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Minister Tony Burke with members of the Greek Orthodox Community of NSW. Photo: Social Media<\/p>\n\u201cMulticultural Australia and modern Australia are the exact same thing,\u201d Tony Burke says to Neos Kosmos. That is the argument at the heart of the Government\u2019s position on multiculturalism. As Minister for Home Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship, the Arts and Cyber Security, Burke sits at the centre of some of the most urgent questions facing Australia: the fraying of social cohesion, the rise of the political right, the aftermath of the antisemitic Bondi terror attack, the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, and the rise of an extreme left whose politics can also challenge national unity.<\/p>\n
A framework for the Australia we have become<\/p>\n
Together, these pressures have placed multiculturalism, and the idea of a shared Australian identity, under renewed strain. Burke carries the weighty responsibility of confronting those tensions as Australia debates what kind of country it wants to be. The policy question was examined through the Government\u2019s 2024 Multicultural Framework Review, led by Hass Dellal AO.<\/p>\n
The hope is that Australia might once again define multiculturalism not as a program for minorities, nor as a space for competing identities, nor as a bureaucratic category, but as a national framework for a country transformed by migration<\/p>\n
The hard right, represented by One Nation, presents multiculturalism as a failed experiment. On the left, the idea has become colonised by competing identities and grievances, leaving the original migrant communities that built multicultural Australia feeling sidelined. The political centre, meanwhile, has become increasingly uncertain about how to defend multiculturalism, or even how to define it.<\/p>\n
The Dellal review confronted a question larger than the administration of multicultural programs: can multiculturalism once again become a unifying national project? Can it provide a civic framework in which people retain their language, culture, faith, and history while fully participating in a shared Australian democracy?<\/p>\n
Minister Tony Burke with members of the Greek Orthodox Community of NSW. Photo: Social Media<\/p>\n
Burke believes it can, though he is cautious about grand announcements.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still working things through,\u201d he said in response to the Review.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m coming to the view that it\u2019s not a single big announcement. The biggest thing is that we start to integrate multiculturalism into everything,\u201d Burke said.<\/p>\n
Multiculturalism needs to become, in the minister\u2019s view, a principle applied across government: immigration, citizenship, education, the arts, employment, national security and the public service. The question is whether the Government will take on the recommendations of the Review and give that principle enough definition to become meaningful.<\/p>\n
Burke points to citizenship ceremonies as one example of where that national idea can be made tangible.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy view is that we need to be unequivocal: people making a lifelong commitment to Australia is a patriotic moment. We should celebrate it. It should be above politics. Everyone should be invited. It should be a joyous, great moment for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loving Australia as it is<\/p>\n
Burke believes multiculturalism needs to be connected to national belonging. It must be confident enough to say that the Australia created by migration is not a lesser version of the nation. He sees<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is really important, and I\u2019ve tried to make sure I do this in all the language I use\u2014that we should never be hesitant to say we love Australia,\u201d Burke said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should always talk about loving Australia. But we should also talk about loving Australia as it is, and as it has always been\u2014not some pretend version of Australia that never actually existed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMulticultural Australia and modern Australia are the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The minister\u2019s electorate of Watson is itself a real demonstration of the proposition.<\/p>\n
The electorate is a palimpsest of multicultural Australia. Seven in 10 residents have two parents born overseas. Lebanese, Chinese, Greek, Vietnamese, Bangladeshi and Indian Australians live alongside one another in an electorate that is a map of modern Australia.<\/p>\n
It is also a frontline in the battle over what that Australia means.<\/p>\n
The nation is more diverse, globally connected and more exposed to international conflicts than at any previous point in the history of multicultural policy. The children and grandchildren of post-war migrants \u2014 Greeks, Italians, Serbians, North Macedonians and others \u2014 are part of the mainstream. New communities have arrived from Asia, Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Global conflicts are being imported through social media, while economic anxiety, housing pressures, stagnant wages and distrust of institutions provide fertile ground for populism.<\/p>\n
For Greek Australians, multiculturalism was never a theory. It was a deal. You could arrive from Greece with little English, work hard, open a caf\u00e9 or a shop, build a church, join a football club, send your children to university \u2014 and become Australian without having to stop being Greek.<\/p>\n
The Greek Orthodox Church, the Greek language, the community newspaper, the festival and the football club were not evidence of failed integration. They were the infrastructure through which integration happened.<\/p>\n
