Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Australia can lay claim to being the world's most successful multicultural country, and I think it is one of the reasons I am most proud to be Australian. The joys and successes of multiculturalism are all around us. Those joys and successes are in my children's school, where the end-of-year concert celebrates songs and traditions from a variety of religions and cultures. They were in my former workplace, where we would have international day, and everyone would bring food from their different cultures. They were in Emanuel Synagogue the other evening, when people came from a range of different faiths to break bread and to talk about their common values at a time when people are trying to tear us apart.

We have a high level of support for multiculturalism, as a 2022 mapping social cohesion report by the Scanlon Foundation found, with 88 per cent of people agreeing that multiculturalism has been good for this country, and 86 per cent saying that immigrants improve our society by bringing in new ideas and cultures. There is also strong evidence that our success also contributes to our economic success. For instance, immigrants in Australia have an unemployment level that is just 0.3 per cent higher than native-born Australians. This is remarkable compared to the OECD average, with immigrants having an almost three per cent higher unemployment rate than the native-born. Even countries we admire like Sweden and Denmark have 11 per cent, or almost four per cent higher unemployment rates of immigrants rather than native-borns. It is absolutely remarkable what we have achieved as a country.

Our multicultural success underpins not just our cultural strength but our economic future, and multiculturalism has to be something that we invest in and protect, because this is actually the hardest time I have ever witnessed as an Australian for our social cohesion. I believe this is a time we need to work harder than ever to preserve the multicultural success that has underpinned us. How do we do that? Looking at the evidence, there are three key requirements. Firstly, we need to continually build the bridges between different parts of our community. Secondly, we need to have supportive institutions, including this one. Finally, we need a strong and inclusive economy that provides dignity and economic opportunities to all.

The father of social psychology, Floyd Allport, did some extremely important research about something we understand intuitively. When we regularly and positively interact with people from different backgrounds, from different cultures and from different perspectives, we build tolerance, even of people who we were previously prejudiced against. This was true of the American soldiers that Allport studied, who, if they were in more contact with German civilians, were more supportive and inclusive of them; and soldiers of mixed platoons, again, were more inclusive than those in segregated platoons.

But for all those interactions to bond us together, the interactions need to be between people who come together as equals in the workplace, in the sports team and at school. Robert Putnam identified the need for both bonding social capital, which ties people within groups together, and for bridging social capital, which builds bridges between members of different groups. Since October last year we have seen events overseas divide and undermine our social cohesion. In my community, concern and fear about antisemitism has never been greater. Other communities are equally concerned about other forms of racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia. We need to come back to that strong bond that Australians share and we need to come back to the bridging. For me, this is why I support in institutions in Australia—for instance, like my lifesaving clubs, the local SES and my primary schools. These are the institutions that bring people together as equals and build those bridges between different parts of our community. It's also why I'm so proud of people like Anna and Rabbi Kamins, people who are going out of their way at this time of need to build bridges between different parts of our community—to hold us together right now. But as well as having that interaction between us we also need institutions that underpin us—institutions such as parliament. We have to make sure that it underpins society and ensures that we don't have discrimination; that should be driven by our parliament.

Finally, we need inclusive economic growth. What we see from history is that in times of great financial strain it is actually the far-right parties who normally prosper. I think that part of our cohesion in Australia has been built on our prosperity—prosperity that is shared across the Australian community.

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