by John Pilger
Eleven rioters were brought to trial, only to be acquitted by sympathetic juries. One judge argued that, since all Australians looked the same to Chinese, the Chinese could not possible identify their attackers! The Chinese remained in hiding, or dispersed to other diggings and occupations, their community now aware that, together with the Aborigines, they had become the colony’s scapegoats.29 Later, the poet Henry Lawson offered recompense with his line: ‘Some of my best friends are Chinks!’ Today in the town of Young, which stands at Lambing Flat, the scene of the riots is a tourist attraction, and the flag the miners marched behind is exhibited in a museum. There is no reference, however, to the hatred and the scalping.
‘We were blamed for everything,’ said Denis O’Hoy. ‘We polluted the water and we brought disease and we coveted the European women . . . we were voracious! There wasn’t a racial stereotype that was not applied to us. But even in those days large numbers of whites and Chinese began to find their own peaceful common ground; and I always had the impression that my own family enjoyed the respect of all kinds in Bendigo.’
A typical caricature of the ‘yellow peril’ from the Sydney Bulletin, c.a. 1900
During the gold rush Bendigo had a Chinese population estimated at 4,000. Denis’s grandfather, Louey O’Hoy, arrived in Australia on a junk and established himself as a merchant. (He had reduced the honorific in his name, giving it an Irish sound.) His son, Que O’Hoy, had two wives, which was customary, and Denis was born to the second in 1938 in Bendigo.
Denis drives the town’s splendid collection of vintage trams, and acts as local historian, guiding academics and others to the small, plain headstones of the White Hills cemetery, overlooking the diggings. With an uncertain pride, and guilt, Bendigo takes its Chinese heritage seriously. The preciously restored joss house, painted traditional red, stands among ceremonial trees beside a lotus pool. The Dai Gum San collection of imperial Chinese figures in wax looks incongruous in Australia, though no more than the Doric columns of Castlemaine Marketplace. And the dragon in the ‘Sun Loong’ procession at the Easter Fair is one of the longest in the world. Denis believes that the transformation of this still isolated town, from a cassine of white exiles besieged by oriental phantoms and phobia to a state of tolerance and civilisation, is the journey of Australia itself.
When, on April 25, 1976, a wooden fishing boat, the Kien Giang, dropped anchor off a suburb of Darwin, for many people an Australia imagined only in fear and caricature was inaugurated. The five Vietnamese on board the Kien Giang were not the first Indo-Chinese refugees to arrive in Australia; but they were the first of many to navigate all the way to Australia’s shores. ‘A country whose immigration policy was built on the rock of Asian exclusion’, wrote Jock Collins, in his Migrant Hands in a Distant Land, ‘was to take in large numbers of Asians for the first time since the Gold Rush of the 1850s.’30
The Labor Government of Gough Whitlam was in power when the Vietnam War ended in 1975 and the exodus of ‘boat people’ began. Labor, which had opposed the war, was unfriendly towards the refugees from American-sponsored South Vietnam. Whitlam himself was quoted as saying that ‘Vietnamese sob stories don’t wring my withers.’31 What seemed significant was that politics, not race, was at the centre of a national debate about how Australia should meet its responsibilities towards its former allies. The first refugees may well have been mostly military officers and others associated with the Saigon regime, but they and their families suffered and often died terribly trying to reach a safe haven. When the conservatives under Malcolm Fraser succeeded Labor, the political colouring of the boat people was acceptable; and in the years since the war Australia has given refuge to more people from Indo-China than any country except the United States. In the late 1980s almost half of all newcomers to Australia were from Asia. And there has been no ‘earthquake’. A campaign to exploit the confused and bitter feelings held by many Australians about their divisive war in Vietnam failed perceptibly. Tabloid headlines such as VIETNAM WAR IN THE SUBURBS warned of racial warfare, but there was none.
