Page 542 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 14 March 2007
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interaction among cultures. Too many people imagine that others—people from non-English-speaking backgrounds usually—come from somewhere and have a culture while they themselves come from nowhere and have no culture. That is one aspect of the division between those whose lived experiences ensure they are sensitive to the various cultural perspectives that people in our society have and those who simply see it all as a question of us and others.
The words we use to describe our society are not purposeless. Multiculturalism, in the Greens view, is an important statement to Australians that we value cultural activity and the diversity of cultures in our community, that we look for connections and dialogue between cultures—between people in fact—and that the richness of diversity, like biodiversity, is an invaluable resource.
Probably the social challenge human beings face is that of empathy, of being able to put ourselves non-judgmentally in the metaphoric shoes of others. That means that when we hear about a boatload of refugees being refused access we put ourselves in the minds of those refugees. If we all did that I believe we would approach these issues with a great deal more compassion. Those who continue to judge and treat refugees as others in fact lack that really important quality of empathy, the ability to see something from someone else’s point of view, the ability to feel what they feel.
Without the multicultural project, that essential goal for our society is so much harder to prioritise. Indeed, there are only two things that we need to get our heads around in this world, to talk in generalities: one is our place on the planet and our responsibility for it and the other is our care for others. In that context the Pauline Hanson phenomenon, and the Liberal and National parties’ appropriation of it—with the Labor Party, in my view, more or less tagging along—has been extraordinarily damaging. And now we hear that Fred Nile has jumped on the bandwagon; I can only suspect that when you are desperate for votes you will seek out any fringe minority that you can find, especially ones who fear difference, and build on a fear latent in the community.
In contemporary political parlance the word “multicultural” has become tied to a derogatory notion of someone else’s political correctness. Any discussion of values, the whole game of imagining an Australian values test and much of the discussion about the threats or terrorism act as a dog whistle for racism and xenophobia. When we have most needed political leadership we have had from both major parties a failure of leadership.
And so commitment to the word “multiculturalism” is important and a commitment to a project that grows from multiculturalism is more important again. In that context the Canberra National Multicultural Festival is both important and limited. It is important in what it does but too limited in what it hopes to say. That is in part a failure of concept to my mind, but it also reflects a lack of resources and a lack of commitment to grow those resources.
If this festival is to become something significantly more than a celebration of different nationalities in Australia and beyond—through dance, food, costume and local and overseas performance—it needs to be funded so that it can select and commission projects, develop the occasional piece of new work over years and step
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