And people keep claiming that a majority of Australians aren't racist----we must face the fact that we are, and then we may do something about it.
Just watch the articles that appear over the next week or so attacking this article by David Day and reassuring Australians that they are not really racists, but just frustrated aspirationalists which causes them to behave in a racist manner. Laurie. ---------- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Trudy Bray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "news-clip" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 11:01 AM Subject: The Age: A political whitewash > THE AGE > A political whitewash > > By DAVID DAY > Wednesday 5 December 2001 > > Ninety-eight years ago an incident took place near Melbourne that bears an uncanny > similarity to an event in August 2001 that was pivotal to the Howard Government's > re-election. > > In December 1903, shipwrecked sailors were rescued after their vessel ran aground off > Point Nepean. The British officers and non-European crew were taken by tugboat to > Melbourne, where customs officers prevented the coloured crew from stepping ashore > on to the soil of the newly federated nation. Customs was enforcing the Immigration > Restriction Act, the cornerstone of the new White Australia Policy. > > Despite protests from the British officers, and potential international embarrassment, > Liberal prime minister Alfred Deakin refused to allow the crew ashore. It was during an > election campaign and Deakin was hard-pressed by the rising Labor Party, whose > members were equally ardent about barring non-whites. The non-Europeans among the > crew were put aboard a Japanese mail ship and taken to Hong Kong. > > The British captain was appalled - he had never seen or heard of a country where a > shipwrecked mariner was not allowed to set foot on land. If this was an example of > Australian humanity, he declared, "it is a disgrace to the British Empire". > > This year, Australi a has celebrated the 100th > anniversary of Federation. Yet one vital > Federation event has not been celebrated, the > centenary this month of the passage of the > Immigration Restriction Act, which came to > define Australia for most of the 20th century. > Ironically, the act was introduced after about > 80 Afghans landed in Melbourne in 1901, > amid fears that, as one MP put it at the time, > the country was being "overrun with aliens". > The law was passed with hardly a voice > raised in protest, although there was > discussion as to the best way of achieving its > objective of racial purity. > > The dictation test > > The conservative government of Edmund Barton opted for a so-called dictation test as > the best means to exclude non-white immigrants. Rather than just banning people based > upon the colour of their skin, customs officers on the wharves would force any > non-white arrivals to take a dictation test of 50 words in a European language of the > officer's choosing. > > This subterfuge, adapted from South Africa, was introduced at the suggestion of the > British Government to avoid protests from parts of its multiracial empire, and to avoid > unduly upsetting Japan and China. The subterfuge did not work. A campaign was > launched in India to boycott Australian produce. > > Some Labor MPs, including future prime minister Billy Hughes, wanted to do away > with such ruses and have the legislation declare simply that Australia would not admit > coloured arrivals. But wiser heads in part prevailed. Potential British objections were > assuaged by using the dictation test, while the Australian Parliament, determined to > create a new, white society in the South Seas, dismissed Japanese objections to the test > being in any European language, rather than just in English. > > At first there was some confusion in the test's administration. Some English-speaking > immigrants from India were admitted while some non-English-speaking immigrants > from Italy were excluded. But this was soon sorted out. Customs officers were told to > discover which European languages the non-white applicant did not know and then set > the test in one of them. > > The policy did not just involve stopping new arrivals on the wharves. As Deakin > declared, Australians were united in their support for "white Australia" and in ensuring > that "all alien elements within it shall be diminished". Had it been able to, the > government may have deported from Australia all those who could not be defined as > white. > > In the event, the only people deported were several thousand Pacific islanders who > refused to return voluntarily to their islands after their labour contracts expired. Even > then, some were allowed to remain if they had been long-standing residents of > Australia, although no more Pacific islanders were allowed to be recruited. The > economic viability of those who were allowed to remain was undercut by a bounty that > was paid to sugar growers who could show they used only white labour. The > government also prevented Afghans and others who operated camel trains across the > interior from carrying mail to isolated towns and farms. These measures