Abstract:
This article tests the pulse of contemporary Australian multiculturalism by
canvassing the views of residents and service providers living and working
in the St George region of south-western Sydney, one of Sydney's most
culturally-diverse regions. It explores the local impact of the dismantling of
the programmatic content of Australian multiculturalism under the Howard
Government in office since 1996. An insight into the direction of the most
recent change in immigrant settlement policy is found in a Department of
Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs' (DIMIA) Report of the
Review of Settlement Services for Migrants and Humanitarian Entrants
(DIMIA 2003). This article poses the question: Does this review provide
evidence for a continuation of the undermining of the programmatic content
of settlement services or is it a sensible refocusing of scarce resources to
the most significant of needs for new migrant realities in Sydney today? This
article uses the DIMIA Review and its recommendations as a lens through
which to throw the spotlight onto what it is like today for immigrants living
in cosmopolitan Sydney's multicultural suburbs. It does this by presenting
the perceptions and opinions of residents and of ethno-specific and
mainstream service providers in the St George region in the south of Sydney
to the DIMIA review. The article concludes that, at the very time that
multicultural policies are reduced in dollar terms and refocussed in terms
of a narrow scope, there is strong evidence of an increasing but unrnet
demand for immigrant settlement services. The other conclusion is that
mainstream organisations are not yet willing or able to pick up the policy
areas that DIMIA wants to drop.
