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Racism – No Way! Speech delivered to KOoEE members at the UTS Kuring-gai Campus By the Hon. Al Grassby, AM 25th May 2004
I would like to start by quoting the Scottish ploughman poet, Robie Burns who said: “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn” and a colleague of mine adds: “again, again and again”. Surely one of the greatest causes of man’s inhumanity to man is racism and bigotry.
It’s more than 30 years since I launched the policy of multiculturalism in 1973 for Australia and since that time Australia has undergone a cultural revolution which has built a new sense of independence and harmony throughout the nation and recognises the truth of the words of Robie Burns. Despite this, there are continuing challenges which if ignored will see the rise, once again, of racial discrimination.
Because of this, the activities of the University of Technology through its Department of Education and the CEOs of education systems , are to be enthusiastically commended for taking the lead in teaching Australian educators the facts about the multicultural nature of Australia and the stark alternatives which would impede progress and divide the nation.
It is important for all Australians to know who we are, what our real history has been to enable us to confront the evils and divisions of the past and show the way ahead. In the document which launched multiculturalism the first words summed it up:
“Any contemplation of the character which our urban society might assume by the year 2000 must naturally begin with a hard look at our present society and the potential forces for change already discernible. Any other approach to futurology would be day-dreaming”.
These were prophetic words for 1973 because up until the 1970’s the government policies of Australia were based on colonial myths and legends. The Australian Cultural Revolution of the 1970’s was entirely peaceful despite the fact that it banished nearly two centuries of state endorsed racism of the worst kind. The entirely new concept not only recognised the diversity of Australian society but accorded to all Australians the right and pride in their own ethnic and religious heritage.
It does not seem possible nowadays to imagine a situation in which Australians were taught that they belonged to a homogenous society which was 98% British and that it was necessary to carry out a policy of assimilation so that we would all belong and follow some sort of dominant national group. Of course the myth of homogeneity was based on the fact that until 1949 there were no Australians because there was no Australian citizenship and we were all British subjects. Even my birth certificate records I was a British subject born in the colony of Queensland. The first change was to change the word “colony” to “state” but there were still no Australians until the 1949 Citizenship Act.
The colonial myths and legends were perpetuated by the educational institutions who taught in most cases that Captain James Cook discovered Australia. In fact, he arrived with a map which showed him precisely which half of the continent he should take possession of in the name of the BritishEmpire. He was also given the choice of naming the eastern half of the continent. While the western half remained “New Holland”, Captain Cook chose “New Wales” as the name of the eastern half until one of his officers pointed out that there was already a New Wales in Canada. Cook compromised and renamed it New South Wales.
The educational institutions ignored almost every other outside visitor to Australian shores. It still comes as a surprise to most young Australians to find that the first Chinese visitor to Australia was Admiral Zheng Ho in 1421 who incidentally was the first recorded Muslim to arrive in Australia. It is only just a matter of days since the Annual Conference of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. All the guest speakers promoted the view that the first Muslims were Afghan camel drivers who came in the middle of the 19th century. This ignored not only Admiral Zheng Ho in 1421 but the Macassans who had been trading with the inhabitants of North Australia before Captain Cook was even born.
As far as assimilation as a national policy is concerned, the absurdity and outright arrogance of this racial objective is underlined by the facts about Australia’s population today.
The 20 million Australians are made up of more than 200 different ethnicities – we speak more than 200 languages at home, and if you are planning a marriage, you have a choice of more than 100 different religions registered with the authorities to perform the ceremony. As a matter of interest the largest single religion in Australia is Catholic, while there are over 100,000 Jews, 400,000 Muslims and the most recent Census tells us that Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in Australia.
At the time of my launching the policy of multiculturalism the numerically top ethnicities in Australia included the English, as the largest single group of 33%; followed by the Irish, Italians, Greeks, Germans, Maltese (there are more Maltese in Australia than in Malta); Spanish speaking; Slavic speaking, Scottish and Philippino. The 2001 Census showed that the top 30 language groups were now: Italian, Greek, Cantonese, Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, German and Macedonian but if you combine the Mandarin and Cantonese speaking language groups, their figures place the Chinese as the number one language group other than English.
To sum up the population changes in Australia today, 22% of people were born in another country; about three-quarters of Australians identify with an ancestry other than indigenous Australians who comprise about 2% of the population. More than 40% of all Australians have at least one parent who has been born overseas. In all, Australians come from more than 200 birthplaces.
In some circles, even today, there is confusion about how to describe Australians and their background. As far as cultural background is concerned I have always used the term “ethnic” which is based on the good Greek word “ethnos” meaning “people or folk”. Just how quickly people can be confused can be seen from the fact that within 12 months of my general and repeated use of the term, a local dictionary defined “ethnic” as meaning “non-Anglo-Saxon”. It has now been dropped by the NSW government as it was deemed to be perjorative. As I said at the time, it is the story of the destruction of a good word. For example, I always quote that I was a gay bachelor for many years – but I cannot say it now because a lot of people would get the wrong idea.
