Multiculturalism – what the figures really mean

When the University of Western Sydney's Challenging Racism project revealed that a staggering 95 per cent of Canberrans supported multiculturalism, I posted it on my Facebook page. After all, here was proof of what I had believed in and written about for more than a decade – something I had always thought to be the case but never had reliable figures to prove until now.

Almost at once I got a reply back from one of my Facebook friends, pointing out that the survey also found that 41.7 per cent of Canberra people had expressed anti-Muslim sentiments, 21.5 per cent stated they were anti-Indigenous and 19.2 per cent described themselves as anti-Jewish.

"Not really something to be proud of," she said.

No matter that the ACT came out on top as the least racist and most accepting jurisdiction with the anti-Muslim figure well down on the national average of 49 per cent, these are still confronting statistics. Ikebal Patel of the Federation of Islamic Council said he was surprised by them and the chair of the Canberra Multicultural Community Forum, Sam Wong's initial reaction was one of shock.

Which is why the survey has received so much attention even when it was produced at the moment regimes were disintegrating across the Middle East and Christchurch was devastated by an earthquake – but a little bit of sober reflection is necessary.

The survey is actually saying that four out of five Canberrans are NOT anti-Jewish and a similar number are NOT anti-Indigenous. Try and get a similar figure in favour of tolerance of the Jews in Moscow or in Rome, or in almost any European capital – and that's before we even start to think about Teheran or Riyadh.

Canberra's intolerance of Indigenous Australians was also well below the national average. We do not live in a perfect world and changes in community attitudes tend to be glacial. We are moving in the right direction, but more work needs to be done.

The nearly 42 per cent who declared themselves anti-Muslim does deserve more serious consideration. On the face of it the figure looks shocking, but it would be interesting to know just what sprang into people's minds when the question was put to them.

Did they get a mental picture of suicide bombers inserting themselves into crowds and blowing themselves up to create indiscriminate mayhem – or the fanatics who take over a plane and fly it into a building?

Or were they thinking of the guy who drives them to the airport in a taxi or the woman in a headscarf teaching their kids at the local primary school? Surveys usually demand black and white 'yes' or 'no' answers in a world where there are many shades of grey.

The real danger in producing figures like this is that opportunists will seek to exploit them for personal and political advantage. The days have long gone when governments led or even defied public opinion when they decided on a particular course of action. In these focus group-driven times what is popular has become what is right, and as satirist H.L. Mencken one famously said, the most inferior ideas are usually the easiest ones to sell.

Which is why I was delighted to hear the Member for Fraser, Andrew Leigh's calm, but colourful rejection of the attacks on multiculturalism in Parliament recently.

He said that brewing up racist discontent had its own special recipe. "Start with a cup of rhetoric about how 'those people' with their 'strange customs' are different from 'us'. Add a spoon of envy about how those outsiders always seem to get better treatment than 'ordinary Australians'. And for good measure, dash in a suggestion that they could be happier if they just went home where they came from.

"Then give the pot a good stir and let it simmer until it's hot enough to serve up to some unsuspecting racial minority."

Mr Leigh quoted economist Ed Glaeser's theory that racial hatred targets can be predicted at the point when they reach a critical mass. Thus according to Dr Glaeser, Australians of Italian background would be too large and well-established a group to attack – they are likely to fight back; on the other hand the numbers of say, Luxembourg-Australians are too insignificant for anyone to get fired up about them, but Australians of Middle Eastern background are currently just about right.

Muslims form about one per cent of the population, which means that many people have had little or no everyday contact with them – nothing to counter the all-pervading images of terror and conflict that fill the television channels and newspapers.

Opponents have made much of overseas attacks on multiculturalism and especially of comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel that her country's attempts to create a multicultural society had 'failed totally' and that immigration had 'weighed down our social system'.

German multiculturalism was doomed from the beginning. In fact it hardly deserved the name, driven by commercial demands for cheap, plentiful labour. The 'guest worker' program that began in the early 1960s fuelled the German economic miracle without any plans for how the newcomers, overwhelmingly from Turkey, could fit into society. It was a recipe for ghettoes, exclusion, alienation and unrest - which is exactly what has happened.

Multiculturalism did not fail Germany – Germany failed multiculturalism.

The United Kingdom went close to repeating the German fiasco, and there are still prominent sections of society, including Prime Minister David Cameron, who blame the radicalisation of a tiny fraction of British Muslim youth on past policies of multiculturalism. Instead, almost in spite of themselves, most Britons have come to terms with a multi-racial, multi-ethnic society, and despite the best efforts of some well-funded far right organisations - and warnings of dire consequences that go back to Enoch Powell's infamous 'rivers of blood' speech more than 40 years ago – anti-immigration parties remain on the fringe of political life there.

So I am going to maintain my belief that Australia, and especially Canberra, will continue to be an example of how, when properly handled by enlightened leaders, multiculturalism can not only work, but be a solid foundation for a harmonious society.