Evolving ideologies of the intercultural in Australian multicultural and language education policy

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1 Evolving ideologies of the intercultural in Australian multicultural and language education policy Anthony J. Liddicoat School of International Studies, University of South Australia, Australia Australia s language and multicultural policies have constructed the intercultural dimension of Australian identity and practice in a number of different ways relating to different community groups. This paper traces the evolution of multicultural policy from the 1970s until the present through the main national policy documents in order to examine how understandings of multiculturalism and the participation of various cultural groups within a multicultural society has changed over time. It demonstrates that although the ways in which multiculturalism and the interrelationship of ethnic groups within Australian identity has evolved over time, the positioning of the monocultural majority and ethnic minorities within the overall multicultural framework has consistently been understood in different ways. The result is a policy context in which there are multiple ideologies of multiculturalism at play and the existence of tensions between the forces of diversity and integration within the same policy context. Keywords: cultural pluralism; ethnic identity; language ideologies; language policy; linguistic diversity Introduction Language policies express ideas which are linked to ideological processes and reveal the perceptions and evaluations of realities in the sociocultural contexts in which they are constructed (Vološinov 1973). They ratify and transmit the ideologies which they contain by defining and encoding what is valued by policymakers (Considine 1994). Policy discourses, therefore, reveal the ideological framings of the concepts they encode and create the meanings and ideologies transmitted (cf. Bakhtin 1981; Vološinov 1973). Policies function in terms of both projection and enactment. Projective texts are usually generated by and circulated among those responsible for decision-making. They look forward and describe future contexts for which the realisation is dependent on the text being endorsed and acted upon (Gee 1994). Policy documents can therefore be understood as socially transformative work: they are projective in that they form part of a process of education reform and offer a vision of what education can and/or should contribute and they are enactive as they are formulated to guide actions in order to achieve the envisioned reform. While policy discourses create the discursive contexts in which they are implemented, they are also shaped by the discursive contexts in which they are produced: policies can be seen as both context-shaped and context-renewing. Language policies are context-shaped in that they respond to the context in which they are created; the belief systems, attitudes and values that surround language and its use (Schiffman 1996). They are context-renewing because they shape the context in which they are implemented and affect the actions that follow from policy and influence how these actions are understood. Through a series of documents, shifts can occur in the constructions of what is planned as the result of changing emphases in practice and ideology (Liddicoat 2005). This means that a series of documents reveal the ways in which the envisioned realities change.

2 This paper examines how conceptions of the intercultural 1 have been conceived and changed in Australian Commonwealth policies from the 1970s to the present. It will trace the evolution of the construction of the intercultural chronologically and trace lines of development. For convenience, texts have been grouped by the decade in which they were written, but this should be considered no more than a heuristic device as many policies applied outside the decade in which they were created and the divisions between periods blend together. Moreover, the ideas introduced at one time do not disappear as policy changes, but rather the terminologies of policy carry a history with them which colours the ways in which they are used and understood. 1970s: multiculturalism and national cohesion Multicultural policy in Australia begins with the Galbally (1978) report. The report articulated a broad ideology of multiculturalism reflecting the existing cultural diversity. It was concerned with the problem of social cohesiveness and argued that diversity should be maintained, but should be interwoven into the fabric of our nationhood (Galbally 1978). The report placed multilingualism at the heart of multiculturalism: it argues that cultural diversity requires linguistic diversity and upgrading Australia s general language resources to develop intercultural understanding. The Galbally report was endorsed and Australia was declared to be officially multicultural in The adoption of multiculturalism as the official response to diversity had immediate consequences for social policy, especially education policy. These have been played out since 1978 through two main policy strands which can be termed multicultural policy and language policy. In this study, multicultural policy covers broad social policies that frame Australia s approach to pluralism and diversity. These policies include, but are not restricted to, statements concerning education. Language policy is embodied in documents which are primarily concerned with language in education but may also include other dimensions of language policy. Contemporary language policy originally grew out of multicultural policy, but developed its own discourses and trajectories (Ozolins 1993). 