Australian Politics

Diversity is not our strength

It was encouraging to see Albo’s government recently appoint a Special Envoy for Social Cohesion, Wills MP Peter Khalil, in a nod to community harmony, which has been taken for granted in Australia for far too long. Equally, it was discouraging to see the same regime recklessly importing relatively unvetted Gazan migrants from a war zone, given that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has become the violent edge of ethnic division here. Stoking a problem at the same time as staunching it, then? Despite the protestations of our multicultural lobby, it is self-evident, after the 7 October massacre in Israel, that not all communities can coexist peacefully – or even want to.

Yes, Australian generosity and tolerance has created a successful multi-ethnic society, but growing divisions are emerging, as separate group identities, funded and promoted by multicultural ideologies and agencies, strain the ties that bind. Divisive Welcomes to Country, locking up ‘country’ such as Mount Warning away from other Australians, unruly pro-Palestinian protesters, two-tier policing, and massive migration numbers are straining this nation’s social fabric like never before.

At issue is our 50-year-long policy of multiculturalism: are we creating too many rival groups and enclaves, at the expense of a shared Australian national identity? One of the first great social philosophers, the 14th-century Arab Ibn Khaldun introduced a concept called ‘asabiyah’, the unifying feeling that binds a group and makes collective action possible. It can be religious, or racial, cultural or military. It’s the glue that makes a society work. The asabiyah of the terrorist group Hamas is the destruction of Israel and the Jews, for example.

A 2023 book, Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire, by US economist and researcher Jens Heycke, contrasts ethnic separatism (‘Multiculturalism’) throughout world history with a more integrationist (‘Melting Pot’) approach. Across the globe and through history, societies that preferenced separate identities fared far worse, sometimes catastrophically so, than more integrated ones. It is a woeful tale that makes you wonder how modern multiculturalism ever took hold.

The Roman and Ottoman Empires, Islam, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, the Balkans and more come under Heycke’s gaze. Expanding, successful Rome was assimilationist, explicitly including conquered peoples as citizens; the Greek Aristides wrote: ‘In your empire all paths are open to all.’ But separatism rose after the mass immigration of Goths and Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries; they failed to integrate or gain citizenship and in 476AD Rome fell.

Similar stories play out elsewhere. In Rwanda the Tutsi-Hutu enmity turns out not to be an age-old rivalry but a product of Belgium’s divide and conquer approach, in which the colonialists gave out ID cards distinguishing Tutsis from Hutus, and gave Tutsis job and educational preferences, thus setting the stage for an explosion of racial violence that killed up to one million people in 1994. A modern success story, Rwanda now has a strongly colour-blind policy, in which all must be Rwandans, no longer Tutsis or Hutus.

Similarly Sri Lanka, where the Tamils and Sinhalese had long coexisted relatively peacefully. After independence in 1948 a ‘Sinhala only’ language campaign arose, the linking English language was abandoned, and separate education systems for Sinhala and Tamil ultimately divided the two populations. The percentage of Tamils employed in the armed forces fell from 40 per cent in 1956 to one per cent in 1970. Finally in 2009 a bloodbath left some 40,000 Tamils dead.

Botswana’s story is extraordinary. Founder and first president, the black prince Seretse Khama, had to overcome British government skulduggery and racism in order to marry London clerk, Ruth Williams. As a result, Khama’s movement was welded to colourblindness, resolutely opposing racial, ethnic and tribal distinctions. Questions about race, tribe or ethnicity are banned from the official census, for example.

Heycke notes that the Botswana, Mauritius and Rwanda constitutions all mandate colour-blindness, and are among Africa’s freest, and most prosperous nations.

The economist then ‘costs’ ethnic division: ‘the data… suggest that ethnic diversity is strongly correlated with extensive violence, rampant corruption, poor economic growth and abysmal living standards’. The happiest countries, such as the Nordic nations, also turn out to be the most homogeneous.

A key insight concerns public goods such as health, sanitation, law enforcement, education and infrastructure. Highly divided nations do very poorly at providing such public services, with ethnic communities tending to focus on their own people, at the expense of the country at large. This impoverishes everyone. In this he builds on the work of sociologist Robert Putnam, as quoted in the New York Times. His 30,000-strong study across the US found ‘the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote, and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects’.

