Transcription
Well, you've been handed two options, and you've been told that you have to pick one. This monologue is all about multiculturalism versus monoculture. Welcome back to the Redible Car podcast.
Now, option one, you are a multiculturalist, right? You believe that every culture on Earth can just move here, set up shop, keep doing exactly what they have been doing back home, and then bring it here, and somehow it all blends together into one big happy society. "Diversity is our strength," is what you would say. No questions asked. And if you do ask questions, well, you're a bigot.
Option two, you believe in a monoculture, which, according to people arguing against you, means you're some bloke who just wants everyone eating plain toast, wearing the same clothes, and being buttered chicken, and shutting down every Thai restaurant in the country. You hate flavor. You hate color. You want Australia to look like a beige waiting room. That's the choice you've been given. It's called a false dichotomy. Multiculturalism or toast only.
And I want to tell you today that that is a false choice. It is a false dichotomy. As I said, it's been deliberately set up that way because if those are the only two options, then one side wins the argument before it even starts. Nobody wants to be the toast guy.
But here's what I've noticed. Every time this debate kicks off, and it's kicking off right now in Australia, in the UK, across the West, nobody stops to define the terms. What actually is monoculture? What actually is multiculturalism? What are they even fighting about? Because I would argue that people on both sides of this are arguing past each other, yelling at each other about food and festivals, while the real question, the question that matters actually, sits untouched in the middle of the room.
And that question is this: Is there a line? Is there any culture, any practice, any value system that you would say does not belong here? When I say here, I mean the West. Because if you answer no, you think that everything can come here, then we can talk until the cows come home. We will continue being useful idiots for the puppet masters because we haven't defined our respective positions. And they know this. And I'm convinced the majority of us don't actually.
But if your answer is yes, there is a line somewhere that we should draw, then we actually have a conversation worth having. We're probably closer to each other's beliefs than what the media would have you believe. Now, to be clear, it is my position that the answer, like it has to be yes. There is a line. You should understand and believe that there is a line where not every culture fits together. You spend 5, 10, 15 minutes reading a history book, both either modern or ancient, and this is proven to be true. Not all cultures come together.
First things first, what is culture? Actually, what is culture? What does it mean? Because we throw the word around like everyone agrees on what it means. But it's evident based on the arguments mainly by people on the left, but not always. But it's evident that nobody actually agrees on what culture itself means. Culture is not just food. It's not just music. Culture is not what you wear on a Saturday or what festival you're celebrating in spring. Those things are expressions of culture. They're like the visible bits, the stuff that you can photograph, but they're not the thing itself.
The word culture comes from the same root as the word cult. It literally means, on the deepest levels, what people worship, actually what they hold sacred, what they will not compromise on. Culture at its core is a shared answer to, like, the biggest questions there are. What is human life worth? How do you treat a stranger? How do you treat a woman? What do you do when someone wrongs you? What do you owe to your neighbor? What happens to the weak, the old, the unborn? Culture is the agreed-upon answers to those questions. Everything else, the food, the music, the clothing, it's decoration on top of those answers.
Let me give you a picture of this, and it might help make it click. Think of a country like a house. Every house has two kinds of features. It has the furniture. This is like the couch, the curtains, the artwork on the walls, what's cooking in the kitchen, what music is playing in the lounge room. And it has its foundations and, like, the load-bearing walls, the things you cannot touch without the whole house coming down.
Now, you can change the furniture as much as you like. You can bring furniture from every country on the planet. Bring a rug from Morocco, some artwork from Japan, some curry on the stove by India. Beautiful. The house is arguably better for it, more interesting, probably more alive. But the foundations, the load-bearing walls, if you touch those, and it doesn't matter how nice the furniture is, the roof comes down on everyone, including the people who brought the nice furniture.
And as a Christian, I can't help but hear the echo here because Jesus told this story like 2,000 years ago. The wise man built his house on the rock, and the foolish man builds his house on the sand, and when the storm came, only one of those houses was still standing. It's not about how the house looks. It's about what the house is standing on, the foundations.