2 Multicultural education policy began with the introduction of the Multicultural Education Programme (MEP) (Committee on Multicultural Education 1979) in The MEP divided multicultural education into two components. The first was the teaching of community languages, while the remainder was devoted primarily to a variety of other programmes emphasising cultural sensitisation and intercultural studies. The MEP promoted multicultural education for social objectives: language learning and intercultural understanding would foster social cohesiveness and tolerance to overcome the potential problems of a culturally and linguistically diverse society. Multiculturalism in this document is constructed in social terms and its educative value is to contribute to a general social good. Multicultural education was viewed as achieving two broad objectives. Firstly, it would increase immigrant groups success in education by developing first language skills to support English language development and by incorporating their cultural identities into the curriculum. The MEP was therefore an equityoriented policy which constructed interculturality as a vehicle for social and educational access. Secondly, it would prepare all students to participate in a multicultural society by developing understanding of difference and promoting communication between cultural groups. This added a socialisation dimension to the policy, which attempted to make multicultural education more broadly based. Multicultural education was designed for all social and cultural groups insofar as it prepared students to deal with the realities of a multicultural society. In reality, much of the effort of the MEP ended by being directed at

3 equity goals and few programmes were developed outside the context of schooling for children of immigrant groups (Bullivant 1995). The orientation of multicultural policy in the 1970s - and subsequently - to immigrant groups implies that multiculturalism meant participation in two cultures, one s own and the mainstream. The relevance of multiculturalism for the monocultural mainstream is therefore difficult to determine as there is no single natural cultural focus. The focus for the mainstream was tolerance and acceptance of the multiculturalism of others. In practice this meant that Australian multicultural identity was construed globally as co-existence of people belonging to different cultures, with a common cultural reference point in some unproblematised Australian culture. Individuals were either multicultural in that they adapted to the generalised Australian norm while adhering to another cultural tradition, or they were monocultural members of the generalised Australian culture accepting the diversity of others. Participation in interculturality was therefore unidirectional - immigrant group members participated in the mainstream culture but the mainstream group maintained its monoculturality. Multiculturalism was further constructed as a policy for immigrants in that the place of indigenous Australians was not clearly articulated. Multicultural policy was developed in the context of Australia s post-war immigration and the languages and cultures of indigenous Australians were largely absent from the core policy documents and educational programmes. In cases where indigenous Australians were recognised, this was often as an added afterthought flowing from the rationale of interculturalism for an immigrant society. The separation of indigenous Australians from the multicultural focus is most clearly seen in educational contexts. In educational policies, immigrant minority languages came to be designated community languages. Community languages in practice did not regularly include indigenous languages as these constituted a separate category subject to different policies and programmes. Community languages were often provided through governmentfunded ethnic schools in which ethnicity, understood in linguistic and cultural terms, became a basis for recognised educational needs relating to language and cultural maintenance. Within the Australian context, ethnic denotes immigrant groups, as if they alone had ethnicity, and the ethnic schools sector and funding for ethnic education was focused on the teaching of the languages and cultures of immigrant groups. Again indigenous languages and cultures were dealt with under different policies and different programmes. What this means is that Australian multiculturalism divided the Australian cultural community into three separate groups with different interactions with multiculturalism: immigrant Australians, indigenous Australians and - and here the terminology has always been difficult - Anglo-Australians. 3 Immigrant Australians are seen as being the core multicultural focus and programmes of multiculturalism have mainly been directed to settlement issues and language and culture maintenance after immigration. This association has been most strongly marked by official administrative jurisdictions, for example, the location of the Office for Multicultural Affairs within the Department of Immigration, or the renaming of the Department of Immigration as the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA). For the Australian mainstream, multiculturalism has been something for the ethnic Other, something which is observed and permitted but not something with which one is engaged. Indigenous Australians have fallen into an intermediate limbo, being marked as culturally different, therefore needing to adapt to the Australian mainstream although maintaining their own cultural traditions, but not coming into the orbit of a multicultural policy framed through an immigration perspective. Policy and

