Xenophobic fever
Prime Minister John Howard's belated decision on Wednesday to accept the Labour opposition party's proposal for a joint parliamentary motion condemning racism and pledging a tolerant and open society is seen by many as heartening progress made by the Canberra government to calm the sensitive issue which has been raged for the past two months.
Sharp criticism was aired by a number of Asian countries and Australian politicians in the wake of independent MP Pauline Hanson's comments against Asian immigrants. In her maiden speech to parliament last month, Hanson said that "Australia risked being swamped by Asians" and demanded Canberra to halt all immigration.
The situation was made even worse by an incident in Australia's northern state of Queensland earlier this week, when two visiting Singaporean women were racially abused and robbed by local gangs.
A Queensland town mayor, Barbara Wildin, admitted that there had been five unprovoked attacks in her territory and said the xenophobic "incidents come from this nonsense put up by Pauline Hanson".
It is true that racism, in its various disguises, and racial abuse still prevail in many parts of the world, but the racism that surfaced down under recently shocked us since Australia, which discarded its whites-only immigration policy in 1976, is still obsessed by the ugly and sensitive feeling at a time when more and more Asians have made Australia their home.
The Asians -- excluding Vietnamese boat people who have been blamed for being willing to work hard for lowly paid, thereby taking local people's jobs -- have indeed been lured to live in Australia because Australian politicians have boasted, time and again, that the country would become a multiracial society that could take ideas, cultures and people from overseas.
According to data, of the four million immigrants who have resided in Australia since the end of World War II, more than 600,000 are of Asian backgrounds. The Asian population is expected to double by the year 2010, in line with economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region that has been predicted by noted economists worldwide.
A recent survey conducted by The Australian newspaper showed that an anti-immigrant feeling ran highest among older citizens and low-income people, prompting many analysts here to think that the Hanson case was just an example of racial hatred that prevailed throughout Australia.
Unless Australians change their attitude toward immigrants, we believe many Asian parents will reconsider the worthwhileness of sending their children to study in Australia. For safety reasons, Asian students may, for instance, decide on other developed countries to continue their studies.
The recent racism furor is an acid test for Howard, who, during his campaign for premiership was branded by the then ruling Labour government as having anti-Asian overtones, to once again prove that the opposition's allegation is groundless, not only by making a diplomatic visit to several Asian countries, including Indonesia, but also to show to region's people that Australia and Australians, as he himself has stressed, "are a tolerant and compassionate society".
Australian parliamentarians should have realized that, as we are approaching the millennium of globalization where human movement is indispensable for cooperation and development, no nation can be part of any world community if it continues to set up ideological, racial and religious barriers.