The ‘multicultural era’ was short, roughly between 1975 and 2000. But it had a long-term impact (Bongiorno 2015). Its national leaders were Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. All these party leaders were eventually defeated at the polls, except for Hawke who was pushed aside by his own party. The era came to a deliberate end as national policy with the election of the John Howard Liberal/ National governments in 1996 and 1998 (Bean et al. 1997; Simms and Warhurst 2000) and Howard's dedication to reversing much that had gone before. Perhaps more importantly, this was also a period of dramatic change in prosperity, lifestyle and public controversy around national identity.

Between the original report of 1978 (Galbally 1978) and the Bicentennial celebrations of 1988, support for multiculturalism broadened rapidly as the logical replacement for White Australia. But it remained a welfare, educational and settlement programme for immigrants, not a nationwide attempt to change society, as its friends and enemies claimed. It did not include Aboriginal activists, at their own request. Its origins in immigration cut across Indigenous claims by the First Australians. The focus of multiculturalism was in the Immigration Department and aimed largely at immigrants. This excited conservatives and traditionalists, who found their voice in One Nation and the more conservative wing developing in the Liberal Party under the influence of John Howard. Rural and provincial Australia still had only a limited experience of immigrants and a long tradition of suspicion towards them tinged with racism lingering from White Australia.

The newly founded One Nation was the first party to challenge multiculturalism, which its leader, Pauline Hanson, believed should be abolished. Despite massive media attention and strong electoral returns in Queensland, One Nation did not originally last for very long. But while it did it changed the clock back towards White Australia, created room for conservatives to reduce the liberal element in the Liberal Party and to frighten timid elements in the Labor Party. Howard mobilized this support around traditional Australian values and in defiance of the reality that Australia had become a multicultural society since he was a boy. In the end he lost his Sydney seat in 2007 after a strong swing against him by the local Chinese and Korean communities.