Burke puts the argument in personal terms.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not,\u201d he says, when I suggest that multicultural Australia is sometimes treated as a subset of the nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cMulticultural Australia is who we are. My Irish heritage and your Greek heritage are part of multicultural Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is a deceptively simple proposition, which is also increasingly contested.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things I think happened over the last 20 years was that we started to drift into multiculturalism being viewed as a subset, rather than as a definition of the whole country. If we reclaim that, we\u2019re back on strong ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/burkeadnbondi-PRINT_41244-768x1024.jpg\")
Minister Tony Burke laying a wreath for the victims of Australia\u2019s worst terrorist attack when two Islamic State-influenced Australians murdered 15 Jewish Australians at the 2025 Hanukkah celebrations in Bondi Beach. Photo: Social Media<\/p>\n
The migrant communities that built multicultural Australia<\/p>\n
The post-war Greek migrant arrived as a person: a young man from a village or city; a woman who had left family behind; a worker with limited English; someone who might spend years in a factory, restaurant, shop or small business before buying a house and sending children to university. They built institutions because they needed them. Then those institutions became part of Australia. That process is in danger of being forgotten.<\/p>\n
Some of these older migrant communities, Greeks, Italians and others, feel left out of contemporary narratives about identity, even though they were among the original champions and architects of Australian multiculturalism. They can find themselves described simply as \u201cwhite\u201d or \u201cprivileged\u201d, while watching a political language of identity develop that no longer seems to include their history or experience.<\/p>\n
Any new approach by government will have to confront that political reality.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy view is that we need to be unequivocal: people making a lifelong commitment to Australia is a patriotic moment. We should celebrate it. It should be above politics. Everyone should be invited. It should be a joyous, great moment for the country.\u201d Tony Burke, Home Affairs Minister<\/p>\n
Multiculturalism needs to reinclude the migrant communities that built it, the newer communities that have joined them and the generations born in Australia, who increasingly experience their heritage as part of a complex Australian identity rather than as a separate ethnic category.<\/p>\n
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has travelled overseas to meet neo-fascist figures, flirted with notions of mass deportations (which she has since walked back) and lamented the end of the \u2018White Australia policy\u2019. On the extreme left, the Israel-Hamas war has become a vehicle for a politics of rage that has contributed to an unprecedented wave of antisemitism in Australia.<\/p>\n
The challenge became a horrific reality on December 14, 2025, when an antisemitic, Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach. Fifteen people were killed.<\/p>\n
The attack was not an argument against multiculturalism. But it was a reminder that multiculturalism cannot survive on good intentions alone; it needs policy, money and energy. For Burke, the damage to social cohesion caused by the conflict in Gaza has been experienced in countries around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we talk about Bondi, we\u2019re talking about the most horrific antisemitic terrorist attack and the horror of that happening on our own shores,\u201d Burke says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Royal Commission is looking into the two individuals and the specific circumstances. As Minister for Home Affairs, I\u2019m fully briefed, including on material that is classified,\u201d he adds<\/p>\n
\u201cThe concept of blaming people here for what is happening there is completely unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
And when the temperature rises, the possibility of violence rises with it, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever the temperature is high, it becomes more likely that there will be a violent act.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reclaiming the flag<\/p>\n
Burke says multiculturalism must reclaim the national symbols of belonging. He is keen to \u201ccelebrate who we are as a country\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe moment you fall into that trap, you effectively give the angriest voices access to our national symbols. It stops me in my tracks when I see an anti-immigration rally wrapping itself in the Australian flag. I think, \u2018No. The flag, the anthem and our national symbols belong to all of us.’\u201d<\/p>\n
He adds that One Nation\u2019s views are \u201cun-Australian\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be careful because most Australians are in the middle, just wanting to get along with each other. You\u2019ve got to be careful not to mistake volume for numbers\u2014the angry, shouting person who doesn\u2019t represent the rest of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Burke, patriotism is not the enemy of multiculturalism. It is part of its future.<\/p>\n
Burke says a multicultural society requires three things.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need the big events where we all celebrate everything together. They might be sporting events, big festivals or whatever they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
The flag, the anthem and our national symbols belong to all of us.\u201d Tony Burke, Home Affairs Minister<\/p>\n
\u201cYou then need places where people can celebrate and preserve their heritage and the story that brought them to Australia. We need to celebrate that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe third bit, which I don\u2019t think we do well enough yet, is the sharing of backgrounds and heritage, making sure we have a better understanding of each other so those traditions aren\u2019t something that lives in a silo but can fully enrich Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are pretty good at talking about that when it comes to food, but it starts to thin out beyond food.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every city and town in Australia has ethnic festivals and cultural events that contribute to tourism, the services economy and local identity.<\/p>\n
