All of today’s Australians (even the Aboriginal people) are either migrants, or descended from people who migrated here from overseas. From the founding of the modern Australian State at Federation, until the early 1970’s, the basis of our immigration policy was more or less the same as that of the United States.
This was articulated clearly in the following letter from Theodore Roosevelt to the American Defense Society:
“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here.
“Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
This policy worked because our earliest immigrants worked hard to become Australians. The great majority were from Europe and the UK, whose cultures were quite similar to ours. Cultural harmony is no problem with harmonious cultures. Children of immigrants were almost indistinguishable from their school mates.
These immigrants turned Australia into one of the most prosperous and successful countries in the world. Sometime between the early 1970s and the early 1990s however, every “Western” nation around the world (excluding wealthy “non Western” countries such as Japan) decided to implement a previously unheard of doctrine known as multiculturalism.
In Australia, this policy was introduced in 1973 by controversial Whitlam Minister and suspected Mafia collaborator Al Grassby. The public was never consulted about this policy, and the concept of “culture” was never defined.
Harry Richardson is a long-time student of Islam and author of best seller, "the Story Of Mohammed - Islam Unveiled', http://thestoryofmohammed.blogspot.co
