FORUMS

Out of the forests: a New Way Forward for Tasmania

• Kim Booth MHA, Greens member for Bass
• Vica Bayley, The Wilderness Society
• Lucy Landon-Lane, Pulp the Mill
• Frank Strie, Timber Workers for Forests
• Tim Thorne, Now We The People

How can we make Australia a less racist society?

Below are the speeches given by the forum participants.

Nabil Kazemi*

A definition of racism. The Human Rights Commission defines racism as an ideology that gives expression to myths about other racial/ethnic groups and which devalues these groups. It is the result of a complex interplay between individual attitudes, social values and institutional policies.

A few observations.

The misconception that only the white man is racist.

Racism exists in all societies and in all countries. It exists amongst white, black, brown and yellow peoples. It also exists amongst sections of each of these groups. Some examples of racial conflicts would include:

Black: The Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda
Yellow: The Japanese and the Koreans
Brown: The Iraqis and the Iranians
White: The Serbs and the Bosnians

Racism exists amongst Christians, Moslems, Jews – in fact in all religions. Again, it exists between different sections within each of these groups:

Christians: Catholics and Protestants
Moslems: Shi’ites and Sunnis
Jews: Sephardin and Ashkenazi

No country/race is immune from racism and we are all guilty.

The difference is in the way that racism expresses itself and the form that it takes. Recent events around the world are proof of some of the extraordinary ways in which racism rears its ugly head and even seemingly innocuous cultural differences such as music can be used to dominate others. For example, in the American run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a cultural suppression technique was tried by the personnel there. In an attempt to break the prisoners’ resolve, very loud music was played. Initially, the music played was heavy metal, but it was found that many of the young prisoners actually enjoyed this music. Hard rock was then introduced, but with the same result. It was not until Country Music was played that the technique was found to be effective!

Does racism form a part of our value system in Australia?

I would like to remind you that this country was not founded on any lofty principles but on the exploitation of convict labour and the genocide of aboriginal people. Let us look at some specific examples:v The principal (some would say the only) reason behind the establishment of the Commonwealth was to restrict coloured immigration. The first act passed was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901.

The White Australia Policy.

• Language tests for would-be immigrants. These tests could be in any language and could thus be used to eliminate any “undesirable” applicant from the process.

  In Italy, if it was difficult to ascertain whether the darker, “sun-tanned” Italians were white or not, applicants were asked to remove their trousers in order for the immigration officers to see if their bottoms were white or brown! This ensured that only “genuinely white” Italians would be selected.

• The Medical Act of 1938 in N.S.W. Foreign graduates who successfully completed the last three years of Medicine at the University of Sydney could register to practice, provided that no more than eight such doctors registered in any one year. Problems created by this Act became obvious in 1949 when twelve doctors successfully completed the course. A ballot had to be held to decide which 8 out of the 12 should be allowed to practice.

• The Bulletin Magazine carried on its masthead the motto: “Australia for the White Man”. It only discarded this in 1961.

• Aborigines were not entitled to be or considered Australian citizens until 1967.

• Our first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, one of the leaders of the Labour Party (a party traditionally sympathetic to the notions of social justice) declared publicly that “Two wongs don’t make a white!”.

If we look at the situation today we can see that racism still exists. However, it now expresses itself in a much more sophisticated and subtle way.

A recent anti-Moslem hysteria campaign began recently as a result of the publication of some provocative (but naturally very innocent!) remarks made by our Prime Minister. These remarks were followed by Dona Vale’s comment informing us that Australia will inevitably become a Moslem state. Peter Costello then made his contribution to the debate with his comment that Moslems in Australia should accept Australian values or leave. Pauline Hanson then declared that Costello’s speech vindicated her stance. Costello’s comments were followed up by one of the commercial television channels which conducted a survey amongst its viewers. The question was whether they would support withdrawing Australian citizenship from migrants who did not subscribe to Australian values. 99% said they would.

On 13th March of this year, the Four Corners programme covered the events in Cronulla and Maroubra in December 2005. One Cronulla resident who had participated in the riot believed that the riot started as a result of life-savers rescuing some Moslem women and touching them in the process of saving them! This was not actually the case and misconceptions such as these can trigger reactions that are out of proportion to what really happened.

It is clear that although the way racism is expressed in Australia has changed a lot in the last 50 years, it is still alive and well.

We now come to the crucial question:

How do we make Australia a less racist society?

I believe that we in Australia have a unique opportunity to provide an example of a society that can manage to reduce and tame racism. In considering how best to achieve this, I decided to ask a number of my friends this question, and I received close to 50 replies from people who come from 20 different countries.** I would like to share a number of these responses with you and have divided some of these responses into four main categories.

