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The New Labor Agenda

Stephen Castles.

Professor Stephen Castles gives his view on Hawke and multiculturalism.

Created:

1995

Date Added:

26 June 2002

Source:

Making Multicultural Australia

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

--

Length:

31 secs

Transcript

PROFESSOR STEPHEN CASTLES
Professor of Multicultural Studies, University of Wollongong

I'm not so sure about Hawke. I’m never really quite sure whether it was a personal commitment on his part, or more seeing it as a useful political instrument. And the reason I say this is that in the early years of the Hawke government, multiculturalism really was rather marginalised, especially in 1986, of course, when a lot of major multicultural programs were simply dumped in the budget. Then he very quickly turned around and suddenly showed a great commitment to multiculturalism. I’m not sure how seriously one can take that.

CONTINUATION OF INTERVIEW AS TEXT

Hawke didn’t seem terribly committed and didn’t really seem to believe that anyone would care. And of course there was a big backlash and Hawke realised and was told by the then NSW Premier Barrie Unsworth ‘you’ve got to bring all these multicultural things back or we’re going to lose seats’.

Interview for Making Multicultural Australia, 1995.