In a new book, The Long Slow Death of White Australia (Scribe Publications), Gwenda Tavan traces the incremental demise of the deliberate policy, which effectively excluded non-white migrants from Australia between 1901 and 1972. (There were a few cosmetic changes in between).
But is White Australia really dead?
From 1972 to 1996, Australia was looked upon as the epitome of multiculturalism, thanks to leaders of all political persuasions and individuals who consciously promoted a more inclusive vision of Australian society. But, if the events of the past 10 years are anything to go by, “White Australia” has always remained just under the nation’s skin, waiting to surface whenever Australians suffered a bout of insecurity.
Xenophobia resurfaced when terrorist planes plowed into the World Trade Centre in the US on 9/11 2001 and again when boatloads of asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan arrived unannounced on the Australian horizon. The Bali bombing in 2002 led some to question the merits of multiculturalism. And now, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in London, multiculturalism is once more under assault.
Perhaps the nation takes its cue from its leaders. The groundwork for the current “fear” of migrants, particularly those from non-English-speaking countries, was laid by the Howard government which came to power in 1996. John Howard is no admirer of multiculturalism.
Even before Tampa appeared on the horizon, the coalition government had cut benefits to migrants, reduced the numbers to the annual refugee intake and family reunion schemes, and withdrawn much of the support to multicultural institutions. Howard also gave tacit support to the anti-Aborigine and anti-Asian views of Pauline Hanson in 1996. In 1999 he introduced temporary protection visas for asylum seekers found to be genuine refugees, rather than offering permanent visas, as had been the case until then. Australia became the only Western country with indefinite long-term mandatory detention, a system that has driven some detainees to madness.
These policies have conditioned the nation into a xenophobic mind-set and a siege mentality.
In the past three weeks, several media commentators and at least one academic have suggested that multiculturalism is somehow to blame for the London bombings and therefore poses a threat to Australia.
Reminiscent of Pauline Hanson’s anti-Asian vitriol, Andrew Fraser, Professor of Law at Queensland’s Macquarie University told a TV current affairs programme that Africans and Asians should not be allowed into Australia. His reason? Sub-Saharan Africans have low IQ and are naturally prone to violence and the Asians are “too smart” for “ the Australian way”!!! Perhaps, he finds his own mediocrity threatened by his Asian peers in the academia.
His backhanded compliment to Asians, however, fails to hide his blatant racism and his contemptible attitude towards non-whites. More disturbingly, in a phone-survey following the programme, 85 per cent supported his bigoted views.
A senior columnist of the Melbourne Age, Tony Parkinson, says that the London bombings have shaken our faith in the future of multiculturalism. Pamela Bone, an associate editor of The Age goes even further to say that the “bomb blasts in the London Underground marks the death of multiculturalism” and calls for a “limit to the ethnic mix”.
Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun suggests that Islamic terrorism is symptomatic of a deep-rooted Asian/African hatred of the West. ABC radio’s Terry Lane finds the concept of multiculturalism “ repulsive” and “ugly” and “assimilation (as opposed to the inevitability of integration over time) a beaut idea that works”. Perhaps, he would like an act of Parliament that would force newcomers to wipe their feet and erase all footprints and memories of their past lives as they enter Australia?
The present debate is obviously focused on Muslim communities in Western countries including Australia. It is fair enough a debate in view of the events of the past 4 years.
Every society has the right and obligation to take the necessary measures against those who preach hatred and perpetrate violence to justify their cause or ideology. And there is nothing more despicable than to kill and maim those in the very society that has given a person refuge from political oppression, ethnic persecution, religious intolerance and poverty in his or her own country.
There are Islamic elements in Australia that preach hatred, distribute incendiary literature and even espouse violence in the name of the jihad. They, certainly, have no place in any democratic society.
But not all Muslims are terrorists. The vast majority, as political leaders rightly hasten to assure us after every terrorist attack, are decent, law-abiding citizens, going about their business like other ordinary people.
There is no justification for blaming the Muslims diaspora for the acts of a tiny minority.
Acts by Muslim individuals or groups are not exclusively and inherently Muslim. Rather they are symptomatic of much deeper and more complex political and global circumstances.
But to imply that somehow multiculturalism is a threat to Australia’s security is to take the debate to the level of vulgarity.
Australia has the world’s highest percentage of immigrants- one in four. With more than 240 nationalities, 180 languages and 8 faiths encompassing all the world’s major cultures, it has the most successful ethnic mix anywhere. Incidentally Muslims represent less than 2 per cent of the population.
Some see multiculturalism as a faddish political experiment, a weakness created by social engineering. But it has actually developed almost organically over decades to become an integral part of Australian life. The country has been repeatedly built on the new foundations laid by each wave of migrants and has done well out of it.
Strangely unremarked in the ill defined questioning of multiculturalism in Australia is the fact that it is taking place in response to terrorism in another, different country and without an attack having taken place on Australian soil. Perhaps we should consider whether our long unofficial tradition of multiculturalism and more recently, official policy, have helped protect us. When it works, and it certainly does, multiculturalism makes it more difficult for violent extremists to find the reserves for sympathy that facilitates acts of terrorism.
It is important, nonetheless, that we not naively imagine that multiculturalism works magically on its own.
Most political and community leaders have recognized that, when terrorists are testing national bonds, Australians must engage in active ideological resistance to the terrorists’ own deadly ideology of fundamental differences.
But coercive assimilation is not and was not the answer. It has been tried and failed. In the context of extremist violence by alienated, angry young men, it is important to think through the possible consequences of subjecting migrants to a suspicious, conditional welcome, which requires them to renounce part of themselves in order to be accepted as full members of society. The natural human response to exclusion is resentment and, in extreme cases, violence.
Multiculturalism does not divide Australia. If anything, it offers us the vehicle through which we can enter dialogue and have analytical and critical conversations that will enable us to grow together and build the kind of society to which we aspire.It celebrates diversity while promoting links between different cultures and people, all of whom broaden and enrich the country’s human capital, its collective wealth of ideas, wisdom and skill.
There is, as Victorian Premier Steve Bracks noted last week, another strategic consideration. Human links fostered by multiculturalism extend beyond our borders to migrants’ countries of origin. Such links often precede and underpin the development of strong political and economic ties. The arrival of Chinese and Indian migrants (the largest groups in recent times) gives Australia a real human advantage in its relations with two emerging world powers.
The most fearful impact of terrorism is that we lose faith in the protective power of our shared values of respect, understanding and tolerance, the human values that have done much to define Australia. This should not be allowed to happen.
Those who aim to make Australia’s multiculturalism the fall guy in the war against terrorism, refuse to concede that Australia is an inclusive and plural society based on the recognition that we are, in essence, a land of indigenous peoples and migrants.
Perhaps, they would want to wind back the clock to the racist policies of the 1950s. White Australia may not be quiet dead yet.
(http://www.dailymirror.lk/2005/07/26/opinion/04.asp)
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