Peter Wertheim, Executive Director at the ECAJ, appeared before the Select Committee on Strength­en­ing Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism on 29^th June, 2017. This committee is tasked with inquiring into and reporting on ways of pro­tect­ing and strength­en­ing Australia’s mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and social inclusion.
The ECAJ’s full written sub­mis­sion can be viewed here, and the tran­script of Mr Wer­theim’s appear­ance is below.

Select Committee on Strength­en­ing Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism – 29/06/2017
Pro­tect­ing and strength­en­ing Aus­trali­a’s mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and social inclusion
Members in attend­ance: Senators Di Natale (Chair), Dodson, Duniam, Kitching.
DOUKAS, Mr Peter George, Chair, Ethnic Com­munit­ies Council of New South Wales
VELLIS, Mr George Alexander, Coordin­at­or, Aus­trali­an Hellenic Council of New South Wales
WERTHEIM, Mr Peter, Executive Director, Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry
CHAIR: I welcome rep­res­ent­at­ives from the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, the Aus­trali­an Hellenic Council and the Ethnic Com­munit­ies Council of New South Wales. Thanks so much for coming along today. I invite you to make a brief opening statement. We will start with Mr Wertheim and then move across. Try to keep it brief because then we will have an oppor­tun­ity to ask questions of you. Fire away.
Mr Wertheim: I appre­ci­ate the oppor­tun­ity. Hopefully, this will take no more than two or three minutes. Aus­trali­a’s unique model of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism gives equal emphasis to rights and respons­ib­il­it­ies. We respect the freedom of all Aus­trali­ans to express their indi­vidu­al cultural identity and to maintain and share their cultural heritage within an over­rid­ing com­mit­ment to Australia and the basic values of Aus­trali­an democracy and the rule of law. This includes the respons­ib­il­ity to accept Aus­trali­a’s Con­sti­tu­tion, system of law, demo­crat­ic decision-making, freedom of speech and religion, English as the national language, and gender equality. In any conflict between a sectional culture and religion and Aus­trali­an values, Aus­trali­an values prevail. Aus­trali­an law trumps all other law. New arrivals have a readily attain­able pathway to full part­ner­ship in Aus­trali­an society on the basis of cit­izen­ship.
Suc­cess­ive Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ments, rightly, in our view, have rejected the UK and European models of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism because these models insuf­fi­ciently emphasise the respons­ib­il­it­ies of new arrivals to their new country and a system of ethics and law as the essential pre­requis­ite for their accept­ance by and suc­cess­ful integ­ra­tion into the wider community. Gov­ern­ments in the UK and Europe have passively tolerated members of cultural and religious minority groups living separate lives from the rest of society and have failed to address groups who openly denigrate the values and laws of their host society. The anything-goes model of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism has been a demon­strable failure, as suc­cess­ive leaders of the UK and Europe have them­selves openly acknow­ledged.
It is therefore appro­pri­ate for the gov­ern­ment to place a high value on Aus­trali­an cit­izen­ship and loyalty to Australia, and under­stand­ing of Aus­trali­a’s language, culture and values which cit­izen­ship requires. But cit­izen­ship alone is too narrow a focus. The values we affirm as a society need to be followed through in many other facets of our public life, including gov­ern­ment policies and programs, public and school education, federal and state legis­la­tion and in political discourse by political and community leaders.
Whilst my organ­isa­tion’s written sub­mis­sion has covered each of these areas, I would par­tic­u­larly like to highlight the import­ance of school education in promoting enlight­en­ment values and coun­ter­act­ing prejudice. Far from sug­gest­ing a social engin­eer­ing model in which students are told what to think and what not to think, we are proposing forms of education that sys­tem­at­ic­ally instil habits of critical thinking. This means knowing how to research and adopting a sceptical and ana­lyt­ic­al approach to all inform­a­tion, espe­cially from online sources. In all areas of the cur­riculum, ques­tion­ing assump­tions and seeking and weighing alternate views should become second nature. This would provide a framework for giving students an insight into the validity of enlight­en­ment values and undermine the potential appeal of simplist­ic, extremist ideo­lo­gies. It would also provide a much-needed inocu­la­tion against racism and ideas of racial or religious suprem­acism, and more generally would better equip today’s students and tomor­row’s leaders to intel­li­gently handle life’s chal­lenges and the country’s chal­lenges.
