From workshop 5: Multiculturalism after 30 years - Why Australia Failed the Refugee Test. Now We The People conference, 23.8.03 University of Technology, Sydney

Phong Nguyen

What a week has it been in the life of our nation! First we have got the PM re-ignited the debate on the death penalty, then refused to sack Wilson Tuckey over the "Letterhead" affair and Pauline Hanson got 3 year jail term.

One might wonder what have these things got to do with the topic of multiculturalism and the refugee issue? I would say that they are the symptoms that have got a lot to do with the disease that has been plaguing our country in the last decade or so. That disease is the serious decline in the moral standard, principle and integrity in our national leadership and in turn, leads to the decline in public moral and compassionate standard in Australia.

Without integrity and moral principle to guide our politicians' actions and behaviours, we would continue to see these shameless actions and policies take place on refugee, multiculturalism, and reconciliation matters from our politicians.

In fact, I would call the Tampa, the "Children Overboard" affair, the detention of innocent children, the rise of Pauline Hansonism, the implicit support of the PM on One Nation's policies, the water down and finally abandonment of the PM on his own Ministerial Code of Conducts, the failure to apologise to the Aboriginal people for past wrong doings as symptoms of a much more fundamental problem that is eating away the core values, the conscience and the humanitarian spirit that our nation has hold very dearly in the past. These symptoms reflect a very sick soul that needs immediate and drastic remedy. The failed test on the refugee issue is therefore just one symptom amongst others that happened due to the disease that affects the soul of the nation. The vital and only blood supply for that soul is the moral principle that has been fouled by our "at the very top" immoral leaders.

Australian standard of decency, humanitarianism, fairness and truth has eroded alarmingly in the eyes of the world and of decent Australians. Our leaders merely regard as "not a hanging offence" or "foolish" on mistakes or actions that would have brought down a minister or even a government a couple of decades ago. Politician leaders from both sides of the fence only chastise their mates for being caught out rather than being morally wrong.

It's alarming to see how many callers in talk back radios, including politicians, regarded one of the most serious crime against the democratic principle which is electoral fraud for personal gain as a mere minor mistake and not serious enough for a 3 year jail term. Instead of demanding more accountability and responsibility from our high profile, politicians and leaders, people are now calling for leniency and special case for stealing from taxpayer money and misleading the whole nation. Why is it so? I think the reduced standard and below average ethical level expectation from the public on our political leaders is a result of seeing too many bad things for so long has desensitized one's sense of perspective.

Instead of providing leadership and directly dare to live and die by what one has said and done, our national leaders have been using dirty tactics and playing a puppeteer role to avoid responsibility. The remark that got the PM into the lodge in the last election was so strikingly similar to the one expressed by Pauline Hanson on her maiden speech in 1996 that one can not help but wonder who was leading who. This is what Pauline Hanson said: " If I can invite whom I want into my house, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country" and this is the mantra John Howard has used: "We decide who comes and the manner in which they come". The dog has indeed barked the way its master wanted it to do. The whistler is now singing the same tune as the bird.

Multiculturalism in Australia was possible due to strong and courageous leaders and leaderships. It can only thrive and hope to be alive by continuing to have morally decent and fair leaders and leadership in the land. When the leader of the land defied conventions to say things like Asian immigration was too high or under his government anti-political correctness people can have their freedom to say anything they like, multiculturalism was already undermined.

As far as I am as a former Vietnamese refugee is concerned, Australia has already failed the refugee test long ago when it helped to architect and setting up detention centre policy in S-E Asia for the Indo-Chinese refugees.

I arrived in Australia as a Vietnamese refugee in December 1979 from an Indonesian refugee camp. Australia was regarded very highly by the world for her generosity and compassion. We were made to feel very welcome and wanted. Multiculturalism was in its 5th year and the economy was at its peak with many factory hands needed to fill manufacturing jobs.

However, the economic downturn in the late 1980s changed all of that. Indo-Chinese refugee intake became a topic for debate and a convenient scapegoat for the Australia's woes.

Australian Government, under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, was the architect for the so-called "Orderly Repatriation Program" of the Indo-Chinese refugees in S-E Asia. Tens of thousands of Indo-Chinese refugees were arbitrarily labeled "Economic refugees" on a set date and a set hour of the year and subsequently refused consideration for settlement in a third country. The program eventually became a forced repatriation program.

In Hong Kong and elsewhere, refugee camps were turned into detention camps and centres and all freedoms were taken away from the refugees. Women and children were treated like criminals and police began to use violent means to suppress and to curb unrests and protests in these centres. Access to migration lawyers and representation to the UNHCR was limited and in most cases denied.

There were thousands of children born and grown up within the barbwire fences without schooling or freedom whatsoever.

Many adults committed suicide or died from mass hunger strikes throughout S-E Asia. In some camps, there were 2-3 young men committed hara-kiri style suicide per month to no avail.

Throughout this tragic and inhuman episode, the Australian government was absolutely silent and made no protest whatsoever to these S-E Asian governments to stop the carnage. On the contrary, they had encouraged, funded and support these governments to speed up the process of forced repatriation of these refugees (the Pacific solution has its origin here, I think).

And yet, when confronted with questions from international and Australian human rights groups on the detention centre policy, the Australian politicians either shrugged it off as an internal affair of those countries or said that it could only happen in Asia. Some even used that as an example of the Asian "barbaric way" of treating their own kind.

As a refugee already settled in Australia at the time, I watched with horror the drama that unfolded in front of my eyes. However, I was deeply convinced that such treatments would have never, never happened in the civilised Australia.

How wrong I was and how wrong the rest of Australians were on our political leaders. To me who worked and to those who have lived and fought for the Indo-Chinese refugees in S-E Asia, the detention centre policy, management and treatment of refugees in Australia today are the exact replica of what has happened in S-E Asia more than 10 years ago. It started with demonisation, scapgoating, detaining and then forced repatriation.

What has made worse for Australia was from a respected champion of human rights position not so long ago she is now has been turned into a HR villain and abuser of the UN Charter on the rights of innocent women and children by our evil and morally corrupted politicians.

And boy, how "par excellence" our political leaders have done it. Far from being ashamed about it, they were trying to export their expertise to the E.U because they have successfully turned HR abuse into a new art form.

If the true meaning of multiculturalism is to treat everyone who have reached our shore or want to seek freedom and avoiding persecution in Australia with respect, dignity, equality and human rights, then multiculturalism in Australia today is a big fat joke. Since multiculturalism has arrived and created out of the moral and humanitarian consciousness of a nation and a people, the crucial test its has to pass is depended on the outcome of the moral and humanitarian test that our national leaders have to undertake. Without moral principle as the corner stone, the Australia that we know of will continue to surprise everyone in the world and ourselves as her citizens with bizarre policies that defy UN's human right charter and human decency.

Phong Nguyen is a community activist and works at Melbourne's Vietnamese Community Welfare Agency.

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