Australia and immigrants

The Jakart Post
2 December 2005

Your Letters

I refer to a letter entitled On Insight Program by Irene Fraser in The Jakarta Post on Nov. 10. It was correct of Fraser to point out that Arthur Calwell, the Australian former minister of immigration, made the comment "Two Wongs don't make a white" in the 1940s. Like many other Australians, however, Fraser is in denial of the fact that certain racist attitudes still remain in Australia -- despite how the nation has become more multi-racial, thanks to immigrants from Asia and other parts of the world.

Just because Australia has now become a multi-racial, or multi-cultural, society, that does not make it a tolerant place where immigrants or Australian citizens of non-white origins are treated with fairness, equality, or for that matter, dignity.

The reason, Professor Geoffrey Blainey points out, is that "The more emphasis that is placed on the rights of minorities and the need for affirmative action to enhance those rights, the more is the concept of democracy -- and the rights of the majority-- in danger of being weakened. But most importantly, however, Fraser was so wrong when she declared that, like Calwell, the White Australia Policy is dead.

Let me remind her of (or give her, rather) a brief history of Australia's racism. We needn't go as far back as the 1970s, when the White Australia policy officially ended, or even to the 1960s, when the masthead of the Bulletin, Australia's leading magazine, carried the slogan "Australia for the White Man"; we certainly need not go as far back as The Magic Pudding, the famous Australian children's book, that includes insults such as "you unmitigated Jew!"

Let's just take a trip to the period between the 1980s and the 1990s, when Arthur Tunstall, Australia's infamous senior sports official, made racist jokes and comments about disabled athletes; it was the same decade that saw a string of aboriginal deaths in police custody (not many white ones); and the same decade saw the rise of the One-Nation party led by Pauline Hanson, who all but called for those of Asian descent to be ejected from the country, displaying her profound international knowledge by sayingthe 2.5 billion Asians to the north "have their own language and culture."

Whatever motivated Fraser to write her letter in response to my comments on the Insight program, she needs to know better about her own people's history and realize the reality that Australia is not a racism-free society.

THANG D. NGUYEN Jakarta

The Jakarta Post
10 November 2005

On Insight Program

Recently I saw on TV the SBS "Insight" Program from Jakarta and I would like to make some comments to both you, your readers and the others involved in the Insight Program.

Thang Nguyen's argument that Australians are racists referring [sic] to Arthur Calwell's quote "Two songs don't make a white." This was a bad joke; many of our politicians have been known to offend while trying to be funny.

Your audience as well as a large percentage of our population would not be familiar with the name Calwell. Nguyen implied that this was a recent comment and representative of Australian thinking in this time.

Calwell is long dead and that comment was made when he was minister of immigration, which was back in 1945-1949. He was a strong supporter of the White Australia Policy, and it, like Calwell, is also dead.

We have come a long way since then and as the world knows we have embraced many cultures and religions. Nguyen with his knowledge of our past [sic] history could have commented.

In spite of the White Australia policy, in 1909 the people elected to our upper house and parliament a Chinese man with Chinese values.

Referring to the reaction of so much support by Australians for Schapele Corby, it is not, as some on the program claimed, because "she is young and pretty"--there have been other and pretty Australians who have been charged with drug crimes but whom the Australian public have [sic] not supported. The difference is we can identify with Corby's case.

We have a history of corrupt police, politicians and criminals along with a drug trade which flourishes. Airport baggage handlers have been shown on surveillance cameras intercepting passengers' luggage.

We ask, is it beyond reasonable doubt that Corby's unlocked luggage could have easily had drugs planted in it that were meant to be off-loaded at Sydney International Airport? Certainly people in the highly paid drug trade will exploit any person and any situation for their benefit. Unfortunately there is no proof.

There was also [sic] no proof for the ordinary couple who reported after arriving at their hotel in Bali that they found an addition to their luggage. A parcel containing what they presumed was a drug.

The Australian Embassy then advised them not to report it to the police and to instead flush it down the toilet. There was no proof they would have been able to offer, therefore, they could have been accused of being drug dealers.

IRENE FRASER
Ryde NSW, Australia