were part of > discriminatory state and federal legislation designed to pressure those non-whites > already in Australia to leave. > > While the 30,000 or so Chinese Australians were allowed to remain, those white > Australians who wanted them gone could comfort themselves with the thought that the > Chinese were mostly elderly men and would die out in time. > > Meanwhile, to encourage them to go, their lives were made harder by customs duties > imposed on their consumables, from rice to opium. As with other non-European > Australians, they were not allowed to vote or receive the old-age pension or other social > welfare measures. > > Equality for some > > Barton lauded the Immigration Restriction Act and the Pacific Island Labourers Act, > signed into law by the governor-general, Lord Hopetoun, in December 1901, as "a > handsome new year's gift for a new nation". > > Australians liked to think that their new nation stood in sharp contrast to the old, > class-bound societies of Europe. And it did. It was not only democratic, but the vote > was enjoyed by men, and would come to be enjoyed by women, regardless of wealth. > But not regardless of race. Aborigines were not allowed to vote. > > How did white Australians reconcile their egalitarian impulses with the racism of the > White Australia policy? Barton simply declared that "the doctrine of the equality of > man", which supposedly underpinned Australia's new federation, was never intended to > include racial equality. Non-white races were destined always to remain "unequal and > inferior". > > Deakin, the second prime minister of the Federation, argued that it was not the > inferiority of non-white races that caused Australia to prevent their entry. Instead, he > said, it was "their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new > tasks, their endurance and low standards of living" that made "alien races dangerous ... > to us". > > Labor supporters believed the better society they sought would be endangered if it were > not racially pure. As a result, the party's principal objective combined an aspiration for > "an enlightened and self-reliant community" with a commitment to the "maintenance of > racial purity". The contradiction in these aspirations was brushed away, or not even > recognised. > > Instead, they looked to recent history to justify their racism. Labor supporters > considered non-white immigration in light of the system of indentured labour that had > been used to ship workers from India, China, Japan and elsewhere to provide cheap > labour, mainly for plantation agriculture, in European colonies. Australia had imported > such labourers for sugar farms, and divers from Japan, Malaya and the Philippines > worked in the pearl fisheries of northern Australia. The Labor Party feared this labor > would be used again to break down hard-won working conditions. > > The issue of miscegenation was also prominent. It was thought that inter-breeding > would concentrate the worst qualities of each race in the children and gradually degrade > the white race. Australians liked to think of themselves as being part of a new race, > grown stronger and more vigorous in new soil. > > Once implemented, the White Australia Policy lay at the heart of Australian national life > for 70 years. In the debates over conscription in World War I, both sides argued that > the issue was about preserving White Australia. And when prime minister Billy Hughes > went to the peace conference at Versailles in 1919, he ensured that the country's > discriminatory immigration policy was protected from interference by the League of > Nations, and that the Japanese attempt to enshrine the doctrine of racial equality was > thwarted. > > Hughes returned in triumph, telling Australians: "White Australia is yours. You may do > with it what you please..." > > After World War I, when many German-Australians were interned then deported, it > was no longer enough to be white or European to gain entry to Australia. > > People preferably had to be British. Australians were comforted by a census revealing > that 98 per cent of the population was from a British background. A succession of > governments in the 1920s promised to maintain it against a rising tide of immigrants > from southern Europe. > > The Italians, Greeks and Yugoslavians, who had previously been allowed into > Australia, were demonised and described as black. Regulations were introduced to > severely restrict their numbers, and many southern Europeans were prevented from > landing. > > The doors open > > The 1930s Depression, in which more people left Australia than arrived, put paid to > this insularity. Policy makers now acknowledge that the country could no longer be so > particular about the source of its immigrants. World War II made it clear that a nation > of seven million people could not hope to hold a continent without substantially > boosting its numbers. > > Yet while they did not all have to be British, they had to be white. At the cost of > considerable international embarrassment, the post-war government of Ben Chifley > organised the deportation of the small number of Asian refugees who had been > sheltered during the war and who then refused to go home. Neither Chifley, nor his > immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, could understand why Asian countries were > outraged when Australia deported people who had been resident for up to eight years, > some of whom had Australian spouses and children. > > When Menzies became prime minister in 1949, he continued Chifley's attachment to > White Australia, although his immigration minister, Harold Holt, removed some of its > more offensive aspects. As prime minister, Holt continued the gradual liberalisation, but > the changes were mostly minimal and hardly changed the mix of the population. The > proportion of non-Europeans increased from 0.26 per cent in 1954 to 0.35 per cent in > 1961, and most of them were students. There were few non-Europeans among the > flood of immigrants to Australia in the 1960s. > > Even in 1974, a year after Gough Whitlam had finally proclaimed immigration policy to > be colour-blind, just 14 per cent of migrants were Asian. Moreover, the absolute > numbers were small as the immigration program was more than halved. Rather than > establishing immigration offices in Asian countries, the government turned to South > America for migrants. As one immigration officer observed, the people of South > America were seen as "largely European". > > The Vietnamese > > It was not until the arrival of Vietnamese refugees from 1976 onwards that Australia's > immigration policy was colour-blind in practice as well as in principle, with the > proportion of Asian immigrants increasing to more than a third of arrivals. About > 15,000 Vietnamese refugees were admitted each year. Their arrival could easily have > provoked the same sort of hysteria that has recently been generated towards Afghan > and other refugees. But it was handled sensitively by the government of Malcolm > Fraser with the support of the Labor Party. > > By the early 1980s, about 30 per cent of immigrants came from Asia, mainly Vietnam. > Many came under the family-reunion provisions of the Immigration Act. Although it > was projected that Asians would make up only 4 per cent of the Australian population > by 2000, their arrival in relatively large numbers and their concentration in urban areas > aroused increasing concern. > > In 1984, the historian Geoffrey Blainey gave voice to these renewed fears, with a series > of newspaper articles, speeches and a book calling for immigrants to be again decided > partly on racial grounds. The Liberal Party under Andrew Peacock flirted with the idea > before deciding against it. Ironically, John Howard was one of those arguing for a > non-discriminatory policy. > > Four years later, Howard, then opposition leader, effectively endorsed Blainey's view > while denying that he supported a return to White Australia. In the face of a political > furore caused by his remarks, Howard declared he was simply "speaking the truth as I > hear it about what people think on this issue". But Howard was deposed after his > comments damaged his party. The next year, Bob Hawke's government granted > refugee status to tens of thousands of Chinese students who were in Australia at the > time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It seemed that White Australia had finally > been laid to rest. > > Yet the Labor government took a harsh line on a new wave of refugees, many of them > escaping from the conflict in Cambodia, who arrived in small boats on Australia's > northern shores from November 1989. These arrivals were detained in an isolated > camp at Port Hedland. Some families were held there for up to five years; others were > sent back to an uncertain future in Cambodia. > > As Prime Minister, John Howard continued this policy until the latest wave of refugees > swelled the detention centres and culminated in his government's ultimatum to the > Norwegian vessel, the Tampa, in August. > > Ironically, while the government has ignored the centenary of the White Australia > policy, its recent actions have breathed new life into it. Just as Australia was partially > defined in the 20th century by the policy, so it may be defined this century by its > treatment of desperate refugees at sea and imprisoned behind the barbed wire of its > detention camps. Is the past becoming our future? > > - David Day is a senior research fellow at LaTrobe University. His books include > Claiming a Continent and, most recently, a biography of Ben Chifley (both Harper > Collins).. > > http://www.theage.com.au/news/state/2001/12/05/FFX8CBYJSUC.html > > > ************************************************************************* > This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without > permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, > scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal > copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of > the copyright owner, except for "fair use." > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/ until 11 March, 2001 and Recoznettwo is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznettwo%40green.net.au/ from that date. 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