Australian foreign minister defends multiculturalism, attacks far-right

Australia’s foreign minister attacked the policies of the far-right One Nation party, arguing that its call for a monoculture would damage social cohesion at home and relations with friends and allies abroad.

“The call for a monoculture is a call for Australia to curtail our choices and cut off our connections,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a speech on Friday in Sydney. “At a time where external and internal forces are seeking to divide us, turning Australians against each other makes us more vulnerable.”

Wong did not name Senator Pauline Hanson in the speech, though her remarks appear aimed at the One Nation leader, who said in June that Australia was in crisis because of immigration and multicultural policies and called for a “monocultural” society and sharp cuts to migration.

Wong rejected the idea that Australia was ever “monocultural,” calling the idea a “melancholic fantasy” that would turn Australians against each other. “Multicultural Australia is the only Australia that has ever existed,” the foreign minister said, echoing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s argument that the country has never been uniform in its make-up.

The call to become a monoculture is “to look inwards, to have no friends to work with, no partners to trade with, no opportunities to grow from. To be lonely in a dangerous world,” Wong said.

“Denigrating our region and neglecting our partners is no way to secure Australia’s interests,” she said, arguing that efforts to build ties with Asia paid off this year when Australia secured additional energy supplies from Singapore, South Korea, China and others after the Strait of Hormuz closed.