{"id":37145,"date":"2026-06-23T23:44:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T23:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/37145\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T23:44:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T23:44:25","slug":"shared-culture-pauline-hansons-reasonable-wish-for-australia-weaponised-by-those-who-resent-the-idea-our-nation-should-have-a-common-social-purpose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/37145\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Shared culture’: Pauline Hanson’s reasonable wish for Australia weaponised by those who resent the idea our nation should have a common social purpose"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word of the moment is undoubtedly \u2018monocultural’.<\/p>\n

In her take-no-prisoners speech at the National Press Club Pauline Hanson said it was time to axe \u201cmulticulturalism\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot be a multicultural society,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a multi-racial society, but we must be monocultural. Australians must live under the one cultural umbrella.\u201d<\/p>\n

This reasonable comment triggered brain explosions among those who are terrified of the advance of One Nation and who think \u201cmonocultural\u201d is the word they can use as a weapon to stop the barbarians at the gate.<\/p>\n

Are they right?<\/p>\n

Does it mean telling Italian Australians to stop eating spaghetti?<\/p>\n

\"Violent<\/p>\n

Will all the Thai restaurants have to close?<\/p>\n

Will it become un-Australian to celebrate Diwali or Hanukkah?<\/p>\n

Or will all the soccer clubs have to close and be replaced by Aussie rules clubs?<\/p>\n

Will there be a North Korean-style culture tzar to rule on what\u2019s in and what\u2019s out?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the kind of hysterical over reaction provoked by the word \u201cmonocultural\u201d.<\/p>\n

So, what does it really mean?<\/p>\n

Clearly it\u2019s time for Sky News\u2019 resident wordsmith to unpack the word and see what it really means.<\/p>\n

We need to start with a reminder from the great Philosopher of Language Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who famously mused that we shouldn\u2019t let a word hold us captive.<\/p>\n

In other words, don\u2019t become so fixated on a single word that you miss the idea behind it.<\/p>\n

And the idea behind the word \u201cmonocultural\u201d is \u201cshared culture\u201d.<\/p>\n

When there is a \u201cshared culture\u201d that covers a territory or a population group that is a \u201cmonoculture\u201d.<\/p>\n

Is Italy monocultural?<\/p>\n

Yes, of course it is.<\/p>\n

There is a distinctive Italian culture shared among the people who live in Italy.<\/p>\n

From the ruins of ancient Rome to the pizzas invented in Naples, to La Scala Opera House, to fashion week in Milan, to Juventus football club, to young Italians riding around on their Vespas – there is a shared culture.<\/p>\n

Is Japan monocultural?<\/p>\n

Again, it obviously is.<\/p>\n

There is a distinct Japanese culture shared by the Japanese people.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part of what makes them Japanese.<\/p>\n

Part of it is ancient (from sumo wrestling to the role of the emperor) and some of it is modern (manga comics and bullet trains) – but it is all Japanese, all a shared culture.<\/p>\n

Is there something similar in Australia?<\/p>\n

Something that is (or should be) a shared culture (a monoculture)?<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Reeks<\/p>\n

Part of the panic-stricken response to Hanson came from people who seem to despise Australia and dismiss any notion that an \u201cAustralian culture\u201d should exist.<\/p>\n

But they are just the latest iteration of \u201ccultural cringe\u201d – the memorable phrase coined by literary critic A. A. Phillips in 1950 to name this cringing sense of inferiority that infects the elitists.<\/p>\n

One radio host joined the panic by pleading with his listeners to ring and tell him what Australian culture could possibly be.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the answer – Australian culture is \u201cthe common pot\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"TV<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the term coined by our greatest poet Les Murray in his verse novel \u2018The Boys Who Stole the Funeral\u2019.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s \u201cthe common pot\u201d that we all contribute to, and that feeds us all.<\/p>\n

We all share what we have with each other, and the resulting \u201ccommon pot\u201d feeds our Aussie spirits.<\/p>\n

It started in 1788 with the arrival of 18th century British culture.<\/p>\n

And almost the first thing that culture did was to adopt a lot of Aboriginal language – especially to name the strange flora and fauna, but other cultural terms quickly blended in: words such as \u2018boomerang\u2019 and \u2018corroboree\u2019 became part of the Australian language.<\/p>\n

Then the landscape of this amazing place, played a role – this wide brown land, with its droughts and flooding rains.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Very<\/p>\n

The experience of life in the bush contributed notions of mateship, and a kind of honesty we call \u2018fair dinkum\u2019.<\/p>\n

In the 1850s (with the gold rushes) and again in the 1950s (after World War II) the floodgates opened to people from around the world.<\/p>\n

And they didn\u2019t just come, they shared.<\/p>\n

They contributed to the \u201ccommon pot\u201d and made us all a bit richer, a bit more Australian.<\/p>\n

So, perhaps \u2018monocultural\u2019 is not a big bad wolf of a word that we should all be afraid of?<\/p>\n

Unless, of course, there are some who decide it must be wrong because it was Pauline Hanson who raised it.<\/p>\n

But we can safely ignore them – they are just suffering from PDS (Pauline Derangement Syndrome).<\/p>\n

Kel Richards is a veteran Australian broadcaster and author whose distinguished media career includes hosting the ABC current affairs show AM and his own talkback commercial radio shows. He is also a frequent on-air contributor for Sky News Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The word of the moment is undoubtedly \u2018monocultural’. In her take-no-prisoners speech at the National Press Club Pauline…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,31187,1955],"class_list":["post-37145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-monocultural","tag-one-nation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}