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"What is Wrong with Multiculturalism?"

Colin Rubenstein.

Dr Colin Rubenstein, Politics Department, Monash Universtiy, talks on the multicultural Australia, negative stereotyping and activists involvement.

Created:

2 December 1993

Date Added:

16 July 2002

Source:

“What is Wrong with Multiculturalism?”, University of Adelaide, 2 December 1993.

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

--

Length:

1min 4secs

Transcript

DR COLIN RUBENSTEIN
Politics Department, Monash University

Even during the 1991 Gulf War, despite occasional stupid incidents like the burning of an Australian flag by very few Australian Arab activists, the negative stereotyping of Australian Arabs and Moslems was totally unwarranted and violent attacks on them completely unacceptable manifestations of bigotry, in a multicultural Australia. Despite the media’s concentration on individuals and small minorities, sympathetic to Saddam Hussein for example, there is evidence that the bulk of Australia’s Arab and Moslem communities supported Australia’s involvement in the Gulf crisis, and behaved perfectly appropriately and properly. But the bottom line in this point is that not anything goes. Values and practices, wherever they’re derived from, are not acceptable if they breach the framework of shared values and practices common to all Australians, and the laws of Australia upon which multiculturalism is based. And there is a fine line here. There is a complex balancing act that has to be orchestrated.

From “What is Wrong with Multiculturalism?”, University of Adelaide, 2 December 1993.