Don't go back to where you came from: Australia's Multicultural Genius

Description

Tim Soutphommasane boldly stakes a claim for the overwhelming success of multiculturalism in Australia. European governments are declaring multiculturalism a failure, with many conservatives in Australia hastening to agree. But is a multicultural approach to integration and diversity really as destructive as critics say? Have we been too quick to declare its demise? Offering an unflinching and informed defence of cultural diversity, Soutphommasane shows that multiculturalism is more than laksa, kebabs or souvlaki and that it doesn't automatically spell cultural relativism, ethnic ghettos or reverse racism. In fact, multicultural Australia has been a national success story.

Tim Soutphommasane is a political philosopher at Monash University's National Centre for Australian Studies and the Per Capita think tank. He is also a columnist with The Weekend Australian . He worked for Bob Carr when he was NSW Premier and for Kevin Rudd when he was federal opposition leader. A former leader writer at the Financial Times and The Guardian , he is a regular contributor to The Monthly and The Australian Literary Review as well as ABC News 24. Tim holds a doctorate (and masters) in political philosophy from the University of Oxford, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. He is the author (with Nick Dyrenfurth) of All That's Left: What Labor Should Stand For (NewSouth, 2010) and Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-Building for Australian Progressives (Cambridge University Press, 2009).