DATA.................................................OPINION...................................DIALOGUE
 
 

Contributors this issue: Ross MacGregor, Ray Jureidini and Virginia Rapson

A COMMENT ON JUREIDINI’S ‘ORIGINS AND INITIAL OUTCOMES OF THE RACIAL HATRED ACT 1995’
by Ross MacGregor

This contributor’s careful research makes two solid points.

First, it offers corroboration that, as far as hard evidence goes, racial vilification in Australia continues to be the biggest beat-up since Reds Under Beds. We now know that in the twelve months following this legislation — a tumultuous year that included a racism-dogged election and Hanson’s incendiarism — only 112 citizens nationwide could be sufficiently bothered to use the new law to complain. One quarter of all complaints were declined outright and a fifth related to the heat of ‘neighbourhood disputes’, so a pathetic residue of a dozen or so, still unadjudicated, is left as the flimsiest hard evidence ever collected for the argument that racial vilification is the constant scourge of the national population of 18 million souls.

Statewise the story is the same. Ray Jureidini tells us that in New South Wales (NSW) in 1993-94 only 94 racial vilification complaints were made to the NSW Board, of which 14 were beyond jurisdiction, 17 otherwise declined, and 48 not proceeded with, leaving only fifteen complaints to receive some attention on their merits. That is, only three or four citizens per million of the NSW citizenry could be bothered to put pen to paper.

With all the figures running so heavily against her catechism of ubiquitous racism (the Race Discrimination Commissioner herself has had to admit that the first twenty years of the Race Discrimination Act 1975 could coax out complaints Australia-wide at the effective rate of barely four a working week for her squadron of race experts at the Race Discrimination Unit to get their teeth into), she now resorts to comparatives, announcing recently ‘a big increase in complaints’, complaints based on racism have ‘doubled’ and ‘exceed sex-base complaints for the first time’.¹ The reality behind the bluster is still chicken-feed; even with the bonus of the 112 new complaints, she still has only what? One ostensibly meritorious complaint per working day to handle?

Jureidini’s article thus is an antidote to the excesses of the Racism is Everywhere Hooray School for whom every daily recital of incident or anecdote is claimed to reinforce some sort of Heroic Presumption of the verity of its dogma.

Secondly, Mr Jureidini provides an object lesson in how a priori belief can distract an otherwise rigorously inquiring mind. Disclosing a conviction that ‘significant behavioural change’ is needed from us, he strains at every gnat to avoid drawing the conclusion of the rarity of racism: is the absence of criminal sanctions to blame? should we take away the defence of fair comment or public interest or public debate? He seeks a prop in ‘informal evidence of abuse, fear and trepidation’, evidence that always melts away in the daylight. And dragging in Thornton as authority for the universality of endemic racism is akin to quoting the Reverend Ian Paisley for the balance on the subject of Roman Catholicism. In the Review article Juriedini quotes her from, she actually identifies men as the cause of all the world’s troubles, specifically all those ‘who are Anglo-Celtic, heterosexual, able-bodied and middle-class, the ubiquitous comparators of discrimination law(sic)’.²

At present, of all the forms that racism can take, our Australian law chooses to outlaw only two — racial discrimination and offensive behaviour based on racial hatred, leaving all the other petty racism in the purely moral sphere along with rudeness, fibbing, unkindness, cheating at cards, adultery and the rest of the Sins. Dragging all racism into the criminal camp would be futile, for if criminalisation guarantees eradication, how come murder is still with us? And why not criminalise all sins and thereby usher in Heaven on Earth?

The race debate continues to be crippled by the steadfast refusal of all concerned to define their fundamental term. When Father Brennan SJ can opine that we are all racist anyway (wryly relating his reaction at being mugged by negroes in the USA)³, the term has obviously become useless. In the absence of a statutory definition I propose for general use:

‘Racism’ means, variously:

No clay can be found in Australia in 1997 to build any bricks for racism; the few scattered straws are barely enough to build a bird’s nest. We do have the usual share of boors and idiots who, like the poor, will always be with us.