4 programmes for indigenous Australians have been administered through a separate Ministry for Aboriginal Affairs, which has sometimes been associated with welfare jurisdictions, and indigenous education was managed by an independent section within the Education department. 1980s: multiculturalism and internationalism The 1980s saw an expansion beyond the narrow, immigrant focus of multicultural policy, especially in relation to language policy. The shift involves a movement away from a focus on national identity and social cohesion to an increasingly international - specifically economic - focus. This change did not involve abandoning the older immigrant focus in multicultural policy, but led rather to a multiple layering with new economic concerns overlaying the older multicultural focus. The word multiculturalism continued to refer to the construction of and response to internal diversity and the new focus on the international dimensions of linguistic and cultural diversity created a tension between multiculturalism and internationalism. The National Policy on Languages (NPL) ( ) (Lo Bianco 1987) frames its discussion of interculturalism within a range of contexts in which language and cultural knowledge can be deployed and from which the educational value of language and culture learning can be deduced (Gee 1990). The NPL focused on four core language goals: (1) English for all: literacy and English as a Second Language. (2) A language other than English for all. (3) Support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. (4) Equitable and widespread language services. In arguing a rationale for these goals, the NPL assumes that four major contexts are relevant to language and culture. These contexts were economic activity, equality and social inclusiveness, external relationships and educational enrichment. Of these four domains, economics and equity were clearly more privileged contexts than external relations and enrichment as the former were developed far more in the policy rhetoric. The NPL was implemented through series of programmes, which addressed the core goals and it is through these programmes that the NPL enacted its construction (see also Lo Bianco 1990b). These programmes included: The Adult Literacy Action Campaign, focused on the literacy and numeracy problems outside the school context. The Australian Second Language Learning Programme, based around the teaching and learning of additional languages, including language teacher professional development. This was also supplemented by the Asian Studies Programme, which, although not specifically a language programme, included work on the development of curricula in Asian languages. The National Aboriginal Languages Programme, focused on issues of indigenous language maintenance including education in indigenous languages. The programmes of the NPL effectively reconstruct the domain of language policy from the broad and general focus of the policy document itself. There are a number of gaps in the coverage of the policy when viewed in terms of programmes. Most notably, there is no specific focus on school literacy or on ESL. In part, these gaps reflect a sense that such programmes were already in place and reflect jurisdictional divisions of responsibility: all of the programmes were located within the education portfolio; however, adult ESL classes were administered by the Department of Immigration.

5 The focus on equity in the NPL acknowledged a place for multilingualism and language learning within the diversity Agenda of Australian multiculturalism but also perpetuated an equity view of multiculturalism. This in turn located multiculturalism and multilingualism as being relevant primarily to Australia s immigrant communities rather than the mainstream English-speaking community. While learning of immigrant languages by mainstream Australians may promote cultural understanding, it is the learning of these languages by members of their related communities which appears to be envisaged as the promotion and maintenance of diversity. The focus on economics grew out of developing understandings of Australia s changing role in the world and a move in Australia s economic relations away from traditional, English-speaking, markets towards Asia and Europe (Stanley, Ingram, and Chittick 1990). Given the changing economic foci, it was seen as important that Australians develop the communication and cultural skills necessary to interact with Asia and Europe in order to develop trade. Languages and related cultural understandings were seen as human capital resources which could be deployed for economic gain in the emerging globalised economy. This set of contexts suggests that the focus of language and culture learning is both domestic, as a response to Australia s demographic profile, international, as a response to economic globalisation and evolving social internationalism, and individual, as a response to the role of language education in personal development. Broadly speaking, these contexts highlight a social vision in which productivity and citizenship share equal emphasis and in which language and culture are essential for competitiveness, for inclusiveness and for social justice. Two years after the introduction of the NPL, multicultural policy was reframed in the National Agenda for Multicultural Australia (Agenda) (OMA/AACMA 1989). The Agenda grew out of a developing dissatisfaction with equity-oriented multiculturalism and a desire by proponents of multiculturalism to expand its focus (Lo Bianco 1991). As a result, the Agenda continues to focus on the role of multicultural education as a resource for social cohesiveness. The document identifies three dimensions of multicultural policy: cultural identity; social justice, and economic efficiency. This list covers the basic social aims of the MEP but adds a clear economic dimension. The economic dimension is defined as the need to maintain, develop and utilise effectively the skills and talents of all Australians, regardless of background. This formulation does not present diversity as a resource, but rather seems to indicate that diversity may be problematic for economic efficiency and multicultural policy must deal with this potential problem. The economic focus is taken up primarily under the Human Resources heading, which notes: A major goal of the Government s multicultural policies is to improve the competitiveness and productivity of the economy through the proper management and development of our labour force. (OMA/AACMA 1989) The main discussion here is the removal of barriers to the effective use of citizens within the economy. It is accompanied by discussion of the need for English language skills and for increasing participation of minority groups in education and employment. These dimensions had been given an equity focus in the MEP, but are now encoded as economic. The economic benefits of multiculturalism appear therefore to be subordinated to the equity and social dimension. The inclusion of a strong economic dimension in the document is a change in direction from earlier views of multiculturalism and bears witness to a more hard-nosed