Heycke concludes: social unity is fragile; ethnic division elicits evil from ordinary people; group preferences favour powerful elites over the needy (as we see with the Aboriginal industry, where the monies never seem to reach those living in the dirt); ethnic preferences never solve the problems they were created for, and in practice are usually there forever.

The problem turns out not to be people’s diverse origins but tying benefits or disadvantages to group identities. This is the toxin that poisons societies. Heycke writes, ‘When a society maintains group distinctions, and particularly when it bolsters them with group preferences, people hunker down, adopting an “us versus them” outlook.’ Australia indeed dodged a bullet with the Voice referendum, which, had it succeeded, would likely have expanded society-inflaming race-based benefits. Such toxins can include, for example, the barring of non-indigenous from some parts of ‘country’, or, in the UK, ‘Two-Tier’ Keir’s punitive policing of native Brits, while allowing gangs of recent migrants, masked and brandishing weapons, to rampage without hindrance.

I grew up in a 1950s and 1960s white bread Australia with a level of safety, harmony and peacefulness unimaginable to young Australians now. My community had the second-densest migrant concentration in post-war Australia; I had Ukrainians over the road, Russians and Maltese on either side of our house; and local Aborigines at our school. The migrants were called New Australians then, an innate acknowledgement that we were all involved in building a new Australia. It was our asabiyah.

What is the point, then, of all this diversity, that is straining infrastructure and unity for everyone already here? It is past time to focus on our commonalities and unity, not ethnic and cultural differences.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/diversity-is-not-our-strength/

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Decolonising the nation’s history in pursuit of ‘truth’

It’s nearly a decade since Geoffrey Blainey, Australia’s leading historian, dismissed “talk of the history wars raging in Australia”. Writing in The Weekend Australian on February 21, 2015, he commented that the usage of the word war in this context was mistaken.

Blainey’s point was that “controversy, not war, will continue for a long time to come” since argument was part of “the nature of history and of most intellectual activities”. All the more so in Australia, “a nation where the main strands of history – Aboriginal and European – are utterly different”.

It’s much the same with usage of the term “the end of history”. Writing in The Australian on August 20, 2022, I made the point that the suggestion that someone was on the wrong side of history was just another way of shutting down debate. These days this word weapon is primarily embraced by the left – or liberals in US parlance.

History is in the news again following the revelation that, so far, 19 volumes of the Australian Dictionary of Biography are under revision. The initial general editor was Australian National University academic Douglas Pike. The inaugural publisher was Melbourne University Press, then managed by Peter Ryan.

The publication of the ADB was a terrific achievement for a nation of around 12 million of which only a small percentage of the population had a tertiary education. Moreover, it was essentially put together by those who devoted their time free of charge.

It came as some surprise, then, to hear ADB general editor Melanie Nolan say this on the ABC about the publication (which has been published by ANU Press since 2012): “Of the 14,000 ADB articles, probably a third will stand the test of time and won’t need much changing; a third of them are dreadful (and) a third of them need significant work.”

It’s a long time since a general editor of a historical dictionary fanged their own publication. Sure Nolan, who is a professor at the ANU’s National Centre for Biography, has been in the ADB position for only a few years. But she presides over a publication that gets about 1.2 million visits a year. Not a bad result for a publication the general editor of which reckons contains close to 5000 “dreadful” entries.

On August 19, Nolan was interviewed about the ADB by David Marr, the newly appointed presenter of ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live. The session was advertised as “Fixing up Australia’s written history”. The blurb declared: “History is subjective but in Australia we have a history of not just sanitising the past and its characters but censoring or at least covering up.” It was suggested “one significant project” to do with the de-sanitising was the proposed revision of the ADB.

Then Marr introduced Nolan by saying that “decolonising those 20 volumes, nine million words and almost 14,000 biographies can’t be done overnight”.

Nolan told Marr the project was overdue. She spoke about the need for “revisionism” and made the obvious point that “our values change”. She added: “It’s a long time since historians have been completely objective.” But she did not say when such a (utopian) time existed. Nolan acknowledged that the ADB was an unusual publication of its type in the 1960s in having the lives of representative Australians covered. By this she meant that not all entries were about the rich, powerful and famous. But Nolan criticised the ADB for having a celebratory past and added “people who were seen as disreputable were not included”.

