Sussan Ley, the new Liberal leader, has been quick to condemn Anthony Albanese for his inadequate support of the Israeli military attacks on Hamas. According to Ley, the prime minister is seriously damaging Australia’s strong record of ‘social cohesion.’
The government’s own Department of Home Affairs promotes Australia as ‘one of the most cohesive societies in the world’.
Even so, the most recent Mapping Social Cohesion report (2024) claims that Australians’ sense of national bonding is under strain. This is owing to the cost-of-living crisis, a divisive Voice referendum, and local responses to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
These difficult economic and social conditions are further exacerbated by far right agitators. The far right exploit and amplify social duress, claiming it to be an inevitable outcome of multiculturalism and ethnic-religious diversity.
What is a successful economic strategy?
According to right-wing extremists, real social cohesion can only be achieved through a unitary national culture directed by a powerful, authoritarian state.
On the other side, progressives argue that Australia’s ongoing prosperity depends on high levels of non-discriminatory immigration, cultural pluralism, and a ‘many-in-one’ ethnic nationalism.
Government policies on inclusion, multiculturalism, and anti-hate speech are essential to the success of this economic strategy.
According to progressive politics, the recent blip in Australia’s Social Cohesion Index should be regarded as both aberrant and ephemeral.
Are they right, or are we heading for the same radical anti-diversity reaction we’re seeing in the US and Europe?
Unsurprisingly, the answer depends on how we define ‘social cohesion’.
Most of the academic literature agrees that social cohesion is related to a sense of belonging and communal bonding. In practice, however, government-sponsored research into social cohesion usually focuses on one particular dimension of national unity. That is, on ‘ethnic-cultural’ communities – how they relate to one another and to the British-based institutions that are the political and cultural framework of ‘Australia’.
This means that reports on social disharmony or population-related infrastructure stress and ecological decay are rarely countenanced by governments, mass media, developers, and the Australian Research Council.
A true cultural and social map of Australia would be far more complex than any simple Social Cohesion Index. It would detail a much broader range of communities, sub-cultures, and cultural schisms. And it would ask much more probing questions about a given cultural group’s sense of itself, its members and their engagement with other groups and the nation as a whole.
Wealth disparity
A complex social map would recognise that these groups are dynamic and malleable, forming around gender, sexuality, Indigeneity, relative ability, geography, health, recreational activities, radical politics, environmentalism, ‘crime’, occupation and employment, generation and age, education, body mass and so on.
It would recognise that, at any one time, individuals participate and draw their identities and social knowledge from multiple, different groups in various ways. And all of this occurs within a nation that is highly stratified, often brutal, and unjust.
These social hierarchies are most dramatically evident in the increasing disparity between Australia’s wealthiest and poorest groups.
Throughout Australia’s history these economic and cultural struggles have frequently erupted into community division, political violence, and even terrorism.
None of this should be surprising, as the whole nation was forged on the anvil of violent invasion and near genocide. That violence still resonates through the national imaginary and the ongoing oppression of Australia’s Aboriginal communities.
Underlying racism
The Voice referendum of 2023 dramatically exposed these ongoing contentions within a fantasy of national cohesion.
Many progressives were shocked by the referendum result, accusing the right-wing media of deluding ordinary Australian voters, especially migrants.
Many Indigenous leaders believed that the failure of the referendum exposed an underlying racism in the Australian polity.
There may be some truth in those claims. More broadly, though, racism is just one more schism in a society that is an agglomeration of histories, knowledge systems, groups, and strangers.
These schisms are evidenced locally with the recent home invasion epidemic in Byron Shire and elsewhere in Australia. This may just be another symptom of individuals lacking a sense of ‘belonging’ to a socially cohesive nation.
Social pragmatism
Kids from various backgrounds are stealing cars and announcing themselves on social media largely in response to these feelings of separation and cultural anxiety. That feeling of ‘not belonging’.
To put it plainly – Australia is not a cohesive society. It functions with reasonable compliance because of its relative affluence. Most citizens are prepared to defer their differences and disharmonies, so long as they see value in doing so.
Progressive politics denies this kind of social pragmatism, believing in the higher principles of ‘inclusion’ and its expression in anti-hate and equal opportunity legislation.
Unfortunately, these forms of positive discrimination can create other forms of alienation and resentment.
Politicians like Donald Trump and Germany’s Alice Weidel feed on this resentment. It’s how they are turning democracy in on itself. So Trump – a philanderer, bankrupt, sex criminal, and anti-democratic iconoclast – emerges as a religious and political saviour.
But then Australian democracy is also changing. The rough voice of freedom that continually abraded social authority has been tamed and transformed into a more effete political hydra.
This appears to have alienated many ‘battlers’ who are turning increasingly to conservative politics – including the far-right – as a source of hope.
In this context ‘social cohesion’ is just another rhetorical illusion – a fantasy of national unity and social equality that can be invoked for any political purpose.
Which is exactly why Sussan Ley chose it to attack her electoral opponent.
♦ Dr Belinda Lewis is a health anthropologist from Monash University. Professor Jeffrey Lewis is an anthropology professor. He is a former Research Dean at RMIT and Professorial Fellow at the London School of Economics. His books include Language Wars and Media and Human Violence: From Savage Lovers to Violent Complexity. He recently completed a government-commissioned research report on Right Wing Extremism in Australia.
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