References

It is curious that Ross MacGregor has bothered to write a rather cheap point scoring exercise on my article with quite outdated and fallacious arguments. He is obviously a man with a mission.

With the sophistry of a lawyer, Mr MacGregor’s argument suggests that anything which cannot be measured or seen does not exist — a rather anachronistic empiricism. If we were only to rely upon formal, institutionalised evidence we would have a very narrow view of how social forces operate. It would be interesting if Mr MacGregor took the same position with regard to crime generally. Does he believe that to measure the crime rate in Australia it is sufficient to look at the number of cases which come before the courts? He knows full well that people get away with criminal behaviour every day (including serious crimes), but the statistical evidence cannot be reliably produced. How many rape victims bring formal charges against rapists? How does he judge the incidence of rape in Australia? What of incest, of child abuse, sexual harassment, domestic violence, racial discrimination? In Queensland a few days ago six men with Ku Klux Klan hoods severely bashed an Aboriginal man — one of at least four such incidents against Aborigines in Queensland in the past two months (the Australian, 7/6/97). That such incidences do not come before the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) does not mean that racism does not exist in Australia.

What MacGregor does not take into account is that criminal laws exist which do not acknowledge racist motivations or actions. For example, a conviction for property damage may in fact be for writing racist graffiti. This point was made in my discussion as part of the argument for criminal sanctions against racial hatred. The problem is that criminal cases which involve racism (as defined under the Act) do not have the racist or ethnic element formally acknowledged or counted and so the statistics again do not indicate the true level of racial hatred in Australia. Last week a stone was thrown at an Asian student in a Melbourne high school. It will not reach the statistics.

I thought I had made it clear that the 112 formal complaints to HREOC were not to be seen as indicative of the level of racial hatred or racist violence, vilification and discrimination in Australia. The Commission in addition receives many telephone and other inquiries, which also require consideration and analysis. Importantly, however (to anticipate Mr MacGregor), the relatively low level of formal complaints to the Commission does not support an argument that HREOC or the Race Discrimination Commissioner are inadequate or ineffective because they do not attract more complaints. An alternative interpretation is that HREOC needs an increase in support to find more ways to bring justice to victims of racism, to educate the public and to ensure that these types of behaviour are not to be tolerated. To accept, as MacGregor does, that these people are mostly ‘boors and idiots who like the poor will always be with us’ is to adopt a highbrow complacency which reveals little understanding of what it means to be on the wrong end of racism, however trivial it may be perceived.

It was also pointed out in my article that there are many reasons why victims of racial hatred (including violence, intimidation and abuse) do not use the law. The Victorian Inquiry into Racial Vilification in 1990 acknowledged some of these reasons. Not everyone, and perhaps particularly migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds, feel they have access to formal recourse against others. They often come from repressive regimes (through no fault of their own) and thus their reluctance to pursue the issue is understandable. Further, harassment and abuse by unidentified perpetrators do not find their way into HREOC’s statistics of formal complaints. These are relegated to ‘anecdotal’ evidence, and for commentators like MacGregor are not to be treated seriously. The ‘rarity of racism’ is certainly not proven by MacGregor.

Since September 1996, there have been a number of accounts of Australians of Asian and Muslim backgrounds fearing to leave their homes for fear of racist taunts, abuse and possible violence. People do not respond this way for no reason. Does MacGregor feel comfortable in dismissing these perceptions of threat as irrational? Anecdotal accounts must be taken as serious indicators of racism.

The idea that ‘only 112 citizens nationwide could be sufficiently bothered to use the new law to complain’ indicates MacGregor’s narrow formalism and I find the suggestion in these terms utterly offensive. It may be suggested that MacGregor does not have an adequate understanding of what it is like to experience racism (perhaps he thinks he does). It is one thing to offer formal definitions, but another to be sensitive enough to know the subtle pernicious ways which racism can be played out of sight of the law, where, in the light of day, all that is solid seems to melt into the air.

