of Nino’s experience of confronting
people’s prejudiced expectations makes clear the Australian public’s racist sentiments

in the 1960s. Films and other forms of mass media have served as one effective
communication tool for shaping public opinions of the migration history of Australia
(Bertrand and Collins, 1981). An easy look at the contents and themes of Powell’s
movie clearly suggests his goals for building dialogues about the country’s big trend
of educating immigrants to digest Australian culture. Throughout the movie, Powell
(1966) focuses on depicting the Italian newcomer, Nino’s struggles to adopt the values
and norms of Australia. It seems that the male protagonist’s interactions with every
person are intended to teach him to assimilate into the world of the Anglo-Celtic mob
(Wang, 2011). One good example showing Powell’s intent to reflect the Australian
public’s prejudiced attitude towards non-white residents stems from Nino’s
conversation with one police officer in one ferry, which happens in the second time
they meet. Once seeing Nino, the police officer says: “You again? You are drunk this
time?”. After hearing Nino’s explanation, the police officer impatiently asks “Where
are you going?”. These claims, along with the police officer’s indifferent look, fully
reveals his biased idea that people like Nino are those who can easily get into trouble
and hinder the local police’s order-keeping tasks. This example, along with other
scenes, illustrates Powell’s efforts to comment on the Australian public’s stereotypical
opinions of immigrants and their desire for promoting the Australian way of living
(Mascitelli et al., 2016). From these details, one can learn that the movie does an
outstanding job of getting across the idea about white Australians’ racial bias and its
intolerance of cultural differences.
The movie’s depictions of the Italian migrant, Nino’s story of gradually adopting

the Australian way of life reflect immigration policies’ crucial role in shaping the
discriminatory practices of the country. It is true that cinematic representations
directly impact public knowledge about one place’s social circumstances and political
realities. In his movie, when describing Nino’s encounter with Aussie culture, Powell
successfully conveys the message over the restrictive nature of the country’s
immigration policies in the 1960s. One example illustrating this fact comes from the
director’s portrayals of one drunken man’s abusive speech on the ferry. In this scene,
the Australian man refers to one Italian family as “bloody dagos” and makes fun of
their accents. The man’s use of the term “dagos”, which is a sign of prejudice, along
with his claim that “It’s our ferry, not your ferry”, raises thoughts about the nation’s
belief in racial superiority (Jimenez, 2013). Most importantly, the man’s speech
enhances viewers’ ideas of immigration policies’ key function in causing the severe
phenomenon of racial discrimination. At the time when the movie was made, the
White Australia policy, which caused Australia to build a racial hierarchy to receive
desirable immigrants, according to the researcher, Jessica Carniel (2012), was still
influential. The policy is believed by Carniel as having an important position in
shaping the history of the racial bias of the country. Carniel’s words point out that in
Australia in the post-World War II era, the atmosphere of race prejudice was largely
caused by the country’s operation of immigration laws. By portraying the abusive
language of the Australian man, the movie, therefore, effectively represents
legislation’s key part in increasing systemic discrimination.
While perceiving the movie’s description of how Nino is expected to merge into

the social and cultural landscape of Sydney, modern people can easily conclude that
forced assimilation is morally unacceptable in current years. What shapes the movie’s
unique position in the history of Australia is its messages over two issues: cultural
acculturation and assimilation (Mayer, 2007). The fact that Nino eventually becomes
friends with his co-workers from Australia embodies a fine example of acculturation,
which is the phenomenon where groups of people maintain contacts by sharing or
adapting to different cultures (Bolaffi, 2003). This phenomenon is acceptable in that it
conforms to the western world’s principle of protecting individuals’ freedom of
expression and communication (Schorlemer and Stoll, 2012). One equally important
feature of the movie is its conversation over assimilation. This theme can be identified
in many scenes where people Nino meets try to force him to rapidly absorb the
Australian lifestyle. Assimilation involves a country’s behavior of requiring people
from different cultural or racial backgrounds to adopt its ways of living without
respecting their own customs and conventions (Cotesta et al., 2013). Even till the late
1960s, assimilation policies, as asserted by the scholar, Bruce Kaye (2004), were
implemented by Australia to sustain its national identity as a white nation. These
policies are morally wrong because their operations are inevitably achieved through
coercion, which violates human rights. In other words, in the movie, local people’s
actions are problematic as they cause Nino to lose or abandon things that are specific
to his own culture. These aspects help people conclude that Australia’s assimilation
measures are morally incorrect because of their trend of denying the cultures and
identities of non-white peoples.