This debate about culture – multiculturalism versus monoculturalism – was sparked by Pauline Hanson’s comments at the National Press Club last week, and I know I’m not alone in believing those comments were long overdue.

It was John Howard who, many years ago, criticised the term ‘multicultural’. That didn’t stop the likes of Liberal MP Garth Hamilton wading into the fray, ridiculously claiming that monoculturalism means living in North Korea. Talk about deserving a Hyperbole Award…!

The word ‘monoculture’ literally means a single crop growing on a farm. It is open to interpretation when it comes to being used in the context of national culture, but the word ‘multicultural’ is not open to interpretation. It describes ‘many cultures within a society rather than a mainstream culture’.

The definition of multiculturalism, in other words, is diametrically opposed to the existence of a dominant mainstream, or mono – which simply means single – national culture.

I believe the genuine and honest debate should be:

Should Australia, as a nation, have many cultures of equal value, or should Australia have many cultures of unequal value, the best of which may be assimilated or absorbed into that mainstream Australian culture? And if so, what defines mainstream Australian culture?

I was listening to the radio during the week and all manner of predictable nonsense was being spouted about ‘white bread’ versus falafel. This sort of stuff.

To have a genuine discussion about culture you have to understand what the word ‘culture’ means.

It is obviously about growth, but not only growth, managed growth. You cultivate crops. You care for them. You nurture them. They don’t grow wild and unattended. You can have young cultures, like ours and America’s; mature cultures, like northern Europe’s; ancient cultures like China’s and the Mediterranean; and dying or dead cultures which disappeared either because they were deliberately killed off or simply because they were too weak to survive.

For obvious reasons, most cultures can be fairly easily defined by a nation state or a geographical area. That’s why the left hates culture so much, in all its meanings, and why conservatives love cultures. They help define who we are and where we came from and offer deep roots and a solid trunk to allow us to develop and grow.

Culture includes music, the arts, literature, language, humour, idioms, lifestyles, entertainment, and of course food and dress. But cultures grow, they absorb, they may adapt, but their primary function is to encourage that growth and that development to become as ‘cultured’ as possible. To be the best of what they have grown from.

As far as I’m aware, communist Romania under the Ceaușescu produced very little of what you might call culture, other than one very talented and sadly sexually abused gymnast, but Italy, for example, has produced the most extraordinarily rich and nourishing culture over centuries and continues to do so. Despite all the innovations, it remains Italian culture.

But here’s the thing, most successful nation states take measures to grow, nurture, and preserve their own unique culture

France has its Académie Française that patrols the language to preserve it; Italy uses very strict development regulations to protect its architectural integrity and culture; Singapore uses endless festivals and shows and has literally developed a culture all of its own; and Japan uses immigration restrictions to preserve its unique culture.

A healthy nation with a healthy economy deserves and needs a healthy culture.

And Australia does not have that at the moment thanks to two decades of demonising our history and hating or ignoring our cultural achievements. Politicians, bureaucrats, the schools and universities, and the Left are largely to blame, with the help of their bedwetting Liberal friends.

One radio host the other day was demanding to know, ‘What is the Australian culture? Define it!’

So I will.

Our culture has strong roots based on its Colonial settler history and its British Empire heritage. By the 1960s, our culture was well defined and growing strongly. We were the land of open spaces. A friendly, equally open and self-assured people, whose language, customs, and arts had derived from the Anglo-Saxon world, predominantly England, Scotland, and Ireland, but increasingly from America too.

As a kid in the Sixties and Seventies, I was proud of our history and absorbed both British and American TV, movies, pop music, books, and comics as much as Australian. We watched Skippy and Aunty Jack, we sang along to the Seekers then to Skyhooks, and even when Gough was rightly dismissed we still laughed along with Norman Gunston. We were shocked and titillated by Germaine Greer, we cheered Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould, we proudly walked out at the end of Picnic at Hanging Rock and then muttered, ‘What was that all about?’ and next time took our girlfriend to Jaws or Star Wars instead. During the Eighties, Australia was so confident and proud of our culture and our prowess that we showcased it all around the world. Evonne Goolagong, Shane Warne, Neighbours, Foster’s Lager, Kylie, Gallipoli, INXS, Men at Work, Crocodile Dundee, the America’s Cup, Pat Cash, Elle Macpherson, Dame Edna, Brett Whiteley, Nick Cave, AC/DC, the list went on and on…

Aussies to be proud of, each and every one of them.

