Citizenship based on rights won’t restore nation’s civil society

As the new year opens, discussion heats up about contenders for Australian of the Year.

Announced on Australia Day, the valued award is conferred on citizens who have contributed significantly to the life of the nation in a sphere such as sport, the arts, science and technology, and community affairs.

The award is also a kind of snapshot of the nation; showing us not only what Australians consider to be of value at this point in our history, but also illustrating the varied ways in which our fellow citizens express a commitment to our social well-being.

And this matters, especially at a time when many fear that a deep rot has set into the national fabric.

We have just drawn down the shutters on a troubling year. Many of us are beset by cost of living pressures, energy bills are set to burst through the roof, and antisemitic violence —including the destruction of a synagogue — has erupted in our cities. Eyes are turned anxiously to the new year in the hope these social and economic pressures will ease.

Venting our spleen at the ballot box is one way of expressing dissatisfaction with the direction in which the country is heading. But as we begin 2025, it’s important to remember that it’s not only politicians who shape the life of our country.

Australian of the Year awards are a reminder that each one of us has a hand in our shared future.

This is so because of the bonds of citizenship that bind us in the common enterprise of nationhood. As Australian citizenswe participate with one another on an equal basis, bearing a shared responsibility for strengthening the cohesion and health of our society, and by protecting Australian values.

For most us, little of what we do will win widespread public recognition. But that’s not the point.

Each of us, often in the smallest of ways, can contribute to society by helping to build up the communities in which we live and which, in turn, underpin our wider community: the nation of Australia.

We can do this in many ways, such as by volunteering in local organisations, by giving of our time to help and coach others, by setting examples of behaviour to our young people.

And we need one another. The annual Mapping Social Cohesion (MSC) report published by the Scanlon Foundation provides us with one of the most authoritative accounts of our social health. Its most recent report, published in 2023, found that our willingness to engage in voluntary activities was declining, along with our sense of pride in the Australian way of life.

When our commitment to our communities weakens, so too do the foundations of strong citizenship.

One sign of that weakening is that whereas Australians habitually trusted one another to ‘do the right thing’ in every situation, we are now much less trusting of one another and have become increasingly suspicious of anything and anyone unfamiliar to us.

Turning the page of a new year, as we have just done, is an appropriate moment for us to rethink our attitudes to one another and to our nation.

Australia remains a beacon to hordes overseas eager to share our good fortune. After all, some six million people from many countries have become citizens here since 1949 when a new citizenship law came into force.

So, it should be of concern to each of us that the bonds of participation and belonging — the key marks of citizenship —are fraying.

One factor accounting for this fragmentation is identity-politics based multiculturalism which has continued to generate enclaves not only keen to preserve cultures distinct from Australia, but that are also increasingly intolerant of difference.

Another factor is that we are now quick to assert rights against others;  the right to do whatever we want, the right to choose for ourselves (including now the right to die when we want) and the right to cancel those with whom we disagree. But we have forgotten that rights also involve duties, such as the duty to tolerate the views we dislike.

We are inclined to see citizenship as matter of status —asserting the rights that flow from the political fact of being a citizen. But we need to expand our focus and understand that a principal chief factor of citizenship is not so much status aspractice. In other words, we need to reframe our idea of citizenship not so much in terms of being as of doing.

The practice of citizenship entails a shared responsibility that each of us bears for the wellbeing of the national communityto which we belong. It is a responsibility that cannot be delegated to others; nor is it one that can be shunned — at least if we are sincere about our pride in identifying as citizens of the nation of Australia.

Perhaps practical citizenship does not come naturally to us. After all, it requires that we consistently preference the needs of others over our own needs and desires.

But we have many examples set before us; and the annual anointing of leading citizens as Australians of the Year can, if nothing else, encourage us to strive for yet higher ideals in 2025.

Peter Kurti is Director of the Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society program at the Centre for Independent Studies, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Australia