Even today the word “multicultural” seems under threat. In the last ACT elections, I overheard two candidates discussing their constituencies. One said to the other: “have you got many multiculturals in your electorate”?
There is a new divisiveness which has arisen lately in Australia and is typical of extremist movements around the world which would seek to take us back in time. The three pillars of the cultural revolution in Australia were the abolition of the White Australia Policy in 1972; the introduction of Multiculturalism in 1973 and the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 which enabled the government to ratify the International Convention Against All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The new attempts at divisiveness continue to ignore the history of Australia and its people. It is even forgotten that in 1947, the century’s largest migration programme was launched and brought about six million people to Australia together with no fewer than 660,000 refugees who were referred to as displaced people at the time.
We continue to see examples of the new divisiveness. Another attempt to create a mythical majority is the use of the term “English speaking background” which has turned Nelson Mandela into an ethnic Englishman because he lives in South Africa which was categorised as English speaking and a former English colony. Another example of seeking to create a mythical majority in Australia is the use of the term “Anglo-Celtic”. This effectively abolishes a significant and influential Irish contribution to Australia. For most of my life, I have used demographic research which gave the Irish 25% of the population. In recent times, on the one hand, I have seen figures as high as 40% and as low as 10%. There is obviously room for more research but whatever the results, the data will not support the concept of an ethnic majority in this country.
Another part of the new divisiveness is the continuation of stereotyping. In the old days it was summed up by the use of perjorative words such as “pommie, dagos, chinks, wogs, balts and abos”. A serious cause for concern is the use of perjoratives under the heading of racial profiling for immigration and national security purposes. The Department of Immigration assesses visitor visa applications based on the risk factor provided on people from various countries. For example, a person who would trigger the high risk factor assessment would be a female from Chile who is 20 years or older; or a male from Chile – 20-30 years inclusive or a male from Chile who is 60 years or older. Similarly a female 20-29 years inclusive or 50 years or older and males from 20-39 years inclusive and 60 years older from Greece are also considered to be high risk visitors. Surprisingly, people from the United Kingdom and the United States are not included in this list of profiles of high “risk factor” visitors, even though they make up the top two largest number of overstayers.
This is part of what I call the politics of fear. We saw an ugly example of this during the last federal election when Australians were asked to believe that they were about to be invaded by huge numbers of mainly Muslim asylum seekers who threatened to throw their children overboard (which we now know was a lie). I always remember being approached by a woman who had been a member of the ALP in Canberra, for more than 20 years, and she asked with an air of absolute desperation, “Al, what are we going to do about the invasion by 25 million Muslim Afghans”? She lived in a multicultural society, she belonged to a typical multicultural branch of the ALP, and yet propaganda had alarmed her to such an extent that Muslim Afghans were about to take over the country.
Despite all our experiences, we are still confronted by the politics of fear mainly associated with asylum seekers and refugees. As a result of the impact of armed conflict in various parts of the world, we have seen a swelling tide of ordinary women, men and children fleeing violence and seeking asylum in host countries. A very small number have sought to come to Australia. In June 2000, the number of unauthorised arrivals was 5,870 but compare this to the number of overstayers of 58,748. The ratios of Australia’s intake of refugees per capita is 1:800 whilst Canada accepts 1:399 and Pakistan 1:95.
The fear line being used embraces religious and social stereotypes reminiscent of colonial Australia during the 19th century. The cry then was support your colonial government together with your imperial masters because the Yellow Peril is real and the Chinese are about to invade. On the religious front, the colonial cry was “Beware of those who would open the doors to large numbers of superstition ridden Irish Papists. They are coming to take over and bring their terrible religion with them.” It has all been said before and used in the classic political division of “Divide and Rule”.
Right at the outset, I quoted a famous line from the Scottish ploughman, Robie Burns and in case you felt I selected him because he was likely to vote Labor, I thought I would finish by quoting the tutor to the French Sun King, Louis XIV, one of the founders of the new French Empire who said: “All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers”.
Again, a basis for the great movement for multiculturalism which even in today’s conservative United States is attracting attention. On my recent lecture tour there, I found many educational leaders convinced that the current policy of assimilation which the US calls the “melting pot” is divisive and has to go. People in the USA are defying the policy anyway. In the 40 years since 1960 the number of inter-racial couples in the USA has increased more than ten fold. While White ethnicity was once the dominant feature of US life, in recent years, the Census has found only one in five White couples share the same ethnic heritage. Almost one third of US born Hispanics are married outside their ethnic group while 36% of young Asian Pacific American men born in the US marry White women. Yet despite this, the Black/Hispanic White divide remains with the highest number of incarcerations focusing on the Black and Hispanic communities. This is not dissimilar to the situation that exists between the Indigenous people and the wider community in Australia.
The challenge is for the USA to follow the Australian lead. Australia today is also a key reference point for Europe which is building a new Union of great ethnic and religious diversity, through the formation of the European Union, and we can, not only show them how to do it, but to confront the minority revisionists who would take the newly formed European Union back to the old times of imperialism and colonialism.
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