Multiculturalism in Australia: It’s Past, Present and Future

MULTICULTURALISM IN AUSTRALIA 1
Multiculturalism in Australia: It’s Past, Present and Future.
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MULTICULTURALISM IN AUSTRALIA 2
Multiculturalism in Australia: It’s past, present and future.
Multiculturalism is a situation where a society or country accepts and tolerates
individuals from different backgrounds and cultures. Therefore these individuals get support
from the local people without the risk of getting discriminated against due to their beliefs and
norms. Australia is an example of a country which is very multicultural. The country has policies
in place that embrace the different cultures in the country plus the shared beliefs and values
(Murphy, 2013). Multiculturalism in Australia has a past where it came from, a present the level
it is as now and a future which is the direction it will take in future and it will be discussed in this
essay.
Multiculturalism in Australia has a past not only in terms of policies put in place but also
in the social sense. Before World War Two, the country was not so accepting of multiculturalism
since the indigenous people were fighting against the white settlers who they felt had come to
control them and take their land. However, after the war, these conflicts and differences
according to cultural and religious lines started to wane. Since there was a need for labor in the
growing manufacturing industry, the country needed a different source of migrants from their
normal source which was Britain. With this growing need, this leads to a diversified society who
immigrated to Australia to work. In addition to this those enemies interned in war camps settled
in Australia (Soutphommasane, 2012). Thus, the country saw a need to develop policies to
support multiculturalism or get rid of policies which did not support it. They got rid of Anglo-
conformity which was the pillar of the homogenous society in Australia and also in 1973 the
“White Australia” policy was formally removed by the Whitlam Government. After this, the
Whitlam government developed policies in the 1970s which supported the accommodation of the
diverse socially and culturally. These changes were implemented by the minister of Immigration,
Al Grassby through the notion on “family of nations” which encouraged people not to view
immigrants as aliens but as citizens and get all the benefits of citizenship while the immigrants
would start embracing the different cultures and get assimilated (Koleth, 2010).
Currently, multiculturalism in Australia has changed for the better in many ways. Almost
a quarter of Australian citizens now were born overseas showing how diverse the society has
now gotten. The culture is now as diverse as its landscape and it is going the direction that it was
meant to showing how successful it is. They live it every day in their cities, at work and even in