The period directly after World War II saw the beginnings of a major demographic transformation in Australia. Like other Western liberal democracies, Australia was encouraged by the international community to provide refuge for the significant numbers of displaced persons created by the war. This, along with an imperative to ‘populate or perish’, led to the acceptance of small numbers of refugees from non-English-speaking European backgrounds (Asian immigrants were not accepted until after 1966). ‘Assimilation’ was the term used during the late 1940s and 1950s for government policies aimed at ‘settling’ these postwar migrants of non-English-speaking backgrounds. During the 1960s, the term ‘integration’ replaced ‘assimilation’, but the government policies essentially remained the same, that immigrants should shed their previous cultural personas and adopt the language and customs of their host society as quickly as possible in order to become fully integrated into the dominant Anglo-Australian culture.^[34] By the 1970s, assimilation had fallen out of political favour, replaced with a new paradigm, multiculturalism, which advocated cultural pluralism rather than cultural homogeneity.

However, despite its fall from political grace, the concept of assimilation did not disappear entirely. In a work published earlier this year, historian Anna Haebich has noted the recent re-emergence of assimilationist narratives within Australian political culture:

During the conservative political climate of the Howard era (1996-2007) Australia experienced a significant shift in political discourses on cultural diversity. Although it is not within the scope of this essay to discuss the ‘return to the right’ of Australian public culture during the Howard era, it is worth briefly noting some significant events that occurred during this time, which benchmark a return of neo-assimilation discourses in Australia and which, according to political analyst Rogers Brubaker, reflect a wider global trend.^[36] Many of these retro-assimilation discourses have been fuelled by the tensions generated since 2001 regarding border security, immigration and the spectre of home-grown terrorism. The terrorist attacks on ‘Western’ targets by militant Islamic groups—beginning with the attacks of 11 September 2001 on US soil, followed by attacks in Bali (October 2002), Madrid (March 2004), London (July 2005) and Mumbai (November 2008)—have resulted in global anti-terrorist rhetoric and increased racial tension within liberal multicultural nations.

These tensions contributed to Australia’s first race riots, in December 2005, which erupted in the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla—allegedly between young males of Anglo and Lebanese-Australian descent. In the wake of these events, Prime Minister Howard used his 2006 Australia Day speech to openly critique multiculturalism, stating, ‘We’ve drawn back from being too obsessed with diversity to a point where Australians are now better able to appreciate the enduring values of the national character that we proudly celebrate and preserve.’ For him multiculturalism was associated with narratives that, he claimed, falsely presented ‘old Australia’ as ‘xenophobic, racist and monocultural’.^[37] He also re-iterated that Australia’s national character was derived from Britain and made clear his commitment to the values of ‘old Australia’.

Interestingly, Howard began his speech by noting the lack of a predeterminate ‘test of Australianness’ for aspiring citizens, saying that immigrants came to Australia ‘because they want to be Australians’. He added, ‘The irony is that no institution or code lays down a test of Australianness. Such is the nature of our free society.’^[38] Despite the ‘free nature’ of Australian society, by September 2007, the government had introduced a new citizenship test, which required potential citizens to demonstrate their knowledge of the English language and the traditions and values of Australian society (as defined by the government). The test was deemed to somehow inculcate a greater ‘Australianness’ in new migrants, leading to more effective social integration.

Sadly, the test has proved anything but inclusive. An independent review of the test commissioned in 2008 under the newly elected Rudd Government (which replaced the Howard Government a month after the test was made active) found the test to be ‘flawed’, ‘intimidating’ and ‘discriminatory’.^[39] The test forebodingly echoed Australia’s original citizenship test, the infamous 1901 Dictation Test, designed to keep non-white migrants out of the country. Richard Woolcott, who headed the 2008 review, supported these assumptions by stating that ‘the standard of English required [in the citizenship test] was too high and discriminated against non-English speaking migrants’.^[40] The irony of the citizen test is that it promotes the notion that ‘Third World-looking’ immigrants must learn to be authentic Australians (part of the mainstream), while at the same time denying these groups entry into the mainstream by defining it solely in terms of Anglo-Australian identity and cultural expressions. This is the catch-22 of Australian citizenship as it currently stands.