Saturday 28th of December 2024
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new orstralyens …..

new orstralyens …..

from Crikey .....

Lessons in History: asylum seeker fear is in the fabric of our nation

Mike Stuchbery, a Melbourne author and teacher, writes:

ASYLUM SEEKERS, EAST TIMOR SOLUTION, IMMIGRATION, REFUGEES

If Julia Gillard's speech on asylum seekers has proved one thing, it is this -- through war and peace, through cycles of economic bust and boom, there exists an eternal and unshakeable fear within the Australian populace of those who come here from elsewhere seeking a better life.

Scoff if you will, but fears surrounding migration were one of several driving forces behind the rise of the labour movement, the development of Australian print media and Australian Federation itself. Having settled here, we just don't seem to want to share the place.

Rather than the Afghans, Iraqis and Sri Lankans who populate the fears of many Australians, it was the Chinese who were more likely to terrify their great-great-great-grandparents and set them quaking in their crinolines. While there had been small numbers of Chinese migrants making a home in places such as Sydney and Melbourne in the early decades of the 19th century, Chinese migrants first became a common sight in the colonies during the goldrushes of the 1850s and 1860s.

With little English and significant cultural differences between themselves and many of the other arrivals on the goldfields, many opted to live and work together in camps away from the main concentration of tent. This tendency to live and work together, coupled with what could perhaps be described as more experience of the kind of hard manual labour that is involved with extracting gold from the earth, often led to divisions between the Chinese and other miners.

These divisions mostly led to low-level resentment but there were occasions when tensions reached critical mass. The most prominent example of these outbreaks of violence towards the Chinese was the Lambing Flat Riot of July 1861. A group of miners, Australian and from a variety of other nations, became incensed when they learned that a contingent of Chinese was heading to the goldfield near present-day Young in New South Wales. They marched on the diggings behind a banner and proceeded to gravely injure 250 Chinese while destroying much of their property.

In response, troops were sent to prevent further violence, but the resentment lingered, eventually finding expression in the NSW Chinese Immigration Act of 1861. This was not the first anti-Chinese legislation passed in Australia, however. That honour belonged to Victoria, who passed their Chinese Immigration Act of 1855, that imposed stiff penalties of ship's captains landing more Chinese than there were tonnage aboard the vessel.

Fear of the Chinese refused to go away during the 1870s and 1880s. If anything, it bought a house, raised some kids, made an extension to the patio. The sentiment towards the Chinese that had been sparked on the goldfields worked its way throughout the colonies. Fears of the Chinese at this time were generally conformed to the trifecta of "stealing" jobs, land and women fears.

In many of the periodicals that sprung up during these two decades, cartoons and short stories appeared -- such as the exceptionally lurid and purple "Mr & Mrs Sin Fat"-- that cast the Chinese as degenerates, business cheats and leader of Australian women into disrepute. Figures such as William Lane, who published The Boomerang and poet Henry Lawson linked the arrival of Chinese to declines in working conditions for white Australians as part of their nationalist and labour-focused campaigns. It worked gangbusters. The Chinese were seen to be a threat to every Australian man, woman and child for the best part of half a century.

Fear towards the Chinese reached a high point in the early 1880s when a smallpox epidemic broke out in Sydney. The epidemic was suspected of originating within the Chinese community after a small Chinese child was found to be carrying the disease. While the true source of the disease was never found -- although later suspected to be a European nanny with a weak form of the disease -- the local Chinese were shunned and excluded while legislation was drawn up to restrict further arrivals. There was one small hitch for the authorities, however -- they couldn't fully legislate to restrict Chinese arrivals into Australia.

You see, the Australian colonies were governed by the terms of the pesky little Treaty of Nanking, that was signed in 1842 between China and the United Kingdom. Part of this treaty outlined the right of the Chinese to travel and live within the United Kingdom and her territories, without restriction. If the colonies wanted to restrict the influx of Chinese coming in, they would have to band together to gain more bargaining power Thus, it was that anti-Chinese sentiment became a driving force behind Federation.

In 1888 an Inter-Colonial conference in Sydney was held to address the question of Chinese immigration. At this conference delegates agreed to impose restrictions on the Chinese of comparative severity. This coming together of representatives of each of the colonies would set the tone for the further conferences that would take place and drive the momentum towards Federation.

