The IPA published a note in the AFR that contained the following.

For good (or for ill), the culture of the nation was created on a foundation of Judeo-Christian ethics and the British legacy of human rights, the rule of law, and parliamentary democracy. Australia has one culture – not many.

Australia is multiethnic – it is not, and never has been, multicultural. The multiculturalism politicians are so fond of talking about can only exist in a social and political culture that’s liberal, peaceful, and accepts (up to a point) difference. Australia made multiculturalism possible, not the other way around.

(Yet, for some reason, the academic institutions of the English-speaking world now believe their primary purpose is to attack the history of a culture that allows people of different backgrounds and beliefs to live together in some sort of harmony.)….

At the Sydney Jewish Museum, Albanese said he wanted Australia to be “a place where people are valued regardless of their gender, their faith, their race, their sexuality, regardless of who they are”. That implies there should be equality of citizenship – a concept that the Voice referendum attempted to overturn. The strongest advocate for the Voice was the prime minister himself.

You may be familiar with that kind of ideology.  If you went to  family dinners on a Friday with Jewish, Muslim and Catholic families, you might be surprised to find only ethnic differences and not cultural differences. 

You might also be surprised to learn that the Voice was a challenge to equality.  (And try all that on with First Nations people at Yuendemu. Did Emily share the culture of Turner or Picasso?)

But what of ‘Judeo-Christian ethics’?  This label is often used with ‘Western civilisation’.  The trouble is that the three main faiths in Australia – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism – all came out of Asia.  Christianity chose to bury that past.  It took its philosophy from Greece and made Rome its geographic base.  To me – a lapsed Prot – in doing so, it butchered the teaching of the founder.

But let us put to one side whether Christian and Jewish ethics are the same, and if so whether they differ from those of Islam.  You are still left with  a gaping schism in Christianity.  We cannot have a Jew or Muslim as our head of state in London.   We cannot have a Catholic.  We take what we get, and the English constitution says the king or queen must be in communion with the Church of England.

Which is an interesting contribution to our multi-culturalism.  Or our attitude to the Enlightenment.

Multi-culturalism – IPA – religion – ethics.