A hard form of multiculturalism that condones practices such as female genital mutilation is promoting a “fetish of diversity” and should be stopped, says a new report.
Centre for Independent Studies research fellow Peter Kurti also said governments should get out of the business of supporting the cultural, ethnic or religious components of identity.
“This determination to promote diversity has become an obsession that has driven “hard” multiculturalism beyond a concern to eradicate racial discrimination,” he said.
“It has begun to cast doubt on the very legitimacy of the notion of a core national culture.”
Mr Kurti said most Australians supported a soft multiculturalism that tolerated diversity and made newcomers welcome, but they were concerned about a dangerous hard form that gave equal space to groups to exercise unsavoury cultural or religious practices.
“Female genital mutilation or the forced marriage of underage girls, which most Australians find abhorrent, are extreme examples, yet hard multiculturalism nonetheless argues that a liberal state must tolerate such practices in the name of diversity,” he said.
“It is time for the fetish of diversity to end, and the advance of hard multiculturalism checked.”
Mr Kurti said former Sierra Leone refugee Khadija Gbla, who was South Australia’s young person of the year, had spoken about female genital mutilation at a national summit this year.
"(She) insisted that the term ‘mutilation’ shows a lack of respect and only conjures horrible images instead of helping people to understand the cultural context in which the procedure continues to take place,” he said.
Mr Kurti also named new federal Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane as a prominent supporter of hard multiculturalism.
Speaking this week at an anti-racism conference convened by Deakin University, Dr Soutphommasane said that so-called casual racism was a pervasive form of racial prejudice being practised in Australia.
“We all know we needn’t be a card-carrying member of a racist organisation to do or say something with racist implications,” he said.
“More often than not it is about the rehearsal of stereotypes than it is about the expression of doctrinal belief.”
Dr Soutphommasane said that the federal Human Rights Commission received a 59 per cent increase in racial vilification complaints in 2012-13, while about half of racial discrimination cases involved the workplace.