Keynote Speech

Speech given by George Megalogenis, Author and journalist 

7 July 2004

I'd like to run you through some research of public opinion from our immigrant past.

These are Gallup Polls taken from the mid-1960s. Hindsight tells us this was a progressive era. Both the Coalition government of Robert Menzies and the Labor opposition of Arthur Calwell were united on the big issue of whether to open our doors to non-English-speaking immigrants. There was no Pauline Hanson. Nor were there any mainstream politicians openly worrying about our national identity, which, in more recent times, has become the surrogate for criticising the composition of the intake.

Given this bipartisanship, it would be fair to assume the community was pro-immigration, that public opinion was following the political leadership of the day. Unfortunately, the reverse was true.

The Gallup Poll tested whether the community was pro- or anti-immigration by asking: “Do you think the number of people coming here each year to live permanently should be increased, reduced or remain the same?”

Between 1953 and 1963, the poll was conducted eight times. On each occasion the public was either strongly anti-immigration or at best sceptical.

In 1961, for instance,

* 44 per cent said reduce the intake

* 37 per cent said leave it as it is

* 15 per cent said increase it.

This was the year of the great credit squeeze, the recession that almost cost Menzies government. But there was more than economics at play here. Generally speaking, the 1950s and early 1960s were a period of prosperity. Home ownership had jumped from 50 per cent to 76 per cent of the population between 1946 and 1961. So the attitudes of the day to immigration reflected something other than just the fear of competition for jobs. My guess is the community was still a little wary of what the politicians were doing to change the face of Australia.

The turning point came in 1964. This was the first year the Gallup Poll could claim Australia had become pro-immigration.

In August that year,

29 per cent were in favour of increasing the intake

21 per cent wanted it reduced.

The pollsters said: “For the first time, the Gallup Poll has found substantially more people for increasing immigration than for reducing it.”

There is an important lesson here that should help inform our present debates on multiculturalism. Despite unprecedented unity amongst the political class, and an economy that was running at full employment, it took almost 20 years before the public became comfortable with the post-war immigration program.

Australia was, of course, a fairly conservative place back then. In the following year, 1965, almost half the nation was opposed to the Beatles receiving MBEs

49 per cent against versus

40 per cent in favour.

Which makes sense when almost two out three Australians in those days were for the monarchy. The republican vote was 28pc back then. Today it is double that level, according to Newspoll.

But the poll that struck me as the most intriguing was headed “saucers or not?” Some 35 per cent of Australians believed in flying saucers. From what I can gather, the Gallup Poll didn’t ask that question again.

Yet, buried in those polls is a second, equally important story. The Australia that was slow to embrace immigration was also capable of welcoming those foreigners with whom they were already familiar. This is a contradiction that repeats itself in our history.

There had been a high-profile case involving 23 illegal Chinese immigrants who were found working in Sydney in 1962. The Gallup Poll asked in 1964 whether they should be deported or allowed to stay.

* 46 per cent said let them stay

*40 per cent said deport them.

Among the comments recorded for those who wanted them to stay was: “Give them a chance” and “they should make good citizens”.

Forty years later, John Howard told me in an interview that support for the regular immigration program is strong, but the public doesn't like people trying to come here illegally.

The other flashback that should challenge the view of Australia as an inherently intolerant society comes from another 1964 poll asking whether more should be spent to educate and house “our” Aboriginals:

* 56 per cent said spend a lot more

* 19 per cent said spend a little more

* 16 said we are doing enough now

Today, after the division of the Mabo and Wik debates, and the legacy of Hansonism, the pollsters would ask if less should be spent. From what I’ve seen of research in Queensland, for instance, many working class voters would want to cut funding for indigenous people.

The problem today is despite six decades of immigration, the first instinct of the public remains to say no to the next wave. We have also witnessed a hardening in attitudes towards asylum seekers. But don’t read this as an entirely bad thing. While there are many examples of xenophobia in our history, each episode carries a twin meaning. Every new arrival confers, without meaning to, a form of vindication for the previous intake. This is the side of Australia that is most redeeming.

The arrival of the Greeks and Italians after the Second World War marked the end of sectarianism; the first Vietnamese boatpeople in the mid 1970s gave legitimacy to the southern European waves; and what some academics now call Islamophobia can be seen as a back door acceptance of Asian immigration.

