We should cut the coppers some slack as they grapple with the public handling of the attacks on Indian students in Melbourne.
Policing has long been a closed culture. Less than a generation ago the only way police reporters could get stories was to spend months or even years hanging around the Police Club, drinking with detectives and slowly building enough trust to get the inside running on big stories. These days, whenever a cat gets stuck up a tree there’s an expectation that an all-in press conference will follow within the hour to discuss its breed, name, and how the pesky little varmint got up there in the first place.
There is no point in police complaining about this. It’s a reflection of the public’s legitimate conviction that information should flow freely from every arm of government. People have a right to know what is happening in their community and, these days, it is the job of the police to tell them.
But in telling these stories, the police have their hands and frequently their tongues tied by the principles which underpin the legal system - the rules of evidence, the presumption of innocence, issues going to identification. The last thing they want to do is stuff a case by saying something intemperate which points to guilt. As a result they often end up saying nothing or, worse, saying things which sound completely laughable to even the most reasonable person.
The Indian attacks in Melbourne have provided a rich vein of garbled copper speak.
A Sikh Temple gets burned to the ground by a firebomb in the dead of night and we’re told that there is as yet no evidence that any person or persons have or have not have engaged in an act of arson on racial or religious grounds. In much the same way that mosques just spontaneously combust, or churches set themselves alight.
The attacks on individuals have prompted similar narratives - a male person in a turban decamped at speed in a northerly direction after being assaulted at a train station by three men described as Anglo-Saxon, medium build, blonde hair, and there is as yet no evidence to suggest that race was a factor in the alleged attack.
Unfortunately the Victorian Police Commissioner Simon Overland has been the worst offender.
His first mistake was that he didn’t seem to have resolved whether he was speaking in a purely operational matter on these many incidents, or trying his hand for a role with the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Overland was correct in his assessment that we are no more racist, and considerably less racist, than other nations. One of the reasons there are so many students of Indian extraction in Australia is that a country such as Malaysia won’t let many of them go to university at all, under an explicitly racist tertiary education system which places quotas for Malay students to the exclusion of Indians and Chinese.
But that said, it’s really not Simon Overland’s job to muse publicly as to whether Australia is less racist or more racist than other countries. It’s his job to make sure that the bad guys get caught.
Worse though has been his vacillation and double-speak on whether there is evidence that Indians are over-represented as victims in the crime statistics. Overland has spent much of the past six months arguing that there is no such evidence. Yet three days ago he finally revealed that “there is no question” that Indians are more likely to be robbed in Victoria than other races.
You can imagine how this backflip will be interpreted by the more reckless sections of the Indian press, who could teach us tabloid types in Australia a thing or two about how to best beat up a story.
The kind of leadership we need on this issue came this week from Major General Peter Cosgrove, who is the very antithesis of a black-armband handwringer on this or any other issue. But with straight talk and plain language Cosgrove said it is undeniable that there is a small and ugly section of the Australian population that is demonstrably racist, and that in some instances, it’s been Indians who have been victims of this racism.
To suggest otherwise seems a nonsense.
In NSW the Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione has been forced to increase officer numbers for Australia Day after the sickening spectacle last year, where VB-fuelled yahoos draped in our national ensign were monstering passers-by for refusing to kiss the flag or join the Aussie Aussie Aussie chorus, a song so lyrically bereft that it’s amazing anyone is prepared to sing it publicly.
The fact that Australia is home to a number of these halfwits is not cause to weep for the nation, or to regard ourselves as a special case on the world stage. The British National Party increased its vote last year to win seats in the European Parliament, the French are dealing with a resurgence by Jean-Marie Le Pen; be they organised or disorganised, these people can be found everywhere.
The strange thing about Australia though is that some people seem determined to deny the reality of their existence, rather than acknowledging them and tackling them head on as Cosgrove did with such powerful and direct language the other day.
As for the Victorian Government installing Justin Madden as the Minister for Respect, it looks more like touchy-feely window dressing than an attack on the lawless and uncivilised. Australia has not become more socially inclusive because Julia Gillard bills herself as the Minister for Social Inclusion. It’s doubtful whether Madden, as the Aretha Franklin of politics, will usher in a new era of respect by dint of this gimmicky name change.
Cosgrove has given us the model here. An honest recognition of a real problem which is being perpetrated by an ugly minority. To which you could add - and a police force that is going all-out to tackle the problem, rather than giving a worthless running commentary on how we rank internationally in the racism stakes.
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