Last week I trekked down to Melbourne to speak at a policy dialogue put together by the Robert Menzies Institute on immigration. This was a closed-door conference held under Chatham House rules, so I can’t tell you who said what, but the talkfest certainly got me thinking.

I was invited down to talk about the economics of immigration, which was perhaps the least interesting part of the day.

Nearly all speakers agreed that immigration had little net impact on the broader economy, and so the real debate lies elsewhere … on the issues of national identity and social cohesion. Though before jumping into the cultural issues, it’s worth noting one important economic issue.

Warped economics of immigration

While the net impact of immigration on the economy may be roughly zero, that aggregate conclusion hides the fact that there are some clear winners and losers. The main economic benefit of immigration is the extra tax revenue for the government, and the extra tuition revenue for our university sector; the main costs of immigration come from the increased demand for infrastructure and housing, which lead to shortages and congestion in the short term, and extra construction costs in the long run.

This situation creates a warped incentive for our politicians. The benefits are concentrated with the federal government, arrive quickly, and are easy to identify. The costs are dispersed amongst the citizens and state governments, grow slowly over time, and are less obvious. The end result is that the federal government has an incentive to maintain high immigration, regardless of whether or not it is good for the whole country.

The above is not necessarily an argument against immigration, but it is perhaps an explanation for why the federal government has consistently run a larger immigration program than is preferred by the voting pubic.

The unanswered question of national identity

With economics out of the way, the rest of the day was left to deal with the issues of national identity and social cohesion. Many eloquent speeches were given, but with a few notable exceptions, most of them failed to deal with this issue substantively.

The dominant opinion at the conference (and our cultural elite more broadly) was that Australia is bound together by multiculturalism, egalitarian values, and our democracy. This is a non-answer. If we were to take that answer seriously, then our identity has been defined so broadly as to include most people on Earth, which makes it meaningless.

Implicit in the above answer is that Australians are unique from non-Australians due to our citizenship. While true, this is a shallow concept of ‘identity’ where being Australian simply means being part of a political system and economic zone. While politics and economics are important, for most people the concept of identity goes far beyond having a shared constitution and tax system. For most people, the answer is cultural.

What is culture?

Everybody thinks they know what culture means, so nobody defines their terms, which leads to many people talking straight past each other. Attempts at defining culture are inevitably risky, but for the sake of clarity I will give it a shot.

Culture is the learned beliefs and behaviours that are easily understood and expected by other members of that cultural group. This includes lifestyle issues such as food, housing, and dress; performative issues like arts, sports, and traditions; interpersonal issues like relationships, manners, and reputations; and productive issues like time preference, risk aversion, and work attitudes.

Individuals still vary, but people from a common culture generally find one another’s actions predictable and normal. This predictability makes it easier and cheaper to interact, leading to more economic, social, and political cooperation, which in turn reinforces those shared cultural norms.

Culture is not exactly the same as religion or genetics, but there is a high correlation between the three concepts, and they have been used interchangeably though much of history and still in many parts of the world. The correlations between culture, religion, and genetics have declined in the modern world due to the rise of religious tolerance and cheap international travel. When they diverge, my assertion (which I don’t have time here to defend) is that culture is the primary element of identity.

Cultural change is inevitable. That change might come in the form of cultural evolution, where new beliefs and behaviours are introduced and become popular over time, or it could come in the form of cultural replacement, where new cultures come to supersede the old cultures. Both are common through history. The difference is that an evolving culture has a meaningful and ongoing sense of shared identity between the generations. This is why a culture should not be defined by the exact beliefs and behaviours at any point in time, but rather by the intergenerational existence of a people who identify with that culture. For example, Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill, and John Lennon were all part of the evolving English culture, despite the sharp differences in their beliefs and behaviours.

As mentioned in the last section, most people identify themselves with their culture, and so most people like their cultural group and care about its ongoing existence. This is not a claim of ‘cultural superiority’. Love for family does not come from a claim that your family is superior to all other families, but simply because your family is your own. Likewise, love for your culture does not come from a claim that your culture is superior to all other cultures, but simply because your culture is your own. Some cultures may indeed be superior, but that is not the source of cultural love and loyalty. It is possible to love your own family and culture while still respecting and caring for other families and cultures.