6 multiculturalism (Lo Bianco 1990a), which moved away from issues of valuing difference for its own sake to valuing difference for what it can contribute economically. The educative focus of the Agenda is primarily on the place of social sciences education in fostering tolerance, in particular through developing cross-cultural awareness. Educational multiculturalism is seen as developing for each learner a body of knowledge about mainstream and non-mainstream Australian groups, whether they be indigenous or immigrant. This knowledge is not seen as having a necessary relationship with language, but rather is located outside language learning. It is therefore an interculturalism mediated through the national language 4 in which diversity becomes an object of study. The Agenda also discusses the importance of language maintenance and of language learning, including both English as a Second Language and other languages. It justifies language learning in the following terms: Language learning has many rationales - intellectual and economic included - but the promotion of cultural understanding is one of the most important. (OMA/AACMA 1989) Languages in the Agenda are located in the context of interculturality and education is one of the key dimensions through which interculturality is to be developed. The section on languages concludes: Multicultural policies therefore seek to ensure that all Australians have the opportunity to acquire and develop proficiency in English, to speak languages other than English, and to develop cross-cultural understanding. (OMA/AACMA 1989) In so doing, the Agenda ties multiculturalism to multilingualism as one possible manifestation of an intercultural policy. There is therefore within the document a two-part approach to interculturalism in education: a linguistic dimension, which frames interculturalism as being related to proficiency in another language, and a non-linguistic dimension, which frames interculturalism as knowledge of other cultural groups. The movement of intercultural policy away from 1970s multiculturalism created a tension between community-focused multiculturalism and economic internationalism. This tension was characterised by an increasing separation between economically useful languages and community languages with an implicit hierarchy of languages. At the top of this hierarchy were the languages of major Asian economies (e.g. Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian and Korean) with other economically useful languages such as French or German following next. The languages of ethnic communities from economically less important countries - and given the economically driven nature of most post-war immigration this classification applies to the majority immigrant languages - were increasingly relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy and seen as a cost rather than an asset. Indigenous languages and cultures continued to have a problematic relationship with intercultural policies, which perpetuated the separation of indigenous languages from other languages as a separate area of focus. This separation of Australian languages for special attention was required because of the particular needs of these communities for language maintenance and revival programmes. However, it tended to cast policy for these languages as being for indigenous people only and to marginalise them as second languages in the mainstream provision of languages other than English.

7 A further development in the 1980s was the increasing emphasis on the role of English as the language of common identity and intergroup communication. While English has always been the working language of the Australian polity, its symbolic value as a marker of common identity was not strongly articulated in earlier policies. Resettlement policies for immigrants had long recognised the necessity of English for immigrant groups, but this was conceptualised more as a practical need rather than as a symbolic marker. The emphasis on English parallels an emphasis on a shared Australian culture, which emerges in the Agenda as a common reference point for Australian identity. This notion of shared Australian culture is not developed and is presented as uncontroversial, however, given the different articulations that immigrant, indigenous and mainstream groups have with multiculturalism, the shared culture can only be interpreted as that of the monocultural mainstream. If multiculturalism means participating in one s own culture and that of the mainstream and that the monocultural mainstream participates only in their own culture, it can only be this culture that serves as a point of repair for a common identity. 