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is subsumed within the .’world* of multi-cultural Australia,
≡ ≠ W
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11.3 Australia as a multi-cultural society
As was the case with Aborigines, policy towards migrants
was initially one of assimilation.
In 1972, at the same time that King was announcing integration
as policy for Aborigines in South Australia, Lynch, the then
Federal Minister for Immigration, announced integration as a
new policy for migrants:
The earlier desire to make stereotype Australians
of the newcomers has been set aside. The use
of integration instead of assimilation is not mere
semantics; it is the outward sign of a fundamental
change in the attitude of the Australian Government
and people (Lynch, in Roberts, ed., 1972:10).
What Lynch did not state was that the fundamental change in the
attitude of the Australian Government was due to political pressure
brought to bear on the government by migrant groups.
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In the case of the Aborigines, who had no vote until the
referendum, it had been advantageous to mainstream society to
exclude them from a common framework; Aboriginal people were
powerless in the face of this treatment.
The migrant groups, however, were a force to be reckoned
with; many of them were highly politicised and the cohesion
of the groups gave support to their demands.
However, while policy could be reformulated, restated at
governmental level, Lynch’s theory that the policy of integration
also showed a change of attitude on the part of Australian people
was utopian in the extreme.
Changes in practice can be legislated for. It is not possible
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to legislate for changes of attitude. It is even more unrealistic
to speak of changes in the attitudes of people following upon