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Prejudice is always with us. It is a fact of life and is born of fear and ignorance. It will continue to flourish, like a virus, wherever fear and ignorance have a stranglehold.

For the most part, the policies of multiculturalism in Australia have been a triumphant success and set an example to the rest of the world. Multiculturalism goes far beyond the facile description of “eating souvlaki and dancing to Zorba”. But cuisine does play an important role in inter-racial exchange. It’s an easy and immediate point of contact.

A great variety of food can be found in most inner-city suburbs around Australia. After a while, you don’t notice what language people are speaking, what they’re wearing, where they worship. They are simply the neighbours. Racial tension? Forget about it. They are all happily integrated, living their own lives according to their own cultures, side by side all over the country.

So what about the so-called “race riots” in Cronulla recently? Don’t they prove the failure of multiculturalism? On the contrary, they are a measure of its success, demonstrating that violence will occur in an area that is homogeneous, dominated by one ethnic group and resistant to outsiders coming in. Given my own Celtic heritage, I was embarrassed to see that the majority of youths arrested for assault and affray bore names that were Irish.

The factors behind the Cronulla riots were the obverse of multiculturalism. They have their roots in the marginalisation of and discrimination against a particular ethnic group that suffers high youth unemployment and a feeling of disenfranchisement that leads inevitably to resentment and violence.

The most obvious and immediate answer to the problem is education, from an early age, about the cultures, beliefs, and traditions of our fellow Australians whatever their background. Travel isn’t enough. It’s supposed to broaden the mind but often ends up as simply a shopping expedition, taking snaps at a couple of tourist spots and staying at the local Hilton or getting trashed at nightclubs on the beach. Travel without curiosity or knowledge of what you’re looking at doesn’t do much for an appreciation of otherness.

First and foremost we should learn more about our indigenous people. How many of us know the names of the Aboriginal clans and tribes, their languages, where they lived and what happened to them? Because they depended on a tradition of oral history, music and dance, much of this information has been lost. It’s an urgent priority to record what we can of Aboriginal oral history and languages before they disappear forever.

Fortunately we do have a fabulous heritage of indigenous painting and visual art. Take a look at a collection such as the one at the Ian Potter Gallery in Federation Square. Take time to read the commentaries, and you’ll find these works are a lot more than decorative wall-hangings. They are replete with symbolism, metaphor and spirituality, which tell us an enormous amount about the cultures that produced them and still flourish in Australia today. They are, besides, among the most sophisticated and imaginative works of art produced by humankind.

The benefits of multiculturalism in Australia go way beyond an interesting and varied cuisine. Newcomers to Australia have given us leaders in business, sport, science and medicine as well as in art, music, literature and dance and an exciting variety of carnivals, festivals and cultural celebrations. But do we all share common values – and what are they? One Australian academic has described our core values as egalitarianism, fairness, democracy and freedom. So how do we measure up today?

Blind Freddy could tell you that egalitarianism is much more of an ideal than a reality. We are witnessing a widening gap between the haves and have-nots with the have-nots feeling increasingly neglected and marginalised. We are developing an unhealthy adulation of wealth and power no matter how they are accrued or how they are deployed. The promise of equal opportunity to rise to the top remains a mockery for those caught up in poverty and unemployment.

As for fairness, have a talk to those unfortunates who have been held for years in detention centres or suffered the vagaries of the Immigration Department. When did that compassionate term “asylum seekers” become a term of abuse? We seem to have let our guard slip in giving everybody a fair hearing and a fair go.

Democracy and freedom are fine words and dear to the heart of every Australian; so we should remain acutely aware of the mixed feelings among citizens of all political persuasions involving aspects of recent legislation concerning workplace reform, changes to the unfair dismissal laws and legislation against “sedition”. The country is far from united on any of these issues.

Egalitarianism, fairness, democracy and freedom are aspirations to be striven for rather than qualities we already happen to possess simply because we are Australian.

Many of the blemishes on society – marginalising of ethnic groups, harsh treatment of refugees, threats to free speech – are born out of fear. And if we are to flourish and progress, we can’t afford to be a fearful nation.

What are we afraid of? We are afraid of the other, aliens, foreigners – until we get know them and find they are just like us. We are afraid of the dark side of our story, our past mistakes and atrocities. There has been a racist strain in this country from the beginning, as there is in any country, and we should have the courage to own up to it. We had a White Australia Policy until the early 1970s. We must acknowledge the massacres and mistreatment of our indigenous people, especially in Tasmania; the lynching of Chinese miners at Lambing Flats; the racist jokes and prejudices heard in pubs and workplaces around Australia every day. Let’s own up to our faults, our mistakes, our past wrongs and then move on. Let’s not be afraid to say “sorry”.

We are frightened of new ideas, challenges to the status quo. We’re frightened of intellectuals and critics who point out our flaws. Here, as in Britain and the US, there is a resentment and suspicion of intellectuals you don’t find in Europe or Asia. The very word “intellectual” is often used derogatorily and we’ve developed a tall poppy syndrome to keep them in their place.

We are frightened of change, of letting go, of being ourselves. We cling with one hand to the nostalgia of British Empire and with the other we cling to the US alliance, the superpower for whom we are a self-proclaimed deputy sheriff.

We are a nation of many colours, creeds and practices. What can unite us? I believe we shall never achieve a uniqueness, a sense of self, until our head of state, the person recognised internationally as our chief representative, is one of us.

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