Whilst our sub­mis­sion makes a series of other recom­mend­a­tions, I believe that this inter­sec­tion between mul­ti­cul­tur­al and education policy is espe­cially deserving of close exam­in­a­tion. Thank you
Mr Doukas: The Ethnic Com­munit­ies Council of New South Wales, as many of you would know, is the peak body rep­res­ent­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al com­munit­ies in New South Wales. We have over 300 members, and were estab­lished in 1975 in the wave of estab­lish­ment of ethnic and mul­ti­cul­tur­al community councils around Australia. One of our core roles is the pre­ser­va­tion of our society as an open, free and mul­ti­cul­tur­al one. Over recent years, our more than 300 members have become increas­ingly concerned with prominent movements aiming to coun­ten­ance Aus­trali­a’s long­stand­ing pro immig­ra­tion and pro mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism policies. Indeed, in the time that I have been chair for four years or so, people went from asking me what the ECC does for me to ‘Why isn’t the ECC helping me enough?’
The reappear­ance of racism and the reappear­ance of bigotry as a legit­im­ate discourse within the Aus­trali­an political sphere has been something of par­tic­u­lar concern. We believe it is incumbent on the Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ment to take measures to ensure that the com­mit­ment to mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism by Australia as a nation continues to strengthen and that that com­mit­ment is reflected within our society as well, par­tic­u­larly given the integ­ra­tion of new and emerging com­munit­ies — those from refugee back­grounds — along with chal­lenges faced by estab­lished com­munit­ies and, of course, our Indi­gen­ous com­munit­ies. Part and parcel with this, we seek a com­mit­ment to enshrin­ing the prin­ciples of bol­ster­ing inclus­iv­ity within legis­la­tion and ensuring that existing legis­lat­ive pro­tec­tions against dis­crim­in­a­tion, vili­fic­a­tion and other forms of exclus­iv­ity are main­tained.
Senators, you will see that our sub­mis­sion has being primarily focused on the pro­tec­tion that is granted by section 18C of the Racial Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act and the main­ten­ance of this provision that has proven effective in combating racial hatred as well as the con­sist­ent review of relevant legis­la­tion with the aim of strength­en­ing, not degrading, existing pro­tec­tions, which are essential to promoting community harmony.
I agree with my colleague that education is an important aspect of this, but what is important to my members is that this review looks at Aus­trali­an mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism almost in isolation. We are not another Canada. Our model does not reflect something that could be done in Europe or North America. Aus­trali­an mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is unique to this continent and is an example to other countries. It is an example of integ­ra­tion of immigrant com­munit­ies in a framework of a blank canvas — noting the original sin of set­tle­ment and noting our respect of Indi­gen­ous com­munit­ies, but under­stand­ing that the future involves multiple com­munit­ies coex­ist­ing and building an open and free society. Thank you.
CHAIR: Thank you very much. Mr Vellis.
Mr Vellis: Thank you, Chair. Just quickly, in regard to the Aus­trali­an Hellenic Council: it obviously rep­res­ents the Greek community, which rep­res­ents approx­im­ately three per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. My interest here today is more to discuss oppor­tun­it­ies and to focus on success stories, between, for example, the Italians, the Greeks, the Chinese and, of course, the Jewish community and what they have con­trib­uted over time to mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. Obviously there was a bit of scep­ti­cism in the very beginning, regarding mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism as assim­il­a­tion by stealth, which has been discussed by various authors over the years. But, in essence, for me, it is more a comfort zone that needs to be created within emerging com­munit­ies that come to seek the so-called promised land or a better life. It is those com­munit­ies that require the most assist­ance, naturally, and hopefully they will not encounter the barriers that we had when we first arrived. It is for this reason that I am more inter­ested in terms of the ques­tion­ing that will come out of this committee on how we can make mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism stronger and better for the fore­see­able future.
