Is One Nation trolling the Coalition?

There is an identification of multiculturalism with ethnicity, but the ethnicities that built this society – the English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Cornish, later the Italians, the Greeks, the Poles, the Germans and other Europeans are practically invisible.

There is a table of organisations that were consulted. None are Anglo-Celtic, as far as I can see, apart from one association, and arguably, the Anglican Church. As far as I could tell there were 61 from South Asia, 54 either Islamic or Middle East, but only 17 from Europe.

More than half those consulted were actually organisations involved in the multicultural policy ecosystem: agencies, service providers, settlement bodies, peak councils, advocacy groups, and selected ethnic/religious organisations.

The consultation list tells the story. The institutional voices of multiculturalism were heavily represented; the inheritance of the country into which migrants are being integrated was barely visible.

Unsurprisingly many of the recommendations proceeded on the basis that these ethnic cultures were so important to the immigrants who come from them that the government had to provide assistance to maintain them.

The Howard government instituted 'Harmony Day', the report wants to lean away from it. It makes the claim that Australia is a racist country, when the best evidence is that Australia is one of the least racist countries in the world.

It rehearses the revisionist position of Australia having been conquered, rather than settled; widespread massacres; land still belonging to Aborigines and so on. All the sorts of things that, if true, make first-generation migrants complicit to some extent in crime, like receivers of stolen goods.

This is then used to claim that:

Communities … conveyed … a strong desire for Australia's diversity to be recognised and fully embraced, including through highlighting the significance of First Nations histories and integrating them into the education system for new arrivals in Australia. This …is seen as essential for genuine reconciliation and the need to achieve equality for all, without which multiculturalism is incomplete.

In my view, this suggests a world where multiculturalism is incomplete without the indoctrination of new migrants into a disdain for the Judaeo-Christian culture that actually makes us who we are.

If the Liberal Party wants to have a future as the major centre-right party in Australia, then it needs to re-examine its knee-jerk affirmation of multiculturalism amongst other things. Signing-up to Labor shibboleths is what makes around half their former base think they are Labor-lite.

Angus Taylor is promising a full slate of policies before the next election as his winning strategy. Billy Sneddon, Opposition Leader between December 20, 1972 and March 21, 1975 tried the same tactic, producing a 136-page document titled The Way Ahead.

It got them closer to Labor in the 1974 double dissolution election, but it took a change of leadership to a conviction politician, Malcolm Fraser, to seal the deal with a record landslide election result.

Policies are important, but until the Coalition can work out what principles it stands for, it has no chance of regaining its majority opposition status, let alone winning an election. And those principles should include a rebuff to Labor's Hotel Australia multiculturalism.