And for this context, we're talking about the agreed values. So when I talk about a monoculture, and I want to be really precise here, I'm not talking about the furniture. I have zero interest in what's on your dinner table. I'm only talking about the foundations. And everyone who takes this position is only talking about the foundations. I'm saying, and we are saying, and they are saying, a nation needs to have one set of foundations. One agreed answer to the big questions, the ones we just mentioned earlier. One shared understanding of what a human life is worth and how we treat each other. You can have a thousand kinds of furniture in the house. You can only have one foundation. That's the whole argument. A monoculture of values, endless variety of expressions.
And once you frame it that way, you realize the entire public debate. They've been arguing about the furniture, the expressions. They, they don't know how to say, "I love Thai food, but being mowed down in the street by machete is a concern to me." Well, it's easy. You just say that. You say, "I want to live with people who value life the way I do." And that means certain cultures won't be able to express their barbaric and archaic ways of life in my society.
On another level, we are out here trying to define what an Australian is so we can protect it. But as I currently sit, and my opinions may change, uh, but I believe it's actually more important to define what the country is, its foundation. Because if we just say what an Australian looks like or where they've come from based on their lineage or whatever, that's great for the title of calling yourself a certified Australian, but it doesn't protect the country in the way that we think it does. Because what's to stop all those certified Australians becoming extreme left progressive and removing God from society and still destroying the values we were and should continue to be built on, i.e., Christian values? That's why I find nuance in just saying, let's identify what an Australian is when it's been my experience that I know some absolute foggs who are true blue Australians, but they've done nothing but take from society and degrade Australian values. And on the other side, I know immigrants, family members actually, who uphold Australian values far better than say politicians on the left and the right, to be fair. And that's just some context to my thought process currently. So while I understand there is a process that allows you to identify as an Australian, which is an Anglo-Celtic and, and/or European descent, and of course the indigenous, I'm not convinced that by having a claim to that label that you are the answer to the problem.
Now, getting back to the monoculture position, because the actual argument is hard to beat. The other side doesn't usually engage with it. So what they do instead is they build like a scarecrow version of it. They set it on fire. They take a bow. So let's actually go through them one by one.
Straw man number one is this: "So you want everyone just eating toast? You hate other people's food, do you?" This is the big one. This is the argument you'll see in every comment section. "Oh, you believe in one culture. I guess you won't have kebabs again. Enjoy your Vegemite sandwich, mate." It's ridiculous. And look, I understand why they say it. I understand why they run this line. It's effective 'cause it makes you look small and joyless, right?
But think about what their argument actually claimed. It claims that culture is food, and that the deepest thing a civilization has to offer is its cuisine. Can you hear how insulting that might be? Not to us, but to them. If I said the great contribution of the Italian civilization is pizza and pizza only, Italians would probably rightly be offended if they wanted to be. Rome gave the world law, engineering, language, calendar on your wall. Reducing a people to their menu is not respect, but more, it's probably like the shallowest possible reading of what a culture even is. Nobody is fighting a culture war over pad thai. There is not one person I know in this country losing sleep over the existence of dumplings. When people raise concern about culture compatibility, they're not talking about the food court. They're talking about the foundations. And everybody arguing in good faith knows that. Which tells you something about the people who keep bringing up the food.
And here's how you know what I'm saying to be true. I can eat food from 50 nations this year without adopting a single value from any of them. Because food just transfers in an afternoon or an evening. Values take generations. The fact that two get deliberately confused in this debate is not an accident. It's a way of avoiding the real conversation.
Straw man number two: "You just don't like people who are different from you." You see this everywhere. I get this in my inbox a bit. I get this from people who are, you know, close to me, but just don't understand the nuance of this of this conversation. And the answer is, it's just wrong. And I'll prove it's wrong in a minute with a story about a man who's about as different for me on paper as it's possible to be. Different continent, different religion, different life story, uh, who I'll take as a neighbor tomorrow, and who I'd uphold as a model of exactly what I'm arguing for. Different is fine. Different is actually often great. The question was never, "Are you different?" The question is, "Do we agree on the foundations?" Do we agree on what a life is worth, or how you treat a woman, or how you respond when someone wrongs you? If yes, then bring your food, bring your music, bring your stories. The house is better with you in it. But if no, then no amount of shared meals fixes that. And we need to be adults about it and say it. You can't live here.