1990s: economic internationalism The 1990s saw intercultural policy shift from an internally oriented focus on social cohesion to an externally focused policy of economic internationalisation (Lo Bianco 2001). This shift led to a rebalancing of the values associated with the various groups of languages created by earlier policy discourses. The Australian Language and Literacy Policy (ALLP) (DEET 1991) includes the four contexts for language use found in the NPL - equity, economic, enrichment and external relations. The importance given to economics and equity in the NPL is preserved and strengthen in the ALLP, with external relations being almost entirely subsumed by economics and educational enhancement receiving only minimal attention. Arguments for language learning in the ALLP are based on multiculturalism: the development of cultural and linguistic diversity (2, 12) and interculturality to develop cross-cultural understanding (2, 12), both of which can be subsumed into a single goal to promote tolerance (2, 62). The ALLP also contains a strong human capital dimension in its rationale and promotes language learning as a way of developing resources for economic gain: maintain a pool of cultural resources to benefit business and industry (2, 16) and develop a knowledge of the culture and customs of other countries to strengthen trade (2, 23). This utilitarian argument for language learning is in keeping with the stronger economic motivation of the ALLP and the reconceptualisation of education inherent in the policy as the development of economically and vocationally useful skills (Clyne 1991a; Liddicoat 1996; Moore 1991). The ALLP differs from the NPL in the paring down of the contexts in which language and culture learning are seen to be educationally important (Brock 2001; Lo Bianco 2001): it serves a role in promoting internal national cohesion through the development of understanding and tolerance and it serves a role internationally by promoting and facilitating trade. The educative value of language and culture learning is no longer seen as personal development and the individual is no longer present as a locus of educative effort. Instead, the focus is on the individual as a social component contributing to the social and economic wellbeing of the society. The National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools Strategy (NALSAS) The National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools Strategy (NALSAS) (COAG 1994) 5 fundamentally tied language and culture learning to developing human capital. NALSAS, however, moved further in this direction than the earlier policies and the multicultural dimension found in earlier documents is entirely absent.

8 Learning the designated constellation of Asian languages (Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Indonesian) is tied explicitly to developing cultural literacy for securing... (Australia s) economic future (ii). Within this broad human capital focus, the core reason for studying Asian cultures within the context of Asian languages is to develop communication skills which are described either as culturally appropriate communication skills (cf. vi) or intercultural communication skills (cf. 2). In addition, the purpose of learning languages and cultures is to develop cultural sensitivity (ii). The rationale here is for learning cultural information which will be useful for facilitating interaction with Asia, specifically in the context of business and trade (Brock 2001). The educative vision of NALSAS is a mono-faceted repertoire which sees educative value solely in terms of the economic return generated by the resulting skills set. Missing here are both concepts of social value and of personal value. The learner is seen as becoming economically useful and his/her contribution to broader dimensions of society external to economy is no longer a salient dimension of educative effort (Scarino and Papademetre 2001). NALSAS was ended in 2002 by the then Howard government after only eight years of a planned 12-year period of implementation. The end of NALSAS was constructed as timely for devolution from the commonwealth to the states and territories (Henderson 2007). However, it also coincided with a movement away from a foreign policy focus on Asia towards a closer alignment with English-speaking nations, especially the USA. 6 The ALLP and NALSAS represent a movement away from language and culture maintenance as a policy objective towards an economic motivation for language study. In particular, the NALSAS document does not mention local community groups speaking the priority languages and presupposes programmes for second/ foreign language learning rather than the development of the language capabilities of background speakers. The emphasis on economically useful languages and the relegation of community languages to an inferior position becomes so strong, that defenders of community languages even felt the need to put an argument that education in community languages is beneficial because the experience of acquiring these languages could later be transferred to and facilitate the learning of more economically useful languages (an argument already found in Lo Bianco 1990a). The emphases in language policy were replicated and strengthened in A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia (New Agenda) (Commonwealth of Australia 1999). The New Agenda can be seen as the result of an increasingly economically oriented turn in Australian political thinking. It recognises cultural diversity as one of Australia s great social, cultural and economic resources. It specifies four principles as the basis for multicultural development: civic duty; cultural respect; social equity, and productive diversity. These four principles have a certain continuity with the MEP and the Agenda and reflect the social cohesion and equity foci of the earlier documents, but have been expanded to include civic duty and productive diversity. Civic duty obliges all Australians to support those basic structures and principles of Australian society which guarantee us our freedom and equality and enable diversity in our society to flourish (Commonwealth of Australia 1999). This inclusion seems to reflect a return to the fears that diversity was potentially divisive and could undermine social cohesiveness. In the New Agenda assimilating to basic structures and

