The most crucial lesson from the MJEP is that cross-cultural understanding is required for a police service that we all long to see in this country, which must be founded on three pillars. After Israel, Australia is the most cosmopolitan society on earth. Beyond understanding this demographic composition, it is essential that the longstanding contributions of migrants to Australia be given their due esteem. They came with their skills and labour that have enabled Australia to reach its current standard of living. Secondly, the police need to appreciate that a major driving force in justice administration is culture.
Culture underpins the law and renders justice a cultural artefact.
Significantly, therefore, this means that those who operate justice are knowingly or unknowingly promoting a cultural agenda. The fact that the justice systems in Australia have remained largely mono-cultural in structure and process, tends to encourage this obliviousness. Unless what we are dealing with is 'wilful blindness', it does not take too much thinking to know that people other than those from the Anglo-celtic culture come in contact with these systems from a position of great disadvantage. The requisite cross-cultural understanding that we are talking about demands that the police appreciate the evidence for this experience which very much abounds. In this regard, education must be used to impart awareness as is appropriate and necessary to help them perform their solemn duty of dispensing justice with sensitivity, understanding and fairness.