Pauline Hanson’s National Press Club address last week reminded us she doesn’t like multiculturalism, she sees immigration as responsible for most of the country’s problems, and she regards the values of some immigrants as inimical to a predominantly “Judeo-Christian society”. She called for “monoculturalism” to replace “multiculturalism”.
These kinds of views are not new for Hanson, nor for Australia. Billy Snedden, who served as Liberal immigration minister (and later Leader), called for a “monoculture” in 1969. The political right’s critique of multiculturalism took off in the 1980s and never really went away. Even left-wing critics saw it as a conservative ideology that celebrated food and dancing – “spaghetti and polka”, it was said – while leaving more fundamental inequalities in place.