9 principles is made a matter of duty. Productive diversity echoes ideas of economic efficiency, but marks a move away from understanding multiculturalism in primarily social terms to a more economically focused multiculturalism. It is a view of pluralism which sees difference as creative and economically enhancing (Cope and Kalantzis 1997). Within this economic focus, there is much discussion of the function of cultural diversity as a contributor to economic development, particularly through trade relations, and in the text, productive diversity seems to share a similar weighting to the other principles combined. The New Agenda has no section devoted to languages per se and language references are scattered through the document. In defining multiculturalism, it reaffirms the position of English as the national language and refers to the usefulness of other languages for trade. This is taken up in the only recommendation primarily concerned with language learning: Recommendation 29: In a multicultural society such as ours, proficiency in a language other than English is more than desirable; it can be a business or social imperative. If we are to engage the global marketplace and derive maximum benefit from it, Australia must maintain expertise in languages other than English, particularly the major languages of our region and the world. It is therefore very important that teaching languages other than English continues to be a priority and that the value of a multilingual community be better appreciated... (Commonwealth of Australia 1999) The arguments in recommendation 29 are not based primarily on a social view of the role and value of languages and there is no explicit emphasis given to language maintenance. Instead the emphasis here is on external uses of language. A multilingual community is of importance, but the community envisaged is potentially different from the multilingual communities established in Australia as a result of immigration. Language has become a tool for production rather than a feature of social and cultural life. The economically based understandings of multiculturalism present in the Agenda have reached a greater elaboration and a more central importance in the New Agenda. While mention of cultural diversity is frequent in the document, there is no mention of linguistic diversity and the general tenor is very different from that of the Agenda in that multiculturalism appears to have been largely separated from multilingualism. Language diversity and language maintenance are present only if considered to be in some way subsumed by cultural diversity and cultural maintenance. This silence on language is noticeable at a symbolic level, especially when compared to the emphasis given to languages a decade earlier. Multiculturalism has been separated from multilingualism (Liddicoat 1996; Ozolins 1993). Multiculturalism is constructed as an economically deployable knowledge of others. Its educational manifestation is the development of a body of factual knowledge about a range of groups developed primarily through the social sciences. Language learning may be added to provide cross-cultural awareness or crosscultural understanding and allow for communicating with others in their own languages. Multiculturalism appears to focus on both internal and external considerations. It is internal in the sense that it promotes understanding of difference within Australia and external in the sense that is an economically deployable resource for trade relations. Multiculturalism, therefore, is explicitly valued at both the social and the economic level. Multilingualism however appears to be solely externally oriented in that it is presented as deployable for trade: as English is the national language, it appears to be assumed that communication internally is the domain of English. This means that multilingualism ceases to have a clear social motivation and has come to have primarily an economic one.

10 2000s: ambivalence The beginning of the twenty-first century saw a continuation of the themes established in the policies of the 1990s, however, there appear to be a number of emerging tensions which show an overall ambivalence in attitudes to diversity at the federal level. One direction is found in the National Statement and Plan for Languages in Australian Schools (Statement and Plan) (MCEETYA 2005). This document is in fact different from the other policy documents discussed here in that it is not a policy of the commonwealth government but rather a policy ratified by all ministers of education, state and territory as well as the commonwealth. 7 One consequence of this is that it is very general as all statements had to be agreed by all ministers in spite of different party affiliations and political ideologies. The document explicitly attempts to undo the divisions between languages by emphasising the inherent value of languages, whether indigenous, immigrant or international. The document has a strong focus on the value of diversity for its own sake, but also for practical ends. Languages are still considered to be economically useful, but a new rationale is introduced in the form of a relationship between languages and security (Liddicoat 2008), although this rationale is implicitly rather than explicitly stated. The focus in the Statement and Plan is, therefore, on diversity as a social good with practical advantages and to some extent turns back the development of policy discourses of economic and the resulting hierarchies of language. The Statement and Plan separates the projective and enactive dimensions of policy (Gee 1994) into two separate texts. The Statement provides a projection of an intercultural Australia expressed in general terms validating multilingualism, declaring that Language skills and cultural sensitivity will be the new currency of this world order (MCEETYA 2005, 2). The Plan is, as the name suggests, an enactive text. The Plan identifies six areas of focus or strands : teaching and learning, teacher supply and retention, professional learning, programme development, quality assurance, advocacy and promotion. The actions which are foreshadowed by the Plan are however passive: information