Posted on 8-7-2004

The no worries society

Australian nonchalance can hide an unwillingness to look squarely at the country's race problems, writes David Fickling

Tuesday July 6, 2004

Australian racists hate to be told they are racists. When an Australian recommends the forced eviction of Aborigines from their own land, it is presented as social welfare. When an Australian advocates imprisoning Iraqi and Afghan refugees in secretive detention camps, it is presented as border control.
So when Australian racists first raised objections to the building of a small Muslim prayer hall in the Sydney suburb of Annangrove last year, they used a typically weaselly complaint. The problem with the hall, objectors argued, was that 80 men and women turning up to pray twice a week would irrevocably change the purportedly semi-rural character of the area.

To reinforce the non-racist point, last month attackers desecrated the building site with a bucket of blood and three pig's heads on sticks. Abbas Aly, the developer of the site, it used to such responses and takes it on the chin. When a planning application for the hall first came before the local council in late 2002, it was turned down by a vote of 10 to two. Baulkham Hills council had received 5,180 letters objecting to the prayer hall - an average of around 10 letters from each of the 530 addresses which submitted complaints, although one diligent household managed to mail out 260.

Councillors might normally be expected to stand up for rational clearheadedness in the face of such hysteria, but after Australia's 2001 federal election the views of a racist minority have acquired a new sanctity. The deputy mayor said the development should be stopped because a Muslim prayer hall would go against the "shared beliefs, customs and values of the local community". His boss, less keen to mince words, told a mediation meeting that "girls and ladies" felt they would be at risk from family groups coming to the suburb to pray.

The provisional wing of this movement helped out by chucking a brick through the windows of a house standing on the site, setting fire to its rubbish bins, and scrawling graffiti over it. After a court battle overturned the council's planning refusal last year, the campaign continued, culminating in last month's attack.

The intimidation has not distracted Mr Aly from continuing to build. Muslim law, he points out, only forbids the consumption of pork: the attackers appear to have hoped to render the site ritually unclean, but rehabilitation will involve nothing more complicated than washing off the bloodstains.

He also maintains that local churches have supported him in his battle against the council and the redneck objectionists, despite widespread reporting linking the attacks to the fact that Baulkham Hills is the closest thing Sydney has to a Bible belt.

There is an important point here. In the wake of September 11 and the Bali bombings, Islamophobic attacks in Australia have a particular resonance and importance, but they are far from unique. Indeed, what is often most striking in Australia is how common such racism is and how little it is remarked upon.

Australian readers, who are deeply touchy about criticism from expat poms, will be quick to point out that Britons are in no place to preach. Only last week, the Guardian reported that stop-and-search of British Asians under post-September 11 anti-terror laws quadrupled in 2003, leading to fresh concerns about racial profiling. Refugees are scapegoated in Britain much as they are in Australia, though for the most part with less damaging effect.

But the important distinction comes in the way the two countries treat the racism in their societies. In Britain, years of campaigning have resulted in a climate where the political mainstream sees open bigotry as a grave problem that should be tackled; in Australia, such behaviour is still tolerated.

Imagine, for instance, if three Asian restaurants were firebombed in one night in a British regional city, accompanied by swastikas painted on the walls. Imagine if the police force investigating the attacks were already under fire for an incident involving officers dressing as Ku Klux Klan members.

Or imagine if a senior officer on the nation's largest police force - equally under fire for its handling of some of the biggest race riots in the nation's history - were to be caught using similar language to that of Mark Wright, a New South Wales police superintendent who has escaped punishment after describing police operations among rural Aborigines as "chasing coons around the bush".

It doesn't take a great stretch to imagine the sequence of events happening in Britain, but the public response has been dramatically different. Whereas the scandals over nail bomber David Copeland and the BBC's Secret Policeman documentary caused prolonged bouts of soul-searching in the British media, this has all happened over the past year with barely a peep of criticism from papers, radio and television.

It's not just the media that are ignoring the problem either. Try to gain a picture of the extent of racially-motivated crime in Australia and you'll draw a blank, because police don't believe there's a need to keep statistics on the subject.

It is hard to know what to make of this, especially since Australians are for the most part a pretty tolerant bunch. Many are proud of their country's multiculturalism, and the proportion of non-white ethnic groups is marginally higher than in the UK. Some of the most apparently backward outback towns have welcomed refugees into their communities, on the admirably pragmatic grounds that it's worthwhile having hard workers in depressed towns regardless of their complexion or religion.

But the failure of all but the most committed placard-wavers to face up to the darker side of life in Australia still stands out. Many expat poms here describe a similar feeling about their new home - a combined excitement about the positive outlook on life, along with a baffled disappointment at the seeming unreality of things.

Stand around a barbie on a midwinter weekend when the mercury stands at 25°C, and it's easy to forget that you're living in a rich country where a third of Aboriginal children are malnourished, where refugee children are incarcerated for up to five years without trial, and where the government lies to the people to win elections and prosecute adventurist wars. Scandals that would bring down a Westminster government scarcely rate a tremor on Canberra's political seismometer.

Perhaps it's something to do with all that sunshine. Like SAD sufferers let loose in a solarium, Australians have a relentless optimism about their country, characterised by the cliched mantras of "no worries" and "she'll be [all] right". At best, this is a healthy corrective to the negativity summed up in the image of the whinging pom; at worst, it takes the form of a state of denial about the things that are wrong with the country.

It needs to change. Australia should be able to build a sense of self-respect without recourse to evasive myths that treat racism as a family secret to be swept under the carpet and ignored. The British may love to scratch away at their sores, but scrutinising your sickness might just give you a chance to cure it. Pretending it doesn't exist does nothing but give it time to spread.