CHAIR: That was short, sharp and sweet. Thank you very much. Can I kick things off. One of the things you said, Mr Doukas, was on the reappear­ance of racism within the national discourse. Do you want to elaborate on that? Can you point to examples? Can you point to examples within the political sphere — things that you think have been damaging? Secondly, has that, do you think, in some part had an impact on the people you represent?
Mr Doukas: The question of racism is one which is mul­ti­fa­ceted. The political discourse — par­tic­u­larly of the last election — does have racial con­nota­tions. It cannot be hidden that the spectre of racism has reappeared with the appear­ance of One Nation. Whether or not those people that elected Ms Hanson are racists is a different question. However, it manifests itself in society in different ways. We have members in the ECC from the Muslim community who have reported back to us that, as a result of state­ments made by Ms Hanson, there have been children coming home crying from school and, as a result of state­ments made, there have been things happening in the workplace which were not happening in the past. I think the discourse — even though it is done within a political setting and is done, often, to attract attention — may be null and void. The outcome, from a community per­spect­ive, is damaging. Our members have also reported to us that the outcome of this is a more polarised society in terms of the com­munit­ies. There is mistrust between different com­munit­ies, and an appear­ance of inter­com­munity racism which I find quite con­cern­ing — so, estab­lished com­munit­ies against newer ones; newer ones against older ones.
Senator KITCHING: In America, for example, there is some tension between the African American community and the Hispanic community over welfare payments or the amount of welfare dollars and the programs that are access­ible. A com­pet­i­tion has arisen. Would you say it is eco­nom­ic­ally based?
Mr Doukas: I would say that it is fair to say it is eco­nom­ic­ally based, but not cir­cu­lat­ing around welfare. In our exper­i­ence—
Senator KITCHING: I used that as an example because that is one of the instances in the lit­er­at­ure coming out of the States — the com­pet­i­tion — and more and more people need help because they do not have the same safety nets that we do.
Mr Doukas: Indeed. We are priv­ileged with a better welfare system than the US. I do not think that is a subject for political debate. The reason I believe that it is economic is that there is always a question of who is taking whose jobs and who is entitled to a job and who is rorting the system in terms of how Centrelink is being manip­u­lated in different ways. That has been raised in debates that I have had against the idea of welfare for newly arrived people. The challenge, I believe — and this has been reflected by our national fed­er­a­tion, by the Fed­er­a­tion of Ethnic Com­munit­ies Councils — is how to educate the wider community that it is not the case that newly arrived migrants are sapping the welfare system or it is not the case that one par­tic­u­lar community has more access to the welfare system than others.
Senator KITCHING: Why do people reach for it?
Mr Doukas: It is an easy target. In my exper­i­ence, it is simple, it is an easy way to reflect on it and it is easy to sell. For those reasons, those stories are better reading. It is as simple as that.
Senator KITCHING: And it has been used his­tor­ic­ally, of course.
Mr Doukas: Indeed.
Senator KITCHING: For a mil­len­ni­um probably.
Mr Doukas: Indeed. The real economics are that newly arrived people work harder and are happier to sacrifice their own lives in favour of their children and are happier to work harder and for longer hours than estab­lished people, and that has been the tradition of Aus­trali­an immig­ra­tion from the beginning. I challenge the notion that newly arrived people are in some way sapping the system. Studies have been done about the success of each wave of migration, the different things that have been brought and the economic success that has followed as result.
Mr Wertheim: That also affirms a lot of the studies that have been done that show that racism does not neces­sar­ily, or even in most cases, have a rational basis. The fact that people are concerned about their job security is a perfectly legit­im­ate concern, but they conclude from that that newly arrived migrants are the ones threat­en­ing their jobs. It does not have a rational basis at all. Nobody who has actually looked into it would come to that con­clu­sion, and yet people grasp onto it because they need something simple and urgent to address what is a very real problem. They are just mis­dia­gnos­ing it. They are mis­dia­gnos­ing the causes of the problem and they are arriving at policy positions that will not address the problem. The problem itself is real. That part is under­stand­able. It is the con­nec­tions made to it and the reasons ascribed to it that are not rational.
Senator KITCHING: Thank you. Sorry, I inter­rup­ted you, Chair.
