Australia's immigration issue

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