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The Galbally strategy for migrant settlement

Malcom Fraser.

Malcom Fraser speaks on multiculturalism and the Galbally enquiry.

Created:

1994

Date Added:

26 June 2002

Source:

Making Multicultural Australia

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

--

Length:

36 secs

Transcript

MALCOLM FRASER
Prime Minister 1975-83

Well multiculturalism, I don't think, had been enunciated very much by 1975. It was probably in the process of establishing the Galbally Inquiry or implementing the Galbally Inquiry that the concept and the philosophy of multiculturalism came to be enunciated in an appropriate sense. And it's worth noting that what we were trying to do was opposed by the Labor Party in the Senate. A number of issues relating to multiculturalism were held up, threatened, criticised, not quite on racist grounds, but certainly on Anglo-Saxon grounds, if there's a difference.

CONTINUATION OF INTERVIEW AS TEXT

Quite a number of Ministers would have been reluctant but they didn't argue all that strongly against the elements of the Report. But probably overwhelmingly, because most of them recognised - even if they instinctively, well some of them didn't like it - they recognised that on a straight, logical, rational argument, it was very hard to come down against the policies. They were appropriate. They were just. Their objective was to build a better and more unified society.
Well what I wanted to achieve I think in many ways has been for all Australia's communities a total sense of belonging no matter what their origin, what their background. Once they're Australian, they're accepted as Australian for what they themselves are. And that's it. You know, they don't have to look over their shoulder to wonder what somebody is going to shout at them. They don't have to feel apart and different and separate because they speak with a different accent or because their physical appearance isn't a typically Anglo-Saxon physical appearance. And I think that in a large measure this has been achieved in Australia. There are always going to be areas for improvement.

Interview for Making Multicultural Australia, 1994.