The Liberals’ Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in a televised ABC interview claimed that the federal government was admitting immigrants “from particular countries over others”, to maximise the Labor vote. “There is a concern with the Indian community, and only because there’s been large numbers, and we can see that reflected in the way the community votes for Labor,” she said.
Loading
Price’s claim seems to mark Indian-Australians as part of a mammoth political “stack” of the country and part of a partisan project. It demeans the intelligence and motives of almost a million fellow Australians. And it paints Indian-Australians as opponents of the Coalition. She issued a retraction an hour later. But, arguably, this was worse than a hurtful act of discrimination, and it should be a disqualification from one of Australia’s parties of government.
We see a former premier travelling 10,000 kilometres to grovel in front of a murder of the world’s worst dictators, lending a patina of Australian imprimatur to the fetishisation of the world’s most intimidating military build-up since the end of the Cold War. And insulting the values and the experiences of many Australian-Chinese people: “I watched with horror as former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews prostituted himself,” wrote Helen Shao, a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre who migrated to Australia, a safe haven, where she owns a small business.
“There he was, standing in the same square where my friends were murdered, shoulder to shoulder with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un,” she writes in this masthead. It’s not only the same square where the massacre of Chinese students occurred, it’s also the same political party presiding.
Andrews attempted to justify himself by saying he was helping a “constructive” business relationship between China and Australia. Reporting by my colleague Eryk Bagshaw exposed that it appears he was chiefly constructing an income for himself.
Loading
Another Labor figure, former Australian foreign affairs minister Bob Carr, also travelled to China this week. Like Andrews, he attended the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, designed as the basis for Beijing’s alternative, anti-Western world order.
At the last minute, however, Carr withdrew from the goon squad cheering the People’s Liberation Army parade: suggesting that Andrews is more committed to his cupidity than Carr is to his stupidity.
Anthony Albanese and Sussan Ley distanced themselves from all of these acts of hate, discrimination and insensitivity, while defending the right to political protest. The thousands of Australians taking part in the self-styled Marches for Australia were ordinary, decent folk with legitimate concerns about the management of the immigration program, they said. Fair enough. The management of the program is far from perfect, and citizens must be allowed to say so.
And Albanese explained to his caucus why it would be unwise to issue a blanket condemnation of all the protesters: “We have to make sure we give people space to move away and to not push them further down that rabbit hole.” But he was shocked that the rallies gave a platform to neo-Nazis, he said.
We have to hope and trust that the good people in the marches will indeed move away after witnessing the aftermath of the rally in Melbourne. Recall that the purpose of the marches was supposedly to express concerns about immigration.
Yaraan Couzens Bundle and Robbie Thorpe speak with the media on Monday after the neo-Nazi attack on Camp Sovereignty.Credit: Justin McManus
So where did the neo-Nazi mob go after the rally? To attack an Aboriginal group. These are the only people in our country who are not immigrants, or descendants of immigrants. That’s why they’re called “Indigenous”. Or “First Nations”.
You could call it ironic that purportedly anti-immigration protesters would specifically seek out and violently attack the only non-immigrants on our continent. I’d prefer to call it evidence. The thugs who made their way to Melbourne’s botanic gardens to assault the Indigenous people at Camp Sovereignty are not concerned with principles or policies of immigration. They are simply racist criminals.
All of these incidents took place within a week. But is this situation really any worse than it’s been in the past, in the decades since our country abandoned White Australia and decided to pursue multiculturalism?
Loading
There have always been outbreaks of racism, discrimination and violence from time to time in limited ways and in isolated incidents, and some systemic discrimination against Indigenous Australians persists to this day in parts of the country.
Here’s one benchmark to measure by, one that’s quite personal to the prime minister. When Albanese was a uni student running for election to the presidency of the Sydney University Student Representative Council in 1983, one of his opponents was a far-right leader of the racist National Action group, James Saleam. National Action soon collapsed when Saleam was jailed for organising a shotgun attack on an African National Congress member.
Albanese this week remarked to colleagues that the 1980s extremist Saleam didn’t advertise himself as a neo-Nazi, but today’s far-right racists march around in distinctive black uniforms. And their leader this week confronted the Victorian premier in broad daylight, with cameras rolling, at a press conference. This is an entirely new level of brazenness.
What’s happened? Donald Trump has set a new benchmark. He’s brought unabashed bigotry from the fringe to the centre of Western political and social life. And so-called social media is a grudge oven and a hate machine. The algorithms seek out division, fear and anger, and intensify all of it. And, by creating the impression for users that everyone else shares their views, emboldens them.
These are civilisation-altering shifts. Australia must consciously counter them, or we will fall prey to them, as some other Western democracies are in the process of doing. Of course, it’s vital that immigration is well managed. And that the growing pains of population growth are kept in check if we hope to retain social harmony.
Neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell confronting Premier Jacinta Allan.Credit: Nine News
But we also need political and social and religious leaders to remind us of our achievements and advantages, lest we allow our grievances to devour us.
The vision splendid for our nation was articulated by Noel Pearson in 2014: “Our nation is in three parts. There is our ancient heritage, written in the continent and original culture painted on its land and seascapes. There is its British inheritance, the structures of government and society transported from the UK fixing its foundations in the ancient soil. There is its multicultural achievement: a triumph of immigration that brought together the gifts of peoples and cultures from all over the globe – forming one indissoluble commonwealth.”
This is our unique reality and opportunity. Today, Australia stands on the brink of dissolving into mindless hatred and hurt. Who benefits from such fraying? A handful of self-interested agitators, the self-aggrandising hatemongers. The foreign trillion-dollar “social” media firms which profit from social harm. And the autocrats who destabilise democratic societies as a matter of state policy.
And to Australia’s victims of hate who wonder whether they should leave the country, this thought. If even Australia surrenders to the ancient evils of hate and racism, where on Earth will be safe?
Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.
