Clare O’Neil recently saw fit to issue what some may call a ‘political loyalty test’ from the floor of Parliament, suggesting that anyone unwilling to defend the doctrine of multiculturalism is unfit to lead the Opposition.

It is, in my view, a breathtaking display of historical illiteracy and ideological arrogance.

Australia is not a ‘culturally blank’ slate, held together by the thin gruel of diversity slogans rather than the iron-clad institutions of our Western inheritance. If we are to take the lessons of citizenship seriously, we must be careful about undermining the very foundation of the country the Labor government purports to lead.

A primary failure in Labor’s line of thinking is the inability to distinguish between a demographic reality and a state doctrine. Australia’s most vital assets – parliamentary democracy, English common law, and equality before the law – are not neutral tools that ‘fell from the sky’. They are specific products of a Western culture that values the restraint of power and legal continuity. It is a contemptible form of arrogance to enjoy the fruits of these institutions while insisting that the culture that produced them is irrelevant. Australia is, at its institutional core, a monocultural society; our laws do not change based on the ‘tribe’ or ‘sect’ of the person standing in court.

The fundamental nature of citizenship and what it demands of the individual can be found in the legal philosophy of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In his notable dissent against the backdrop of the court’s ruling on birthright citizenship, Thomas articulated a vision of citizenship defined by full allegiance. He reminds us that citizenship is not merely a legal status but a deep-rooted commitment to the ‘soil’ and the defence of the country. This concept of allegiance carries a ‘duty of defence’, such as the obligation to be subject to a military draft, highlighting that citizenship is a reciprocal relationship. By pushing multiculturalism as a mandatory ideology, Labor severs this bond. When the state stops demanding integration into our core ‘moral habits’ and instead treats such expectations as ‘prejudice’, it dissolves the glue of civic loyalty.

Furthermore, Labor’s doctrine does not appear to see Australians as equal citizens; it sees them as representatives of ‘favoured racial, religious, or ideological blocs’. This fragmentation is the antithesis of the Western legal tradition, where citizens meet the state as individuals. By dividing the population into ‘protected identity categories’, the doctrine replaces national unity with tribal competition. This makes a singular, ‘full allegiance’ impossible, as the citizen is encouraged to look first to their sub-group and only secondarily to the nation. If citizenship is treated as just one ‘preference among many’, the strong link between a people and their institutions is broken.

We see the ultimate result of this worldview in the obsession with ‘harm’, ‘safety’, and ‘vilification’. Rather than the ‘robust freedom’ that built Australia, we are offered state-imposed speech codes and ever-wider hate-speech laws designed to let the state decide when expression has crossed an ideological boundary. Allegiance is no longer to the principle of free expression, but to the shifting boundaries set by the state. This is not the behaviour of a leader who respects Australian institutions; it is the behaviour of a commissar.

A party of government that refuses to defend the core of Australian culture – its common law, its independent courts, and its requirement for civic loyalty – has no business holding the floor of Parliament, let alone dictating the terms of leadership to others.

Peaceful diversity is the result of a strong, monocultural institutional framework, not a replacement for it. If Clare O’Neil, and the Labor Party at large, cannot understand that our institutions are the fruits of a specific cultural tree, then I would argue that they are the ones who have failed this loyalty test.

Australia does not need ‘multiculturalism’ to survive; it needs citizens and leaders who are unashamed to pledge their full allegiance to the Western inheritance that made this nation worth joining in the first place.