The last claim is not the case. Bushranger and police killer Ned Kelly gets coverage (volume five), as does Sydney’s madam criminal Tilly Devine (volume eight) and murderer Jean Lee, the last woman hanged in Australia (volume 15). Nolan states that only 170 convicts are in the ADB. But it’s not zero. And she said women had been dreadfully underestimated.

The last matter has been addressed in recent years. And Nolan has foreshadowed already planned volumes on colonial women and convicts plus greater coverage of Indigenous Australians. Moreover, in 2005, when Diane Langmore was general editor, the ADB put out a supplementary volume covering people who were missed in the period 1788-1980. Also, through the years there have been a number of corrigenda issued.

In private correspondence about a late friend who has an ADB entry, Nolan advised me in writing that “the ADB does not unilaterally change an author’s text without their permission”. But it does so on occasions. After all, some errors have to be corrected.

It makes sense that, from time to time, historical dictionaries have to be brought up-to-date. The problem with what Nolan told Marr is that the ADB – which is largely funded by taxpayers’ money – now has an agenda to revise Australian history so it can present what Nolan has referred to as “truth”. Which would seem to mean truth as perceived by her and her contemporary colleagues.

Nolan told Marr that while the ADB “has patriotic origins … it’s in a university”. As such, “we are not just telling stories about people we value in the past but also analysing those because we are social scientists”. In view of the state of social science in most Western universities, this suggests that what Marr described as Nolan’s decolonisation project will involve yet more voices of alienated left-wing intellectuals condemning their own societies while on the taxpayer teat.

Then there is the question of what, in Nolan’s view, requires revision. Take historian Manning Clark, a key player in promoting the left-wing interpretation of Australian history. The current entry on Clark in the ADB online refers to his Meeting Soviet Man, published in 1960, as “a controversial book on the Soviet Union”.

It was more than that. Clark compared Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin to Jesus Christ and made no substantial criticism of the communist totalitarian dictatorship that prevailed in 1960 under the heirs of Lenin and Stalin.

The Clark entry could do with substantial revision. But do not expect any. It doesn’t fit an Australian decolonisation project.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/decolonising-the-nations-history-in-pursuit-of-truth/news-story/ada866f12c309b33a2dfdfbbf166b01b

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Sydney school shows that old-fashioned teaching methods work best

Tracy Considine has made countless changes at Canterbury Public in her six years as principal, but she finds it easy to pinpoint those that have helped to lift the school’s maths and reading scores.

The latest round of literacy and numeracy exams shows the school has gained ground in both measures: the proportion of year 3 children above baseline standard in reading is up from 59 per cent to 87 per cent.

“We’ve targeted teacher practice with intensive professional development and making sure every teacher is trained in phonics instruction,” she said. “Parents have come along with us. We run workshops for families on core maths and reading concepts so they can help their kids at home.”

Considine said the school, which uses explicit teaching methods, had also worked hard to shift perceptions among teachers and parents that children “were either good at maths or they weren’t”.

“We’ve debunked myths and changed attitudes. We dispelled myths that only boys can achieve at the highest level in maths. Teachers now have high expectations of all students.”

The NSW Education Department has identified Canterbury for achieving significant growth in both reading and numeracy in the past year. About 80 per cent of year 3 students achieved proficiency in year 3 maths.

Last week’s release of the 2024 NAPLAN results painted a bleak picture of academic achievement across the country. One in three children in NSW failed to reach benchmarks in reading and maths. Ten per cent of year 9 pupils are functionally illiterate.

About 40 per cent of year 3 students did not meet expected standards in grammar tests, meaning they struggled to point out the correct location of a full stop or to identify proper nouns.

While Canterbury’s results are showing signs of bucking the statewide trend, outcomes nationally remain unchanged compared with 2023. The results once again lay bare the glaring gap between rich and poor students, and those in cities and remote areas.

The national scorecard has also intensified the fight between federal Education Minister Jason Clare and his state counterparts over the next schools funding deal.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-sydney-school-debunking-myths-and-bucking-naplan-trends-20240822-p5k4fa.html

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Gazan visa scheme is a sign of weak PM’s desperation

Peta Credlin

Be thankful you don’t have to watch parliament for a living like I do, because the past week has been a shocker.