Straw man number three: "Australians don't even have a culture. We're a nation of immigrants. There's nothing to protect." I've heard this one quite often as well in the comment sections. Uh, I've seen it from political articles as well. You hear it a lot, right? You, what even is an Australian culture? Meat pies and thongs. Again, how ridiculous. But what they're talking about is furniture. They're pointing at the furniture and saying that the house doesn't exist.
Australian culture is this: You get a fair go regardless of who your father is or was. Women walk down the street unafraid, and it's everyone's job to keep it that way. Disputes get settled by law, not by blood. You're innocent until proven guilty. The strong don't get to crush the weak. And when your neighbor's place floods, well, you should turn up with a boat. Mateship isn't just a slogan. It's a duty of care to people that you've never met. And none of that just fell out of the sky. That came from somewhere. It, it grew out of probably centuries of British law, and before that, out of a Christian understanding that every single person, every person is made in the image of God, and therefore every single life has a worth that no king, no tribe, no mob is allowed to cancel. And you can be an atheist and still live off the interest of that inheritance every single day. Most Australians do, actually. So don't tell me there's nothing here. There is something here so valuable that millions of people from all over the world have risked everything to get to it. And that would raise the question that if our culture doesn't exist or it's worth nothing, what exactly are the people coming for? They're coming for the foundations, the safety, the fairness, the trust, the things that this debate refuses to protect.
So let me ask you, are you someone who believes in multiculturalism? Genuine, full-strength multiculturalism. The idea that all cultures are equal, and any culture can be just transplanted here from anywhere in the world, and it all works out. If you are one of those people, I've got some questions for you. So don't leave.
There are places right now in the world, remote tribal regions in Papua New Guinea, certain communities in India where, within living memory, and in some corners still today, cannibalism is very much practiced, and being practiced, ritual consumptions of human beings. That is not a myth. It is not colonial propaganda. It is documented, and in some places, it's within a lifetime of people still walking around. And like I said, just before, right now, it could be happening right now. So the question one: If a community holding that practice as a sacred tradition migrated here tomorrow, would you say they're entitled to continue it? Because it's their culture, right? And all cultures are equal, right?
Of course you wouldn't. I mean, you couldn't. If you said yes to that, we probably can't talk any further anyway. So you've just said no, I wouldn't. You've drawn a line there.
Now, there are cultures with witchcraft accusations that to people, usually women, they get burned alive, and that's right now, not in the year 1500, but now. Does that practice get a seat at the multicultural table? Of course not.
There are cultures where a daughter who shames the family can be killed by her own father or brothers, and the community considered it not a crime, but a restoration of honor. Is that just another thread in the rich tapestry of multiculturalism? No.
There are places where the accepted response to an insult, a debt, a dispute over a girl, is a machete. Where street justice just looks like a man being cut down in broad daylight, and the crowd doesn't even run because it's just Tuesday. Does that conflict resolution style immigrate along with a person who grew up in marinating in it? I mean, that already seems to be here. And it's a problem.
So you see what's happening. Every honest person watching this, left, right, religious, atheist, you just answered no four times in a row. Congratulations. You just drew a line four times. You believe there are cultural practices, cultural values, whole cultural operating systems that are not welcome here and should never be welcome here. Which means you do not believe all cultures are equal. You do not believe any culture can come here and keep being itself and it all works out. You never believed it. Nobody believes it. It has never once been true. And everyone knows the moment you make the examples concrete instead of abstract, it's very easy to draw the line.
So the real debate, the only honest debate, was never monoculture versus multiculturalism. Everyone in the room believes in a line. So the entire disagreement is about where the line sits and who's brave enough to say it out loud. And this is my whole frustration with how this conversation happens in this country. One side pretends there is no line, and they call you a racist for suggesting that there is one. But they believe in the line, too. You just watch yourself prove it. They draw it at cannibalism. They would draw it at honor killings. They just refuse to have the grown-up conversation about where it actually sits because having that conversation costs you something. It's uncomfortable, and you might get called names. But refusing to draw the line consciously doesn't mean the line doesn't get drawn. It means the line gets drawn not by you, but for you, by events in the street after something terrible happens, when it's too late, and the trust between neighbors is already broken. Every country that refused to have this conversation politely is now having it violently. Look at parts of Europe. Look at what's boiling over in the UK right now. That's what happens when the honest conversation gets banned, and the dishonest one takes its place, and the dishonest conversation has no rules.
