Within Australia in recent years, increased exposure and critical examination of previously unassailable immigration doctrine has left it weakened. Now there is new front-line argumentation being adopted.
It involves a pushing to prominence of the 'irresistible international mass movements of people' scenario conflated with a novel inversion of the old 'yellow peril descending hordes' theory. Both are tinged with veiled threats of 'international intervention' should we fail to see the wisdom of doing the right thing by our over populated Asian neighbors. These rationalizations are in the first instance aimed at our hip pocket nerve in order to put a happy prosperous face on the pseudo demographic inevitability of having to incorporate much more epicanthic fold and pigmentation into the national gene pool. This will supposedly insure Australia against both economic decline and the possibility of Asian aggression. These are strong claims, but not too strong given even the following necessarily limited quotes, references, and commentary marshalled to illustrate them.
I think that if we build up gradually inside Australia a proportion of people without white skins, then there will be a complete lack of consciousness that it is being built up and that we will arrive at a state where we have a multicultural country 1
1971 Prime Minister John Gorton
Over the last two decades, artificially generating retro-embarrassment about Australia's geographical existence has been raised to an art form. After being dumped as leader of the Australian Labor Party, Mr. Hayden became Foreign Minister. He said that Australians
should welcome the process of gradually becoming a Eurasian society we are an anomaly - a white race between us and the rest of the world we will not just become a multicultural society - which seems to me to be a soft sort of terminology anyway - we will become a Eurasian society and we will be the better for it.2
Yet in 1986, when answering a question in parliament as to what extent Vietnamese immigrants have been able to use their privileged status in Cambodia to force Khmer out of desirable occupations of land, Mr. Hayden replied
The Australian Government has made it clear to Vietnam and the Asian countries that we would be seriously concerned if allegations that Vietnam intended to change the population balance of Cambodia were substantiated.3
He assured that no expression of 'serious concern' has been registered about Indonesia's Transmigration Programs which are escalating racial, ethnic, cultural, and environmental extinction rates in Irian Jaya and Kalimantan. In March this year Mr. Hayden, now Governor General, supported the new wave orthodoxy saying that
the influx of immigrants from Asia and the Middle East was irreversible and irresistible This is precisely what is happening in Britain, Germany, France, Canada, and the U.S. And consequently, the cultural cross-fertilization that I have spoken about is taking place on a scale never before experienced.4
It might be argued that rather than utopian 'cross-fertilization', the oft predicted mutant outgrowths of multiracial multicultural unhappiness evidenced at Brixton, Brindis, Vaux en Velin, Los Angeles, and Rostock are the bitter fruits of excessive migration. The risks being taken by today's Australian policy makers with no mandate from the people are unacceptable.
In talking up the Multi Function Polis, a Japanese inspired mega-project in Australia, Senator John Button said last year
development of the resources in this country will be absolutely crucial to its future. I strongly believe that if we are not prepared to do it someone else might. In one way or another.5
Dr. Stephen Fitzgerald, Australia's first ambassador to China, responsible for the 1988 landmark government report and recommendations on immigration and multiculturalism, Director of the Asia-Australia Institute, and widely acknowledged influential sinophile, has an often heard voice in Asian and immigration policy making circles. He has said
My concern about Australia's performance is balanced by my belief in its future. The lazy country will be the lovely country, the white society will be the honey-colored society and the ugly duckling will become the honey-colored swan.6
Ex-Prime Minister Hawke's repeated statements on our Asian future are legend. Last year in a speech to Dr. Fitzgerald's Asia-Australian Institute he stated
A most important step in drawing closer to Asia is that we have accepted and welcomed the fact that people from Asia form part, and most likely an increasing part, of our population, and that Asian culture will, likewise, form an increasing part of our national heritage. No less important has been the transformation our economic relationship with Asia we will continue to make this a major priority.7
Mr. Hawke's comments best display the 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' subterfuge. In his terms if you object you're a racist, if you don't, then you must like it. The conflation of race and cultural change as a necessary economic imperative for success is also obviously fatuous. The title of Hawke's lecture was 'Australia's Security in Asia.' Need I say more!
In 1989 hundreds of prominent Australians, many of them immigration/multicultural enthusiasts, bathed together in reflected divinity through the Australia Tibet Council's endorsement of the speech made by His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama of Tibet accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. He stated
The issue of most urgent concern at this time, is the massive influx of Chinese settlers into Tibet this development which threatens the very survival of the Tibetan nation, its culture and spiritual heritage can still be stopped and reversed. But this must be done now before it is too late.8
Many of those who support the Dalai Lama's cause are quick to scream racism when the same sentiments are expressed for the same reasons by an Australian, in Australia, about Australia's future.
In U.S. Senate debate against the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, Senator Strom Thurmond said
The wish to preserve one's own identity and the identity of one's nation requires no justification and no belief in racial or national superiority any more than the wish to have one's own children, and continue one's own family through them, need be justified or rationalized by a belief that they are superior to the children of others.9
In like fashion, the Australian majority's arguments were well summed up by Graeme Campbell, Federal Member for Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
Do governments accept the principles, firstly, that the interest of the residents of Australia should be their first priority? And secondly, that this country is a democracy and that therefore the Government should not pursue policies which run counter to the will of the great bulk of its population? We are not part of Asia, and we do not need to become part of Asia to be successful. Our leaders seem to feel the need not only to apologize for being different in the region, but to erase that difference by erasing our identity.10
Noted Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey recently said
There has never been a well-argued case for Canberra's experiment. That is why criticism of the experiment has not been very welcome.11
References
1. 'The Australian', 25-1-71. An interview with Prime Minister John Gorton.
2. The Melbourne 'Age', 11-5-83. Hayden Hope For A Eurasian Australia. By Peter Smark.
3. Hansard. House of Reps., 19-8-86, p.56.
4. Sydney Morning Herald, 5-3-91, Hayden Backs Asian Ties, by Peter Harcher.
5. The Melbourne 'Age', 19-6-91, Button Gives a Boost to Misunderstood MFP. By Tom Burton.
6. The 'West Australian', 24-11-90. Lazy Country Must Change Its Psyche. By Dr. Stephen Fitzgerald.
7. 'Australia's Security in Asia', The Asia Lecture by R.J. Hawke, P.M. at the Asia-Australia Institute in Sydney, 24-5-91.
8. 1989, 'In Support of World Peace, Australians Congratulate H.H. the Dalia Lama, etc.
9. Strom Thurmond, U.S. Senate Proceedings, Sept. 17, 1965, Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 89th Congress, p. 478.
10. 'Industry Policy, Directions for Growth' a discussion paper by Graeme Campbell, MHR, Member for Kalgoorlie, August 1992, pp. 1-3.
11. Australian Business Monthly, July 1992, p. 34, 'The Immigration Debate. Blainey vs. Business.'