On 13 October 2015 – less than a month after becoming prime minister – Malcolm Turnbull helped launch the National Day of Unity with opposition leader Bill Shorten and Greens leader Richard Di Natale with an extremely rare tripartite media conference. With representatives from Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Baha’i and other religious traditions, our leaders encouraged Australians to visit a mosque on National Mosque Open Day and march in Welcome to Australia’s Walk Together events welcoming people seeking asylum and refugees and encouraging unity between Australians of all faiths, ethnicities and backgrounds.
For a moment, there was hope that we would leave behind the divisive and damaging rhetoric that had dehumanised those seeking freedom on our shores and demonised minority groups, mostly notably Australia’s Muslim communities.
Turnbull emphatically declared that, “We live together with remarkable harmony, and we do so because of our great Australian value – one of mutual respect.”
Yet when the prime minister spoke last week in Germany the unquestionable success of our multicultural society was no longer attributed to our “mutual respect” for our neighbours. Now, our “remarkable harmony” was all down to our “sovereign right” to control our borders.
Between the National Day of Unity and Turnbull’s visit with Angela Merkel, hope had all but disappeared.
We learned that it is no longer the ability to listen and learn from one another across cultural and religious differences that builds social cohesion but rather, as Peter Dutton, the home affairs minister, said this week: “who we’re bringing in, whether or not they’re the right people.”Dutton has also argued that reducing migration intake by 20,000 people might solve the problems facing our growing cities.
The government would like us to believe that it isn’t a lack of investment in infrastructure, settlement services, education, health, affordable accommodation or skills training that creates challenges for transport, house prices and employment but rather too many of the wrong kind of migrant being allowed past the border and taking up permanent residence.
Listening to some government MPs, it seems we can afford 10,000 white South Africans but not to offer safety to any of the hundreds of thousands of displaced Rohingya in our region. We can afford $65bn in tax cuts to corporations (including banks who lay off 6,000 workers when celebrating more than $6bn in annual profit); we can’t afford to build the roads, schools and hospitals that make our cities work and our communities thrive.
In a nation of 26 million people, where almost 50% of the population was either born overseas or has a parent who was, and that is consistently hosting millions of temporary students, workers and visitors from all corners of the globe, it is clear that neither keeping 20,000 extra future citizens out of Australia or gloating about the success of Operation Sovereign Borders will address the difficulties of population growth nor assist with the building of prosperous communities where all people can contribute and flourish.
Only a renewed commitment to the spirit of welcome and mutual respect that Turnbull called for when launching the National Day of Unity can ensure our multicultural society remains successful and maintain our remarkably resilient social cohesion.
In his speech in Germany, the prime minister referred to the essential role Australia’s settlement services play in successful immigration. However, settlement outcomes are undermined every time one of our new neighbours hear our leaders question their presence among us, validate prejudice and misinformation with their silence or intentionally inflame community tensions.
When people feel welcomed they begin to belong; when people belong they begin to thrive. We know this from our own experiences in a new school, workplace, sports team or suburb. Belonging is a gift given by a community set free from fear – and it is the role of a true leader to dispel unfounded fears rather than stoke them.
In June 2016, Turnbull became the first prime minister to host an Iftar dinner at Kirribilli House, breaking the Ramadan fast with Australia’s Grand Mufti Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Waleed Aly, Susan Carland and other Australians of Muslim faith. Less than two years later, it is impossible to imagine such a gesture, as Coalition unity and poll results become more important than national harmony and healthy communities.
Last week, our prime minister was happy for Australia to be famous for those we’re strong enough to exclude. For our own sake, it’s time for our leaders to make us known for those we’re welcoming enough to include. It’s time we returned to “our great Australian value – mutual respect.”
- Brad Chilcott is the founder of Welcome to Australia