So, if the line exists, and we've established it does, what determines which side of it culture falls on? And here's where I'll say something that might surprise some of you, because I don't think the answer is primarily race. And while I could argue from a faith position, you don't actually need to. You can argue it from a human and a moral position. Now, religion obviously plays a part because different, uh, religions, uh, and ideologies, they express themselves differently, and they value things differently. Uh, I'm obviously a Christian. I believe there is no way to the Father except through his Son, Jesus Christ. That is my entire belief, actually. But I want to approach this from a different angle. I think the biggest single factor is one we barely talk about, and that's your environment. What a person has been soaked in since the day they were born. That's the values they genuinely bring. There's always exceptions to the rule, but that's the values they generally bring.
Let me put it this way. Nobody is born believing a machete is how you settle an argument. Nobody's born thinking a woman is worth half a man. Nobody is born with cheap regard for human life. Those things are taught, not in a classroom, but just life itself, in the environment that you're in. It's by what happens to your family, and what happens to the bloke down the road, and what everyone around you treats as normal. If you grow up in a place where the law works, where the police mostly show up, where a dispute means lawyers and not funerals, you absorb deep in your bones the idea that violence is not the answer because you've watched a whole society run on the idea, and it works.
But if you grow up in a very different place, if you grow up where there is no functioning law, where the state may be collapsed before you even born, where armed men might decide who eats, where your survival is dependent on your clan and your willingness to strike first, you absorb a completely different set of lessons. And they're not stupid lessons, actually, in that environment. They are the correct lessons. Hesitate and you might die. Trust a stranger and you might get robbed. Life is cheap there because everything around you keeps proving it's cheap.
And I want to be really clear about my heart on this, because this is where people might get me wrong, or they might want to get me wrong. I'm not standing here saying these people are evil. I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying they are human, exactly as human as you and me. And humans are shaped by what they're immersed in. And that's not a slur on them. That's a fact about all of us. If you'd been born there, you'd be them. If they'd been born here, they'd be you. And that's precisely the point.
And don't take my word for it. Look at the data in your own backyard. Well, let's say America's backyard, where the numbers are actually best studied. Kids who go through the foster care system. I'm not getting sidetracked. Just stay with me. Kids from unstable, chaotic, and often violent environments, right there inside the richest country on Earth. You know, same country, same laws, same schools, same food. The only variable that is different is the environment they were raised in. And the studies are brutal. Around 30% of the foster kids have been locked up before they even turn 18. And by the age of 20, the lifetime incarceration figure runs past 40%. So, 4 in 10.
Now, think about what that means. These are American kids, born under American law, surrounded by American values, speaking the language, watching the same television as everyone else, and a chaotic environment alone was enough to send nearly half of them through a jail cell before they could legally buy a beer. So if environment can do that to a kid inside the country, same passport, same culture on paper, what do you think 17 years, 20 years, 30 years inside a collapsed state does? What do you think a childhood of civil war, warlords, and normalized bloodshed builds into a person? Not because they're wicked, because they're human, and humans become generally what they're steeped in.
Now, are there exceptions? Absolutely. And I don't want anyone clipping this thinking that this is a video saying that environment is destiny. But some of our finest, or for argument's sake, successful people you will ever meet came out of the worst environments imaginable. Let's think about JD Vance. Whatever you think of his politics, the man grew up in the wreckage of the American rust belt. Addict mother, revolving door of father figures, uh, poverty, chaos, the full catastrophe. He probably should have been a statistic. Instead, Marines, Yale Law, I'm pretty sure, uh, the vice presidency of the United States. So it happens by the grace of God. And usually the love of a stubborn grandmother. It happens.
But it runs the other way, too. Ted Bundy grew up in a church-going, working-class American family, Methodist household, scout troops, Sunday services, and outwardly ordinary suburban upbringing. And he became one of the most prolific serial killers in history. So good soil doesn't guarantee good fruit, and the bad soil doesn't guarantee bad fruit. But there's one thing about exceptions, and this is where people get sloppy. Exceptions don't break the rule. They prove that there's a rule to be an exception to. Nobody looks at JD Vance and concludes childhood chaos is fine for kids. Nobody looks at Ted Bundy and concludes that stable families don't matter.