Working our way backward, here are four examples of this revolving door of xenophobia, from Muslim to Asian to Italian to Irish Catholic.

First, in 2002, the Macquarie University and the University of NSW conducted a study of racism (their term, not mine). It posed the “Guess who’s coming to dinner” test by asking people if they would be concerned if a relative married a Muslim.

53 per cent said they would be concerned.

Yet 72 per cent said they wouldn't mind an Asian in-law.

So much for Pauline Hanson's warning six years earlier:

“We are in danger of being swamped by Asians ... They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate.”

John Howard told me that the Chinese- and Vietnamese-Australians were the new Greeks and Italians and their integration into Australia has, in fact, been quicker.

Now, turning back to 1964, the very first edition of The Australian newspaper carried the following item on its front page, headed Mafia attack alleged

“A 46-year-old Italian migrant yesterday said he was beaten and punched insensible by three members of the Sicilian terrorist organisation, the Mafia. Mr John Dellacosta of Lewis Drive, Figtree, a suburb of Wollongong, said (he) was viciously attacked on July 4 after he had refused demands for chickens and vegetables from his two-hectare property.”

The language never changes. The media knee-jerk is always along the lines of the latest immigrant wave being one too many. Australians have always worried about new arrivals that supposedly owe their allegiance to a foreign church.

Finally, during World War I, as the nation split on the question of conscription, the racial “other” was white, the Irish Catholics. Here is a resolution of the time passed at many pro-conscription public rallies that would make the race cards played against the Italians, the Asians and the Muslims seem G-rated by comparison.

“That this meeting of loyal citizens view with grave concern the disloyal and seditious utterances of prelates of the Roman Catholic Church, especially at a time when the whole of the liberties of our Empire are at stake. It urges the Commonwealth Government to take action without respect of persons to repress all such treasonable utterances.”

Each unfamiliar face is tarred with the brushes of the ethnic gang and fanaticism. Fortunately, we get over the xenophobia once we get to know the people.

Australia’s national identity is more resilient than its conservative defenders think it is. To me, the most unAustralian thing you can say is that an immigrant who chooses to come here hates this country so much they will refuse to fit in.

Yet this is the logic the critics of immigration have always employed, that our national identity is too fragile to accommodate people with the cultural baggage of the old world, be they from non-English speaking Europe in the 1950s or 1960s or from the Orient since the 1970s.

What we need to be clear about is that the Australian electorate is always open to the race card, as long as it is played against someone they don’t know.

At this point, I’d like to mention the Asian immigration statements John Howard made in 1988. He admitted in his interview with me in 2002 that his comments cost him the Liberal leadership at the time.

This is an important distinction: attacking Asian immigration, that is making people who already live here feel like they don’t belong, has never been a winning hand for mainstream politicians. Nor, for that matter, was it for Pauline Hanson. All she did was hurt our image in the region. It was her attack on indigenous welfare that resonated with some voters. Of course, the person who hasn’t arrived yet is the easiest to pick on because they don’t vote.

[Incidentally, I think indigenous Australians get the rawest deal of all from public opinion, and from governments, but this is another topic.]

Politicians have learned to distinguish immigration from multiculturalism. This has changed the dynamic of our debate on national identity. We now have a rather unusual situation where the Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, are juggling two seemingly contradictory positions: they are pro-immigration and critics of multiculturalism.

I fear the supporters of multiculturalism don’t appreciate the sleight of rhetorical hand that has occurred over the past two decades.

Consider John Howard’s most concise attacks on multiculturalism, in newspaper columns he wrote whilst he was languishing on the political outer in 1989 and 1991:

“If multiculturalism is only about making people who choose Australia as their home feel welcome and guarantee they are given a fair go, then I am all for it. If, as I suspect, it is another exercise in social engineering, its deficiencies should be trenchantly criticised.”

And,

“The emergence of lobby groups, often speciously claiming the capacity to deliver large blocks of votes to this or that political party, is precisely the reason ethnic affairs in Australia has become so politicised in recent years. … If such groups did not exist, or more particularly if political parties did not seriously respond to their attempts to auction of support, then it is far more likely that a bipartisan approach on immigration and post-arrival policies for immigrants can be re-established.”

If you put either sentiment to a public vote today, most Australians would agree.