CHAIR: That is okay. One of the reasons we are having this inquiry is that, over a number of years, we have heard — and we have certainly heard evidence through this process — that people are concerned about the political discourse, the discourse in the media and the con­fla­tion of issues like refugees, terrorism and immig­ra­tion, and we have had debates around weakening pro­tec­tions, against the Racial Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act, for example.
We would like to be talking about what it is that we do to build a stronger mul­ti­cul­tur­al Australia. Obviously, there are things we can do for the culture within our society, but as legis­lat­ors here we have the oppor­tun­ity through acts of par­lia­ment and through the estab­lish­ment of inde­pend­ent statutory author­it­ies et cetera to be able to foster a notion of a stronger and what some people might call a ‘new’ mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. We have had some evidence, for example, that Canada ref­er­ences mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in its con­sti­tu­tion, for a charter of rights and we have heard about a mul­ti­cul­tur­al act and a mul­ti­cul­tur­al com­mis­sion. We have heard evidence that we need a strong research focus. For example, a centre for inter-cultural diversity has been proposed. I put all of that to you, because I would like to know whether you have done any thinking around what some of that archi­tec­ture might look like and whether you could reflect on whether any of those things might be possible and might support mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.
Mr Vellis: I would like to pick up on one point, a com­puls­ory foreign language, a policy that previous gov­ern­ments tried to bring across. I lobbied for approx­im­ately a year and a half to get the Greek language into the cur­riculum, which ori­gin­ally was to be eight languages. Four of them were to be Asian and the other four were to be your tra­di­tion­al languages — Italian, Spanish, German, French. We lobbied hard for a year and a half to get modern Greek onto the cur­riculum which was already estab­lished but it was clas­si­fied as a community language because it related basically to a economic return, and that was the way they clas­si­fied languages.
However, regard­less of whether it is modern Greek or any other language, the import­ance of learning a second language is phe­nom­en­al. Obviously, it encour­ages the student to travel, to learn another culture and to open their mind, and that then comes into mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism because there is a better under­stand­ing of what is happening around them. That would be one option.
Mr Doukas: I was dis­cuss­ing with my col­leagues earlier that the Canadian model exists in the framework of keeping Canada together when faced with the threat of secession from the French-speaking provinces. So the Canadian model differs at its inception from ours, and for that reason it should serve as a guide but not as a framework. Our model is inde­pend­ent and indi­vidu­al; it should be looked at as something that is leading the world and as something that really that has not been done before. For that reason, a leap forward from a legis­lat­ive per­spect­ive would be to view mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism as an invest­ment, not as social welfare — to view the idea of integ­ra­tion as a way to invest eco­nom­ic­ally into a society, rather than as an extension of the welfare state. As Mr Wertheim said, the stat­ist­ics about how newly arrived people work and how they integrate in the workplace speak for them­selves.
That is one, moving it away into an invest­ment area. Another option is a national mul­ti­cul­tur­al act, for which the Ethnic Com­munit­ies Council and FECCA have been lobbying for quite some time, but one done with care and not just for the sake of it. It has to have a tangible impact on how com­munit­ies interact. Through my own exper­i­ence in the Ethnic Com­munit­ies Council, we have seen that ethnic people — and even that term is difficult to define — no longer form part of ethnic com­munit­ies. As they become more and more integ­rated, they drift away. They maintain identity but are no longer organised in ethnic organ­isa­tions. We see that in the census and it is main­tained through religious insti­tu­tions — churches, mosques syn­agogues et cetera — but the organ­isa­tion­al aspect of mul­ti­cul­tur­al Australia has changed. New com­munit­ies that arrive often gravitate towards organised community centres and then, as they get settled, drift away from them. So I believe any kind if legis­lat­ive review would have to be conscious of that — that mul­ti­cul­tur­al Australia and the idea of broad iden­tit­ies would be conscious of the sep­ar­a­tion of the indi­vidu­al from an organ­isa­tion while still main­tain­ing their identity. That was the second point and the third point would obviously be a strength­en­ing of laws against racism. There cannot be, in our view, a mul­ti­cul­tur­al act or any kind of legis­lat­ive framework advancing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism if racism can be protected as freedom of speech.
