Two things are always true about Australia. Our foundation as a nation is uniquely racist. And we are the most diverse and socially cohesive of the English-speaking and European democracies that we compare ourselves to.

Illustration by Michael MucciCredit:

The evidence for the former is the White Australia Policy, the first significant legislative act of the federal parliament in the year of our birth as an independent nation, 1901. The case for the latter begins with the postwar migration program and was underlined most recently at the May federal election.

The mass rallies against immigration last Sunday pose obvious questions about social cohesion. But do they signal a backlash from the voters who gave a historic mandate to Anthony Albanese’s Labor government just four months ago? It is likely that two things are happening at once: that Australia is fracturing, but the electorate has no interest in rewarding the parties that seek to exploit those divisions.

The fracturing is a polite way of saying that ethnic and religious minorities in Australia feel less safe today than they did only a few years ago. It predates Gaza. Chinese-Australians reported increased discrimination during the pandemic: the top three locations were when “shopping, on the street, and on public transport”, according to the Scanlon Foundation’s 2020 report into social cohesion.

Scott Morrison was riding a wave of popularity at the time and did not see the risk of tarring the Chinese community by association when he muscled up to........

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