Once a nation, the Australian government didn't waste a second of time. The very first piece of legislation passed by the Federal Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. This Act laid out the guidelines by which prospective immigrants would be assessed -- they would be asked to write 50 words dictated to them by an official. Now, this may seem somewhat harsh, but not impossible if the prospective immigrant had been learning English.

However, the wording of the Act allowed the test to be given in any language, effectively rendering it a tool by which the Australian government could bar anyone they didn't like from entering and settling in the country. This piece of legislation would form part of a package of legislation known as the "White Australia Policy", which would only finally be dismantled in its entirety in the early 1970s.

So, fear of those from outside is nothing new within Australian society. Indeed, it formed part of the very bedrock our nation was founded upon. Granted, in the intervening decades we have made amazing strides towards becoming a more open and tolerant society, yet the question of whether we should keep our borders open remains a very prominent, throbbing pimple on the adolescent face of the nation. Will we ever pop it, or wipe it away with a little soap? We're not likely to ever really find out. All we can hope for is that we remain "going forward", in the words of our PM, in becoming a compassionate, tolerant nation, open to those who need a hand.

Mike Stuchbery is a Melbourne author and teacher. You can read more of his stuff here or follow him on twitter (@mikestuchbery)

despicable in dishonesty ……

The Gillard government's on-again, off-again East Timor solution for asylum seekers is on again after the Prime Minister claimed she never said it was off in the first place.

In Perth to placate small miners still unhappy at the proposed resources tax, Ms Gillard found herself having to repair the damage caused by her denial on Thursday that she had specified East Timor as the preferred location for a regional processing centre for refugees.

But as Ms Gillard emphasised East Timor was now her ''focus'', resistance in East Timor continued to build, with its parliament planning to make its disapproval known by sending her a strongly worded condemnation.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, will make a rapidly scheduled trip to Jakarta next week to explain the plan, amid concerns in Indonesia that it was not consulted over the proposal.

On Thursday, Ms Gillard backed away from East Timor as a location after receiving a cool response from its Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao, and the President, Jose Ramos-Horta.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/foundering-pm-refloats-timor-solution-20100709-10413.html

meanwhile .....Mike Carlton observes .....

New whistle, same mangy old dog. After a decade now, the national "debate" on seaborne asylum seekers is a rabid cur that no government, however well-intentioned, can restore to health.

Julia Gillard blew a few notes on Tuesday, a little more tuneful perhaps. But as the Greens rightly said, her overnight brainwave of a Timor solution for the processing of boat people is John Howard's Pacific solution with a new postcode. Should it ever get off the ground it might be applied with more humanity, but it has little to do with rational policy.

It is there to hose down the fear and loathing being whipped up yet again in federal marginal seats by the Liberals and the usual snake pit of right-wing radio shock jocks, tabloid hacks and the TV current affairs glitterati.

But what arrogance it is for any Australian government to browbeat or bribe an impoverished client state into sweeping our problems under its carpet. What gives us the right to chuck our weight around like this?

If I were a citizen of East Timor, or "the region" I would be greatly offended.

In the view from Canberra, though, all that matters is the coming election. One of the Prime Minister's very visible spear carriers with her on a patrol boat off Darwin this week was David Bradbury, Labor MP for the knife-edge electorate of Lindsay, in Sydney's west. If all else fails, and some Javanese rust bucket loaded to the gunwales with disease-carrying Taliban terrorists fetches up in the Penrith Lakes, Bradbury will know how to deal with 'em.

Of course the Howard cheer squad is claiming victory in the "debate". That oaf Peter Reith, one of Howard's five defence ministers and the ringmaster of the children overboard circus, actually had the bare-faced cheek to ring a Melbourne radio station on Wednesday to blow smoke up his own backside. "Talk about the ultimate vindication," he frothed.

Rubbish. The Howard government's policies on asylum seekers - or ''illegal immigrants'', as it liked to demonise them - were cruel and immoral. They were designed to feed that mongrel xenophobia conjured up by Pauline Hanson and her ilk. Howard played it for his electoral advantage, boots and all. The lies were monstrous; the cynical debasement of our political debate was a disgrace.

