The Australian Beware: bigotry is back By Phillip Adams 01sep01

A POWERFUL symbol of inspiration in a world of incarceration, Amnesty International's symbol is a candle shining through a coil of barbed wire. You see this activists' hieroglyph writ large on many an Amnesty poster - or scaled down to a discreet badge for the lapel.

As one of Amnesty's more energetic members - a co-founder of the parliamentary branch - Philip Ruddock wore that badge proudly for many years. These days he displays it defiantly, ignoring the demands of many Amnesty members that he remove it - and himself from the organisation.

The reason for the row couldn't be simpler. Ruddock is in the barbed wire business. The bloke who had an admirable reputation for progressive views on immigration is in charge of the detention centres for people characterised as illegals - an odd term, given that they've broken no laws and that they're exercising a human right guaranteed by international treaties. Amnesty's candle no longer shines through Ruddock's barbed wire. He has long since blown it out.

Asylum-seeker has disappeared. At best, you're a queue jumper; at worst a criminal, a terrorist, someone who's bringing hidden wealth or disease, or both, to our fair land. When we sing Advance Australia Fair, fair doesn't mean just, unbiased, equitable but blond, light or pale in colour or complexion. For we're back in the world of White Australia.

Remember the Yellow Peril? The idea that the teeming millions would come pouring down from above, filtering through the narrow waist of South-East Asia. In a policy as appalling as apartheid and more enduring, we vilified the yellow, brown and black. They were less than human. They were the embodiment of evil. It took us 70 years to disengage ourselves from this shameful policy of official bigotry embodied in grotesque legislation.

It wasn't so long ago that our immigration policy could be summed up in the slogan "Populate or perish". Decoded, it meant that if we didn't breed enough white babies, if we couldn't attract enough Brits, or find enough blond, blue-eyed Balts, the time for the white man would soon run out. We'd be overrun. The propaganda that supported this prejudice was as obscene as Julius Streicher's portrayal of Jews in his Nazi rag. Asians were depicted as rabid and rat-like, while Africans were rapists.

At the same time, indigenous Australians were being dispossessed and despised.

This was the nadir of Australian history, all the more appalling because white Australians like to describe themselves as tolerant. We still insist that tolerance is our defining characteristic - yet for generations it was hard to distinguish our official racism from that of the Nazi eugenicists.

Today's detention centres exist for two reasons: to warn off the asylum-seekers by replacing the symbolism of the Olympic torch with the sweep of the searchlight; and to play to Australia's racial paranoia, to the One Nation factor as the election drums are beating.

Although Ruddock is the principal tub-thumper of this disgusting policy, Con Sciacca, the Opposition spokesman, isn't worth feeding. Here is another issue on which the Opposition plays dead, at best suggesting some finetuning to the system, at worst playing to the same electoral fears. To ratchet up the nastiness, Ruddock wants to imprison people for up to 10 years if they assist anyone to escape from a detention centre. If you offer an escapee sanctuary, he suggests the same sentence: 10 years. That's more than many people get for murder.

Even if a person arriving without documentation is granted asylum, they're still condemned for taking places reserved for genuine refugees. But don't suggest that a simpler cure for the problem would be to create a few more places. The pressure on Australia from illegals is all but nonexistent compared with the scale of unwelcome immigration to the US or Europe, but that doesn't stop Ruddock playing to lurid fantasies and ancient fears.

Hence the demonising of poor bastards fleeing Iran, Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. It might have been possible, just possible, for some refugees to join an official queue in the hope of being granted visas. But they rarely get much help from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.

In Pakistan, people have waited so long to be granted visas by Australian officialdom, they have died of old age. For details, read the recent working paper Security, People Smuggling and Australia's New Afghan Refugees, by William Maley, associate professor of politics at University College, University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Maley is also editor of Fundamentalism Reborn: Afghanistan and the Taliban (New York University Press). His report on the factors underpinning the recent Australian panic over the Afghan refugees and his studies of DIMA and its ineptitude are devastating.

But back to Ruddock's 10 years in the slammer. He says there wouldn't be "200 people in Australia" who would want to provide aid and succour to an escapee. In a sense he is absolutely right. There would be thousands.

I'm putting my hand up and asking others to join me. Let's sign up for a register of civil disobedience. Those who don't like this latter-day version of White Australia, who disapprove of the demonisation of Middle Easterners and Muslims, who feel like challenging a choreographed campaign of panic, of wedge politics, might like to drop me a line. (Sorry, no emails.) And I'll wave the names in the faces of the Government and the Opposition.

There are some fine human beings in detention, some of whom have been there for years. Apart from scholars and scientists, there are any number of people who were foolish enough to believe that Australia is a bastion of human rights and democratic decency.

Here's an issue that should transcend political affiliations; an issue in which Christians can join with members of other faiths, with people of no faith, in a campaign of unity. If you don't stand up to be counted, you're capitulating to the usual crowd of media bullies and their bigoted audiences, and to the politicians who fear and exploit them.

Let's pull down the barbed wire and light a few candles.

© 2001 The Australian

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