media shortcomings

Opinion

Race debate exposes media shortcomings

By Kalinga Seneviratne

At the end of September last year, Prime Minister John Howard claimed in a speech to his party faithfuls in Brisbane that since his elec tion victory in March, his government had created a new climate for “free speech” in Australia.

“One of the great changes that has come over Australia in the past six months is that people do feel able to speak a little more freely and a little more open ly about what they feel,” he said, “without living in fear of being branded a bigot or a racist.”

These comments, coming close on the heels of independent Brisbane MP Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech in par liament, obviously helped trigger the bit ter race debate we have seen in the media since then.

At the same time, it has raised ques tions about the Australian media’s short comings in responding to such issues, especially its cultural bias.

It was only when the economic back lash from Asia became apparent that Australian politicians and social analysts began to criticise the media for its role in triggering off the debate.

The economic backlash was mainly felt by Australia’s largest foreign exchange earner - the tourist industry when large numbers of Asians, especially Singaporeans, cancelled their Christmas holidays to Australia.

The tertiary education sector, which earns another SAI.7 billion (SUSI. 3 bil lion) a year via full-fee-paying overseas students began to get worried as well when Malaysia and other Asian countries raised fears about the safety of their stu dents here.

There is no doubt that this “Hanson race debate” would have been a non-issue if the Australian media had not aided and abetted her.

This Hanson Race debate

would have been a non-issue if the Australian media had not aided her

Howard’s “free speech” thesis has pro vided the media with a passport to give exposure to racist views under the pretext of freedom of speech.

A major theme of this debate has been Asian migrants’ perceived inability to integrate with the Australian society. But, as an Asian migrant who has lived here for the past 18 years, I see this debate more as a fear among predominantly White Anglo-Celtic working-class Australians that they would be the losers because of the very success of Asian migrants in integrating into Australian society in the past two decades.

They resent the fact that children of Asian migrants are doing well at school and are taking most of the places in the elite “selective” high schools and later in the universities.

They also resent it when new Asian migrants, especially accountants and computer specialists, get high-paid jobs almost immediately after arriving here, when they themselves have to struggle to make ends meet. In addition, they don’t like the sight of recent Asian business migrants driving expensive cars and buy ing into expensive suburbs in the city which they can only dream of.

While the majority of Asian migrants may be integrating well into Australian society, as well as doing well economical

ly, they have hardly got a presence in the Australian mainstream media.

The couple of ‘exotic’ newsreaders with Asian faces don’t mean the Asians have a voice in the media. This is why the “race debate” has been able to sustain itself by feeding on stereotypes such as unskilled Asian migrants living on wel fare benefits and swelling unemployment numbers or non-English speaking Asians setting up ghettos in suburban Australia.

For so long, Australia’s media believed they were the moral conscience of the region - it was only they who could expose racism, corruption and human rights violations in the Asia-Pacific region, but tables are turning now.

In an unprecedented attack on the Asian media in federal parliament, Howard said on October 29 last year that editorials written in leading newspapers in the region condemning him for failing to take a tougher stand against Hanson were “written in ignorance of what I have said, of what I believe, and of the policies of the government”.

After Australia’s carefully nurtured international reputation as a “fair go” country has been damaged in Asia, with the potential to damage Australia’s own economic future, political leaders are now beginning to accuse the media for trigger ing off the whole episode.

The former Labour Party leader, for eign minister and governor-general. Bill Hayden (whose old seat of Oxley is now occupied by Hanson), said in a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald ( SMH ) on November 4 that it was the “dominant influence of the media” which had made Hanson a celebrity.

“They are the ones who have convert ed an otherwise undistinguished and poorly informed backbencher into a national cult figure in her first six months in parliament,” observed Hayden. “In my more than 35 years in public life, I have seen nothing like this behaviour of the media before.” Hayden also said that at a time of great social and economic dislo cation in Australia for vast numbers, what was driving this debate was the feeling that the media and governments had not listened to the ordinary people.

Though Hayden may be correct, both

these parties have been preoccupied with Asia’s riches in recent years. As social critic and broadcaster Philip Adams observed recently in a column in The Australian, the increase in Asian immi gration to Australia in the last decade had occurred not because of idealism but as a result of opportunism. “The tables have turned dramatically and we now scramble for the crumbs of the rich man’s meal,” he said.

Australia’s carefully nurtured reputation

as a yair go”country

has been damaged in Asia

“We know the best way to plug into the Asian markets is through the diaspo ra, through the network of friends and rel atives that connects the economies of Dixon Street (Sydney’s Chinatown) with Singapore, with Taiwan, with mainland China.”

While Australia is scrambling to get a piece of the Asian economic pie in the 21st century, the Asian migrant popula tion here, especially those of Chinese extraction, may be able to ride the latest wave of racism.

But for other non-white races, such as the Aboriginals and Pacific Islanders, it is another story.

As Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson, the former chairman of the Cape York Land Council, observed recently, the “new free speech is tabloid free speech”, where debate is conducted in the media through tabloid-style slogans “carefully crafted to activate those hot buttons in our community”.

Thus, for Aborigines, whose land rights are under intense attack as a result of this race debate, the 2000 Sydney Olympics will be the last chance for awhile to get a fair deal. The next three years will be crucial for them. ■