When we're talking about our own kids, everyone suddenly becomes an expert on environment. Every parent in the country agonizes over school zones, friend groups, screen time, neighborhoods, because every parent knows in their gut that the environment shapes people. We only pretend not to know it when the conversation turns to immigration. Funny, isn't it?
So, here's where the line actually sits. It's not about skin, not about your accent. It's about this: What world formed you? What values did that world write into you? And this is the crucial bit: What are you prepared to do about it now? You want to bring it with you, or do you want to change? Because the last part changes everything.
That brings me to the story that I promised you. Long time ago, I think, um, jeez, originally I thought it was 10 years, but I'm getting older. It's actually like 20 years ago. I was in a cab. It was actually in Sydney. I was in the Navy at the time still. So, it's like 2007 maybe. Uh, ordinary day, ordinary trip. And, um, as I always do, I love talking to people. And I asked the driver, "So, where are you from, mate?" I could obviously tell that he's not from here. And he answers and he says, "I'm from Somalia, of all places." And, uh, look, my only understanding of Somalia at the time was my navy understanding. And that Somalia was just full of pirates and full of, um, crime and lawlessness. And, and my, my understanding was right. But that's just all I knew. I'd never actually met a Somalian.
So I asked him, genuinely curious, "You reckon I could visit? What would it be like for me to visit Somalia? Could I go and see where you're from?" And I never really forget, because he sort of laughed, but not like a happy laugh. And he said, "Not where I'm from." You know, he said, "You wouldn't last, uh, an hour. They would kill you," he said, "or they, at the very least, would hold you for some kind of ransom." He didn't kind of say, "It's just a bit dodgy. You know, be careful at night." He said, "You wouldn't last an hour."
So I kept asking questions. I said, "Is your family here with you?" He said, "No, my family died." And I was like, "Oh, sorry to hear that. Is that, um, you know, over time?" You know, how many family members? And he said, "No." Um, it was all at once. His entire family was like murdered. And I just, the way he was saying it was, um, so casual and so calm. Uh, a rebel group had come through and killed all his brothers and sisters and parents, and he wasn't there. And so he had left the country, and he had come here.
Now, I'm sitting in the back of this cab in a safe Australian city, on my way to something completely mundane. And this man is telling me this in the way you describe like a road closure. It's very calm, matter-of-fact, because in the world that made him, that story isn't extraordinary. It's just what happens.
Now, stop and think about who this man is. Everything I said in the last section about environment. This man is the extreme case. He didn't grow up near violence. Violence took everything from him. And if anyone on Earth has an excuse to carry rage, to trust no one, to bring the war with him wherever he goes, it's him. And what was he doing? He was driving a cab, working, paying tax, chatting warmly with a stranger about the country that took him in. And the whole way through that conversation, what came off this man wasn't bitterness. It was something closer to gratitude. He knew exactly what this country was because he knew exactly what the alternative was. And he had buried the alternative.
Now, here's the line from that conversation, because you're probably thinking, "Well, this goes against your whole narrative, Broy, but stay with me." This is what he said in this conversation that has stuck with me. I said, "Do you miss home? What have you brought with you, or what do you miss it?" And he said, "No, I want to live like you." He didn't want Australia to become more like Somalia. Not in any way. Not one inch. He had seen where those roads lead. He'd seen it in a way that you and I, God willing, never will. And he had made a conscious decision. I want to live like you. Not just an Australian on paper, not having an Australian passport. He wanted to fit in.
This man is not a problem for my argument. That man is my argument. Because notice what made it work. It wasn't a government program. It wasn't a diversity seminar. It was a decision. He looked at two ways of living: the one that killed his family, and the one that gave him a second life, and he chose. And then he backed the choice with action, work, contribution, connection, gratitude. Integration is not a place you're located. It's a decision you make.
And that's exactly why our current approach fails, because we've built an entire system on the assumption that the decision doesn't need to be made. Just get here, and proximity will do the rest. Maybe live near some Australians, and you'll osmosis your way into Australian values, but that's not enough. It doesn't work like that. It's never actually worked like that. The emphasis always has to be to fit in. Every environment that has that tone to it, because it's intrinsically important for that environment to continue.