More recently, Mark Latham expressed similar views in his April speech titled A Big Country. He said he doesn't believe in celebrating “diversity for diversity's sake”.

He also said the Australian-born children of immigrants are more broad-minded than the hyphenated identities that multiculturalism gives them: “They do not necessarily see themselves as Chinese-Australians or Greek-Australians but rather citizens with a range of interests and identities. Government policies and definitions of multiculturalism need to catch up with this reality.”

In reply, John Howard's head nodded faster than you could say “one Australia”: “If Mr Latham is saying that multiculturalism should be redefined, I can say to him, ‘Welcome aboard to common sense’.”

I’m not sure that either side, those who are pro-multiculturalism and those who are against multiculturalism have defined the terms of the debate.

What exactly is the national identity we are trying to shape or protect? Surely it's not the blokey Australia of rugby league gang bangs?

Multiculturalism is a nebulous concept. My concern is the public now uses this term interchangeably with the latest arrival.

John Howard mucked it up in 1988 because he was specific; he has been on firmer ground since by attacking the straw man of multiculturalism. I’m not suggesting the critics of multiculturalism are better now at manipulating public opinion, because public opinion has always been conservative on these issues. Instead, what we have is a one-sided discussion. Both camps are arguing motherhood, but the critics have the upper hand because they get to attack the idea that multiculturalism is an ethnic politician who has his hand out to the highest bidder, Labor or Liberal, to fund folk dancing.

This isn’t the reality of the world you move in, but, and I make this point from 16 years experience covering national affairs in Canberra and more recently from Melbourne, this is what the public thinks multiculturalism is. It is certainly what both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader think multiculturalism is.

It is unfortunate, but your challenge as I see it is two-fold. The first is to rethink how you engage politicians who are basically defensive on this issue. The good news is they continue to accept the rationale for an open immigration program. The next step is to help them define multiculturalism as an inclusive ideal.

The second challenge, and here is where I will be specific, is to consider this topic from the position of the second generation.

One of the familiar storylines in Australian today is that people aren’t interested in politics. More specifically, the so-called generation Xers, aged in their 20s and 30s, do not see politics reflecting the lives they lead.

I’d argue that the Australian-born children of immigrants view their ethnic community leaders in the same way. Take the Greek experience, the 20- and 30-somethings, whose parents came here in the 1950s and 1960s. The parents see their Australian-born children as too Australian. This, of course, is not a bad thing. It proves that immigration works, and just as importantly, that multiculturalism works. We have accepted Australia as it is, but we have changed it subtly by being who we are.

The Greek community would like to see people of my generation come home in a sense, by becoming less Australian and more Greek-Australian. I think they worry needlessly about our identity. It is, of course, less Greek than theirs. But the reasons for this are the right ones. We live and work in mainstream Australia. We operate in a place that is more feminine and more cosmopolitan than many people might appreciate.

Here are some majorities from today’s Australia that might surprise you.

* 53pc of professional workers are women.

* 62pc of the bachelor degrees awarded over the past 10 years went to women.

* And the adult children of non-English speaking immigrants outperform all others in their peer group in education and professional qualification. Incidentally, their children, the third generation, return to the national average.

I call this Generation W, for women and wogs. I think it is a more accurate marker of the people who came after the baby boomers.

I think the baby boomers, and that includes the first generation ethnic groups, need to talk to each other, to find a common interest on issues such as aged care. They should also be prepared to hand over to the second generation on the question of how to translate multiculturalism for younger Australians. You should not be afraid where the second generation takes these issues, because their outlook is being shaped and is shaping the new middle class in Australia.

I happen to agree with John Howard. Multiculturalism should be about making the latest arrival feel welcome. That is easy to say, but hard to do, because it would take all sides to think beyond the immediate interest of their individual community. Greek-Australians, for instance, do not need advocates from the Greek community anymore. The Greek community needs to be advocates for Muslim-Australians. In fact, this is the job that all established community groups should be thinking about, to make the latest arrival feel welcome.

I know that might seem to be an obvious, if not idealistic note to conclude on. But the thing we forget is how good Australia is at immigration. I think the process of accepting new Australians has accelerated.

Sectarianism lasted 50 years.

The southern Europeans suffered, at worst, for about 30 years, from the Second World War to the mid 1970s, in the chair of outcast.

The Asians had 20 years.

The challenge is to get that number down again.