EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD Ritika is a first-generation Indian Australian who lives in Sydney’s west. Asked about her views on Australia, she described her response to a school assignment on multiculturalism. ‘I wrote that Australia is like a train picking up passengers from all these different countries, but it doesn’t really have a destination, because once you have people from all these different countries they try to separate themselves out. I know I feel more a sense of belonging to the Indian community because I’m originally from India and I participate more in those kinds of things. So I don’t know if this train is going somewhere, or if it’s just going to keep on going around and around.’

Ritika’s sense of uncertainty can be blamed on an old multiculturalism, which encourages the separatism of ethnic communities with little to bind them. It needs to be replaced with a new multiculturalism that copes with our increasingly complex diversity.