As Bob Hawke said of the children overboard thing a few years ago: "Nothing, I believe, more despicable in dishonesty has ever disfigured the political landscape of this country."

Add to that the Tampa affair; the detention of children behind razor wire; those dozens of legitimate residents unlawfully banged away in detention centres; and last but not least the Dr Haneef fiasco and you have a picture of a government steeped in bigotry, deceit, and dog-whistling racism.

Tony Abbott is still at it. His boast that he would "turn back the boats" and asylum seekers without passports is arrant nonsense, unworkable and almost certainly in contempt of both international and Australian law.

There is no point in Gillard trying to race him to the bottom. She will always find Phoney Tony there first, grinning up at her and ready to burrow lower again.

❏ ❏ ❏

The shrieks of rage from the resources barons had barely died away before the flacks for the finance industry were howling in the void. They are furious at the Cooper review into superannuation, released this week by the Superannuation Minister, Chris Bowen.

The great outrage is a proposal for a universal scheme of low-cost super that the ordinary person could understand. How frightful. Called MySuper, it would deliver around an extra $40,000 in benefits to today's 30-year-olds when they retire. Every super fund would be obliged by law to offer this service, saving Australians an estimated 40 per cent on fees, or $550 million a year. On top of that, there are plans for better management, regulation and reporting in the industry.

Plainly, this is naked socialism, red in tooth and claw. The Bolsheviks are at the gate. This wickedness would trample the super industry's ancient right to gouge ever-increasing fees from unsuspecting punters even as incompetent management sends their fund investments falling off a cliff.

John Brogden, chief executive of the Usurers' Trade Union - aka the Investment and Financial Services Association - led the charge.

''It dumbs it down and it basically entrenches people's disinterest [sic] in their superannuation,'' he said.

''It's the sort of radical proposal that often comes up in these sort of reports that goes too far.''

He is quite right, of course. Surely the events of the past 18 months have shown, beyond all doubt, that the finance industry, worldwide, is a shining beacon of probity and competence worthy of the people's trust.

Friendly fire as foe farewells honest John

John Faulkner's decision to retire to the Senate back bench after the election has provoked tributes from left, right and centre.

Properly so. In all my years of wandering around the political traps I have not met a more honourable politician nor a better man. We saw his innate decency most recently on the day Kevin Rudd was deposed by the caucus; Faulkner was at Rudd's side to shield him on the short but agonisingly public walk past the baying media pack.

The most startling tribute came from an unlikely source: no less than that flint-eyed ideologue of the Liberal hard right, the South Australian senator Nick Minchin. It was well put, and worth quoting in part:

"I have been in the Senate for over 17 years with John Faulkner and regard him as a man of the utmost integrity; a man of good character as well as being a most formidable opponent ... as Defence Minister he has shown great compassion for those who so nobly serve our nation on the frontline.

"I am personally grateful to John for his support, care and compassion when my son was seriously injured in a military training accident earlier this year.''

This looks suspiciously like an outbreak of political peace and love. It cannot last. Normal service will resume soon.

the rattus virus .....

Listening to "a surprised" John Howard taking a tough line against the decision of the International Cricket Council (ICC) to exclude him from contention of Vice President of the organisation, one is struck by how little he learnt or understood from his time as Prime Minister.

And for that we are all to blame.

Grovelling or perhaps not too bright commentators have said of Howard that the corrupt Indian administrators of the game had knocked Howard back because they would not want someone of his fierce and principled reputation for exposing the truth to be appointed to a position where he might make life difficult for them.

What about the Australian Wheat Board, Children Overboard, the Intervention and his backdoor entry to the war in Iraq? None of these issues have been properly investigated and we the Australian people have shown no stomach or determination for them to be examined. The British have conducted an enquiry into why they went to war in Iraq, but not us. Sweep it under the carpet; that is the extent of our determination. Meantime our moral resolve gets steadily white anted by our collective desire to praise, irrespective of the merits of that praise, all things Australian.

