Dr Stephen Chavura: 'The Vanishing Nation: Australia’s Identity Crisis'

At the BACPAC 2025 conference, Australian academic and historian, Dr. Stephen Chavura, presented a potent critique of multiculturalism and its devastating impact on Australia’s national identity, arguing that the nation’s current cultural policies diverge sharply from its historical identity.

Titled “The Vanishing Nation: Australia’s Identity Crisis,” Chavura’s lecture challenged the ideology of multiculturalism, tracing its historical roots and examining its consequences for the nation’s Anglo-Celtic heritage.

According to Chavura, when Australia federated in 1901, it was effectively an Anglo-Celtic ethnostate. Following World War II, assimilation policies sought to integrate migrants into this dominant cultural framework.

By the 1970s, however, multiculturalism emerged, driven not by popular demand but by a small cohort of elites. Chavura referenced the 1988 Fitzgerald Report, which noted public resistance to these policies. He highlighted former Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s 1994 admission that both major parties had supported high levels of immigration despite widespread public opposition. Hawke-Keating and Howard governments, Chavura argued, prioritised family reunion and economic migration, which gradually diluted Australia’s Anglo-Celtic identity.

Chavura emphasised that true assimilation requires a clear, dominant culture rather than vague “Australian values.” He proposed immigration policies that favour ethnic homogeneity to maintain social cohesion, noting a 2018 Lowy Institute poll that showed that 54% of Australians believe immigration levels are too high.

“People do not assimilate into vague, abstract values,” he said. “They assimilate into living cultural practices exemplified by an overwhelmingly dominant ethnic majority. That is what people assimilate to. Thus, when post–World War II migrants came to Australia, the Anglo-Celtic majority was a supermajority. It was overwhelming, which meant it was inescapable and exerted a strong influence in reshaping most who arrived on our shores from European cultures very different from the British. The fact that almost all of them were Christian also helped.”

Urging Australians to embrace their history, Chavura called for grassroots efforts to preserve Anglo-Celtic heritage and reject multiculturalism as a divisive force. “Love for Australia,” he argued, should be rooted in an understanding of the nation’s people and cultural foundations—not merely a lifestyle or set of abstract ideals.

You can watch the full lecture, thanks to the British Australian Community, below:

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