Public Policy in a Multicultural Australia*
| Date | 01 March 1987 |
| Published date | 01 March 1987 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.1987.tb00125.x |
| Author | J. ZUBRZYCKI |
Public Policy
in
a
Multicultural Australia*
J.
ZUBRZYCKI
The debate
on
the consequences of large scale immigration in the making
of
public policy
was inaugurated twenty years ago at the Annual Australian Citizenship Convention held
in Canberra in January 1968. One of the four papers presented to the Convention
The
Questing
Years
reviewed several areas ofpublic policy where there had been practically
no
recognition of the rapidly changing ethnic composition of the Australian population’.
Adult and child migrant education, conditions of employment and especially the non-
recognition of overseas qualifications and the provision of housing came under close
scrutiny. The paper concluded that positive action was required in all of these areas and
that an entirely new philosophy was required to promote ‘cultural pluralism’ as distinct
from ‘assimilation’.
The theory of cultural pluralism (regrettably renamed ‘multiculturalism’ by
Al
Grassby2
in 1973) would imply introduction by the Federal government of programs designed to
remove bamers to social and occupational mobility
on
the part of migrants whose foreign
qualifications were not recognized; the introduction of special schemes to teach English to
hundreds of thousands of migrant children whose progress was seriously handicapped and
the more ready acceptance of migrant groups as official spokesmen and partners in the
progress towards a ‘pluralist’ Australia.
The underlying theme of the 1968 paper and subsequent publications presented during
the author’s successive appointments as chairman of the Australian Ethnic Affairs Coun-
cil and chairman of the Ethnic Affairs Task Force of the Australian Council
on
Population
and Ethnic Affairs was the concern with those mechanisms of intervention in the social,
political and economic spheres that are deemed necessary, proper and justifiable given the
fact that Australia is
no
longer a nation of primary producers,
no
longer a mere appendage
of Great Britain and
no
longer an exclusively white, Anglo-Celtic society.
Just over forty years ago, as an undergraduate and, later, graduate student the author sat
at the feet
of
two unusually gifted teachers and exceptionally warm-hearted human beings:
the late Richard Tawney and the late Richard Titmuss. Tawney was an economic histo-
rian, a philosopher, a profoundly wise man. Titmuss, also a philosopher but above all a
social critic, enjoyed a world reputation not only for studies
of
the Welfare State but also
for his study ofthe cultural values and quality of human relationship involved in the blood
donorship and transfusion3.
*An
edited version
of
the Geelong Lecture 1986 given at Deakin University
on
4
September
1986.
63
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