We’ve had the Multicultural Review – now what?

The Multicultural Framework Review, released in July, sets a robust vision for multicultural policy that would reflect the Australia of this century, not the last. But how can we make that happen?

I had the privilege this week of speaking at FECCA (Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia) 's annual conference, joining some of the leading voices on multiculturalism: Dr Hass Dellal AO , the executive director of the Australian Multicultural Foundation; Christine Castley , CEO of Multicultural Australia; and Professor Andrew Jakubowicz , Emeritus Professor of Sociology, UTS.

With an election on the horizon, one of the questions I was asked was about the role and responsibility politicians have in supporting social cohesion.

I firmly believe that politicians have an - often times unspoken - compact with community to advance social good and remember we live in a society, not an economy.

They have the power and resources – through policy levers they alone hold, through activating debate and dialogue – to be changemakers, both short term and longer term.

In turn, there is a strong expectation from community and civil society that when you step up and are elected to office, you’re there to be of service to the public.

Part of this is the tone and language we bring to public discourse. All contributors with a prominent platform have a responsibility to be careful with their language, to avoid stoking divisions and pitting our community against one another.

It was heartening to hear this reflected in a speech at the conference from Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Julian Hill , who called out division in our political rhetoric and the importance of language and tone.

Professor Jakubowicz made the keen observation that, if we look at our political history, we have not had a prime minister since Bob Hawke who has properly owned, advocated for and progressed multiculturalism.

We need strength from the top, otherwise multicultural policy can be written off by bureaucracies as ‘too difficult’ or ‘too complex’.

There are many people who would like to see the end of multiculturalism. We just have to look to the current US election campaign, where we have one side calling for “the largest mass deportation program in history” and banning of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.

It is incumbent on us as citizens to stand up and say we do not want to head down that path. We have to stand up to say we won’t tolerate multiculturalism becoming a partisan issue - and we want the leadership and resources to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Cultural change in our sector

The fact is that even with buy-in from government, we will not see the benefit of this review without cultural change in our sector. It is incumbent on all of us to look at how we can contribute to creating a more collaborative, cooperative environment that safeguards the role of all actors in this ecosystem.

Back in the early 2000s, when I was CEO of a migrant resource centre, one of the roles we were actually funded for was to support and empower diaspora organisations as they got off the ground.

This included governance and legal guidance, auspicing money until they could apply in their own right, providing office space.

These place-based hubs meant that we were engaging and working collaboratively and collegially. We were working together, not against one another.

Many successful organisations exist today that were incubated in an environment that recognised the value of all actors in the multicultural ecosystem.

Fast forward to today, and we have an increasingly competitive sector, with a particularly pronounced undermining of the role of professional service providers, like MRCs, and even sometimes related professionalise organisations such as legal services.

What this results in is situations like we saw with the pool of funding allocated to organisations in the wake of the Afghan evacuees in 2021 to support new arrivals.

There was a general lack of coordination about where this funding went. As a result, what we saw on the ground was diaspora groups being funded to operate in parallel with MRCs and professionalised services.

This created duplication, which created some tension within the diaspora community, but the bigger shame was that overhead costs ate into funding that could have gone into direct service delivery.

There is no panacea for this issue, but ultimately, when we identify an issue that solution is not to cannibalise existing funding streams or complaining to government to undermine our peers.

Instead, we need to work together – as a sector -to close these gaps.

This means practicing adaptive leadership: moving between the dance floor and on the balcony.

We’re working within our own services and communities - responding to local issues and needs - but we must also take a bird’s eye view, considering the flow-on implications of our actions. Asking ourselves: does this course of action strengthen both my community and my broader sector? If not, how can I ensure it does both?