• Leadership

  - Political Leadership

  A commitment to ridding the nation of racism should be clearly expressed by our National leaders. When I listen to debates in Parliament all I hear, with a few exceptions, is mediocrity. I only wish that our leaders were as interested in the benefits of cultural diversity as they are interested in economic rationalism. I wish too that they were as interested in social harmony as they are in political point scoring.

  - Religious Leadership

  Is it not time for men such as the Pope, Iman el Azhar , the Chief Rabbi and the Dalai Lama (is it by coincidence that they are all men?) to come together in order to produce a code of human behaviour for their followers? If they have more important things to attend to, isn’t it then time for our own religious leaders in Australia to get their heads together in order to produce such a code?

• Education

  - A new subject.

  It would be beneficial to introduce a new subject called Our World : Cross Cultural Communication. The more we know about each other, the more open we are. Understanding differences will make it possible for children to embrace, rather than to fear, these differences. The teaching of non-violent communication could be built into the school curriculum.

  - Gap Year in a different country

  Young people should be encouraged to take a Gap Year in a different country between school and university, or school and their chosen profession.

  A friend from Israel wrote to me about protecting rare flowers. She said that she wanted to see “education about the protection of rare flowers. … It may surprise you that as an Israeli I choose to talk about flowers … but I see human beings as precious rare flowers that I would like to protect without considering race, colour, sex or religion.”

  - Languages

  Upgrade the teaching of languages in schools. The current level of language teaching is inadequate.

• Media

  - The role of the media is crucial and responsible reporting essential. The media should refrain from provocation. This can be achieved by placing emphasis on the conduct or deeds done rather than by focusing on ethnicity.

  - The government could sponsor an advertising campaign illustrating how much we have in common, how much our minority groups have suffered and how hard they worked to establish themselves in Australia, and how much they have contributed to Australia’s economic growth.

  - Through the media a message could also be given to the gangs that they are giving their own people a bad name.

• Practicing what we preach. Personal application as individuals.

  - Treat people as you wish to be treated. Use the power we have as individuals.

  - One email I received contained a quote from one of Amin Maalouf’s books. It was in French, but I have translated it as follows: “It is our perception of others that confine or imprison them, and it is our perception of others that can liberate them.”

  - “I hope that Christians can live up to the Sermon on the Mount, and Americans live up to the Declaration of Independence.”

  - “Maybe we should, for one week, live in the family of another ethnic group and get to know them personally.” (I think that may work in Cronulla!)

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

…
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
… Yes, imagine…

“Somewhere beyond right doing and wrong doing there is a field. I will meet you there!”

* Nabil Kazemi has spent the last ten years travelling extensively, attempting to understand why mankind is more passionate about seeking conflict rather than seeking happiness and pleasure. He has not yet found an answer to this question.

** My sincere thanks to friends who generously provided me with their comments:
Nadia Lozzi-Cuthbertson(comment about advertising campain)
Prof Malcolm Tait(comment about religious leaders)
Agnes Descorsant(Amin Malouf quote)
Judge Nazhat Shameen(comment in 4d)
Kim Thorn(comment in 4c)
Khaled Hroub
Phillip Stigant
Grace Carlotta
Philip Denning
Dr Jocelyn Scutt
Lynda Hove
David Hanley
Simon Maddison
Dr. Martin Mayer
Randy Enomoto
Eliane Michel
Joelle Michel
Ornaw Wochinsky
Dr. Nader Habib
Ramon Corredor
Dr Ali Salah
Oguz Sahin
Ali,Debby Ucas
Sibylle Baumgartuen
Rifaat Shoukralah
Jean-Paul Palmade
D’Arne O’Neil
Amira Kazem
Shahira Abdel Hahn
Helena,Simon and Hermid Gunarde
Deborah Hewson
Diana Kazemi
Wah Kit Tong
Myriam Eck
Kareem El Touney
Santi Mareso
Alison Ziller
Mechthild Neumann
Andrea Fisher
Christine Ebohon
Gun Gencer
Rick Downie
Alison Downie
Susan Talanis
Mandy Archer
Sarah Starfire
Thomas Moore
Brigitte Dextreit
Gordon Allan

Peter Murphy

But most thinking Australians have been aware for years that racism has been let out of the bag for political reasons. The most important player in the game has been our current Prime Minister, backed up by a loose network of academics and media operators. He is a serial hit man – starting with Asians, moving on to Aborigines, then to asylum seekers and then to Muslims in particular.

In Australia, racism is always just under the surface, because this society has been built on dispossession of its indigenous peoples and exploitation of ever-new waves of immigrant labour. Depending on a person's location in the ongoing story of Australia, racism is repressed because it is destructive of the real achievements and hopes of people, or it is mobilised because insecurity is too great. The insecurity can come from within, especially in times of economic distress, and it can come from without through fear of attack or invasion.

The question is how to make Australia a less racist society.

