John Howard as Opposition Member

On 22 August 1988, John Howard from Opposition, named and launched a new immigration and ethnic affairs policy entitled “One Australia”, which detailed a vision of "one nation and one future", including opposition to multiculturalism and rejection of Aboriginal land rights. Critics charged that Howard was tacitly approving policies towards Aborigines and immigration, which they viewed as xenophobic (a person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples).

In September 1988, Howard elaborated his opposition to multiculturalism by saying: "To me, multiculturalism suggests that we can't make up our minds who we are or what we believe in." He rejected the idea of an Aboriginal treaty as "repugnant to the ideals of One Australia", and commented:"I don't think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say 'we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else'".