Has Australia become a hybrid nation of parallel societies? With One Nation’s rise at the expense of the Liberal Party, and the Greens gaining ground on Labor’s left flank, Australians are clearly signalling dissatisfaction with the major parties’ approach to migration and multiculturalism—but what kind of Australia are they voting for?
Australia’s multiculturalism policy, introduced in the 1970s as a progressive alternative to the White Australia Policy, has reached a critical juncture. While 85 per cent of Australians support multiculturalism in principle, social cohesion has plummeted to record lows. This paradox reveals a fundamental problem: multiculturalism has drifted from its original purpose as a transitional framework helping migrants integrate into Australian society, becoming instead an indefinite support system for ethnic separation.
The policy was conceived as a vehicle to becoming Australian, not a permanent destination. Yet five decades later, there are no integration benchmarks, no timelines for reducing community support, and no clearly articulated end-game. Instead, we’ve seen expansion: the Albanese Government recently announced $25 million for 600 community language schools teaching 84 languages to over 90,000 students. Cultural maintenance has value, but the question remains—for how long, and to what purpose?
Australia hasn’t become the unified multicultural society of policy imagination. We’ve evolved into something more complex: a hybrid nation of parallel societies. Multiple ethnic communities maintain separate institutions, media, and social networks with varying degrees of integration. In Sydney’s western suburbs, Melbourne’s northern suburbs, and Brisbane’s southern regions, we see semi-autonomous multicultural ecosystems rather than integrated communities sharing common identity and purpose.
This fragmentation didn’t happen by design. It resulted from policy drift driven by vested interests. Ethnic community organisations, multicultural bureaucracies, and identity politics advocates benefit from perpetuating ethnic categories and separation. Business interests support mass migration for labour supply and market expansion, while communities bear the costs through housing unaffordability, infrastructure strain, and social dislocation.
The scale of migration compounds the problem. At peak levels approaching 400,000 net annually, Australia’s integration capacity is overwhelmed. Services, infrastructure, and social institutions struggle to facilitate genuine integration at this scale. The result: ethnic enclaves where newcomers need never learn English or engage with broader Australian society.
First Peoples’ perspectives highlight another critical deficit. Research from Western Sydney University reveals that Indigenous Australians demonstrate “some levels of unease with cultural diversity” and are “not as supportive as non-Indigenous Australians” of multiculturalism. Mass migration occurs on unceded Indigenous land without meaningful Indigenous consent, perpetuating colonial frameworks that treat Australia as terra nullius—available for whoever arrives to determine its demographic composition.
Neither major party offers solutions. Labor champions multiculturalism as a permanent feature of Australian identity, with no integration benchmarks or sustainability limits. The Liberal Party offers only marginal differences, supporting high migration while expressing concern about social cohesion. The Greens advocate unlimited expansion, while One Nation proposes drastic restriction that would damage Australia economically and internationally. The moderate position—supporting diversity while questioning current scale and demanding integration focus—remains underrepresented.
What Australia needs is reformed hybrid multiculturalism combining the best elements of diversity with genuine integration:
Integration as the goal: Multiculturalism should facilitate integration into shared Australian society, not perpetuate ethnic separation. Support for ethnic communities should be time-limited with clear benchmarks, renewed only where evidence demonstrates cultural extinction risk and national interest in maintenance.
Sustainable scale: Migration levels must align with integration capacity, infrastructure availability, and environmental sustainability. Reducing migration to 120,000-150,000 annually would still represent substantial intake while allowing genuine integration.
Hybrid culture cultivation: Rather than maintaining parallel cultures or forcing assimilation to Anglo-Celtic norms, Australia should actively cultivate hybrid culture synthesising diverse influences into shared identity. Intermarriage, fusion cuisine, and blended cultural practices already demonstrate successful hybridity—we need policy supporting this synthesis.
Indigenous centrality: First Peoples’ sovereignty and perspectives must be foundational to Australian identity and migration frameworks. Migration policy requires Indigenous involvement and consent.
Democratic legitimacy: Migration settings fundamentally shape the nation’s future and require genuine democratic deliberation, not administrative determination by bureaucrats and business interests.
Investment in integration: Substantial funding for English language training, employment support, civic education, and community connection programs is essential. Current spending on integration is minimal compared to migration’s scale.
Three scenarios face Australia. Continued drift risks social cohesion breakdown and populist backlash as public frustration grows. Populist restriction would damage Australia economically and internationally while increasing racism and discrimination. Reformed integration offers sustainable diversity, genuine cohesion, and continued prosperity—but requires political courage to challenge vested interests.
The time for complacency has passed. Australia must choose its future deliberately through democratic deliberation informed by evidence. Multiculturalism has served Australia well as a framework for managing diversity peacefully. With reform—integration focus, sustainable scale, Indigenous centrality, and democratic legitimacy—it can continue doing so. Without reform, the policy’s deficiencies will undermine its benefits.
The question isn’t whether Australia should be diverse—that ship has sailed, and diversity brings genuine benefits. The question is whether we’ll actively shape our hybrid future through reformed policy or continue drifting towards fragmentation. Honest debate about multiculturalism’s purpose, migration’s sustainability, and integration’s requirements is not racism—it’s essential democratic deliberation about our national future.
Australia deserves better than policy drift serving vested interests. We need multiculturalism with an end-game, migration at sustainable scale, and integration as the goal. The evidence is clear, the solutions are available, and the choice is ours.
*Peter Adamis is a retired Australian serviceman with three decades of military service, including peacekeeping deployments to Malaysia and Singapore. An accredited freelance journalist, author/historian of 25 published books and over 2,000 articles, he is creator and founder of the Hellenic ANZAC Memorial in Laconia, Greece. Peter holds postgraduate qualifications from Monash University and has been a Liberal Party member for 36 years.
