What makes Australia a successful multicultural nation

Furthermore, 49% of all Australian born children have at least one immigrant parent. The immigration rate in Australia has also grown over the past two decades reaching new highs in 2016 (Arthur, 2018). Over this span of time, the Australian economy has also blossomed depicting a correlation between immigration and economic performance as a result of increased labour. With an increasing immigrant population often come hate crimes and discrimination cases, but Australia has managed to embrace multiculturalism. Therefore, this research paper aims to understand why Australia is such a successful multicultural nation. France wanted to retain its secular nature and its former president Nicholas Sarkozy always said that immigration was a threat to the secular nature of the French. The former French president, Francois Hollande stated that France could not embrace diversity due to her immigration policy and he instituted more assimilation laws to allow non-French to embrace French cultures and norms (Clyne and Jupp, 2011).

France demanded that all immigrants should conform to her culture and assimilate to her policies and this often led to lower national cohesion. When these policies are contrasted to the Australian multicultural policy, the success of Australia as a multicultural nation can be seen. European policies do not accommodate other people’s cultures and only demand that their cultures be followed and observed. As a result of having a well-ordered immigration plan, immigrants have gained more public acceptance of their cultures and this has bred the multicultural nature of Australia and postulated the essence of diversity. Governmental cohesion initiatives The multicultural success of Australia has also been brought about by the national cohesion efforts undertaken by the government. Australia has learnt the essence of doing this due to previous failures.

During the Howard era, Australia decided to cease multiculturism as they were scared of the increasing Asian population in the nation. From 1996 to 2007, Australia halted its friendly foreign policies and enacted more pro-Australian legislation. These efforts aimed at uniting the nation give everyone in Australia a sense of belonging and identity hence resulting in more national pride (Arthur, 2018). The aftermath of this strategy is a successful multicultural country. The Australian culture Besides government initiatives, the success of multiculturism in Australia can be traced to the egalitarian culture of Australians. In its early days, Australia was built as an egalitarian society which championed for social justice. It is this nature of Australians that was used as a foundation for the institution of contemporary multiculturism.

Their criminal history did not deter Governor Philip from treating them well and this nature of Australia continued with the successors of Governor Philip (Noble, 2009). Governor Lachlan Macquarie who took over immediately after Philip appointed convicts to high government offices. He was showing society that everyone needs to be treated equally irrespective of their origin and history. Governor Lachlan Macquarie even appointed a former convict, Andrew Thompson as a magistrate. This trend continued and it is credited for the ‘fair go’ ethos in Australia. The need for labour and military The government also discovered that Australia was also under-occupied and under-utilized and hence, they decided to open up their borders. The Australian government set up a body to assist with immigration and settlement of immigrants.