Isolated by an inferiority complex that can only process praise, we refuse to face certain unpleasant facts about Australia. And if there is one person who represents all that is now lacking with regards to race and human rights it is Howard and his prime ministership, with his appalling philosophy of whatever it takes and the lengths to which he took it.

Do we really believe we live in a vacuum? The Indian government, media, people and other organisations, including the Indian Cricket Board are well aware of his shortcomings. The ICB is unwilling to put its views forward, but the leak to the respected Indian media outlet Times Now says it all. The problem for them is John Howard and his unrepentant racism, dating from his support of Apartheid through to the appalling attack on Mohammed Haneef, the Indian doctor based in Queensland.

Haneef is the issue which has beached Howard's run for the ICC and he, and we, should have seen it coming. Who are these naïve Australian cricketing officials who put Howard up? Have they no idea what people in Asia and Africa have been saying about Australia behind our backs for the last 12 years or more.

Clearly former Prime Minister Rudd was in the same boat with his silly and ill-advised quest to get a seat on the UN Security Council. We have no chance and will be lucky to get enough votes to save face.

Five, six, seven thousand refugees by boat and we make it into an election issue. Spare me, particularly when the people we should be concerned about from organised crime and sharpsters come in by plane, on forged visas and stolen passports. And how many do this? It is hard to get reliable information because it is smothered by the rackets and corruption surrounding these entrants.

Haneef will haunt Howard for the rest of his days. Not long after this appalling event occurred I went to see the Indian High Commissioner in Canberra. He was livid and if he was livid you can imagine the reaction in India. Attacks on Indian students have only played into earlier perceptions. If India did not want our uranium they might have said a lot more. But Howard no longer holds power, feelings can be vented and they have been.

I have just returned from South Africa. I was posted there as a diplomat. Amongst other things I was a people smuggler for individuals facing torture and death under the Apartheid regime. I have travelled often to the country. I ran a program bringing Black South Africans to Australia for training.

There is no sense of subterranean racism in South Africa, what you see and hear on the street, in pubs, restaurants and lounge rooms is what you get.

There is nothing underhand or furtive in relation to issues of race and racism in South Africa. There are no codes or Masonic signals surrounding and defining racism as there is in Australia.

Howard used racism for political ends while denying its existence. It was nudge and wink racism in public, encouraged more blatantly behind closed doors. It went hand in glove with the secrecy that Howard fostered in response to the fear he sought to engender and use in response to what he termed international terrorism.

Sneaky, subterranean racism rises to the surface in sulphurous, surprising bursts. Recent vitriolic musings in club surrounds from AFL and NRL luminaries give a glimpse into what some select sub-groups consider acceptable, if not normal in their social discourse.

It is an offshoot of the flag draped racism of Howard, where the language and symbolism of his peculiar brand of jingoistic nationalism was deployed to devastating effect against refugees and Muslims.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10661&page=0

lost by labels .....

The issue of asylum seekers has weighed on the conscience of Australians for a long time now. As another boat heads towards Australian waters this week, it is an issue that requires urgent resolution, not neglect.

There is a growing tendency to simply dismiss the problem by citing the relatively small contribution that the boat people make to Australia's overall refugee intake. If one is to earnestly take this stance and grade the current numbers as insignificant, they must in turn have in their collective minds a figure where the contribution does indeed become significant and warrant action.

Australia's intake of refugees based on its Humanitarian Program Grants for 2009-10 will be 13,750. This number is subject to very little deviation, regardless of the number of applicants. In 2009, approximately 2,750 refugees tried to reach Australia by boat, without applying for refugee status via due process.

While the yearly number of boat people is subject to a great degree of fluctuation, in 2009 it represented 14 per cent of our refugee intake. As I have mentioned, for some this current figure is deemed too insignificant to require intervention. Yet when does it become significant? When it reaches 20 per cent? Perhaps even 35 per cent? Could boat people ever contribute 50 per cent of our intake?

Two realities must be kept in mind at this point. First, if one were to analyse the numbers of boat people arriving to Australia in the same fashion that we analyse shares on the Australian Stock Exchange, they could mount a very convincing argument that we are set for slow but steady long term growth.

