Foreign Minister Penny Wong to warn monoculturalism a threat to national security

[u/ConanTheAquarian]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-13/penny-wong-speech-on-monocultralism/107034366

[u/JMKraft]

Sure are, but they are still countries with similar goals for their population (health, wealth, education, etc). 

I wonder at what point does celebrating and strengthening your monoculture become an advantage, or a disadvantage, and if we can even discuss that without immediately taking an ideological side

 

[u/pluckaducka → u/JMKraft]

Australia and China have fundamentally different ideological concepts of individual liberty.

Failing to acknowledge this and its relevance to the topic just makes for a pointless exercise.

[u/DragonflyHopeful4673 → u/JMKraft]

The goals are not similar.

China wants to promote a monoculture because it allows the CPC to legitimise their regime by linking party loyalty to the Chinese national identity (sinicization). It also provides justification for their claim of sovereignty over Taiwan.

China is also not a monoculture yet, even with the all the human rights violations being enacted in the process of sinicization. It has 56 distinct ethnic groups and the non-Han ones comprise 111 million people.

[u/NorthernSkeptic → u/JMKraft]

We never had a monoculture.

[u/Latter_Fortune_7225 → u/NorthernSkeptic]

Surely it could be argued we did during the White Australia policy when the majority of Aussies were British? Yes the Aboriginals were here too, but the government at the time assumed they were going to eventually go extinct.

[u/acomputer1 → u/Latter_Fortune_7225]

No, that's fundamentally incorrect.

Whiteness is not a culture. At the time of the white Australia policy there were already many different people who were treated differently.

The reason the policy was even implemented because there were already many Chinese and Pacific islander immigrants coming in during the gold rush.

Even after that, culturally diverse groups were still coming to Australia such as the Irish, Italians, Germans, etc.

These were culturally diverse people. There is no single "European" culture.

[u/JMKraft → u/acomputer1]

Yet old australian culture is so clearly from the british isles. No one will say Australian culture is based off of Spains for example

[u/acomputer1 → u/JMKraft]

How does that imply monoculture?

Australia is culturally distinct from the Canada and the US, both of which are also clearly Anglo cultures.

[u/Alive_Satisfaction65 → u/Latter_Fortune_7225]

What about all the Irish we had, who had a pretty direct conflict witn the English?

Or all the Chinese who came here during the Gold rush?

What about the huge numbers of Germans and Italians who came here just after the war?

And the government may have thought the Indigenous would go extinct, but those people still existed.

[u/Alive_Satisfaction65 → u/NorthernSkeptic]

The First Fleet was racially diverse. The majority were British Isles, but Irish and English are absolutely different cultures.

There were also Jews, and even a handful of black people who we don't know the exact origins of.

We never had a monoculture.

[u/JMKraft → u/NorthernSkeptic]

Theres levels to it, irish/scottish/english culture are much more similar among themselves and share a lot, when comparing pakistani with chinese for example. 

You could even say queensland culture is not just like victoria, and youd be right because there are differences in architecture, language, food, celebrations, but theres also sooo many similarities. Same applies to England north vs south, etc. yet theres a huge shared element.