So, apparently we Aussies are one of the most tolerant nations in the world when it comes to migrants and ethnic minorities. That’s according to the OECD’s latest Society At A Glance.
Pardon me, but it’s been hard to tell lately.
The barrage of bigotry that has passed for public discourse on multiculturalism, asylum seekers, Islam and pretty much any issue touching on brown-skinned newcomers has been exhausting and depressing.
It struck me, listening to one idiot prattle on about ``our way of life’‘, that the sorts of things being said now are the same things people were saying 40 years ago when my parents came to Australia.
That same idiot might say people like my parents are not the target. But they were, 40 years ago.
Anyone who makes such a distinction is deluding themselves. The same distrust, prejudice and ignorance fuelled anti-migrant sentiment then as it does now.
“Their customs are different. They’ll form enclaves with their funny language and culture. They’re taking our jobs, sponging taxpayer dollars. They don’t understand our ways, they won’t fit in. And what the hell are they eating?”
While my parents speak English easily today - dad peppers all his conversation with ocker slang, gleaned from a life on construction sites - they didn’t when they first landed.
My mum was 18 when she arrived with her parents and four siblings in the late ‘60s. They ate what was then somewhat exotic food, lived in the loudest house on the street, and, in those early unfamiliar years, struggled to adapt to their new language and environment.
So they were occasionally confronted with bigots, ignorance, racism as they tried to settle to a new life here.
My mother has since become a citizen. She has run her own business, raised conscientious children and feels more at home in her adopted country now than she does when she visits Italy. The irony is that, by denying new migrants and asylum seekers the dignity of a welcome, shrill fear-mongers help create the very society no-one wants: a divided nation of “us” and hated “them”.
Political leaders have made themselves part of the problem. Their role should be to snuff out simplistic and sensationalist debates, not milk them for political gain. Their job isn’t to pat people on the head and tell them it’s OK to be worried about boat people and burqas. It should be to lift the national tone, and erase ignorance with reason, honesty and humanity.
South Australian Lieutenant Governor Hieu Van Le - a Vietnamese refugee, who made the risky journey here by boat with his young family - put it brilliantly in February, when he told a crowd of migrants at the Governor’s Multicultural Awards: “Too often we are subjected to views based on ignorance and prejudice and the often unfounded fear that they generate.”
“One can only agree with the Governor’s observation that community leaders could take a much more assertive role in promoting and valuing well-informed discussions about social issues.”
The resurgent debate about the benefits of multiculturalism had me wondering - what will people be saying about today’s migrants and refugees in 40 years’ time? Probably nothing. Most of them will have done what my parents did: Get on with life, work, raise a family, make a home.
Today’s “threat” will be tomorrow’s benign citizen.
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