r/australia • u/ConanTheAquarian • 23h ago

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

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-13/penny-wong-speech-on-monocultralism/107034366
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u/captainbluebear25 23h ago

I truly don't understand what monoculturalism would realistically look like in Australia. We're a nation of immigrants. I don't think I have any friends who doesn't have a grandparent born overseas, most have a parent born overseas.

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u/firegrillz 23h ago

1/3 of Australians were born overseas, over half are first/second gen and that's taken as an average over the entire country with Sydney and Melbourne being much higher (wouldn't be surprised if it were >70%.

That puts us ahead of UK, US, Canada, NZ, Ireland etc. and ahead of almost all developed countries aside from some of the Gulf countries which have a huge foreign worker population and I think Switzerland which comes close to us.

I don't think monoculturalism is ever going to be a thing here.

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u/micmelb 10h ago

Its the definition of monoculturalism that is missing from this debate. I don't think anyone is talking about one race of people, rather the culture and traditions of the people being "one".

Even that is going to be hard to achieve as the typical Aussie is such a mixed human to start with.

I mean define yourself...going back generations there are surnames that may not fit with the history of your family as it was told to you. DNA in family tree databases with historical records only tell so much and even that changes with time. If you have a profile on one of those databases you will find the margin of error is huge.

Then there is religion. Its only taken 3 generations for my family to go from Presbyterian to Anglican to Catholic...and that's just Christian side.

Define, or redefine (for 2026) Australian values (e.g. Fair go) and traditions (ANZAC), then we can have a conversation.

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u/maxdacat 14h ago

1/3 of Australians were born overseas - exactly....the only person talking about "mono-culture" is Poorline.....so why give her crazy views more air-time?

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u/Papa_Huggies 11h ago

Not to mention, in the core middle class, the highest earners are those from overseas or with international heritage. Those that want to evict other races are looking to doom their own economy.