Moreover, those who have since tried to raise false alarms and to inflame continue to fail. In 1984 the historian Geoffrey Blainey attracted considerable publicity when he described the arrival of the Asians as ‘the new surrender policy’.32 Blainey claimed that a pro-Asian and anti-British conspiracy was being imposed on the Australian people by an ‘alliance of academics and ethnics’, trade unions and Civil Servants, who met in a ‘secret room’ at the Department of Immigration. He described ‘front-line’ suburbs in the cities and said he spoke for ordinary Australians whose dissent was confined to ‘graffiti on the café lavatory’. He quoted complaints about immigrants ‘who spit everywhere and spread germs’ and ‘cook on their verandas, so the sky is filled with greasy smoke and the smell of goats’ milk’, and ‘fly around in flash cars while I have to walk all the time’ and dry ‘noodles on the clothes line in the backyard’.33
The reactions to Blainey’s outbursts were more revealing than what he said. An historian who had enjoyed considerable respect for his work in popularising the Australian past, Blainey found himself isolated among his academic colleagues and in demand by that section of the media which favoured and saw currency in his views. (He went on to become a columnist with Rupert Murdoch’s Australian.) His political support, according to Jock Collins, ‘was, embarrassingly for him, relegated to the far right fringe. National Action and the League of Rights carry the torch of anti-immigrant and anti-Asian abuse. Their graffiti on subway tunnels and toilet walls give an inflated impression of their influence in Australia: both groups have minimal membership and negligible public support.’34
Curiously for such a scholar, Blainey offered virtually no data in support of his warning that racial diversity was causing serious disquiet among ‘large sections of Australians’. He must have known of the abundance of studies that refuted his views. In 1986 the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs published the results of one of the most comprehensive surveys of attitudes among Australians and Asians living side by side. The great majority of Australians interviewed expressed positive views about their Asian neighbours, whom they no longer regarded in terms of pre-conceived stereotypes. There was no evidence of ‘ghetto formation’ among Asians, a majority of whom reported that they ‘had an Australian neighbour whom they regarded as a casual friend’.35 The litmus test is, of course, discrimination. In 1989 research by the Australian National University (the ANU) found that ‘most native Australians did not discriminate against migrants generally, and did not believe migrants should suffer discrimination . . . A typical employer was more likely to give a Vietnamese migrant an even chance than discriminate against him or her.’36
Reading the best Australian newspapers, especially the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, I am struck by the number of feature articles and supplements which both celebrate ‘multi-culturalism’ and provide examples of harmony among ‘old’ and ‘new’ Australians. The headlines say ‘Across the Culture Gap to be Best of Neighbours and Friends’ and ‘Harmony on the Street Where the Races Meet’, and the stories report the common ground between people. In this, they represent the press at its best, for it is honest and honourable journalism that dismantles stereotypes and attempts to reflect society in all its diversity – a society where almost half the schoolchildren have at least one parent born in another country and a third of the populations of the two principal cities were born outside Australia.
In Sydney’s far western suburb of Cabramatta, the Cousins and the Kooks speak little of each other’s language, but together they celebrate Chinese New Year and exchange Christmas gifts. Leila Cousins, who looks out for the Kooks’ children when the Kooks are at work, said, ‘We have been here since the 1940s and we have seen them all: Pommies, the Italians and now the Vietnamese. I think it makes our life interesting.’
Agar Street, in the old working district of Marrickville, has a different nationality represented at almost every ad
dress: Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Indonesian and Australian-born. More important, the people of Agar Street are prepared to talk generously about living together and to have their photograph taken, apparently with much hilarity. The photograph was published across page three of the Sydney Morning Herald: a mirror held up to a vibrant reality. This kind of reporting is largely extinct in Britain, where multi-racialism is invariably represented as a problem, or a disease.
Westbridge Migrant Hostel at Villawood in Sydney could not be more different from the old ‘silver cities’ of tin Nissen huts, one of which stands preserved in glistening green paint. The surroundings are landscaped and peaceful, and in several visits I saw none of the nonplussed and obdurate officials who presided at the birth of mass immigration. I watched a group of Vietnamese arrive under the Family Reunion Programme – that most humane component of any immigration policy. The health services and the education possibilities for their children were explained with care and patience and in their own language. Lynne McElroy of the Australian Red Cross said, ‘They’re a bit nervy and you’ve got to second-guess their feelings and be cautious and sensitive. If you’re not, the best-thought-out programmes will collapse. The reward is watching people shed their burdens and relax.’
Those like Lynne McElroy understand, for example, why Khmer parents will not leave their children in a crèche. Having endured the horror of the Pol Pot years, they trust no one with their children: not yet.
This understanding of difference is part of an attitude and a commitment I have found reflected widely. It is in the work of the assiduous human rights organisations and the Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales, whose internationally renowned programmes seek to resolve conflict and injustices at the earliest sign. It is in many of the multi-racial schools which foster pride in ethnic background rather than a denial of it; it is in the energy of teachers at these schools and in specialists committed to breaking down stereotypes: people like Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope, whose radical ‘social literacy’ programmes have helped teachers identify hidden racism and take multi-culturalism beyond what they call ‘the spaghetti and polka’ stage. And it is in the many innovative and often poorly funded teaching aid programmes, such as the Materials Production Project in Sydney, which gives expression to those immigrant children with a longing in their hearts. This poem, for example, is by an anonymous Vietnamese boy:
The miles which separate me from my parents
And my loved one are many;
Only memories remain;
Another world from old school yards and honoured teachers
From the streets I played in
The village I lived in.
My hopes of today are empty;
In a strange land I live,
In a strange school I study.
The school yard is full of animation
With voices from many lands;
The school yard shines with bright futures
Our hopes of one day returning to our homelands.37
This ‘reaching out’ by a substantial group of ‘old’ Australians is reciprocated in the constant celebration of diversity by immigrants themselves: in the carnivals and festivals and impromptu events that are now part of the quality and confidence of Australian street life.
On a Saturday morning in the west of Sydney, a traditional Lao wedding procession makes its way through streets where, less than a generation past, you were careful not to speak your language let alone sing and laugh and make mockery of a bridegroom who has mislaid thirty-two important bodily spirits. At the bride’s house pleas are made over a picket fence to let the poor fellow in. He is, after all, decked out in the pha hang ngao, which is a glittering costume with gold buttons, and his matronly bodyguards have offered a handsome bribe of a litre of Johnnie Walker Red Label, to which the bride’s representative replies drily, ‘Have you also brought the servants and horses?’
