Modern Australia’s ‘defining moment’ was in 1973 – with multiculturalism
Modern Australia’s defining moment came long after First Fleet , The Conversation Benjamin T. Jones Historian at University of Western Sydney 4 September 2014
“……….Independent identity emerges
Australia may not have a neat date from a legal point of view, but perhaps Australians can find a defining moment in their cultural history. The Liberal governments of the 1960s slowly dismantled the “White Australia” policy before Gough Whitlam’s government removed its final remnants in 1973. Whitlam’s charismatic immigration minister, Al Grassby, definitively declared:
It is dead. Give me a shovel and I’ll bury it.
Grassby introduced the term multiculturalism to the Australian political lexicon and it became the government’s official policy. Following the Whitlam dismissal, the incoming Liberal government of Malcolm Fraser kept and strengthened the policy. This was demonstrated most dramatically in the wake of the Vietnam War when thousands of Vietnamese asylum seekersarrived by boat and were resettled.
Australia passed a nation-defining moral test in the 1970s. Having rejected the inherent racism of White Australia and abandoned the desire to create a homogenous British mono-culture, Australians opened their arms and hearts to a new philosophy that sees the beauty in diversity……
1788 was not our defining moment. Rather, some two centuries later, we let old Australia fade into history and took our first steps into the new.
Through social pressure and political leadership on both sides, we decided that in new Australia our neighbours could be the Smiths or the Nguyens. Multiculturalism has brought to Australia a richness and diversity that Arthur Phillip and his reluctant fellow voyagers could not have fathomed.
As I stand before my classes in Bankstown, Parramatta and other suburbs of western Sydney, I see smiling faces from every background imaginable. I see the next generation of Australian leaders and am thankful to live in a multicultural society…….Overwhelmingly, multiculturalism has been an Australian success story.
Perhaps we do not need to go back to the days of empire to find our defining moment. Some 40 years ago, we took a bold stand as a nation and we see the benefits of it every day.http://theconversation.com/modern-australias-defining-moment-came-long-after-first-fleet-31160
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of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
Australia’s “defining moment” will come when it acknowledges, not just through words but by actions, that terra nullius was a lie.
Terra nullius is still implicit in just about anything you read about Australian society. Even the question “when was our defining moment” the word “our” almost certainly excludes Australia’s indigenous peoples.
The word “our” includes those who migrated to Australia since Captain Cook. It includes the most recent migrants, such as Vietnamese boat people.
In a recent visit to the iconic Wilpena Pound in SA one visitor asked “I wonder who discovered Wilpena Pound” When I suggested perhaps the Adnyamathna people some 10’s of thousands of years ago the somewhat miffed reply was “Oh, I meant settlers”.
This is not an isolated incident. It happens daily in conversations, in the media, in Parliament. Terra nullius is alive and well in the psyche of non-indigenous Australians.
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