So when we import people by the tens of thousands from collapsed states, people carrying 17, 25, 40 years of survival programming, and we hand them a payment and a postcard and nothing else, no expectation, no accountability, no clear invitation to become one of us, and no honest description of what that even means, we are not being kind. We are setting people up to fail, as well as eroding the foundations. And we are setting the neighborhoods up that receive them to pay the price. Both of those groups are victims of the same cowardice. Our refusal to say out loud what the cab driver understood instinctively: "I have to become like the place I'm in." If he could see it, a man who lost everything, our political class has no excuse.
Now, some of you are still uncomfortable, and I get it. It feels harsh to say that your culture just can't come here as it is. So let me flip it around, because this is the test that cuts through everything. I call it the mirror test. Imagine if I, in fact, moved to Somalia or rural Papua New Guinea or Afghanistan. Take your pick. Imagine if I rocked up tomorrow with my Australian values, my Australian assumptions, my Australian way of handling conflict, and just carried on, made zero adjustments. I expect the place to work around me and change to me and become what I've come from. How do you think that goes for me? Honestly, put yourself in that position. How do you think it goes for you?
I would be exposed in a week. Everything I know about life that works for me here would be wrong there. I, I might extend trust where trust is a death sentence. I might wait for police that aren't coming. I might handle a dispute with words in a place where words without force mean nothing. Best case, I'm taken advantage of. Worst case, I'm that cab driver's warning. I don't last an hour.
Here's the crucial bit. Whose fault would it be? Would it be Somalia's fault for failing to accommodate my Australianness? Would I be entitled to demand they change their society to fit me, set up Australian enclaves, run their institutions in English, bend their customs around mine? It's ridiculous. Everyone can see that if I move there, my only path, my only chance actually at survival, at anything of a normal life, would be to go all in. Learn the language. Learn the rules, written and unwritten. Find people willing to vouch for me and teach me. Submit to how the place works. Keyword: assimilate.
And notice, it doesn't feel as much like a dirty word when it's pointed at me. Nobody on Earth would call that oppression. They'd call it common sense. They'd call it respect. So, here's the question the entire multiculturalism debate refuses to answer. Why does the logic only run one direction? If I need to assimilate to live in their country, and everyone agrees I do, why is it bigotry to say they need to assimilate to live in mine? Same logic, same respect, same acknowledgement that a society is a real thing with real foundations that don't rearrange themselves around whoever walks in the door. The one-way version, where every society on Earth is allowed to expect assimilation except Western ones, where every person is allowed a homeland, a way of life, except us. That's not a principle. A principle runs in both directions. This one seems to run in one, which means it's not a principle at all. It's a double standard, and deep down, everyone knows it.
So what would actually work? If I'm going to spend all this time telling you what's broken, I probably owe you the other half, or at least what I think. What would actually work? Because I'm not standing here saying nobody comes in. That's not my position at all. And the cab driver is the proof of that. I got family members. I have my own aspirations one day to potentially be an immigrant somewhere else. But here's what I honestly think it could look like.
First, we say the quiet part out loud. In law and in policy, Australia has a culture. It has foundations. Equality before the law, the safety and dignity of women, disputes settled by courts and not blood, the fair go, freedom of speech and conscience, the sanctity of every human life. Coming here means signing up to all of those foundations, not sampling them, not tolerating them while running a parallel system in your own suburb. Signing up. If a person or an ideology cannot in good conscience sign up to those foundations when practiced in full, then this is not the country for them. And saying that isn't hatred. It's the same thing Somalia would say to me.
And let me handle the religious question directly, because I said I wouldn't dodge it. This is not about banning a faith or hating a people. And anyone who clips this to say otherwise is is lying about me. It's about doctrine meeting foundations. Any belief system, I don't care which one, that followed to its complete and literal doctrine teaches that leaving the faith deserves death, that women are property, that religious law sits above the law of the land. The full-strength version is incompatible with our foundations. That's just true. And it stays true no matter how nervous it makes people feel. The question a serious country asks is never really, "What's the label of your faith? Are you Christian or are you Muslim or are you Jewish?" It's, "What do you actually practice, and does it fit inside the foundations?" The question doesn't make the country a land of bigots. It's the bare minimum of a country that intends to still exist in 100 years. The same reason you ask questions of your daughter's new boyfriend. You want to know if this is going to work out or be destructive.
