That said, there is one other point that deserves to be kept in focus - why exactly does the Australian government need to classify the fact that they are killing unarmed men and children. That shouldn't be classified information; if someone is killing unarmed children on my behalf I'd like to know about it tyvm.
Where is your line for where a culture starts and stops? Do we really need to be managing some kind of clash/conflict between the Greek suburbs or communities of Melbourne and the Lebanese, Hispanic or Italian ones for their cultures to be considered different?
Because they drive on the left and follow Australian laws have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population?
These communities are speaking their own languages, importing/selling their own ingredients and products, cooking their own foods, watching their own style of entertainment, practicing their own religions, socialising at unique times and locations, listening to their own music and raising their children in a style informed by their community's historical norms.
If you (and GP) formed your opinions outside of the major eastern cities, or haven't really ventured into the outer suburbs I could see how you could arrive at monoculture, but otherwise I think by requiring a "clash" you may be setting too high a bar for your definition of culture.
If you visit Oakleigh (I think Melbourne is still the city with the highest concentration of Greek people outside of Greece) and see the same culture that you see in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, which has the same culture that you see in Mareeba I'd be very interested in hearing more.
The freedom of religion is explicitly within a Western cultural and political framework.
For example, there is a long history of Islamic jurisprudence that also allows for freedom of religion - as long as Islam remains the 'established' religion, and other religions remain on a lesser footing. This is not obviously compatible with the level of separation of church and state in the West - but Muslim immigrants who might prefer a more theocratic system are obviously in the minority.
> have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population
Chinese civilization has had a markedly non-democratic political tradition for a couple thousand years, and many mainland immigrants lack a strong preference for democratic society. Similarly, Thailand has strong lese-majeste laws to protect the dignity of the king and royal family. These political traditions are pretty alien to the modern West, even though Westerners three hundred years ago would have found them utterly normal.
Culture is not just what you eat or where you worship, but encompass habits like 'How do we treat other groups?', 'How should we be ruled?', or even 'Is it morally acceptable to break laws (like evading taxes)?'
Immigrants are only allowed to act out certain cultural beliefs—the ones that don't threaten or conflict with the dominant culture.
This is the first time I've really seen this argument, and it still feels like it depends on a particularly hard-line definition of culture if it asserts that a community has no culture if they aren't attempting to disrupt the equilibrium and establish their own nation-state.
While I can definitely see how political and legal structures can be informed by culture, necessarily including them as essential requirements is definitely not how culture or multicultural societies have been defined in any other interaction I've ever had.
But this strongly conflicted with the nascent notion of the unitary nation-state, much to the Ottoman (and Austrian) Empires' later detriment.
To be clear, I'm not claiming that there aren't multiple cultures in the West - just look at Amish or Hasidic communities as examples - just that they are still forced to abide by majority rules, which necessarily means that their cultures are somewhat abridged and shorn of their full representation. And note how small these communities are compared to the majority.
It's a rather different story in countries with multiple cultural groups with comparable demographic power, such as the former Yugoslavia, which was torn apart by these divisions.
Put under a different perspective, you can make a rather strong case that cities and rural areas are now different cultural zones in the US, and the intractable political conflicts over abortion, marriage, and even tax policy are byproducts.
In my view, culture is pretty fundamental, and when we run across a culture alien to us, it's quite disconcerting. And so a monoculture is one where you never run across any truly "alien" ideas.
You can have kebab shops and Thai restaurants, and churches and mosques and synagogues, and people speaking different languages, but as long as everyone agrees on the fundamental underpinnings of society, it's still a monoculture.
Australian culture is very open to everyone, so long as they are fundamentally Western in terms of their views on democracy, criminal justice, religious tolerance, women's rights, corruption, LGBT rights. That's so ingrained that when you point this out, there's usually a pause, and then an incredulous "well, yeah, both those are the only correct opinions!", or sometimes even a confused query as to whether any other ideas even exist in the modern world. I have the same gut reaction (I mean, obviously democracy is good, right?), but I also know that there are cultures out there with different views.
If Oakleigh has a lot of Greek people in it, you can probably get some rocking moussaka, but that doesn't mean it shares the same culture as modern Greece does. Consider, for example, the large difference in corruption between Greece (and much of the rest of southern Europe) and Australia (and much of northern Europe): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index If that survey was done on Melbourne suburbs, do you think they'd be fairly uniform, or would it look more like the map of Europe?
I get the feeling your sentiment comes from never having lived in an actual monoculture, so what is multicultural just feels normal to you. Krakow and Vienna are very different compared to Berlin and London to name examples.
Dubai perhaps. The clash between the rich, western expat communities, the rich native communities, and the poor mostly Asian labourer communities is severe, and there are actual disagreements about basic norms.
> I get the feeling your sentiment comes from never having lived in an actual monoculture
I have absolutely lived in what you are calling monocultures. I've lived in small rural farming towns with a populations of less than 800.
Where we disagree is in the meaning of culture. Adding a chinese restaurant to a small town doesn't make it more multicultural or diverse in my view.
