Table Of ContentDon’t Go Back to Where You Came from
Tim SouTphommaSane is a lecturer at Monash Universi-
ty’s National Centre for Australian Studies and a research
fellow at Per Capita, a public policy think tank. He is
also a columnist with The Age in Melbourne, a member
of the Australian Multicultural Council, and a director of
the National Australia Day Council. A first-generation
Australian, Tim completed his doctorate in political phi-
losophy at the University of Oxford. His previous books
include Reclaiming Patriotism and The Virtuous Citizen.
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Don’t
Go BaCk
to
Where
You Came
from
Why multiculturalism works
Tim SouTphommaSane
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For Sarah
A NewSouth book
Published by
NewSouth Publishing
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052
AUSTRALIA
newsouthpublishing.com
© Tim Soutphommasane 2012
First published 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private
study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act,
no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written
permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Soutphommasane, Tim.
Title: Don’t go back to where you came from: why multiculturalism
works/Tim Soutphommasane.
ISBN: 9781742233369 (pbk)
9781742241203 (epub)
9781742243788 (mobipocket)
9781742246109 (epdf)
Subjects: Multiculturalism – Australia.
Cultural pluralism – Australia.
Dewey Number: 305.800994
Design Josephine Pajor-Markus
Cover design Xou Creative
Cover images Thinkstock
Printer Griffin Press
This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or
sustainably managed forests.
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Contents
Introduction vi
1 The life and times of multiculturalism 1
2 The Australian model 45
3 How racist is this country? 79
4 A bigger Australia 127
5 The sovereignty of fear 164
Afterword: Having a go 196
Acknowledgments 206
Notes 209
Index 232
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introduction
Mention multiculturalism and veils, and one naturally
thinks of the controversies that have raged over burqas
and hijabs. Yet it was through a very different kind of
veil that I was introduced to debates about multicultural-
ism in the late 1990s. At the time, Pauline Hanson was
at the peak of her popularity, leading her One Nation
Party’s crusade against Asian immigration, multicultural-
ism and political correctness. During lunchtimes at high
school I found myself in debates with students and teach-
ers about whether Hanson was racist; whether she was
right about the country being swamped by Asians. There
were a good number of teenaged Hansonites among my
fellow students. Occasionally someone in class would
express their admiration for Hanson, or their disdain for
‘gooks’ and ‘coons’. With my interest in politics awak-
ened, I began reading about multiculturalism and came
to be introduced to the ‘veil of ignorance’.
The idea was conceived by American political phi-
losopher John Rawls. In his classic A Theory of Justice,
Rawls famously proposed that we could imagine a hypo-
thetical social contract in a liberal society by placing
ourselves behind a veil of ignorance. Imagine we didn’t
vi
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know about our sex, ethnicity, race or religious affili-
ation. Imagine we didn’t know anything about the social
position of the families into which we were born. Imag-
ine then trying to agree upon some principles accord-
ing to which society should be organised. And, finally,
imagine being bound by these principles once you
stepped from behind the veil and discovered your social
identity. According to Rawls, constructing a just society
requires us first to put ourselves in this ‘original position’.
Lest we leave the original position only to discover we
were individuals with socially disadvantaged identities,
we would want society to offer equal opportunity to all,
not to mention limit its inequality. We would want some
guarantee of social justice.1
As imaginary devices, the original position and veil
of ignorance aid in clarifying the nature of our concern
with multiculturalism. They remind us what is at stake.
How we deal with cultural diversity is far from a marginal
affair, relevant only to newly arrived minorities. Just how
we conduct our disagreements about matters of integ-
ration, immigration and nationhood says a lot about the
state of our society. Multiculturalism requires us to con-
front the matter of social justice – to reflect upon how
we collectively live up to ideals of fairness and equality.
Too often we celebrate our diversity without first asking
whether a fair go and egalitarianism extend to all Aus-
tralians, regardless of their cultural backgrounds. Too
often we are guilty of complacency. What, for example,
introduction | vii
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might have been the case had the gook-baiting, coon-
hating Hansonites among my old classmates paused to
imagine themselves trapped in the body of an Asian or
Aboriginal? What if they had placed themselves in the
original position? And what point of view would today’s
critics of multiculturalism adopt if they weren’t to know
whether they would find themselves to be Muslims once
they stepped out of the original position?
The purpose of this book is to lift a different veil
of ignorance. In recent years, it has been hard to find
multiculturalism discussed in anything but negative
terms. The years of the conservative Howard govern-
ment, and a resurgent Australian nationalism, seemed
to quash enthusiasm for cultural diversity.2 If anything,
the international zeitgeist appeared to confirm that it
was time to move on. There is apparent consensus that
multiculturalism in Europe has failed to prevent Muslim
minorities from becoming, in the words of political sci-
entist Francis Fukuyama, ‘a ticking cultural time bomb’.3
Across Western Europe, successive governments have
embraced more muscular, assimilationist policies. For
example, in October 2010 German Chancellor Angela
Merkel declared that ‘Multiculturalism is dead’, amid
calls from some German politicians for a halt to immi-
gration from Turkey and the Middle East. Not long after,
in early 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron
joined in repudiating ‘a state doctrine of multicultural-
ism’, as did the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
viii | Don’t Go Back to Where You Came from
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Such developments have emboldened many local com-
mentators and politicians to suggest that Australian
governments should do the same.
Yet there are signs of multicultural renewal underway
in Australia. In 2011, Minister for Immigration and Citi-
zenship Chris Bowen extolled ‘the genius of Australian
multiculturalism’.4 In February 2012, a cabinet reshuffle
included the reinstatement of a Commonwealth Minister
for Multicultural Affairs. If there has been any crisis of
Australian multiculturalism, it has been intellectual, one
manufactured by critics. Unlike Europe, high unemploy-
ment across generations and regular street riots aren’t
the characteristic experience of Australian immigrant
populations – quite the opposite. After all, it is the sons
and daughters of immigrants who dominate enrolments
in the law and medicine faculties of our leading universi-
ties. Unruly minorities haven’t been the ones responsible
for the worst of recent rioting, as the 2005 episode at
Cronulla reminds us. Even so, many Australians regard
the concept of multiculturalism with suspicion. It is asso-
ciated with a form of social engineering which elevates
the value of immigrant cultures over those of traditional,
mainstream Australia. Contemporary debates about
racism, population growth and asylum seekers suggest
that Australians are still grappling with how to negotiate
cultural diversity and its challenges. ‘Less than a decade
ago,’ political theorist Geoffrey Brahm Levey wrote in
2011, ‘multiculturalism looked to be secure and to have
introduction | ix
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