a multicultural History of Australia
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Period: Multiculturalism in Practice »
Commentary on: Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs »
Prof Andrew Jakubowicz.
Text Commentary
Knowledge for a multicultural Australia...
1979 - An institute set up to lead research into, and advocate, multiculturalism
As this cartoon by Bruce Petty shows, Australians had limited understanding, in spite of a variety of initiatives, about multiculturalism and its aim of giving migrants an equal place in society. The Prime Minister’s Office proposed an organisation specifically geared at generating knowledge about multiculturalism.
Australia has a long history of using social science and historical research to help illuminate government policy in the field of immigration and cultural relations. From the early post-war work of demographers such as Borrie and later Price, the sociological field work of Martin and Zubrzycki, and cultural anthropology such as the studies of the Greek community by Bottomley and Tsounis, there has been a dynamic relationship between those whose task it is to “create” knowledge, and those who seek to utilise and transform that knowledge in policy contexts.
The Fraser government was affected by the arguments of a young former academic turned political adviser, Petro Georgiou, an active figure in the Greek community in Melbourne. Georgiou had acted as a link between Fraser and Galbally, though he also had his own vision of the multicultural future. The Galbally committee was persuaded of the need for a major institution, with the ear of government but with independence from the bureaucracy, which could act as a focus for the generation of knowledge about the immigrant experience and act as an advocate for the emerging multicultural agenda.
An important recommendation of the Galbally Report was fulfilled with the establishment by Act of Parliament in 1979 of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (AIMA). Its first chairman was Frank Galbally himself, and its first director Petro Georgiou, the former adviser to Malcolm Fraser. The political implications of these appointments led to an early suspicion of AIMA both from the left of politics and within some ethnic communities. However, its objectives and stated functions were laudable. AIMA was to raise awareness within Australia of its diverse cultures and how they serve to enrich the whole; to promote tolerance, understanding, harmony and mutual esteem among communities; to promote a cohesive Australian society; and to assist in promoting an environment which allowed everyone to fully participate in that society.
AIMA was created as a statutory body, freeing it from Departmental oversight. Its functions were to provide advice to the Federal Government, to commission and conduct research, to provide information and educational activities and to collect literature and other materials relating to Australian cultural diversity.
The dominating presence of Petro Georgiou was viewed by some as a benefit, given his access to the Federal Government; others believed Georgiou shaped AIMA by controlling its research topics and choice of consultants in order, as Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki says, “to make it an instrument of politics rather than an instrument serving the whole community”. Alan Matheson, who later sat on the AIMA council and had been involved with the Ecumenical Migration Centre, says that its research was controlled, not refereed and not academically published. But under the later chairmanship of Dr Kenneth Rivett, according to Professor Zubrzycki, the matter was completely remedied and AIMA became open and accountable.
The deepest level of criticism directed toward AIMA centred on its evaluation of the Galbally Report which it was commissioned to do in 1981. AIMA’s evaluation was criticised in much the same terms as the original Report for ignoring worsening economic conditions and their effect on ethnic communities, and for its innate conservatism; suspicion of AIMA’s political ideology hardened. While the Hawke Government, elected in 1983, accepted the recommendations of the AIMA evaluation, it announced a review of AIMA. Following an acrimonious debate between AIMA’s critics and its defenders, the government moved in 1986 to abolish the Institute as part of its overall budget cuts. Its functions lapsed for some time, until the establishment of the new Office of Multicultural Affairs.
At the heart of the AIMA issue was the question of what sort of knowledge about cultural relations was legitimately open to exploration - would it be constrained by the agenda of the government of the day, or would it be open to what might be unpopular and critical investigation? By 1990 the new Labor government had established two institutions to deal with the political and research agendas that AIMA had hoped to cover - a Bureau of Immigration, Population and later also Multicultural Research, and an Office of Multicultural Affairs. Both would outlast the fall of the Labor government in 1996 by only months, their abolition a signal that the Liberal/National government did not want to support the further interrogation of the cultural diversity of Australian society.
Further reference:
Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs National research directory: multiculturalism and ethnic affairs in Australia 1986, Melbourne, AIMA, 1986.
Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs Ethnicity and multiculturalism - 1986 national research conference, May 14-16, Melbourne, AIMA, 1986.
Castles, Stephen (et al) Mistaken identity: multiculturalism and the demise of nationalism in Australia, 3rd ed, Sydney, Pluto Press, 1992.
Jupp, James (ed) Ethnic politics in Australia, Sydney, George Allen and Unwin, 1984.