Everybody, everywhere, knew and desperately envied what Australia’s land and its people and its culture were all about. No radio hosts back then were scratching their heads and going, ‘Yeah, but what exactly is Australian culture?’

And by the Nineties, that culture was blossoming and blooming and happily absorbing whole new elements and inputs and exciting new growth within that culture. ‘Wogs Out of Work’, Ernie Dingo, Anh Do, Kevin Bloody Wilson, Austen Tayshus, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Jimmy Blacksmith, Walkabout, Sydney’s Mardi Gras, Muriel’s Wedding, Cathy Freeman, Heath Ledger, Lantana, Summer Heights High, and Kath & Kim.

Australian culture was vibrant and hungrily absorbing, not being replaced by, but incorporating all the new inputs and influences of new Australians – I use the term deliberately – of the gay and lesbian movement, of a greater awareness of Indigenous history, of Hollywood and our own film-making prowess and comedic larrikin talents.

I’m glad Pauline raised the taboo issue of multiculturalism, because the word itself is misused.

Multiculturalism is falsely painted as something positive, when in fact it was intended in a negative sense. Multiculturalism was introduced by Labor to supplant Australian Anglo-post-Colonial culture – to replace it – not to be absorbed into it.

Labor lies – there’s a surprise – and now claims the idea was to enrich Australian culture, but that is not how they behaved.

Labor specifically demonised assimilation and discouraged integration at the same time as encouraging cultural enclaves, thereby making multiculturalism a doctrine of tribalism, of separation, of replacement, and shame on them for so blatantly and successfully doing so.

Weirdly, NSW opposition leader Kellie Sloane said she supported a multicultural Australia before, then describing the exact opposite, which is a thriving Australian monoculture, or to use a better word mainstream culture, capable of assimilating and absorbing new inputs.

The difference between a multiculture and a monoculture is that the former is quite happy to see the original root of that culture die, whereas the latter seeks to absorb and assimilate new influences and inputs without seeking to strangle or replace the main root of the plant, which in our case, is our Anglo-Saxon, Judeo-Christian, post-Colonial, easy-going, friendly, confident settler larrikin society.

I’ve mentioned many of the things that are part of the Australian culture. Add in Ned Kelly, Steve Irwin, Donald Bradman, Albert Namatjira, Sam Kerr, Nicole, Clive James, John Olsen, and Natalie Imbruglia.

But it’s just as important for us to agree what we are not. We are falafels, fish and chips, and fusion cuisine. We are not female circumcision. We are Socceroos and ‘she’ll be apples mate’. We are not Sharia law. We are ‘have a go, mate’ or ‘get a grip mate’ not ‘you can’t say that, mate!’ We are Vegemite and schooners, not child brides or multiple wives. We are fine wines and pasta and banh mi and taramasalata and tandoori salmon and pad thai and grilled halloumi and garlic prawns and sausage rolls and sushi rolls and souvlaki.

We are ‘oy oy oy’ not ‘globalise the intifada’.

Culturally, we are bikinis and bush hats, not burqas and niqabs. We are ‘sorry, mate, I’m just taking the piss’, we are not ‘how dare you misgender me’. We are ‘let’s march across the bridge to show our love and support for our Indigenous history’, we are not ‘let’s march across the bridge to show our support for the Ayatollah’.

The left loathes our easy-going Anglo culture and loathes most of our history. Labor pretends otherwise, but their actions for five decades, with the brief exception of the Hawke years, have shown their true anti-Australian cultural colours. It was Labor that deliberately introduced non-discriminatory procedures for the selection of migrants. It was various Labor luminaries who boasted of the guaranteed electoral success that comes from large close-knit, non-integrated migrant communities in the Western suburbs. It was a senior Labor federal minister in Gillard’s government who supposedly said: ‘How can I possibly explain this [policy] on the steps of the Lakemba Mosque?’

But above all, you only have to look at the actions of the current Australian government, from Wong to Burke, to realise how twisted and distorted their priorities for this nation’s culture really are. Isis brides, anyone?

Cultures grow. Some thrive. Others die on the vine.

To blossom and reach its full potential a culture must be cultivated, with deep roots in nutritious soil, and cared for, not neglected, to absorb new sunlight and rain, not to be torn out by the roots and replaced with something completely different.

I think the Seekers said it best: ‘We are all Australian.’ That means we are all one nation under one cultural umbrella.

And if you don’t know what that culture is, maybe it’s time you started caring for it a little bit more. Australia Day is as good a place as any to start.