We’ve got a weak Prime Minister who’s getting more and more desperate to hold onto power despite the real sense it’s slipping away from him. We’ve got ministers who are failing to get the basics right, like Health Minister Mark Butler who has allowed Australia to run critically low in essential IV fluids needed by our hospitals. And you’ve got those well-heeled Teals claiming misogyny because they don’t like the tone of political debate but, at the same time, are using slurs like “racist” against Peter Dutton.

What the Left don’t understand (and I include the Teals here as they are Gucci-Greens, not pseudo-Liberals) is that calling the Opposition Leader a “racist” because he wants security checks on people coming to live in Australia brands every one of us a racist.

Nearly every Australian has a migrant background of one sort or another. Migrants who’ve come the right way know just how rigorous the requirements were: the documents, the checks, the time taken before they got their visa.

So, when they learn that Anthony Albanese has granted 3000 tourist visas to people out of a terrorist-controlled war zone, they want assurances they were properly checked. Imagine their concern when they learn that these online applications were approved in as little as one hour, without a face-face-interview and that, once here, Gazans are already applying for permanent refugee status and all the taxpayer support that comes with it?

What’s more, the Albanese Government never actually told us they were doing this.

Australians only found out by accident when the story leaked out in the Muslim community. There was no official announcement, no transparency and no special visa class created, as done in the past, to properly vet any new arrivals.

What troubles me the most is the statement by ASIO chief Mike Burgess that “sympathy with Hamas” is not a deal-breaker when deciding the fate of these Gazans. Hamas is a listed terrorist organisation. That’s done under special legislation against a whole set of criteria that confirms it is the worst of the worst when it comes to the harm Hamas wants to do to countries like Australia.

In the past, we used to deport people that were sympathetic to al-Qaeda and Islamic State (both also listed terrorist organisations), so what’s changed? Was Burgess freelancing here or was he reflecting new government policy? Worryingly, when asked twice in parliament last week: “Does supporting Hamas pass the character test for an Australian visa?”, the Prime Minister completely evaded the question.

Can you imagine John Howard dodging a straight forward question like this? Instead of answering it, Albanese accused Dutton of being “divisive” and “negative”, but this is a big deal. Why is the Prime Minister and his government so reluctant to say that support for Hamas has no place in this country?

So, the question that must be asked, why is Albanese doing this?

Because Labor is under huge electoral pressure. In every major poll over the past eight months, they are behind and, at best, headed for minority government. They are facing a backlash in outer urban seats where cost of living is biting hard. The Greens have used the pro-Palestinian issue to drag young voters away from Labor and in a raft of seats in Western Sydney and Melbourne, Labor incumbents are vulnerable to a new pro-Muslim vote movement.

I don’t think they thought it would go like this. I know how the inside of government works, and I think this was something cooked up quickly last year by Albanese and then Immigration Minister Andrew Giles to trade visas-for-votes among the pro-Palestinian crowd. I think they thought they were being clever and used the backdoor (and fast) route of tourist visas without getting advice from our security agencies (remember at the time, the PM had thrown ASIO off his National Security Committee) or even the immigration department, as a former senior immigration official said last week. I doubt it even went to cabinet, there was no caucus debate, and certainly no public announcement, and it’s now all blown up in the government’s face.

As it should.

No one can call himself a leader and put at risk Australia’s national security. But that’s exactly what Albanese has done here. Hamas is deeply anti-Semitic; it also hates the West and thinks all westerners are evil. It exalts in depravity, slaughters women and children in ways I can’t even describe in print, and it won’t rest until it destroys Israel, or Israel destroys Hamas.

Not every Gazan is a supporter of Hamas but reputable polls say that the vast majority supported what Hamas did on October 7. It’s also an undeniable fact that Gazans elected Hamas as their government.

This is why asking legitimate questions about why we are now letting these Gazans into Australia without proper security checks isn’t racist at all. And anyone trying to claim it is, has something to hide.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/gazan-visa-scheme-is-a-sign-of-weak-pms-desperation/news-story/ed527ed770f116bf00dd6be00af21e6f