Second, intake has to match our capacity to actually integrate people. Let me say that again. The rate of our intake in which we accept people has to match our capacity to integrate them properly and personally showing them the way of our values while enjoying the expressions of their culture. Bring your food, but let me explain the rules of my house. The cab driver made it because he chose to. But you know what makes that choice a thousand times more likely and not an exception? Someone walking beside you.
So here's an idea worth chewing on. Sponsorship. Real accountability. A person or a family or a church, a community that puts their hand up and says, "We will walk with this newcomer. We'll show them how this place works, how the systems function, how neighbors treat each other, what's expected." Not a case number in a department, but a relationship, someone who's answerable, someone to answer to. The further the cultural distance someone is traveling, and be honest, a Somali refugee is traveling a lot further than a Kiwi, the more of that support, and the more time it takes, which means numbers matter. You cannot deeply integrate people at a volume that outruns the community's ability to actually embrace them. And if you get this wrong, you don't get integration, you get parallel societies, enclaves where the old country's operating system just keeps running with new scenery. We can see that forming. Pretending we can't, it's not compassion.
Now, thirdly, time and proof. Citizenship should be the end of the road, not the start of it. Years here, I would say around 10, got to learn the language, a record of work and contribution, demonstrated life inside the foundations, not just an ability to pass a quiz about them. Make becoming Australian mean something. And, uh, here's the thing that people miss about this. The ones who generally want to be Australian won't resent that. They'll be proud of it. The cab driver who we've spoken about would have worn it like a medal. The only people a high bar filters out are the people who never intended to clear it. It's not a flaw in the system. That is the system. And notice none of this is cruel. Every piece of it is what you would expect and accept without complaint if you move to their country. We're not asking for anything we wouldn't give. Right.
Let me land it, and it's going to be a good landing. So stay till the end. I'm a Christian, and I want to finish here because I know, uh, how this video gets framed by people who want it framed badly. "He's punching down. He's stirring hate." So let me tell you what I actually believe. Right. The bedrock. I believe that every person that we've talked about today, the Somali cab driver, the tribesman in the Highlands, the kids raised in a war zone with a rifle in his hand before he even had hair on his face. Every one of them is made in the image of God. Every one of them has a worth that no border, no culture, no video of mine can touch. And I believe, and I'm commanded to, not invited, but commanded to love them. And that's not up for negotiation, and it never will be.
But here's what our generation has forgotten. Love and honesty, or truth, are not opposites. Love requires honesty. Love requires truth. If you love your kids, you don't let them believe comfortable lies. You tell them the truth, especially when the truth costs you. And the comfortable lie of our age is that all cultures are interchangeable. That foundations don't exist. That you can pour anything into any society, and society just stays standing. That lie feels kind to some people. Sounds generous, maybe. And it is quietly wrecking the very thing that made this country worth coming to. The safety, the trust, the fair go, the inheritance, that man in the cab crossed the world to reach.
Because think about it. If we let the lie run its course, and Australia slowly becomes the kind of place that people flee from, who did we love? Not our own kids who inherit the wreckage, and not the refugee either, because we torch the refuge. The most compassionate thing this country can do for its own people and for every genuine soul trying to reach it is to stay worth reaching. And it's to stay worth reaching by protecting its foundations without apology.
So, no, I don't accept the false choice. I'm not the toast guy, and I'm not the open borders guy. I believe in a nation with one set of foundations and a thousand kinds of furniture. I believe in a line drawn in daylight, explained honestly, applied to everyone. The same line every functioning society on Earth draws, and the same one they draw on me. And I believe in that man in the cab. A man who saw the worst the world produces, buried his whole family because of it, and then looked at the country he wants to go to, and he made a decision to join the good thing we have going on here, and not try and bring the bad parts from there.
Multiculturalism is not the goal, because history, but also most recent events, show us that by achieving that goal, it's not a society worth celebrating. It's actually become a society people fear. Monoculture, which means that these are the values we stand by. That's the goal. And if you can adhere to those values, we very much want you to bring your food, your music, your art, and the other expressions of your culture. But we must remain the majority. The values must remain the same. You need to prove your intention to come and show your worth and proof of assimilation to stay. This is the kindest thing we can do for our own, and the ones who genuinely want to be a part of this place too. Anything else is unacceptable.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that monologue. Thanks for watching. Go ahead and subscribe. Share it with someone. Maybe tag a friend. Until next time, thanks for watching.