Creative Australia has often failed to recognise this broader cultural ecology. So, as Arts Minister, does Burke believe Australia needs to rethink its cultural institutions \u2014 perhaps even consider a larger, more comprehensive institution, something akin to the Smithsonian Institution, that could reflect the full breadth of Australian cultures and histories? More broadly, if Australia can celebrate Puccini, why are Italian communities not more fully part of the cultural conversation?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s true,\u201d Burke said, \u201cbut when you talk of Creative Australia as an organisation it would never have the capacity to get across all that\u201d He then shifted to the National Maritime Museum\u2019s immigration wall, where the names of migrants are added in ceremonies attended by their families.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe National Maritime Museum now has an immigration wall. Every month, when they add names to the wall of people who immigrated from overseas, they have a big ceremony, and family members tell those stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI got the shock of my life when I went to one of these a few months ago. I had no idea that one of the women whose name was being added\u2014she came from Germany\u2014had studied at teachers\u2019 college at what is now Western Sydney University with my mum.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so excited to see her. I hadn\u2019t seen her and her husband, Leon, since I was a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose names going on the wall at the Maritime Museum are being recorded forever. Why are they there? Because the fact that they migrated to Australia means they are a building block in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decision to come here is a significant enough gift to Australia\u2014to give your future to the country\u2014that it warrants being part of an official national memorial. I think that\u2019s really powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burke also points to Melbourne\u2019s The Cat Empire whose music draws on multiple cultural traditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I do want them to do is support things like Melbourne\u2019s The Cat Empire, which has so many cultural influences in its music. They\u2019re creating something new using all those different ethnic backgrounds and musical traditions, creating something that probably couldn\u2019t be created in any other country in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/burkeandcitizenship-_40384-768x1152.jpg\")
Tony Burke is doing what he loves most: welcoming new citizens into Australia. Photo: Social Media<\/p>\n
From managing difference to building belonging<\/p>\n
Multiculturalism is at its best for Burke when cultures meet, change and create something new.<\/p>\n
But how does multiculturalism respond when overseas conflicts become domestic political conflicts? How does it protect Jewish and Muslim Australians from being held responsible for the actions of foreign governments or terrorist organisations?<\/p>\n
How does it ensure that established migrant communities do not feel their contribution has been forgotten? How does it prevent young Australians from being recruited into a politics of racial resentment or religious extremism? And how does it make the case that patriotism belongs equally to the descendants of migrants?<\/p>\n
These are central questions of multicultural Australia.<\/p>\n
Burke answers that multiculturalism must once again become part of the national mainstream. Not something done for communities but by the whole country.<\/p>\n
The 2024 Multicultural Framework Review provides the Government with an opportunity to define that promise for a new generation. Once, it was possible to be conservative and multicultural. Multiculturalism was not a left-wing possession. It was a national settlement.<\/p>\n
Burke says he is trying to leave space for the Opposition to return to that common ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to make sure they\u2019ve got space to walk back.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is no immediate political advantage for him in doing so.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut your first job in jobs like mine isn\u2019t political advantage. It\u2019s the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
That may be the most important thing Burke says.<\/p>\n
Because the argument over multiculturalism has become too political to be useful.<\/p>\n
The right wants to turn it into a synonym for uncontrolled migration.<\/p>\n
The left risks turning it into a language of endless identity and grievance.<\/p>\n
The centre has become too nervous to explain what it believes.<\/p>\n
Yet the country has already answered the question. Australia is multicultural. The children of migrants became teachers, doctors, lawyers, academics, politicians and business leaders. And, in our case, we did not cease to be Greek. The hyphen in Greek-Australian does not divide the nation.<\/p>\n
The multiculturalism of Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard understood something that has since become difficult to say. People can retain their histories without refusing a common future. They can love where they came from and love Australia.<\/p>\n
Burke dismisses Pauline Hanson\u2019s notion of \u201cmonoculturalism\u201d as \u201cnonsense\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality of modern Australia is that it is and has always been multicultural. And we should never be hesitant to say we love Australia,\u201d Burke says.<\/p>\n
As Burke puts it, \u201cMulticultural Australia is who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMulticultural Australia and modern Australia are the exact same thing,\u201d Tony Burke says to Neos Kosmos. That is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-813732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}