Comment

John Hewson and
Barry Jones
A minister for social cohesion

A most important national challenge to all involved in our political process – especially government, opposition and media – is to restore social cohesion.

Surely one of our great national successes was to build a tolerant and effective multi-ethnic, multireligious and multicultural nation, one that has as part of it the world’s longest surviving culture, and which until recent times was the envy of the rest of the world.

It seemed difficult for many to recognise that this success could not be taken for granted. It needs to be accepted that a successful and cohesive multicultural society remains a work in progress. It needs to be nurtured through the thick and thin of events as they unfold.

In recent years, this success has been buffeted by a number of significant shocks. One was the racial division created by the opponents of the Voice referendum. Most recently has been the anti-Semitic massacre at Bondi. Last week, the country’s foremost writers’ festival, Adelaide Writers’ Week, was cancelled after the disinvitation of a Palestinian–Australian author.

These events and others have brought out the worst in many, seriously undermining social cohesion. That division has been compounded by a lack of bipartisanship, with seemingly endless short-term political pointscoring for some perceived political advantage, letting hate speech and division reign and intensify.

In this environment, as the parliament negotiates hate speech legislation and hopes for a positive result from the royal commission into anti-Semitism, we believe there is a strong case for the creation of a minister for social cohesion. Such a position will give definition to the challenge, collect and manage the relevant data, create national focus and monitor activities across the key portfolios. Tanya Plibersek would be an ideal choice as minister, but that would be in the hands of the appointer and not the appointee.

We are making this call together, as elders from the Labor and Liberal parties, wishing for the bipartisanship that was once our experience and is increasingly rare.

Social cohesion calls for trust and prevents fear, anxiety, prejudice, bigotry, stereotypes, discrimination, inequality and lack of purpose. Without it, we cannot live meaningful and productive lives.

Social cohesion is for all citizens, for an inclusive and fair society. It will never happen by simply saying it should. Social cohesion needs to be taught and measured as a benefit, like the financial economy.

Australia has a unique opportunity to lead globally on this. We can demonstrate how it is possible. Building an appetite for self-awareness and thoughtful relationships with others, the effect could demonstrate to nations what a real multicultural country could look like.

Social cohesion is a multifaceted challenge with significance to many traditional policy portfolios. The challenge calls for systems-level advocacy, bringing grounded, community-informed insights into policy discussions.

Our political system should focus on social cohesion to help communities stay strong, inclusive and safe. These grassroots experiences should provide a national framework for detailed research, policy development and governance.

It is important to look at the hard data on ethnicity. The most recent census records that the Commonwealth includes 250 ancestries and more than 350 languages. People of European descent comprise 54.65 per cent of the population. Christians, nominal or practising, number 43.9 per cent. Those describing “no religion” sit at 38.9 per cent. Islam is recorded at 3.2 per cent of the population. Judaism is at 0.4 per cent. Some Jewish demographers put the figure at closer to 0.6 per cent, arguing that many Jews, both observant and secular, choose to leave the census question blank. Similarly, the number of Muslims is almost certainly higher, perhaps 6 per cent, with community leaders acknowledging that large numbers are apprehensive about answering the question.

Surprisingly for a strikingly secular society, education is highly segmented and class-based, with affluent parents, including many Labor members of parliament, choosing to educate their children at private schools, often with extraordinarily lavish facilities and a strong commitment to the arts, foreign travel and sports, in stark contrast to the starved state system.

Australia has the fourth-most segmented education system in the OECD – far more divided than in the United Kingdom or the United States – and it is taxpayer funded, a kind of Robin Hood in reverse, stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

This raises important questions for our nation. Do we want to be tolerant and pluralistic? Or cohesive and convergent? In a multicultural society, is it possible to be both?

One can see the case for each model but, taken to the ultimate, the implications
of both are horrifying.

Tolerance and pluralism, taken to their limits, could lead to a breakdown in shared experience and the weakening of a common language and shared values.

If we had a commitment to free speech and diversity of opinion, could we stop people expressing a view we find incomprehensible?

Can we limit the right to free speech and to the holding of divergent opinions, however repugnant, that do not impinge directly on our lives?

The goal of cohesion and convergence is admirable, especially if it is based on cooperation, collaboration and a general inclusiveness and applied flexibility.

It can also become rigid, dogmatic and authoritarian. Taken to its extremes, it can be xenophobic and punitive.

To continue with the example of education, one must consider charter schools devoted to Christian fundamentalism. These schools, which are essentially home learning, insist the age of the Earth is about 6000 years, adopting the chronology set out in Genesis. This exercise in “freedom” is not subject to testing and challenge, which is generally regarded as central to education. Some would argue legislation should stop this sort of teaching.

Learning about one’s true self and real relationships with others makes social cohesion possible. It is a transformational experience, not a transactional one.

Probably the most disturbing feature of recent politics, both in Australia and globally, has been the conscious use of division as a political weapon. Nations have been divided on key issues, simply for perceived short-term political gain, against the broader interests of the nation. The longer-term consequences of this can be very significant.

We are watching the most extreme example of this unfold as the US unravels before our eyes, with the very real prospect that it could end in civil war.

The media has a role in this, too. Entire media companies base their business models on rancour and division. Objectivity and facts are abandoned in favour of outrage and hatred. There is a real need for integrity and a compulsion to report honestly rather than to publish opinion and misinformation.

Politicians have to tone it down and the media needs to call it out. We are seeing daily the frightening damage that a rogue leadership with complicit media can inflict on vulnerable and easily frightened people. It is a recipe for disaster.

In recent years the political discourse in Australia has drifted along similar lines at the expense of social cohesion. This dangerous trajectory needs to be curbed immediately. A minister for social cohesion would be responsible for leading the public discourse, hoping to keep the debate more on track.

They would have a leading role in this week’s hate speech legislation, where care needs to be taken not to compound division and to ensure that all races and faiths, genders, sexual preferences and differences of ability are protected.

The social cohesion dilemma was acutely described by Lord Acton, the great English Catholic historian, who wrote in his “Introductory Lecture on Modern History” in 1895: The progress of civilisation “depends on preserving at infinite cost, which is infinite loss, the crippled child and the victim of accident, the idiot and the madman, the pauper and the culprit, the old and infirm, curable and incurable. This growing dominion of disinterested motive, this liberality towards the weak in social life, corresponds to that respect for the minority in political life, which is the essence of freedom.”

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on January 24, 2026 as "A minister for social cohesion".

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