Mr Wertheim: I think in strength­en­ing legis­la­tion, we need an empirical basis to begin with. We do not even have a uniform national system for recording, pro­sec­ut­ing, measuring and address­ing racially motivated crime. This is something we dealt with in our written sub­mis­sion at some length. It is sig­ni­fic­ant that the United Kingdom, United States and Canada all have uniform national systems for identi­fy­ing, recording and address­ing racially motivated crime. Racially motivated crime is probably the most extreme end of the racism spectrum. There are many lesser grad­a­tions of racism than that — from a casual remark in a con­ver­sa­tion to public racial vili­fic­a­tion to actual violent action — but it seems to me that Australia is at least 20 years behind com­par­able countries in not having a uniform national system just to measure that most extreme form of racism, at least as some guide to the level of racism and action on racism in our society over time. That is one area that des­per­ately needs to be addressed. For the criteria for identi­fy­ing racially motivated crime, we can pick and choose from those other jur­is­dic­tions and perhaps adapt a defin­i­tion that is unique to Australia, but, certainly, we do not have to reinvent the wheel in that regard.
As regards an Aus­trali­an mul­ti­cul­tur­al council or com­mis­sion, I was a member of the current Aus­trali­an Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Council under a previous gov­ern­ment and it did quite a lot of good work. It initiated the Racism: It Stops With Me campaign, which had a series of mul­ti­cul­tur­al and Indi­gen­ous ambas­sad­ors go out into the wider community, speak to community groups and broaden the under­stand­ing of the basis of tolerance and mutual under­stand­ing that holds our society together. So it has done some work in that regard. Its basic idea was to act as a community base to give some bottom-up feedback to gov­ern­ment about where mul­ti­cul­tur­al policy was working and where it was not. But to be perfectly honest, it was not given suf­fi­cient sources. I do not think it has got suf­fi­cient resources now. To some extent, it was window dressing and it is certainly that now, in my view. If it is going to be effective, if we are going to have a body like that, that serves that purpose, it has got to be adequately resourced; it has not only got to have input into and access to the results of research into the design in order to measure the effect­ive­ness of mul­ti­cul­tur­al policies and integ­ra­tion policies and as a means of trans­mit­ting that inform­a­tion to the broader com­munit­ies but also to transmit the per­spect­ive of mul­ti­cul­tur­al com­munit­ies back to gov­ern­ment in a con­sidered way, not just in the anecdotal way but in a way that is based sys­tem­at­ic­ally on research.
Senator DODSON: Just a couple of questions, Chair. I have heard the point on legis­la­tion, and we have heard sub­mis­sions today about Aus­trali­an Con­sti­tu­tion sections 25 and 51(xxvi) basically under­pin­ning racism in the Con­sti­tu­tion. As you would be aware, the expert panel proposed a new section, 116A, which would entrench the notion of nondis­crim­in­a­tion in the Con­sti­tu­tion, rather than in legis­la­tion. I do not know what prospects it has of getting up. But that is a good example, I think, of where the social ethos or the social fabric of our nation is vis-a-vis the legal fabric. My question is: what else is there in the insti­tu­tion­al structure — in the Con­sti­tu­tion or the law, these sorts of struc­tures that we butt up against — that really militates against the integ­ra­tion, if I can use that word, of mul­ti­cul­tur­al societies into some sort of Aus­trali­an polyglot community?
Mr Wertheim: I will have a go at answering that.
Senator DODSON: It is a pretty long­win­ded question, I grant you.
Mr Wertheim: No, no, I get the general drift. First of all, my community supported all the recom­mend­a­tions of the expert panel. I accept what you say — that, in terms of a ref­er­en­dum, the proposed 116A would have very limited prospects of passing, espe­cially if it was not supported on a cross-partisan basis. You are asking about other areas in legis­la­tion, as I under­stand it—
Senator DODSON: In the insti­tu­tion­al framework or the society. I can see how you can be a migrant and you can be very suc­cess­ful if you con­cen­trate on the economics and prosper­ity. But it is the social discourse that arises when someone starts getting called a name or being dis­crim­in­ated against. What are the insti­tu­tion­al things that militate against the stupidity and ignorance that come out of someone’s mouth?
