Bert Kelly, The Bulletin, October 12, 1982, p. 150.

There is an effective organisation in Sydney called the Centre for Independent Studies which examines, through a free enterprise magnifying glass, some of the issues that face us. I have always regarded it with affection and respect, and indeed I support it financially in a mean manner. But it is now beginning to irritate me because it seems to be trying to make me think, and this is painful to a man of my age. I am a bit like an old dingo; I like padding along on my well-worn track, and I hate leaving it.

The centre recently sent me two small monographs, one called Lessons from the Ord, by Bruce Davidson and Susan Graham-Taylor, and the second, The Politics of Multi-culturalism, by Raymond Sestito.

I read the Ord book first because I know the background fairly well, having won myself the title “Knocker Kelly” when, long ago, I opposed the building of the big Ord dam. Indeed, it was then that I coined the pregnant phrase, “At each election I feel a dam coming on,” which has become notorious, or famous, depending on your point of view. And as one of the authors of the Ord book was Bruce Davidson, who always writes so fearlessly and well about government irrigation schemes, I read it eagerly.

It was as good as I expected. And it is a sorry indictment of State and Federal politicians. The sad truth is that both groups were more interested in winning votes in the cities, even if the settlers we encouraged to grow cotton on the Ord went broke. And anyone who thought clearly about the project could see that this would be the inevitable result. This was because the Ord farmers had growing wild around them the natural hosts of the pests of the cotton plant, so the build-up in the numbers of these pests made insect control more necessary and expensive than in other places in Australia, such as on the Namoi. But such mundane matters did not deter politicians in full cry after votes.

Then I reluctantly picked up the pamphlet on multi-culturalism. This is one of the longest words I have met and I must admit that I had only a hazy idea what it meant. But Sestito made me think, and this is what irritated me. His thesis is that the goal of having a multi-cultural society was dreamt up by the political parties in order to attract migrant votes, in the same way that we built the Ord dam to get city votes.

I used to think that multi-culturalism was like motherhood — an automatic good for which migrants really yearned, but Sestito says this is not so.

I suppose we came up with this vote-winning idea in the same way as we got ourselves landed with so many other half-baked, ill-digested schemes. About six months before an election the Good and Great used to urge the party’s backbench committees to get busy and prepare some tasty baits to throw around at election time. They didn’t have to tell us to prepare popular policies — we were politicians too, and were well aware that it is more important to be popular than right.

Sestito says that is how multi-culturalism came on the scene. Then he says:

Multi-culturalism means more than policies which stress that Greeks and Italians should retain only the symbols of their culture. Such policies look only at the “pretty” things association with multi-culturalism: ethnic dancing, music, craft and food.

These policies avoid the reality that multi-culturalism also implies the maintenance of ethnic languages, literature and customs as viable living wholes. This would imply a fragmentation of Australia’s predominant Anglo-Irish culture: for, as a consequence, Australia would have to become multi-lingual and her social, political and economic institutions would have to reflect the ethnic composition of its society. Such a policy may require positive discrimination on the part of governments.

Sestito says that both parties aroused expectations in the migrant community that they didn’t know they had till we told them we wanted to help them.

This kind of behaviour has landed us with ethnic television, which only a few people wanted until we put it in a policy speech. To quote Sestito again:

The government gave little real thought to the purpose of ethnic television, in what form it could best be achieved, and for a government concerned with the level of spending, paid very little attention to the cost of the program. Do multi-lingual programs with English sub-titles really make Australia a multi-cultural society, or is ethnic television a showpiece, a method by which the government can gain the ethnic vote without, at the same time, losing votes from other sections of the community?

I wish I hadn’t read Sestito’s book. From now on, dams won’t be the only things I feel coming on when elections loom.

Appendix for Economics.org.au readers
Apparently Mark Twain once wrote, “Everybody’s Private Motto: It’s Better to be Popular than Right.”