The words monocultural or monoculture are probably not so rare as to appear in an Oxford or Macquarie dictionary of new words. But they will no longer appear in a dictionary of rare words. Not since senator Pauline Hanson addressed the National Press Club in Canberra on June 17.

Shortly into her speech, the One Nation leader said: “Undeniably, immigration or immigration policy has our country in the state of crisis. At the centre of this crisis is the utterly flawed policy of multiculturalism. We cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society but we must be monocultural. Australians must live under the one cultural umbrella.”

Until just over two weeks ago, I did not recall having heard the word monocultural used in this context. The Macquarie Dictionary defines monocultural as “a cultivation practice in which one species is grown over an area to the exclusion of all else, as in wheatfields, lawn, etc”. Whereas the noun monoculture is defined as “a culture in which there is very little diversity in terms of ethnic groups, language, etc”.

Writing on the Inside Story website on June 20, left-wing historian Frank Bongiorno linked Hanson’s word usage to one-time Liberal Party leader Billy Snedden.

He quoted Snedden as saying this in 1969: “I am quite determined we should have a monoculture, with everybody living in the same way, understanding each other, and sharing the same aspirations; we don’t want pluralism.”

Bongiorno did not cite a source for the quote. It would seem that he located it in a book titled Languages other than English in Australian Higher Education, written by Jennifer Joan Baldwin and published in 2019. She does not cite a source for the quote apart from the year 1969.

By the way, Baldwin refers to Snedden as referring to “social pluralism”, not just pluralism.

Snedden was minister for immigration in the Coalition government between December 1966 and November 1969. In 1967, a bilateral immigration agreement was reached between Turkey and Australia. Australia opened up its borders to entire Turkish families. The Turkish-born population increased rapidly between the census of 1961 and that of 1971. Immigration dropped during the Whitlam government from late 1972 until late 1975.

One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson has taken questions after her first National Press Club address since entering politics over 30 years ago.

In other words, Snedden was the first immigration minister to make possible the inaugural significant increase in immigration from a Muslim-majority nation. Clearly, he did not regard Muslim immigration as a threat to Australia’s social pluralism. The Turkish immigrants settled in well – as have virtually all immigrants.

It is true that the Coalition, under Harold Holt’s leadership, started the abolition of the White Australia policy in March 1966 when Hubert Opperman was immigration minister. But it is not correct to state that the Coalition, during Malcolm Fraser’s prime ministership, introduced multiculturalism to Australia between late 1975 and March 1983.

Multiculturalism was a product of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government. On August 11, 1973, immigration minister AJ (Al) Grassby delivered a speech titled “A multicultural society for the future”.

Grassby lost his seat of Riverina at the May 1974 election but the policy was continued by his replacement. In time, the Fraser government embraced and expanded the concept of multiculturalism, including the creation of the SBS broadcaster, as did the Hawke and Keating Labor governments.

While Snedden oversaw the first large intake of Muslim migrants, the Fraser government presided over the first large intake of Asian immigrants following the victory of communist North Vietnam over non-communist South Vietnam in April 1975. Most came not as boat people but as refugees from UNHCR camps in Asia with valid passports on Qantas aircraft. The Vietnamese have been remarkably successful refugees. I referred to this when citing the Commemorative Book to Mark 50 Years of Vietnamese Refugee Settlement in Australia in these pages on January 24. When I worked for John Howard between 1984 and 1986 he was very supportive of Vietnamese immigration.

Unlike some retired politicians, Howard decided to write a frank account of his personal and political life in which errors were acknowledged. In Lazarus Rising (HarperCollins, 2010), Howard recorded that around 1988, following an overseas visit to Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, he publicly acknowledged not having ever felt comfortable with the term multiculturalism, preferring the concept of assimilation.

In the 1950s and into the 60s, immigrants were welcomed as “New Australians” – a term that was liked by many as a sign of friendly acceptance. Including the highly successful Jewish immigrant Frank Lowy.

Howard’s mistake, as he has acknowledged, was to get this position on multiculturalism tangled up with his view, also expressed in 1988, that, if it were in the interests of social cohesion, then the pace of Asian immigration should be slowed. In Lazarus Rising, Howard conceded he “had been wrong to make the original statements on the pace of Asian immigration”.

However, he wrote towards the end of his memoirs that he still preferred the term the Australian achievement over multiculturalism. In any event, the Howard government implemented a high and successful immigrant intake.

I was an early strong supporter of multiculturalism but changed my mind and came to the view that Howard’s opinion about the term was correct. Around this time, British Conservative prime minister David Cameron expressed concern about radical Islam, as a factor leading to a situation whereby a small minority of Islamists rejected the West while choosing to live in the West. German leader Angela Merkel expressed similar sentiments at the same time.

In more recent times, there has been the emergence of what American scholar Mark Levin has termed the Marxist-Islamist Alliance – as sections of the extreme local-born left join the Islamists in our midst as being hostile to, and wanting to overthrow, the democratic societies in which they live.

Australia never was and never can be a monocultural society, whatever that means. The Australian achievement has been one of tolerance and acceptance – illustrated by the low level of anti-immigrant crime and the high level of interracial marriages. Australians do not need to live under “one cultural umbrella”. We do need to live in a vibrant democracy that is devoid of self-hatred.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.