Mr Wertheim: I think, in the long run, the only remedy for stupidity and ignorance is education, which is why I led off with that in my opening statement. I do think that it is about the inter­sec­tion between education policy and a whole range of other policies. Mul­ti­cul­tur­al, con­sti­tu­tion­al reform and Indi­gen­ous recog­ni­tion policies are all bound up together and, crit­ic­ally, come together in the field of education. There has been some limited thought given to how we enshrine those values in the national education cur­riculum, but, when you look at it, it is sort of hived off into a separate subject, like civics and cit­izen­ship; it is not integ­rated more broadly into main­stream areas of education like English, history, science, the natural sciences. I think, if some real thought were given to how we can integrate those values into the national education cur­riculum more broadly and not just as a stan­dalone subject that does not even count for your HSC, we might actually be able to make some progress in the long term in these areas of prejudice, and, in the process, encourage habits of critical thinking which are going to be of more general benefit to the community in terms of the capacity of young people to deal with life’s problems generally and society’s problems when they inherit positions of lead­er­ship down the track. So I think education is a very important area.
In the area of legis­la­tion, the one glaring gap that I still see is in the Criminal Code, which has pro­vi­sions relating to urging-to-violence offences — that is, people urging violence on the basis of race, religion or a number of other factors — and it is sig­ni­fic­ant in my view that, since those pro­vi­sions were intro­duced, there has not even been a pro­sec­u­tion, let alone a con­vic­tion, under any of those sections. We are talking about sections 80.2A and 80.2B of the current Criminal Code. The real problem with the way those sections are drawn at the moment is that a pro­sec­utor needs to prove a double mens rea, a double mental element — in other words, not only an intention to urge violence on the basis of one of these specified grounds but a further intention that violence will occur. That is nearly impossible to prove in the vast majority of cases, because it cannot merely be inferred from the words them­selves. There actually has to be some other nexus that a pro­sec­utor can use to prove that that element is satisfied to the criminal standard — that is, beyond reas­on­able doubt, which is a very high standard.
So in the legis­lat­ive area it seems to me that that is an area that is crying out for reform, because, whatever view you might take about freedom of speech or whether religion should be protected in racial vili­fic­a­tion laws, that is a com­pletely different question to the question of promoting or advoc­at­ing violence on one of these grounds. Nobody could justify promoting or advoc­at­ing violence on an arbitrary ground like race, religion, political belief or what have you. So it seems to me that this committee would be serving a very positive purpose if it made recom­mend­a­tions for reform of those par­tic­u­lar pro­vi­sions. They are crying out for reform.
The other area, as I mentioned earlier, is to properly record racially motivated crime on a national basis and to have a uniform system rather than the piecemeal system we have at the moment, where some states do and some states do not and there is no uni­form­ity between them.
Mr Doukas: If I can provide an anecdotal answer, as part of the New South Wales gov­ern­ment’s proposed changes to section 20D of the New South Wales Anti-Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act we held open forums at the Ethnic Com­munit­ies Council, and the biggest problem that we dis­covered was a general mis­un­der­stand­ing of how the state act works and how the national Racial Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act works — a lack of under­stand­ing of where one stops and the other begins and of what reforms were being proposed. We found that quite con­cern­ing in that people with genuine problems felt that they were protected by a system that they them­selves did not under­stand.
So it is a question of education in every sense. I think organ­isa­tion­al education is also important. From a legis­lat­ive per­spect­ive, there is a general mis­un­der­stand­ing of how the existing pro­tec­tions against racial vili­fic­a­tion operate. Obviously, as my colleague said, the lack of pro­sec­u­tion is something that breeds cynicism in those com­munit­ies that are most in need of pro­tec­tion.
CHAIR: Senator Kitching, I under­stand you are leaving shortly, so fire away.
Senator KITCHING: Mr Wertheim, I was going to ask you about Jobbik. What I am really asking is not how it is going in Hungary or how the political situation is in Hungary. Do you see any parallels here? Why do you think there is a movement that is sweeping across that would advocate—
Mr Wertheim: You are asking me about the upsurge in anti-Semitism in Europe?
Senator KITCHING: Yes.
Senator DUNIAM: I was going to ask you to explain what it is you mean, but thank you — you have.
