Australia's immigration issue

I appreciate your publication of a report on Dec. 9 regarding the Jakarta leg of Australian federal Parliamentarian Mr. Graeme Campbell's goodwill mission around Southeast Asia, on which I accompanied him. The mission's goal was to more accurately inform regional governments and the media about the immigration/race debate in Australia. The article you published was more balanced than many of the sensationalized reports about the Hanson phenomenon in Australia.

There was one error in your report, however, that may have unintentionally misled your readership. The report stated: "He (Mr. Campbell) referred in particular to the ongoing race debate in Australia triggered by last year's election of shopkeeper Pauline Hanson into the House of Representatives after campaigning on a platform to limit the number of Asian immigrant into Australia."

This was the case. Mrs. Hanson made some comment on Aboriginal welfare spending wastage and was disendorsed from the Liberal Party in the heat of the March 1996 federal election campaign. This, in turn, gave her a large sympathy vote and saw her unexpectedly elected as an independent. She did not mention immigration and therefore was clearly not elected on an anti- immigration platform. Her anti-immigration views did not emerge until Sept. 16, 1996 when she made her first speech in parliament after six months of coaching and silence.

In our briefing discussions with Mr. Hadi Wayarabi, director of Asia-Pacific affairs at your foreign affairs department and with your newspaper, we pointed out the above facts. Also discussed was the long-standing majority nature of publicly polled and published dissatisfaction with successive Australian governments' immigration policies. We also cited the Australian government's own bureau of statistics evidence that "...people born in Asian regions have made up above 40 percent of the migrant stream to Australia over the last 10 years".

It is the irreversible long-term consequences of this bipartisan policy of gradual Asianization that is at the heart of mounting discontent in Australia. Regardless of the Australian media's sensationalization, the immigration race debate certainly did not start with Mrs. Hanson and is most unlikely to finish with her regardless of her own political fortunes.

Mr. Campbell has been in Parliament since 1980. In December 1995, he was dumped by then Prime Minister Keating from the governing Labor Party for his stance against immigration and the resultant Asianization. March 1996 saw Mr. Campbell reelected as an independent and Paul Keating dumped comprehensively along with his immensely unpopular vision of Australia as part of Asia.

DENIS MCCONNACK

Vice President

Australia First Party