In the three Now We The People conferences so far, participants have asserted high priorities on positive government policies and laws to respect the rights of indigenous Australians, asylum seekers and immigrant communities, as well as the need for broader economic, social and environmental policies to lift the living standards of the majority in a way that everyone is included and contributes as best they can. Since we began this project in late 1999, we much conclude that Australian society has gone backwards on all scores.

While the Howard government has been worn down on asylum seekers, the system is as vicious and merciless as ever. It is only the scale of suffering that has changed. The policy on indigenous people is more paternalistic and pragmatic then ever. The economic situation for a large minority of people is insecure and stressful. The global environment is full of frightening events and prospects. Australians have been touched by them – in Bali, in London and now in Cronulla.

The Cronulla race riots do focus the mind. The violence has been repressed, but young men on both sides, in significant numbers, are ready to escalate and await the opportunity. Once the ingredient of raw civil violence becomes 'normal', escalation of communal conflict could be rapid and destabilise all our cities. This is one scenario we must close off by using all our energy and social and political skills, in both short-term efforts and for long-term developments for the better. The racist opinions at Cronulla directly reflect government and media messages about Muslims and terrorists.

The reaction of the Middle Eastern communities is a combination of anger and fear. They are outraged that they have lived longer in Australia than the young anglos who tell them they don't belong. The great majority of these immigrant communities highly value the democracy, stability and safety of Australian society, perhaps appreciating it more than the anglo youth who won't tolerate them.

Coming from the labour movement, I see labour market dynamics as major drivers of immigration and of racist expressions.

Despite an official national unemployment rate of 5.2%, real unemployment is more like 10%, but due to the Howard government's lack of a serious training program, and the privatisation of virtually all the major public sector industries which trained workers, there is already a very tight labour market for all sorts of skills. In these circumstances, the Howard government has quietly boosted the immigration program to record levels and even invented a guest worker program which now involves 22,000 workers, while keeping up its racist rhetoric against asylum seekers and Muslims, for political reasons.

But the guest worker program is itself a departure from Australia's long term policy of immigration to meet labour needs. Under the new Visa 457, a worker is sponsored by an employer for two years, with an option for a further two years, and then an option to apply for permanent residency. This creates a category of workers with fewer rights, alongside recently arrived permanent residents and citizens who don't really have a right to family reunion, alongside more established communities with fuller rights. This is a picture of growing division and discrimination, something cultivated by the Howard government in its efforts to alienate asylum seekers.

Right now, labour market conditions are more conducive to the repression of racist sentiment. Even lower unemployment would be even more conducive. It is the drum-beat that Muslims are terrorists, coming from the government and the Federal Police and ASIO, that is turning this situation on its head.

Back in 1998, when Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party was at its anti-Asian height, big employers and big exporters were furious at the Prime Minister, but only gave him the message behind closed doors.

In 2002, in the lead up to the Iraq invasion, the industries with a big interest in the Middle East and global relations, such as the wheat and livestock industries, Qantas and the tourism sector, kept quiet while Howard built a great store of resentment against Australia in the region.

In other words, big business has traded off its needs for labour and global business with its commitment to the Howard neo-liberal economic program, at the expense of community cohesion.

Given these recent dramatic experiences, I advise everyone not to put any hope in the good sense of big business to stand up against the Howard government for an inclusive, harmonious multi-cultural Australia.

Who then do we turn to?

We have to focus the progressive organisations and movements in our society on the urgent need for action to avoid even worse racist violence in the future. Here we need to combine the efforts of unions, welfare sector groups, teachers and community activists in general to demonstrate that people from the Middle East, people of the Muslim faith, in fact anyone who looks a little bit non-anglo, are positive contributors to Australia. The initiative has to be perceived by the public to be in the hands of the diversity of Australia, not in the hands of the racists. This means a media strategy too, one that provides a wider range of voices from these new immigrant communities to break down the persistent stereotyping from the Howard cheer squad.

More broadly, we must ensure that in our growing campaign against the WorkChoices law, that all communities, including indigenous peoples, are involved and visible. The solidarity from this struggle will be resilient against the divisiveness of racist campaigns. Workers coming in under Visa 457 have to be supported, and this category must be replaced with a fair and humane immigration program with good support programs and family reunion. Most important of all, we need to change Australia's policy of military aggression to one that restrains US military aggression and instead promotes conflict resolution and genuine economic development in our region. The Philippines comes to mind – Australia's current policy of fighting terrorism there is directly undermining the major peace processes in the two big civil conflicts there, involving the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the national Democratic Front on the one hand,a nd the Philippines government on the other.

Not since 2000 have we experienced a real economic setback in Australia. When the next one does come, it may be very destabilising, it may be part of global economic crisis, and our people are not well equipped to understand that kind of development. In a time of rising unemployment, the labour market will be a contributor to racially-inspired conflict. We have to do as much as we can now to build the bonds of solidarity, and to expose the racism coming from the top.