The need for asylum is an ever-present reality considering the tragic state of affairs in the more turbulent regions of the planet. In 2008, Italy alone received 36,000 boat arrivals, with comparable numbers arriving in the US, as well as Canada, France and the UK to a lesser degree. The tyranny of distance has isolated Australia from boat people to some extent in the past, but as more people successfully make the trip, it logically follows that it will continue to become a more viable option for people smugglers in the future.

There is no doubt that the need for asylum is there. Our population worldwide continues to spiral. The decline in life sustaining natural resources is matched only by mankind's willingness to kill for them. World peace has been unobtainable throughout human history, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

The second reality involves consideration of the capped number of 13,750 refugees Australia will accept in 2010. Accepting 2,000 boat people last year meant that 2,000 other people elsewhere, who applied for refugee status by legitimate means, missed out. Two thousand people, many of whom still sit amid the poverty, rape and disease of refugee camps around the world, with neither access to a boat nor the financial means to procure a position on one. In an effort to imbue fairness into an unjust world, these suffering peoples should not have their fate determined by the industriousness of people smugglers.

Again I ask you, at what point does the contribution of boat people become an issue? Whether we agree on 4,000 or 10,000, be it within years or decades, it is simply a matter of time before our threshold will be breached. What then?

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10633&page=0

A perfect description of a Mountain out of a Mole Hill?

I have read your three preceding articles and I can resonate with the principles involved in those opinions - except maybe the Masonic signals, I must be missing something there.

IMHO, the cause of this uncertainty and confusion among the Australian people is clearly due to the media Barons and their abuse of their freedom.  The number of times one reads that “it is reported” [by who?] a “senior politician” has commented (who?) it is apparent [to whom?]  Struth - you know as well as I do John that the power of the media is what the government of a people deserves if they allow that to continue – because those profiteers decide who will be the government, even to the point of the very election boxes.

Never mind “Paul the Octopus” we have Rupert Murdoch – damn!

What really annoys me John is the selective reporting of just plain ordinary news and the way that the media can twist the facts to make it “entertainment” to their liking – no matter how they abuse the basic rights of the people they either intend to excuse or convict.

The media turned the “Tampa” incident into a Howard victory and completely excused the Reith/Howard “babies overboard” lies, not to mention the order to the Navy NOT to "interfere" with the people (in international waters) which resulted in the drowning of 353 men women and children asylum seekers from the SIEVE X under the “reported” glare of two searchlights [see Dark Victory]

And guess what – Abbott wants to pass the buck to the Navy when faced with the same situation.  When was the last time we forced one of our ADF Ship Commanders to the position of making a decision of life or death of foreigners for the government of Australia? Does Abbott consider that we are at WAR with asylum seekers? Do we help or let them drown? Not phoney Tony!

IMHO, the facts are certainly involved in those posts to which I refer, but I must say that the only way this humanitarian problem of “boat people” can be resolved is by the media being somehow forced to print the truth and the facts and constrained to put their misinformation, especially so politically biased, in a clearly highlighted “Editorial Comment” which, under Howard’s “New Order” has disappeared?

IMHO It was you John who, as requested, fully informed me regarding the test case on this issue in W.A. and if I recall correctly, the proprietors of the media were entitled to be biased in their “Editorials”?  Surely that is fair enough since it is also enshrined in the ABC Act 1983 and if I was a proprietor of an information “appliance” I would certainly want to have my say – but, fair dinkum!

However, I must say that the ABC would have to be considered as being COMPLETELY AND ONLY EDITORIAL since it’s obvious bias is demonstrated by its extreme rightwing attitude in every form of it’s involvement in “confusing” the Australian public – which was apparently begun by Howard when he only allowed one non conservative to be on the Board of Directors - who shall remain unnamed.

I am afraid for the future of our nation John, should the Murdoch led execution of one of our most sincere Prime Ministers (no matter what anyone else says) be used as an excuse to victimize the entire Labor government.

Make no mistake; if anyone cares to chronologically investigate the rise and fall of the Rudd Prime Minister’s tenure, it is clear that the unbelievable crash of a person’s public image was NOT due to the person themselves – just the evil manipulation of our “hearts and minds” by the Murdochrachy.

God Bless Australia and may we survive the Corporation’s attack on our freedom and right to know the truth.  NE OUBLIE.