Mr Wertheim: Have I got that correct?
Senator KITCHING: Yes, that is right.
Mr Wertheim: You are abso­lutely right, but you have to under­stand that, as I mentioned earlier, racism does not neces­sar­ily have a rational basis, and anti-Semitism in Europe has very, very deep roots, going back to early Christian times and the medieval period, when it was reli­giously based. Then it mutated in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries into a racial basis. As a result of the sci­entif­ic revolu­tion, iron­ic­ally people were looking for a sci­entif­ic basis for their pre­ju­dices rather than a religious basis.
Senator KITCHING: Perhaps, for example, eugenics.
Mr Wertheim: Exactly, and that was the whole basis of the so-called racially based movement of anti-Semitism. In fact, the word ‘anti-Semitism’ was coined in the late 19^th century by a German writer to dis­tin­guish this new racially based form of hatred of Jews from the earlier word, which was ‘Judenhass’, or hatred of Jews, which was reli­giously based. The word ‘anti-Semitism’ is spe­cific­ally directed against Jews and spe­cific­ally on the basis of race. It was a word that was coined for that very purpose. Then nowadays, of course, anti-Semitism, due to its protean nature, has mutated yet again. I am not sug­gest­ing that every attack on Israel is neces­sar­ily based on anti-Semitism, but you do see a lot of morphing of anti-Israel discourse into tra­di­tion­al anti-Jewish tropes. So there is some overlap. So it has changed again. What I am saying is that prejudice is there because people are insecure and have low self-esteem, and there might be a whole lot of other psy­cho­lo­gic­al bases for it. The reasons they give, whether it is economic — ‘My job is under threat,’ or, ‘I’m afraid of terrorism,’ or whatever the reasons may be — are ration­al­isa­tions. They are not reasons. The real reasons lay within the racist himself or herself, not neces­sar­ily in reality. If there was an intel­li­gent grasp of reality, people would come to different con­clu­sions.
In Australia, thank­fully, we have not seen anything like that resur­gence of anti-Semitism. My organ­isa­tion each year records and puts out a report on the level of anti-Semitism in Australia. We have a very clear set of criteria that are based on the 1991 national inquiry into racial violence in Australia. We have been doing it since then, so we have some lon­git­ud­in­al stat­ist­ics as well. These show that, essen­tially, the level of anti-Semitism fluc­tu­ates in Australia. The general trend is up. But, then, the general trend in the pop­u­la­tion numbers is also up. So it is probably in line with that rise in the general pop­u­la­tion in Australia.
Although anti-Semitism is not as a severe problem in Australia as it is in Europe, my community has long taken the view that if racism starts with other groups, whether it is with Abori­gin­al groups, Asian group or anyone else, it does not end there. It never ends there. Just as racism did not end with the Jews in Europe — it started trans­lat­ing into other areas as well — in Australia racism may start with other groups, but, ulti­mately, it does not end there. A sys­tem­at­ic attack by any section of society on another is bound to undermine the social fabric in a way that will lead to further racist attacks — a signal of per­mis­sion, if you like, for racist attacks against other groups. People sometimes wonder why the Jewish community always has to come out against racism against Abori­gin­al people or Asian groups, or whatever, the reason is we know that racism does not end just with the immediate target. It might start there but it does not end there. Once one group is vul­ner­able, all groups are vul­ner­able. That is also the reason that we took the line that we took on 18C. As difficult as it was with parts of the community with whom we normally have good political relations, we just had to do it.
Senator KITCHING: I have a far more prosaic question. To which minister did the Aus­trali­an Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Council report? Was it the minister for immig­ra­tion?
Mr Wertheim: Yes, it was. The depart­ment of immig­ra­tion provided some resources in terms of the presence of public servants and doing some of the work. But it tended to be very much driven at the top. Although the council — as it was con­sti­tuted when I was on it, there were 10 people; they came from a very wide variety of back­grounds — did do some good work, we always felt that it did not have anything like the resources that it needed or the access to inform­a­tion that it needed to do the job optimally.
