
Issue No 115		12 October 2001

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History

Conditions Precedent

Frank Bongiorno writes that the recent events off the coast of Christmas Island recall a story once told by Paul Hasluck.

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The year was 1945 and the scene the San Francisco Conference at which the United Nations was formed. Hasluck was there as an adviser to the Australian Minister for External Affairs, H.V. Evatt.

One evening some Australian delegates walked into a bar where they encountered the Czech politician, Jan Masaryk. Earlier in the day, Evatt had criticised Masaryk for failing to support an Australian proposal.

'Here come the Australians,' announced Masaryk jovially, 'the people who have no geography.' When one of the Australians protested lamely, Masaryk walked over to a map of the world on the club's wall. 'Where is Australia?' asked Masaryk in mock puzzlement. 'Ha, here it is, way down here. And what is around Australia? Nothing. Water. No neighbours. A long way from everywhere. And where is Czechoslovakia?' Sure enough, Masaryk found it in central Europe, looking vulnerable to the Soviet giant looming on its eastern border.

These geopolitical realities would have tragic consequences three years later, when a coup brought Masaryk's nation within the communist bloc and he was himself almost certainly murdered by communist thugs. Evatt, on the other hand, died in bed in 1965, the privileged end that most Australian politicians enjoy.

Half a century later, as the Australian government was provoking a diplomatic incident over the arrival of a few hundred boat people, there were millions of refugees and asylum seekers around the world sitting in camps in much poorer countries than our own. Australia, in fact, will never have to deal with anything more than the merest trickle of refugees because she is, as our national anthem tells us, 'girt by sea'.

Australia arguably owes 'Girt' a great debt. She has provided the country with a measure of natural protection against 'cheap' foreign goods, potential invaders and hordes of 'coloured' folk. 'Girt' has also helped to breed insularity, a fear of the foreign and a naivety about the scale and significance of Australia's problems in the global scheme of things.

Two fears have long exercised white Australians, both legacies of our sense of isolation as European peoples in the Asia-Pacific region. One, less powerful today than even 30 years ago, is the fear of invasion. The historian Robert Hyslop has estimated that there were nearly 200 war scares in Australia before Federation. The feared enemy varied, but included France, Germany, Russia, the United States, China, Japan and even occasionally Holland and Spain. In September 1854, at the time of the Crimean War, Melbourne went into a panic when some of its citizens heard cannon fire and rockets appeared in the sky above the city. Word got around that the Russians had landed. It soon emerged that the racket had been caused by a ship celebrating her release from quarantine.

Yet a more persistent Australian dread is that of being swamped by 'undesirables'. This has a long history, which perhaps found its clearest expression in the publicity given to a reported remark of a Chinese man during the gold rushes of the 1850s that all China was coming. In recent times, the threat has been similarly identified as Asian, as in Hansonite rhetoric, but early in the 20th century the intruder was sometimes Jewish or European--particularly Southern European.

The danger has most commonly been perceived as racial, but not always so. Convicts were a particular concern. In 1852 the Victorian parliament passed a bill that sought to prevent convicts with conditional pardons flooding into the colony from Tasmania. Australian governments in the 19th century were also hostile to the presence of French convicts in that country's Pacific possessions because of the possibility that they might end up here. And the appearance in Sydney in 1849 of the convict ship, the Hashemy, set off angry protests led by our federation father, Henry Parkes. This agitation ended an unpopular attempt by the British government to renew convict transportation.

Parkes was also in the forefront of anti-Chinese manoeuvres in 1888 when a ship (called, ironically, the Afghan) arrived in Sydney, carrying about 250 Chinese immigrants. It had previously tried landing at Port Melbourne, but the Victorian government managed to contrive reasons for sending the ship away. It then moved on to Sydney, where there were violent anti-Chinese protests. Parkes, as premier, rushed through draconian legislation in a single day to stop the Chinese from landing. Sound familiar?

The appearance of a ship carrying 'undesirables' has on more than one occasion in Australian history been the focus of government concern and popular protest. In 1916 the arrival in Australia of a boatload of Maltese immigrants was badly timed as far as Prime Minister Billy Hughes and the advocates of military conscription for overseas service were concerned. Its appearance during the height of the bitter debate over conscription added credibility to the claims of some anti-conscriptionists that employers intended to replace white Australian conscripts with cheap 'coloured' labour. Rather like the appearance of the Tampa, the Maltese immigrant ship served a useful domestic political purpose.

In 1885, at the time New South Wales sent troops to an imperial war in the Sudan, a little boy from Manly named Ernest Laurence wrote to the premier sending money to assist the cause. A Bulletin cartoonist seized on the event, and created an Australian symbol--The Little Boy at Manly--who came to stand for a people who had not yet grown up. This Australia was impudent, naive and ignorant of the ways of the world; it was yet to put away childish things. The Little Boy at Manly appeared in cartoons for years, but seems to have eventually disappeared, perhaps at the point when Australians had the Anzacs and Gallipoli to show that they had come of age.

We may have dispensed with the Little Boy at Manly prematurely. He was on display during the Tampa crisis, when an affluent Western nation in its centenary year tried to convince itself and the world that it is hard put upon by the world's riff-raff. I would like to advocate that the Little Boy at Manly be taken out of retirement.

Frank Bongiorno lectures in Australian History at the University of New England, Armidale

For ten years Eureka Street has been publishing incisive articles on refugee and immigration issues. These articles are now collected in The Immigration and Refugee Resource Kit. This comprehensive collection of articles provides an independent account of the debates surrounding immigration and refugees in Australia for the last ten years.

Features: The resource kit provides a ten-year history, as well as up-to-date analysis of the latest news and policy developments.

Articles address:

� The Australian government's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers

� The global scale of the refugee situation

� Australia's obligations under regional and international treaties on human rights

� International political conflicts with effects beyond geographical and political boundaries

�

The readership: The resource kit provides a reference for secondary students, their teachers, and all those interested in the issues of immigration and refugees in Australia. The kit relates directly to the curricula of Contemporary Australian Society, Political Studies, and International Studies, but could also be used in the specific Country studies.

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  Issue 115 contents

Interview: Connecting the State
NSW IT minister Kim Yeadon is the man responsible for enabling the people of NSW. Here's how he's doing it.

Workplace: The Enemy Within
In the IT industry it's the recruiters who are earning the workers' ire, as our special correspondent explains.

Unions: From the Virtual Coalface
Computer programmer Vince Caughley argues there is a place for unions in the IT industry.

History: Conditions Precedent
Frank Bongiorno writes that the recent events off the coast of Christmas Island recall a story once told by Paul Hasluck.

International: Victims of Terrorism
Repression against trade unionists on the increase world wide, with 209 trade unionists assassinated last year, reveals ICFTU 2001 Survey.

Campaign Diary: Week One: Get Shorty
Labor's first week of campaigning was as an effort to gain attention from a nation rocked by the telvised war on terrorism.

Economics: Global Alliances
Ray Marcelo reports from India that the ILO is arguing that globalisation needs a worker and employer alliance.

Health: The Phantom Menace
Trade unions made an impact this week at an international congress In Melbourne in the global fight against AIDS.

Review: Rings of Confidence
In his study on the 2000 Olympics, Tony Webb argues that the government and unions reached a new level of cooperation.

Satire: Greens 'Quietly Unconfident' of Forming Government
A leaked memo from a senior member of the Greens reveals the party is unconfident of winning government on November 10.

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