A few days ago Matt Canavan, appearing on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing was badgered by host Patricia Karvelas about a phrase he used in relation to migration.

We know immigration places pressure on housing, on the roads, on schools and hospitals. But Canavan also mentioned “cultural pressure”.

This was apparently so notable Karvelas asked him to expand on it, and the Labor member of the panel thought Canavan’s comments were so outrageous that he tweeted a video of it.

But of course, Canavan is right, everyone knows he is right.

There is a cultural pressure element to mass migration that the mainstream media and most politicians are too afraid to talk about – probably because they’ll be subject to ‘gotchas’ instead of serious debate.

Canavan mentioned the intra-ethnic crime we’re seeing in Melbourne as an example, and it’s a real one. But the insidious thing about cultural pressure is that it is much more subtle and ordinary.

You see, unlike most mainstream pundits and politicians, at ADVANCE we take the concept of diversity seriously.

We take seriously the idea that when you look around the world at countries and peoples with different values, those values are actually different, and those people actually believe in them and practice them.

This is something the progressive academic and activist classes have no problem understanding when it comes to, for example, Indigenous Australians. They understand Aboriginal culture is different to Western culture, and that British colonisation had a big impact because it was so different.

They don’t just understand it, they don’t shut up about it!

But talk about people from other countries with different values coming here in big numbers today, and you get horrified questions from incurious mainstream journalists.

Here’s the reality:

Australia’s freedom of speech, freedom of religion, democratic governance, belief in the fair go, respect for the rule of law, egalitarianism and equality, respect for public order, high trust, commitment to the common good over kinship loyalty, individual rights, and non-hierarchical social structures are not a given.

They have been inherited from other western cultures and British culture more specifically, and evolved into something that’s unique to Australia.

And there are many cultures in the world who share some, or a few, or barely any of these values.

This is obviously true and anyone honest knows it.

We can, and have, absorbed people from those cultures over past decades and gladly welcomed them into those values and fully into the Australian community.

But if you keep bringing people from different cultures in greater and greater numbers, at some point the incentive to adopt Australia’s values will begin to weaken.

And those different values start to put pressure on our own values.

Take a simple example: 

Melbourne was once a city where parts of the CBD were not shut down every Sunday for a march in support of an antisemitic regime in a conflict on the other side of the world.

But bring in a critical mass of people whose alignment with a foreign entity outweighs their respect for peace and order in our city streets, and now it is.

That’s the real “cultural pressure” Canavan is talking about.

It’s having an adult’s understanding of how culture works and that if you bring in more people who don’t share your values than those who do, your country’s values and culture are going to change.

That’s what we’re witnessing in Australia. It starts small and harmless.

It will not end that way.