sharing, data collection and many activities to be considered. This means that the ability of the interculturalism of the Statement and Plan to move from the domain of rhetoric into the domain of action is considerably compromised. An alternative direction in interculturalism can be seen in the Discussion Paper on Citizenship Testing (DIMA 2006) and the ensuing introduction of a citizenship test in Australia in late The report proposed citizenship tests involving a test of English language proficiency and a test of commitment to Australian values. A number of the assumptions made in the discussion paper imply a monocultural rather than a multicultural focus in Australian society, for example: Australia has successfully combined people into one family with one overriding culture, based on a set of common values. (DIMA 2006, 5) The shared values are represented as self-evident and uncontroversial and presuppose that Australian culture involves assimilation to a particular culture and associated value system: that is, those of the monocultural mainstream. The justification for English testing is done on practical lines relating to the need for English to participate in Australian society and exercise the rights and duties of citizenship: An understanding of the Australian way of life, our practices, customs, laws and values; and a practical command of English will better equip migrant and refugee

11 settlers to build new social links and make a meaningful commitment to Australia. (DIMA 2006, 11-12) The document therefore does not indicate that English is a national identity marker and concentrates only on practical issues. Nonetheless, the inclusion of a language test as citizenship testing in a context which is symbolically laden with constructions of Australian identity, creates a link between a command of English and the construction of what it means to be Australian. This is further underscored by questions about the desirability for similar forms of testing for permanent and temporary residents in Australia, in which case a knowledge of and commitment to the values of the monocultural mainstream and competence in the national language would become preconditions for entry into the country. For some commentators on the discussion paper, the introduction of a gate-keeping test harks back to the dictation test of the White Australia Policy and signals a return to older constructions of identity in Australia. 8 The questions found in the new citizenship test have not been made public, however, the information on which the test is based is available in a booklet Becoming a Citizen (Australian Government 2007). This book represents a particular construction of what it means to be Australian. The book is divided into four main sections: Part 1 - What does being an Australian mean? Part 2 - Our land, our nation. Part 3 - Governing the country. Part 4 - Applying for citizenship. Part 1 and Part 3 are particularly interesting in terms of the construction of a ratified Australian identity. Part 1 lists the shared values of Australians as: respect for the equal worth, dignity and freedom of the individual; freedom of speech; freedom of religion and secular government; freedom of association; support for parliamentary democracy and the rule of law; equality under the law; equality of men and women; equality of opportunity; peacefulness and tolerance; mutual respect and compassion for those in need. It is argued that: These values and principles reflect strong influences on Australia s history and culture. These include Judeo-Christian ethics, a British political heritage and the spirit of the European Enlightenment. Distinct Irish and non-conformist9 attitudes and sentiments have also been important. (Australian Government 2007, 5) That is, the formative period for Australian values was the period before federation (1901) and this occurred in a context of relative homogeneity based on primarily British traditions. Part 3, the historical overview of Australia, called Story of Australia, is particularly significant in that it devotes only four sentences to pre- European contact history. It also covers early exploration of the Australian coast (two paragraphs), convict settlement (two pages), exploration of inland Australia (two pages), Australia s participation in war (three pages), nineteenth century economic and political development (two pages), sport (two pages), the development of the federation and its subsequent history (two pages, which include a paragraph on non-british immigration) and post-european contact history of indigenous people (two pages). The text constructs a British-oriented account of Australian culture, with frequent mentions of the important of British traditions, values, language, etc. and repeated mentions of a Judeo-Christian heritage. The text therefore constructs an Australian norm which is white, Anglo-Saxon and Christian as the core identity to which new

12 citizens will give allegiance. The representation downplays the linguistic and cultural diversity of Australia in favour of a British homogeneity - although admitting that The formal ties with Britain have diminished over time (Australian Government 2007, 30). The place of multiculturalism in such a construction of Australian identity appears to be tenuous, and this is further underscored by the recent renaming of DIMA as the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. 