Communities who on their home ground are at war – the Muslims and Christians of Lebanon, for example – are generally at peace here. A Turk who arrived in Australia fifteen years ago, believing he had signed up for a spell of ‘guest work’ in Austria (‘I tell you, it was a bloody long flight for a country next door’) remains ambivalent about the charms of his adopted country – except one. ‘I have been in the States and it’s the difference between here and there,’ he said. ‘Over there immigrants take their fights with them. Australia is where you leave all that behind. Don’t ask me why.’38
None of this is to suggest that the old ways have gone. In 1991 the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission reported that the ethnic community lived with verbal abuse, police harassment and violence – some of it racist.39 And many who pass through Westbridge hostel are, like the Displaced Persons of the 1940s, prevented from using their skills. An immigrant from Afghanistan, Zalmai Haildary, has a master’s degree in archeology and ancient Indian history and culture and is one of the authors of a UNESCO history of archeology. He has applied for jobs at universities and museums, yet has been refused even an interview. He has been told that his decade of study is equal to ‘two years of tertiary study in Australia’ and the best Australia can offer him is uncertain work as an interpreter – just as the best Australia can offer an architectural draughtsman from Chile, Peter Llana, is work as a ditch digger and cleaner. There are thousands of these cases and they may represent a majority among small ethnic groups. The Australian professional groups remain Anglocentric, tradition-bound and discriminatory.40 The test given to immigrant doctors is said to be so hard that recently graduated Australian doctors would not be able to pass it.
There is also an oddly Australian fear of ‘summoning up the devil’ of racism by speaking his name. When two Government commissioned researchers uncovered discrimination in the Department of Community Services and Health, their report was placed in the National Library in Canberra and no one was told about it; the authors cannot even discuss their findings in public.41 At times this ‘ostrich’ approach has allowed the voices of racism free rein. A Sydney radio ‘personality’, Ron Casey, used his popular programme on Station 2KY to make racist jibes. He described Asians as ‘slopy-headed slanty-eyed, bow-legged little bastards’ and incited others to get ‘a dozen or so of your footballing mates together and have a night [in Chinatown] and sort these little bastards right out’.42 Casey skilfully used the publicity to represent himself as the ‘underdog’ and to justify his behaviour. He was suspended, then sacked only after considerable pressure. A few months later he was given his job back, although the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal subsequently ordered 2KY to broadcast a reprimand that amounted to an apology.
In 1988 a major enquiry into immigration commissioned by the Hawke Government and chaired by a former Ambassador to China, Dr Stephen FitzGerald, proposed that ‘the voice of opposition to multi-culturalism be taken seriously, not dismissed as simply the voice of extremism or racism’. The FitzGerald Report offered no evidence of the existence of this reasonable and moderate opposition, yet it recommended changes in the Family Reunion Programme which would affect mostly Asians. It proposed that only a naturalised citizen should have welfare rights. If adopted, the proposed measures would emulate Britain and divide immigrants into citizens and non-citizens, creating a structural division on which to accelerate racism. In its respectable guise, the FitzGerald Report put race back on the Australian political agenda for the first time in twenty years.
Reaction was unusually swift. Prime Minister Hawke stood up at a citizenship ceremony in his own electorate and in reaffirming his Government’s commitment to its immigration policies seemed to be rejecting FitzGerald’s proposals.43 But Hawke’s words belied the less than public actions of his own officials. Two days before the release of the FitzGerald Report, changes were made to the system of points which governs immigration quotas, in order to place more emphasis on skills and less on family reunions. In addition, the application charge all immigrants must pay was trebled to $A200, a sum out of reach of most Asi
an and Third World applicants.
Still, it is difficult to imagine a British Prime Minister feeling the need to defend publicly and passionately the principles of a multi-racial society, as Hawke did; and he is nothing if not a politician, whose instinct is to react to what he perceives as the public mood. And however varied that mood, and however deep the fear of Asia in the heart of white Australia, the truth is that since Arthur Calwell’s ship of ‘Beautiful Balts’ and Tom Stratton’s angst over whether a man in pantaloons should be seen on the streets of Sydney, two generations of Australians have been educated to understand that immigration is ‘good’ for everybody – gastronomically, culturally and politically.
Here again, the contrast with Britain is striking. In 1983 the Thatcher Government introduced a Nationality Act which institutionalised racism by removing the automatic right to citizenship of all British-born children of immigrants. These non-citizens cannot vote and are excluded from welfare benefits. Family reunion has been virtually eliminated, and an atmosphere of racism begets violence every day. With justification the immigrant community regards the police and much of authority as its enemy. Similarly, Governments in Western Europe have tried to repatriate ‘guest workers’ and to reduce family reunions. Police harassment of minorities and racist attacks are now commonplace. Fascist parties, such as the National Front in France and the National Democrats in Germany, are able to exploit the ‘new xenophobia’ while ethnic communities are increasingly marginalised.