Mr Vellis: Other than enriching national bodies, or funding them a little bit better, education, as discussed, either through foreign languages or putting in history, for example, about national recog­ni­tion more so, or putting in the achieve­ments of ethnic groups, such as what they managed to do with the Snowy Mountain river scheme and so forth, I think this committee can also look at another aspect. This would be with regard to tourism and promoting and assisting in the promotion of mul­ti­cul­tur­al events. This would enhance the exper­i­ence of people in domestic tourism and inbound tourism attending these events and give them a strong eye-opener and so forth. There are many other aspects that can be looked at other than the core aspects, which are obviously education, legis­la­tion and national bodies.
Senator DUNIAM: Mr Wertheim, following Senator Kit­ch­ing’s questions on anti-Semitism, it strikes me as shocking that anti-Semitism is trending upwards.
Mr Wertheim: In Europe, yes.
Senator DUNIAM: Not in Australia?
Mr Wertheim: Long term in Australia too but probably in line with the growth in the pop­u­la­tion.
Senator DUNIAM: What drives that in a country like this? It is a genuine question. I do not under­stand.
Mr Wertheim: I cannot give you a simple, defin­it­ive answer, but I can tell you that the fluc­tu­ations that occur often coincide with upsurges of violence in the Middle East. For example, the major war in Gaza in 2014 tended to result in an out­pour­ing of anti-Semitism online and then that trans­lates into an increase at a lower level in violent acts against Jewish insti­tu­tions and against Jewish people.
Senator DUNIAM: That makes sense.
Mr Wertheim: That is one example I can give you to account for those fluc­tu­ations. On the other hand, I do not believe it has a rational basis. Generally, the more secure people feel, the less racism there is and the less anti-Semitism there is. The less secure they feel, the more racism there is.
Senator DUNIAM: Speaking bluntly here, dis­crim­in­a­tion often comes out not only for the points you have made but for new groups coming into a community — people who look different and sound different. The Jewish community has been part of Australia for a very long time and—
Mr Wertheim: Since 26 January 1788.
Senator DUNIAM: Exactly right.
Mr Wertheim: There were 20 of us on the First Fleet.
Senator DUNIAM: So I had to ask the question: why is this still prevalent today?
Mr Wertheim: You would not get an older, more estab­lished or well-integ­rated community, but that does not mean that racism does not occur. But it illus­trates the point that there is often an irra­tion­al basis that has to be addressed. I do not know of any other way of doing it other than through education.
Senator DUNIAM: Yes, which is really what I want to focus on. I think that is a very con­struct­ive way of dealing with this. Getting in early is really one of the only answers to dealing with the longer term issue.
Mr Wertheim: It is partly in content in terms of educating people against prejudice; it is also getting young minds trained in the skill of critical thinking.
Senator DUNIAM: Yes, I would like you to flesh out how that can be done. You talked about doing it across a number of subjects and in every dis­cip­line that is taught at school. Obviously, getting in earlier is better when young minds are really forming in, say, primary school, when you start to normalise things a bit more. Can you explain how it would actually work in the Aus­trali­an education system.
Mr Wertheim: You would need to get some expert educators — of whom my wife is one, and this is where some of these ideas come from — who have sys­tem­at­ic­ally integ­rated courses to cultivate skills in critical thinking at uni­ver­sity level. There is no reason at all that that cannot be done at secondary level and at primary level. So I would start by getting together the range of experts who are available in Australia who have actually con­struc­ted programs to cultivate these skills among students and ask them how it can be integ­rated into, say, the English cur­riculum, the history cur­riculum, physics, chemistry or geography, because I am sure it can be done.
Senator DUNIAM: I was going to ask: are there any other jur­is­dic­tions overseas—
Mr Wertheim: That do it?
Senator DUNIAM: Yes.
Mr Wertheim: There are. My under­stand­ing is that in South Korea these sorts of skills are looked at, but generally — and this applies, unfor­tu­nately, to Australia — the trend in education has been very heavily focused on rote learning, mem­or­isa­tion and parroting required knowledge, and the countries that have been most suc­cess­ful in their edu­ca­tion­al attain­ments and more generally are those that have moved away from that model.
CHAIR: Mr Wertheim, Mr Doukas and Mr Vellis, thank you so much for giving us your time today.
Source: Par­lia­ment of Australia