10 Such a naming appears to replace Australia s pluralist policy of multicultural with a more homogenised national identity focused around the norms and values of the monocultural mainstream. In spite of these developments, Australia at the policy level claims to remain a multicultural society adapting rather than replacing multiculturalism and other interculturally oriented policy positions. This means that there is a tension between the projections of Australian society encoded in these policies, with different and contradictory discourses existing simultaneously. Conclusions The history of Australia s language and multicultural policies provides a series of discourses which have changed over time and have constructed shifting ideologies of Australia s relationship with linguistic and cultural diversity. Each policy has framed Australia s multiculturalism and its ideals of interculturalism in different ways and has privileged particular understandings at different times. Such understandings orient to various positions on continua constructed between poles such as assimilation-pluralism, equity-economy, and monolingualism-multilingualism. Tracing these evolutions leads to an identification of perceptions and evaluations of Australia s social, cultural and linguistic reality as they have been constructed at various times in the recent past. These policies have constructed the intercultural dimension of Australian identity and practice in a number of different ways relating to different community groups. It is possible to determine the construction of interculturalism for the monocultural majority as tolerance of the diversity of others, with the possible development of language capabilities which will enhance their value in terms of human capital. There is a different construction of interculturalism for members of minority groups in which maintenance of minority languages and cultures is conditional on adaptation to the majority culture and language. While indigenous Australians have been cast in an uncertain relationship to multicultural policy, it nonetheless appears that the expectations of adaptation apply equally to indigenous and immigrant groups. Interculturality for the majority is a disposition towards other practices rather than an engagement with diversity, while for minorities it is seen as necessitating participation in the dominant culture, with the possibility of adding to or adapting linguistic and cultural repertoires to add economic value. The dichotomous nature of the relationships with interculturalism reflected in Australian policies maintains the monocultural mainstream as a reference point for Australia s linguistic and cultural identity. In the current political climate, this reference point has been able to assume the potential to operate as an underpinning and enforceable norm for Australian linguistic and cultural identity without at the same time being seen to undermine multiculturalism as a national Agenda. Notes 1. In Australian policy documents the intercultural consists of a number of terms, of which multicultural and its derivatives is the most widely known, however, terms such as

13 intercultural, cross-cultural are also found as part of a semantic complex. In this paper intercultural implies this general semantic complex, while the term multicultural is used for a specific policy domain relating to ethnic diversity in Australia. 2. Language policies have existed in Australia since the colonial period but prior to the 1980s tended to be ad hoc policies dealing with aspects of languages education, broadcasting and the media. Language policy as such began to gather momentum from the 1950s. For an historical overview of language policy in Australia see Clyne (1991b) or Ozolins (1993). 3. Anglo-Australian is a term which is often used, but sits uncomfortably as many members of this group would not identify as anglo. The term is used as a portmanteau category for those Australians who do not identify as indigenous or immigrant, regardless of personal histories, although would appear to excluded Australians of non-european origin regardless of their histories within Australia. The Anglo group is therefore characterised by assimilation to the dominant language, culture and appearance and a forgetting of their immigrant experiences. 4. The section devoted to language begins by stating that English is the national language. 5. The primary author of the report on which the NALSAS programme was based, Kevin Rudd, became the Prime Minister of Australia following the 2006 election. 6. At the time of writing, the Labour government is proposing introducing a National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Programme (NALSSP), but details of the programme have not been finalised. 7. The NALSAS Programme was based on a national level report (COAG 1994), however, the programme was an activity of the commonwealth government and state/territory initiatives were carried out with commonwealth funding. 8. The Labour government has recently begun a review of the citizenship test. This review is oriented to the content, operation and impact of the test rather than questioning the need for the test per se. 9. Non-conformity here refers to those elements of British Protestantism which did not accept the established Church of England. 10. This name seems to have survived the change of government in November References Australian Government Becoming an Australian citizen: Citizenship: Your commitment to Australia. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Bakhtin, M.M The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Brock, P Australia s language. In Australian policy activism in language and literacy, ed. J. Lo Bianco and R. Wickert, Melbourne, VIC: Language Australia. Bullivant, B.M Ideological influences on linguistic and cultural empowerment. In Power and inequality in language education, ed. J.A. Tollefson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clyne, M. 1991a. Australia s language policies: Are we going backwards? In Language planning and language policy in Australia, ed. A.J. Liddicoat, Melbourne, VIC: ALAA b. Community languages: The Australian experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. COAG (Council of Australian Governments) Asian languages and Australia s economic development. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Commitee on Multicultural Education Education for a multicultural society. Canberra: Schools Commission.

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