Countries and cultures

Countries do not have to have a single culture. History is littered with examples of countries that have included many cultural groups, and there is no fixed rule that says that countries and cultures must overlap. The Habsburg Empire included Austrians, Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, Czechs, Poles, Romanians, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Slovenes, and many more. Singapore has Chinese, Malays, and Indians. In these cases (and many others) there is a clear divide between the people’s political loyalty and their cultural identity.

The idea of aligning countries with cultural identity is relatively recent, given some impetus with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, but only really getting popular after the 1789 French Revolution. Before this time, it was understood that political loyalty and cultural identity were separate topics… The French innovation was to merge the two concepts, and link people’s cultural identity to their political system. The result was the emergence of modern nation-states, where distinct national and cultural groups fought for political independence and unification, and old empires collapsed. These nation-states then evolved into the modern democracies we see today.

This is obviously an oversimplification of a long and complex history, but I think it helps to inspire some more serious thinking about what we mean when talking about countries and cultures. Do Australians see themselves as having a distinct Aussie culture and national identity, or are we simply part of the Australian political system (with many cultures) and we get our sense of identity elsewhere?

Aussie-culture or Multi-culture?

The multicultural ideology is an explicit rejection of the nation-state, and opposed to the idea that the Australia should have a unique Aussie culture. This raises a series of questions:

1. What is to be done with people who already identify with Aussie culture? Are they a new type of indigenous-Australian, or should they be encouraged to rediscover the culture of their ancestors, or should they forgo cultural identity?
2. How do multiculturalists reconcile their preference for exclusive cultural groups and networks (in order to maintain their separate identities) with their desire for non-discrimination and universal inclusion?
3. If Australia is simply a political system and economic zone, without a unifying culture, will that elicit any meaningful love or loyalty?
4. Can a modern democracy survive a return to multiculturalism, given that voters will identify primarily with their cultural groups rather than the general public?
5. How will the rise of identity politics and the importation of foreign identity conflicts impact on social cohesion in Australia?

These questions haven’t been adequately answered. Proponents of the multicultural ideology are attempting to deconstruct the nation-state without having a proper understanding of how it has worked until now or what will likely come next.

Though for all the talk of multiculturalism, the current reality in Australia is that we still do have a dominant Aussie culture. That culture emerged from the early British and Irish settlers, evolved due to our unique geography and history, and has been influenced by waves of migrants.

There are of course many cultural minorities in Australia (as with nearly all countries) and those minorities are growing in size and influence, but these points do not contradict the existence of a dominant culture. It is entirely legitimate for Australians to consider the potential impact of immigration on that culture.

Immigration and Aussie culture

As mentioned earlier, culture is always evolving, and one cause of that evolution is immigration. The impact of immigrants on the existing culture will depend on three things:

• The number of migrants that arrive each year.
• The existing culture of those migrants, and how similar it is to Aussie culture.
• Whether new migrants are encouraged to integrate into Aussie culture or retain their separate culture.

Recent decades have seen an increase in total numbers, an increase in the proportion of people coming from very different cultures, and public policy focused on retaining separate cultures. The consequence is a sharper cultural divide, which has inevitably triggered some opposition.

There will always be some pushback against cultural evolution, but the more dramatic question is whether parts of Australia are at risk of cultural replacement?

To use a simplified example, if we start with a community of 100 similar people and add one outsider, over time that outsider will adjust to the existing culture of the 100, though they may also add some new ideas that lead to steady cultural evolution. In contrast, if we instead added 1,000 outsiders, there is a very real risk that the existing culture will be replaced.

This is an exaggerated example, but the general concept should be clear enough.

History is full of examples of migration leading to cultural replacement, but that does not mean the replaced group has to passively accept their fate.

The current political climate says that we should not discriminate on the basis of migrant culture (point #2) and we should encourage migrants to retain their separate culture (point #3). As a consequence, those opposed to the growing cultural divide have focused their efforts on simply reducing the migrant numbers (point #1).

While that is an understandable approach, a thorough review of immigration should reconsider all three points and consider possible trade-offs. The ideal immigration policy is not something I can easily answer here, but these are the sorts of issues that are at the core of the immigration debate.

First published on the Death & Taxes Substack.