a multicultural History of Australia

Making multicultural Australia

Search the complete site: ... Sitemap » ... Links to other sites »

thumbnail

Commentary on: The Galbally Strategy for migrant settlement »

Prof Andrew Jakubowicz.

Text Commentary

Respecting community differences...

1978 - The Galbally Report brings more services for migrants

English language classes for migrant adults and children, such as this one at Port Kembla Primary School, near Wollongong in 1979, were among the services given a boost as a result of recommendations in the Galbally Report, commissioned by Prime Minister Fraser in 1977. Melbourne barrister Frank Galbally QC (who had defended the Bonegilla “rioters” in the early 1960s) says the aim of the report was to “make migrants more welcome”, help them to settle more easily into Australian life, to maintain their own cultures and to ensure they had the same rights and access to services as other Australians.

The four guiding principles of the Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services to Migrants were:

  • to ensure equal opportunity and equality of access to services for all members of society;
  • that everyone should be able to maintain their own culture and be encouraged to understand others’;
  • that the needs of migrants, while they should ideally be met by mainstream programs and services, should in the short term be specially targeted in order to ensure equality of access and provision; and
  • that services and programs should be designed and operated in full consultation with clients, with an emphasis on self-help to enable migrants to became self-reliant quickly.

The 57 specific recommendations of the Report involved expenditure of $50 million over three years. They included settlement services, English language classes for adults and children, translation services and improved communication by government with non-English speakers, the extension of grant-in-aid programs to ethnic community organisations and the establishment of Migrant Resource Centres. The Report also recommended the establishment of the Australian Institute for Multicultural Affairs (AIMA), the extension of ethnic radio and the establishment of an ethnic television task force.

In 1981 the AIMA (under the direction of Petro Georgiou, formerly Fraser’s adviser and key participant in the behind-the-scenes work on the Galbally review) was commissioned to evaluate the implementation of the Report’s recommendations. It concluded the level of implementation was “impressive”, but found some inadequacies in migrant programs and services and made a further 89 recommendations at a net cost of $6 million.

One major criticism of both the Galbally Report and its AIMA review was a perceived failure of the recommendations to address the broader economic perspective. Unemployment was beginning to increase markedly, particularly among the lower skilled where migrants formed a high proportion. Thus while the Report firmly anchored the new multiculturalism in some government policy and programs, these programs were designed to achieve cultural enhancement and social maintenance of ethnic groups but failed to address structural inequalities and issues like those of migrant workers. Theorist Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki claims the Galbally Report “had a blatant political agenda in setting up structures which would clearly serve or be favourable to the electoral fortunes of the new government”. He said the Report “only addresses issues of… cultural maintenance. But it completely disregards the wider issues of how will these people fit into the wider framework”. Fraser, however, says the policies of the Report were “appropriate, they were just. Their objective was to build a better and more unified society”.

The Report’s recommendations shifted the debate about multiculturalism away from policies of integration to those of equality of access and opportunity and the right of ethnic groups to maintain their cultural distinctiveness. They also entrenched multiculturalism as a bipartisan ideology and the Hawke Labor Government, which succeeded Fraser in 1983, despite its wariness of AIMA and Georgiou, accepted the policy measures recommended by the AIMA review into the Galbally Report.

Further reference:
Castles, Stephen (et al) Mistaken identity: multiculturalism and the demise of nationalism in Australia, 3rd ed, Sydney, Pluto Press, 1992.

Jakubowicz, Andrew; Morrissey, Michael; and Palser, Joanne Ethnicity, class and social policy in Australia, SWRC reports and proceedings, no 46, Sydney, Social Welfare Research Centre - University of New South Wales, 1984.

Jupp, James (ed) The Australian People: an Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and their Origins, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1988.