I am Stephen Chavura’s problem, or am I?

My family arrived in Australia from Britain in April 1961, but it wasn’t without a fight. It could have been the photos of the two youngest (my twin and I), or maybe there was a meeting with my parents at Australia House. We were simply too exotic for Menzie’s Australia. My twin Peter and I are half Japanese and a quarter Jewish. But it was not until very recently that we discovered the Jewish part.

So my twin and I were the reason the family was turned down for immigration – until the South Australian Government got involved, and the family arrived a little later than planned, on the last voyage of the P and O’s Strathaird rather than the glamorous Oriana.

Which has the odd bonus that there’s a mock-up of the exact cabin we travelled in at the Port Adelaide migration museum. But it has also left me relieved that the old White Australia policy has been left behind.

Christian Academic Stephen Chavura, a regular on Sky after dark, has been targeted by The Sydney Morning Herald for his politically conservative view that includes a desire to maintain a majority Anglo-Celtic nation.

He outlined his views at a “BACPAC” conference, organised by the “British Australia Community” a few days ago. It is his summary of his views and worth quoting to make them clear. He argued for a dominant culture to persist in Australia, derived from a past Australia. “When Federation takes place in 1901, you could describe Australia as an ethnostate at the census taken that year, we estimate that roundabout 98% of Australians were of an Anglo-Celtic background, and that remains strongly the case right up to World War II.” 

 

Chavura said Europeans assimilate best. “Strictly speaking, when we say that the post-World War II European migrants assimilated, what we really mean is that to a degree much greater than many present-day migrants, they adopted the prevailing Anglo-Celtic culture, but they never fully assimilated. For example, Greeks did not come and become Anglicans, Presbyterians or Catholics. They stayed Greek Orthodox for the most part. Similar things can be said for other migrant groups. For me personally, I’m very public on the record about this and maybe for obvious reasons, I greatly cherish the broader European contribution after World War ii. I actually do think it brought us something that complemented us beautifully…

“… if there’s one key thing I want you to take away tonight, it’s this and it really dawned on me over the last few months, people do not assimilate into vague abstract values. They assimilate into living cultural practises exemplified by an overwhelmingly dominant ethnic majority. That is what people assimilate to. Thus when the post-World War II migrants came to Australia, the Anglo-Celtic majority was a super majority. It was overwhelming, which meant it was inescapable and exerted. A strong force in reshaping most who arrived on our shores from European cultures, very different from the British, almost all of them being Christian also helped.”
Chavura believes that a broader migration policy threatens the replacement of that Anglo-Celtic culture.

Chavura goes on to make it clear that he particularly objects to Islamic migrants, and defends seletion on the basis of race. “I challenge the notion that an immigration system that takes race into account is thereby racist. It is not if ethnic and racial homogeneity is a good thing for a nation to have, but if it is, then an immigration system that takes ethnicity and race into account may be described as racialist but not racist.”

In arguing for maintaining or recreating a past culture, Chavura maintained he is not being racist. He might consider my twin and me to be some sort of ‘honorary whites”, passing some sort of cultural test. 

If, as Chavura maintains, he wants to have a culture-based immigration policy rather than a race-based immigration policy – likely with much reduced numbers of immigrants – then it is questionable that a European-based intake would achieve that. If he wants to emphasise family values, who would best fit, a libertine Briton or a family-oriented Tongan? If family is a marker of the culture, what about reuniting South Sudanese refugee families, often dispersed across refugee camps? And if a hard-working culture is wanted, what about prioritising East Asians? Chavura’s migration views appear to float on a nostalgia about Britain and the Australia of his growing up. 
If he wants in effect to prioritise Christians then China or India would have more to choose from that Britain.

The Sydney Morning Herald piece The far-right figures teaching students at a Sydney college, accuses Chavura and a colleague, Stephen McInerney, who teaches at Campion College in Toongabbie, of “promoting White Nationalism.”

The fact that Chavura wants migrants to come from countries where people are predominantly pale-skinned lends some credence to that charge. It is arguing for a return to a White Australia policy – or a mostly White Australia policy. 

But many of the best contributors to Australian society are yellow, like half of me, or increasingly brown.

Campion College is a Catholic liberal arts College that teaches the classics, with backing from wealthy conservative funders. It has a new Library building, named the Gina Reinhart library, presumably in honour of who funded it. The Sydney Morning Herald piece functions as an attack, in that it describes the college president responding to the paper’s dossier of evidence by promising to investigate the pair of academics.

Chavura’s social media footprint has been edited. As far as The Other Cheek’s Facebook is concerned, it is not me doing it, so it is likely Chavura.

The College has the right to select its academic staff. Parents have the right to send their young adult children there. And Stephen Chavura has the right to campaign for his view on what Australia should be. As does The Sydney Morning Herald. If free speech applies 

It is worth noting that Chavura was previously employed as an academic at Macquarie University but came under fire in 2017 for being a board member of the Lachlan Maquarie Institute, a training body founded by the Australian Christian Lobby and lost his job. This appears to have been on the basis of his views – so a cultural cancellation.

Should a public university respond to the personal political position of its staff – or simply hire and fire on the basis of academic and teaching ability? That issue is under pressure in the United States in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, with people’s social media being examined with the threat of job loss. Chavura is an example, perhaps in the opposite direction. His defenestration from Macquarie Uni should earn him sympathy, while his politics on migration might not.

Campion College, more of a private institution although government supported through Fee Help,  after its due diligence promised in the Sydney Morning Herald piece, will also have to make a call on the two Stephens, and it appears to this observer that the outcome is likely to differ from Macquarie.

There are two things that can and should be separate. One is disagreeing with Chavura on his politics. He is a controversialist; he expects people to disagree with him. In this piece, I have laid out that I do. 

The other is maintaining his free speech rights. Seeking to have someone dismissed based on their political view – if one regards that Sydney Morning Herald story as attempting to do that – is an attempt to narrow the room for discourse. That is bad for an open society in which bad ideas should be defeated through debate. It will also lead to the tit-for-tat policies of Trump, which are also detrimental to a fair society.

Image: John (left) and Peter (right) Sandeman, too young to know what was going on.