Janet Albrechtsen may claim to be a conservative, but her latest column shows she’s anything but. How so?
Back in the early 1990’s, a conservative Macquarie University law professor told me of his dismay at the left-wing method of “critical legal studies”. What’s the point of criticising the legal status quo of law before understanding it?
Real conservatives try to understand the status quo. Where the status quo seems to work (even if imperfectly, which is always the case), they don’t seek radical change.
Albrechtsen doesn’t appear to have understood the reality of Australia’s multicultural status quo. She claims our current policy is "hard multiculturalism" – where people are separated according to culture and where minorities cannot be criticised.
Albrechtsen’s idea of criticising minorities was seen in her 1 November column where she joined Peter Costello in claiming all 360,000 Muslims were responsible for the speech given by Sheik Hilaly to 500 people inside a mosque with a capacity of 5,000 people.
"Criticism from some Muslims came only after The Australian reported the speech". True, Janet, but how else are Aussie Mossies meant to learn of the speech? Do we subscribe to the al-Qaida Islamic extremism podcast? And with hardly 20% of Muslims native Arabic-speakers, how are English-speakers like me to know each time a thick-Sheik blames women’s dress for rape?
What is her evidence that “the hard version endures”? Albrechtsen points to a Victorian ethnic lobby’s response to a discussion paper, and to Fraser’s claim that a Muslim election is coming up.
Perhaps Albrechtsen’s problem with multiculturalism is its allegedly removing her freedom to question the bona fides of 360,000 Aussies from over 60 different nationalities who tick “Muslim” on their census forms.
Albrechtsen ignores successive reports on Australian multiculturalism, all of which point to the need for a commitment to shared values and shared institutions.
I can’t see any evidence of hard multiculturalism in Australia (apart from ravings of Cronulla rioters and assorted clerics). Instead, I see people comfortably living side-by-side. There is a place in the sun for governments who legislate and enforce culture. But it’s not called Australia. It’s called North Korea.
© Irfan Yusuf 2006
