Will Australia’s new multiculturalism roadmap help strengthen migrants’ ‘sense of belonging’?

A new Australian government report recommends nearly 30 measures to improve the country’s cultural diversity, including introducing citizenship tests in multiple languages ​​and creating a dedicated multicultural affairs commission.

Observers have welcomed the Interior Ministry’s revised multicultural framework, published on Wednesday, and its ambitious reform agenda, but stress that its success depends on effective implementation.

Canberra has not publicly accepted the report’s recommendations but has said it is “committed to the principles of the framework”. It has also pledged to spend A$100 million (US$65.6 million) to “support a stronger multicultural Australia”.

Ten of the recommendations were rated as high priority, including proposing citizenship tests in languages ​​other than English, to recognise and preserve migrants’ cultural heritage and strengthen “a sense of belonging”, the report said.

The deterioration of this sense of belonging, in a context of increasing discrimination and prejudice, motivated the commissioning of this study more than a year ago.

“I think the idea of ​​allowing more languages ​​is a good thing. In fact, we don’t technically have a national language in Australia. We have English, but we don’t really pronounce it,” said Carlo Carli, president of the Federation of Ethnic Community Councils of Australia.

“In reality, our migration has never really depended on everyone being perfectly fluent in English.”

A traveler pushes a luggage cart outside Sydney Airport in Australia in November 2021. Photo: Bloomberg

But that won’t be enough to help migrants gain citizenship or migrate to Australia, said Tharini Rouwette, who heads Allies in Colour, an independent national body representing culturally and racially marginalised people in Australia.

Migrants face much greater residency challenges well before they reach the citizenship test and need more government support, not just from migration agents, to progress towards citizenship, evidence compiled by Allies in Colour shows.

“This goes way back in the citizenship journey and that’s where support needs to be provided, not at the end (of citizenship),” Rouwette said. “Many migrants don’t understand their rights.”

Indeed, the three main themes addressed in the 796 public submissions considered by the review panel were the availability of language services such as interpretation and translation, the inclusion of migrants in Australia and concerns about racism.

Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman welcomed the report’s call to recognise individuals’ experiences of discrimination as a first step towards tackling systemic racism.

Another “high priority” recommendation to create a commission to provide leadership on multicultural issues, including holding human rights critics to account, was much more concrete than other recommendations, many of which were symbolic or repeated over the years, Andrew Jakubowicz, a sociologist and professor at the University of Technology Sydney, said in an analysis earlier this week.

Carli echoed his comments, saying similar bodies in the past, such as the Office of Multicultural Affairs, which once sat in the Prime Minister’s Office but was dismantled during the Howard government, had been effective.

Such a body could help collect data on migrants that would help Canberra make better decisions about multicultural affairs, Carli said.

But to be useful, the commission would need to involve all sectors of government, from urban planning to transportation, Rouwette said.

“You can’t have a multiculturalism agency that operates in isolation,” she said. “If it doesn’t take into account other stakeholders in all of its policies and in all of its services, it won’t be able to advance multiculturalism.”

Lakemba Mosque, in the south-western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. A new report proposes several measures to recognise and preserve the cultural heritage of migrants in Australia. Photo: EPA-EFE

Such a commission should make an effort to consult and listen to the many private contractors and independent organizations that work with migrants like Allies in Colour, Rouwette said.

“Creating a new commissioner position is a ‘very Western’ way of solving problems that doesn’t apply to multicultural Australia,” she said.

“The government needs to find new methods. It continues to use the same advisory committee, the same methods to solve multicultural problems.”

Indeed, more needs to be done to ensure the government can put an end to retraining goals, including exploiting migrants’ language talents, Carli said.

The new report calls on the government to prioritise a “revitalised” national language policy, including highlighting the contribution of multilingual Australians to the country’s economic prosperity.

“Canberra has come a long way in terms of language policy. Is it so difficult to have a bilingual society? It’s not rocket science, most countries in the world are bilingual,” he said.

In Australia, language teaching in schools and universities has stagnated over the past three decades.

Once again, all eyes will be on the government to see whether it has the will or commitment to accept and implement the report’s recommendations, Carli added.

Indeed, the government would first have to present the public’s reactions to the report as well as those of the opposition party before it could move forward, Jakubowicz said.