ABSTRACT
This chapter recasts the political evolution of Australian multicultural policy emergent from Australia’s primary industrial economy of the 1970s. Analysis of the policy context about Australia’s postwar migrant recruitment patterns is offered to explain the relationship between skilled and unskilled labour and the historical period, demarcating the arrival of the global market economy. The chapter illustrates the neoliberal political turn also during the late 1970s – significant for supporting a market economy and society – including, for example, details of a visit to Australia during this period by Friedrich Hayek, doyen of neoliberal market society. This political era is important for understanding how cultural diversity and national identity built upon a European heritage and economic foundation were challenged as political barriers to the free flow of global capital. The politics of multiculturalism are discussed to suggest it had a limited life-span as an ameliorative welfare rights concept within a Keynesian state model.
