| The Australian Institute of Polish Affairs
invites you to the launch of “The Promise of Diversity”, the book by John Williams and John Bond about the architect of multicultural Australia, Jerzy Zubrzycki, by The Rt Hon. Malcolm Fraser AC CH. Tuesday, 16 April 2013, 6PM. Armagh, 226 Kooyong Road, Toorak. “Jerzy Zubrzycki was widely described as the “father of multiculturalism” in Australia. He contributed enormously to the social development of this country". (Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister 1975 - 83).
Jerzy Zubrzycki AO CBE (1920 – 2009) was the founding professor of sociology at the Australian National University and is credited with helping to steer Australia towards adopting multiculturalist settlement policies. His commitment to multiculturalism was born in the ashes of World War II, during which he served with the Polish resistance and with Britain’s Special Operations Executive. After the war, he studied sociology at the London School of Economics.
In 1976 he became the first chair of the Ethnic Affairs Council which would advise Minister for Immigration on migrants’ settlement and integration issues. In 1977 he co-authored (with Jean Martin) a ground-breaking policy document “Australia as a Multicultural Society”, which stated, “We believe Australia should be working towards not a oneness but a unity, not a similarity but a composite, not a melting pot but a voluntary bond of dissimilar people sharing a common political and institutional structure.”
A contemporary and friend of Pope John Paul II - the two attended the same high school in Krakow - Professor Zubrzycki was also a founding member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican.
About the book
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