Victims of racism and discrimination usually know when they are victims. They can feel it, smell it; there is an odour of meanness and injustice and hatred (to use a phrase from Graham Greene). It can be expressed in lawful and unlawful ways — and people can get away with it. Just as tax avoiders, knowing the loopholes can arrange their activities beyond legal recourse, so can Section 18D offer protection for clever racists under the guise of the public interest and freedom of speech.

I, for one, do not want a return to the atmosphere of the assimilationist 1950s and 1960s when a child could tell an adult migrant to ‘shut-up’ and stop speaking their ‘foreign’ language in public (‘that jibber-jabber’). That colonialist consciousness hopefully has no place in Australia any more, although it does still exist.

Nor do I want to envisage a political system whose leaders feel satisfied that it does not need an institution like HREOC, however powerless it may have become. HREOC also serves as a symbolic pillar establishing human rights standards and benchmarks for acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour in Australia. HREOC and the Race Discrimination Commissioner are essential, for the rule of law does not always cater for the experiences of the powerless, the inarticulate and fearful citizens. For many reasons, not all victims of racism, even if the ‘opportunity’ is there, have the courage or the wherewithal to ‘take on’ their persecutors.

STEP MIGRATION FROM NEW ZEALAND: HOW MANY AND FROM WHERE?
by Virginia Rapson

The scale of third country migration from New Zealand (NZ) has been the subject of recent public discussion. Under the reciprocal Trans-Tasman Arrangement, New Zealand (NZ) citizens are able to move into and out of Australia freely. In 1995-96 the NZ-born (12,265) formed the largest birthplace group settling in Australia.¹ But, in addition to these NZ- born settlers, another 3,835 NZ citizens who were not born in either NZ or Australia entered Australia permanently (see accompanying table, p. 86). These overseas-born NZ citizens form an increasing share of all NZ citizens settling in Australia. NZ citizens are not incorporated into the official government migration program numbers but are counted in the number of settler arrivals each year. Twice as many (16,238) NZ citizens settled in Australia in 1995-96 as in 1992-92 (8,206).²

In 1995-96, the largest group (more than 36 per cent) of the 3,835 overseas-born NZ-citizen settlers were of Polynesian birth (mostly Western Samoan). The number of Polynesia-born NZ-citizen settlers grew from 366 in 1991-92 to 1,373 in 1995-96. The next major birthplace group are the Asia-born who now exceed the once dominant UK-born flow from NZ. The Asia-born formed 27 per cent of overseas-born NZ citizen settlers who arrived in Australia during 1995-96. Their numbers grew from 164 in 1991-92 to 1,038 in 1995-96. The largest group was the Taiwan-born, and together with the two next largest birthplace groups (Vietnam and China), they made up nearly half of the Asia-born NZ citizen settlers who arrived in Australia during 1995-96. But, even though the Asia-born form an increasingly significant proportion of total NZ-citizen settler arrivals, they only represented 2.6 per cent of all Asia-born permanent arrivals to Australia during 1995-96.³

Given the upsurge in the number of residence approvals granted by the NZ government after the introduction of its ‘targeted’ immigration policy in November 1991,⁴ the number of overseas-born who are eligible to take out NZ citizenship will increase over the next few years. To gain NZ citizenship by grant, applicants have to have resided in NZ for three years and intend to continue to reside in NZ or intend to continue to be in the employment of a NZ person or business.⁵

Permanent settlers constitute only one component of the Trans-Tasman flow. The 1995-96 net permanent long-term data shown in the table suggest that there is a differential return pattern according to birthplace. The departures from Australia are overwhelmingly the NZ-born and their Australian-born offspring. The net effect currently is a strengthening of the impact of the inward movement of overseas-born NZ citizens.

Does it matter? This depends on how the NZ immigration program differs from the Australian program. In effect, under the existing Trans-Tasman Arrangement, the NZ program is selecting potential Australian immigrants. If the NZ program is more lenient in its selection criteria than the Australian program (and it has been claimed to be so by some⁶), then it may matter if large numbers of immigrants wishing to come to Australia (but ineligible under Australia’s program) use NZ as a stepping stone to enter Australia.

References

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