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The End of the Culture Wars

Waleed Aly

First published in the Sunday Age

It is a familiar narrative: the most recent influx of migrants has previously stood accused of bringing with it a culture of gang violence that corrupts our otherwise virtuous society. Once they were Vietnamese.

Hands up if you're confused by the Howard Government's contradictory messages in demanding greater integration from migrants, yet making the barriers to obtaining citizenship higher? In fact, it's a trick question: the assumption on which it rests, that the process of becoming a citizen is now slower and harder, is untrue in most cases.

Amid the heated discussion that has surrounded the Government's new citizenship test and four-year waiting period, only The Australian's George Megalogenis seems to have noticed that this in fact reduced the time it takes to acquire citizenship for many migrants. For example, overseas students, business migrants and their spouses have previously had to wait at least five years for their opportunity. Only permanent residents could previously have obtained citizenship in two years. The changes sought to remove the quirks of the system, making it more or less uniform.

Of course, that was not the headline. Instead, it read “Four-year wait to be an Aussie – then you must pass an English test” on The Daily Telegraph's front page. There is a reason for that. The government made no serious attempt to make the practical impact of its policy known. The politics pulled in the opposite direction. The public message, as the politics demanded, was emphatically about citizenship tests, migrants being required to learn English, and having to wait longer. “Australian citizenship is a privilege, not a right,” it declared repeatedly. This was precisely calibrated as a cultural symbol. The tests would ask pointless questions about Don Bradman and Phar Lap, not because this assisted migrants with integration in any practical way, but because it was intended to send a symbolic message to a specific constituency in the electorate. A sector that seeks reassurance that the only migrants who will make it through are the good ones.

The Coalition seems to have had grand plans for this in its politics. The citizenship tests were rolled out episodically. First came a discussion paper in mid-September last year, as though complex, sophisticated policy questions were at play. Then, in December, came confirmation that the test would be introduced. Then, in May of this year, as part of its media strategy on the Budget, the Government dedicated an entire press release to the issue: “$123.6 million for Australia's New Citizenship Test” boomed the title. That might be a lot of money for a dubious policy initiative, but did it really deserve it’s very own headline? This was an astute political design aimed at regular repetition. The citizenship tests were intended to be a reiterative spike in our political consciousness.

Overwhelmingly it has failed. The furious debate of September last year has now been descended into caricature. Comedians talk about the citizenship tests more than political commentators. Other issues have come to the fore this political year, much to the Coalition's detriment: global warming, education, industrial relations. Despite attempts to exhume it, the politics of culture simply didn't bite.

Which could be why something of a culture bomb was dropped in the middle of the political conversation on the eve of the election campaign. I use the destructive imagery with purpose, for the scenery that lay in its wake was decidedly ugly.

The story begins with the murder of Liep Gony, an 18 year-old Sudanese refugee, in Noble Park. Asked for a response to this tragedy, immigration minister Kevin Andrews proclaimed that the refugee intake from Africa would be cut. Why? Africans, it seems, “don't seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian life as quickly as we would hope,” partly because of the trauma they often bring from devastating war zones. In context, the implication was that they spook the locals who fear their current proclivity for violence.

Assuming Andrews' bleak assessment of African integration is correct – and it has been rejected by Victoria Police Commissioner Christine Nixon and the UN High Commission for Refugees – his argument is absurd. Consider the implications: the greater the devastation from which people are fleeing, the greater the challenges of integration. If this is a reason to cut the intake, it is not merely an argument against African migration; it is an argument against the acceptance of refugees. In this vision, the most worthy migrants are the least traumatised. People most like us.

Talkback radio responded in the conventional way, assuming with Andrews that Gony's murder exposed the diabolical scourge of African migration. It is a familiar narrative: the most recent influx of migrants has previously stood accused of bringing with it a culture of gang violence that corrupts our otherwise virtuous society. Once they were Vietnamese.

But as it happens, Gony was not the victim of African gang violence. He was killed by two young white men. But such is the nature of our cultural conversation that this fact made not a jot of difference once it was revealed. The culture of these assailants, or their capacity to integrate, was never called into question. Nor was it the following week when, amid the tension created by Andrews' remarks, an apparently racially motivated attack hospitalised another Sudanese youth in Melton. Only the next day when some Sudanese youth attacked a police officer was Andrews inspired to declare that such violence repudiated “the Australian way of life”.

Such selective censure is disturbing, but aptly symbolic. Particularly in the last six years, the politics of culture in this country has been far more concerned with parochialism than principle. Pressed to apologise for his inflammatory comments, Andrews' response was to refuse “to apologise for saying what people are concerned about.” By implication, “people” are not “concerned about” white kids who attack Sudanese kids if the absence of strong condemnation by Andrews is any guide.

Precisely, which “people” are these? They are those who reflect an imagined “us” to the exclusion of a constructed “them”: mainstream, middle Australia. The same people John Howard had in mind when he came to the defence of Alan Jones who had just been found guilty of racial vilification: “I don't think he's a person who encourages prejudice in the Australian community, not for one moment,” we were reassured. “But he is a person who articulates what a lot of people think.”

The Sudanese episode introduced a wild fortnight in the culture wars that, even if it has not thrust itself into the election campaign, has revealed much about our current cultural paradigm. Kevin Rudd got himself into a tangle by rebuking his foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland for calling for Australia to lobby to abolish the death penalty completely, even in the case of the Bali bombers. Howard seized the opportunity to reiterate his hardline position on terrorists. In that case, it's not about the death penalty, but about “people who murdered my fellow countrymen and women”. That is, the parochial imperative trumps the principle. When both politicians saw fit to excoriate the Chaser for its insensitive song about the romanticised memories of dead celebrities, the parochial again prevailed. The most tasteless verse concerned Princess Diana, but Howard specified his anger at the treatment of Don Bradman and Steve Irwin. These are carefully selected symbols of middle Australia.

So dominant, so thoroughly suffocating is this parochial cultural paradigm, that for the moment, it is invincible. All who aspire to cultural clout must acquiesce. We can expect no reframing of the discourse from the Opposition because it recognises this is futile, even political suicidal. Rudd's much-discussed me-too-ism probably began on the cultural front. He attacked the controversial Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali even more acerbically and regularly than Howard. He, like Howard, refused to criticise Alan Jones. His party gave “in principle support” to Kevin Andrews when he decided – extraordinarily – to suspend the visa of Mohamed Haneef. Only when the obtuseness of Andrews' decision became manifest did the ALP seek to differentiate itself. Rudd, unlike Howard, supports a formal apology to Aboriginal Australia, but remains indistinct on practical policy such as the Northern Territory intervention.

No doubt, this has much to do with Rudd's (highly successful) small target politics. As on questions of the economy, the question remains whether Rudd is merely wearing a Howard-like disguise at present, only to reveal himself if elected and reorientate the cultural conversation accordingly. But even if this is true, those dissatisfied with the status quo must be sobered by one realisation: it has taken Howard 11 years to dominate the Australian cultural consciousness as completely as he now does. Even Howard admits that much of his rhetoric and policy on, for example, indigenous affairs would have been unacceptable to the electorate as recently as five years ago.

The cultural shift has been as gradual as it has been deep. Any change of direction – even assuming Rudd desires one and will have the chance to make it happen – would be similarly paced. One suspects our cultural course, however one feels about it, is set for some time to come. At least for now, the culture wars have been won.