Multiculturalism was a wrong turn for a pluralist country

Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodians still cluster in geographical areas like Sunnybank in Brisbane, but they are amongst some of the smartest and highest-performing students, and tend to become integrated via the professions and business.

Two groups stand out as not integrating. One is Muslims who cluster in the Western Suburbs of Sydney and the North-Western Suburbs of Melbourne. The other aren’t immigrants at all but are the indigenous.

In both cases there are demands for similar things which amount to a permanent separateness from the rest of society.

For Aborigines it is the relitigation of settlement, including separate representation, and even accommodation of Aboriginal customary law. For Muslims it is also institution of their own special law, Sharia, and the importation here of disputes from their homelands.

One of those disputes is the relitigation of the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

It is being the alleged victims of “settler colonialism” that gives both a superficial similarity, although on closer examination Arab claims to Israel are a lot weaker than Aboriginal claims to Australia.

And as occupiers of land once Aboriginal, Muslims here partake in the “original sin” of dispossession.

Aborigines have had tens of thousands of years of uncontested occupation by outsiders, while Arabs have been in control of Palestine for only around 800 years (since the Kingdom of Jerusalem was conquered), while jews have lived in that area continuously for maybe 4,500 years.

Fatima Payman and Lydia Thorpe therefore have a lot in common as renegades from mainstream Australian political parties who have taken a stand on sectarian and cultural interest. They demand to be treated not as equals, but as different.

Rather than accept the pluralist path that, while we all have different cultures stemming from our ethnicity, our families, our experiences, the jobs we have, the incomes we earn, the places we live and so on, but we have a set of beliefs that mean we are citizens of the same society, these politicians want separate development.

This path will never work.

Even more worrying is their insistence that narratives be established that cement in difference. In the case of Islamism, it currently clusters around the alleged genocide in Gaza and acceptance as legitimate of the massacre of innocent Israelis by Hamas, a terrorist organisation.