Except those groups never interact with each other. The implicit statement in a city being multicultural, is that as an inhabitant you will interact with these different cultures. I've never been to Dubai, but I strongly doubt you are going to get close with any Arabs or Asian labourers if you live there. I know someone who moved to Jerusalem, I was thinking maybe you would pick that city as an example, but I've heard that again the different communities live very separate lives, and they actively avoid interacting with each other.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/investigative-jo...
The AFP didn't wake up one day and send armed men to storm a building. After two year's worth of investigation, they gathered enough evidence to request a search warrant for a single ABC office which was granted. They then notified the ABC that they were on their way and entered without conflict to find and collect the data they wanted to take. Nobody was arrested, nobody was beaten, nobody was threatened. Nobody was even insulted during the process. The Australian Federal Police are not even allowed to access the data until ABC's lawyers have reviewed the entire process within a two week window.
I'm not sure how much more democratic that can be.
It's difficult for me to comment on this because I feel like I'm coming across as if I support an overreaching government. I support an extremely small government but one thing that catches me out is national security. The only role a federal government should play, in my view, is national security and I don't see a problem when they're doing exactly that in a way that dots all the i's and crosses all the t's.
[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-05/abc-raided-by-austral...
I don't think it's fair to characterise the reporting as 'spreading conspiracy theories' either, just for quoting a media spokesperson who 'described the raids as "disturbing" considering they have taken place so soon after a federal election.' This attributed comment was followed by quotes from the AFP and the relevant minister asserting their independence.
No but...
Valid defenses include: the statement is true. The statement is the speaker's opinion. And even if those fail, it must proven that it was spoken with malice. So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable.
Also a defence under Australian law.
> The statement is the speaker's opinion.
Also a defence under Australian law, as long as the speech falls under the concept of "fair comment and criticism", which is the same rule the US follows (albeit interpreted quite differently).
> it must proven that it was spoken with malice
NOT a defence under US law, unless the plaintiff is a public figure, which is a category defined quite narrowly in the US.
> So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable.
There are a lot of libel suits in the US, many of them are won by the plaintiffs.
The difference in law is less than you seem to think, and what differences exist are mainly on the extent that opinions ("I think Joe is an asshole") should be protected; both countries agree that factual claims ("Joe murdered his wife") are not. And offhand, it's hardly clear that Australia had drawn the line in the right place.
See, eg:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/australia-defamat...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/30/your-right-to-...
https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-...
I have lived in both countries long enough to see this.
As an American I've immediately been thrown off with "why are you/they allowed to do that" or "there aught to be a law" or "I have nothing to hide-type conversations.
It's just a flat out different personal liberty viewpoint than I have. That's not atypical, but the quickness I find myself disagreeing is.
That said, in this case we haven't had a magistrate order a journalist to reveal who their source was, so journalistic source confidentiality hasn't been breached. Instead we saw a portion of a slow, deliberate and year-long investigation by the federal police with no pressure placed on the journalists themselves - either in the form of arrests or coercion to reveal secrets. So this still wouldn't be a journalistic rights issue.
The raids are the furtherance of the suppression of public interest material being made public through the media, so that is absolutely a free speech and journalistic rights issue.
I have to disagree with you here... Sydney & Melbourne have the world's 3rd and 4th largest foreign born populations.
45% of people living in Sydney weren't born in Australia... Melbourne 41%.
Agree that outside Syd & Melb though, it's very mono cultural.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_born#Metropolitan_and_...
The question is whether the populations are separated into heterogeneous cultural communities, or rather are integrated into a more homogenous society.
In my experience (having spent effectively all of my >40 years living in Melbourne) is that it's a bit of both, but that cultural disharmony is not a problem.
Yeah, no. The only total unadulterated horsehit is this unsourced nonsense that tries to suggest Australia is a police state.
> Australians by and large don't want American style, unfettered free speech
I'd argue that Australians, by and large, don't know that they don't have a legislated right to free speech similar to what they have in the US. This is evident by the shock surprise and outrage from Australians every time there is an action that stifles free speech.
> And are quite happy with "say whatever you want so long as you don't libel or slander someone or some group of people" approach
Neither libel nor slander is protected under the American first amendment.
> It's what keeps our very multicultural society together.
Australia has a very mono-cultural society. The "multi-cultural society" meme attempts to liken having a kebab shop on the corner to having conflicting cultures in the same area, which to me (as a non-Anglo Australian) doesn't make sense. Australian values and culture is quite evidently very specific (freedom of religion, freedom of dress, freedom of expression, etc) and we - both legally and as a society - reject any culture that conflict with this.
Perhaps the only other culture that is allowed in Australia is traditional Aboriginal culture, where we quite literally have a second set of laws to accommodate it.
That said, freedom of speech doesn't have any impact on this at all. I'm not sure where the link you're supposing comes from.
---
In general, what happened[0] was intentionally misreported by the ABC.
1. The AFP obtained a search warrant for the ABC offices.
2. The AFP notified the ABC that they were coming to investigate in advance, however the ABC reported it to be a "raid."
3. The ABC dedicated a five camera film crew to follow the AFP around throughout the process.
4. The AFP had the explicit goal of finding out who the source was for revealing classified security information.
That's it.
It wasn't a free speech issue -- and it wasn't a journalistic rights issue.
[0] https://www.afp.gov.au/news-media/media-releases/afp-stateme...