Author: Greg Sheridan
Publication: The Australian
Date: June 4, 2009
URL: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25583278-7583,00.html
The recent spate of bashings of Indian students
in Melbourne is an appalling episode in this nation's history. It is a serious
social, educational, diplomatic and probably economic crisis that no one is
taking seriously enough. The performance of John Brumby's Victorian Government
has been pathetic. It has stumbled from bland denial to belated symbolism,
never acknowledging the gravity of the problem or its own culpability and
not taking any serious action to confront it.
The Rudd Government's response also has been
belated, but there is a better sense in Canberra of the problem's dimensions.
It seems astonishing that you would have to
argue with anybody that a big outbreak of racist violence in an Australian
capital city is a first-order problem.
Last financial year nearly 1500 assaults and
robberies were committed on people of Indian origin in Victoria, up by nearly
one-third from the year before. But what has rightly gained international
attention is the many assaults on Indian students.
Brumby and his Police Commissioner Simon Overland
at first were inclined to deny the problem was racial at all. Eventually they
came to admit that some attacks were racial, but still cling to the idiotic
defence that most of the crimes are opportunistic, as if it's impossible to
be opportunistic and racist.
In making these assertions, Brumby and co
must be the only people who believe them. Certainly the victims of the crimes
don't.
Brumby and his Government have conveyed a
kind of insane, Sir Humphrey Appleby, genial imperturbability. You can imagine
the Sir Humphrey response: "Yes, Mr Banerjee, we do acknowledge that
you have been beaten to within an inch of your life and the Government finds
that wholly regrettable. However we can assure you that the perpetrator, whose
identity we do not know, had no racial animosity towards you. We would further
remind you that you are lucky to live in the world's most livable city and
we hope that next time you are bashed your response will bear this more fully
in mind."
A young Indian-Australian friend of mine walked
into a Melbourne garage and saw a young Indian attendant, a student working
part time, being subjected to the most vile, scatological, racist abuse by
a man of Caucasian background who was covered in tattoos and wearing long
hair. When my young friend made the abuser aware of his presence the abuse
stopped.
Too many Indian students report incidents
such as this, ranging up to full-scale assault, for anyone seriously to deny
the problem.
Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull made useful
statements deploring the attacks. But, as usual, the greatest moral clarity
came from Michael Danby, the federal Labor member for Melbourne Ports. He
wasn't obliged to play the Sir Humphrey tricks and instead spoke straightforwardly:
"These attacks are a disgrace to Australia. As an MP from Melbourne I
am angry and ashamed that these things are happening in my city."
These bashings also have developed into a
foreign policy crisis. This is because of the blanket, at times hysterical,
coverage in the Indian media. But before we get too high and mighty condemning
the Indian media, just imagine our response if dozens of Australian tourists
had been racially selected for bashing in, say, Fiji or Malaysia. Just think
of the talkback radio and tabloid reaction we would create.
These bashings have been reported all across
the world. Al-Jazeera rang me this week to get the phone number of the Indian
Students Federation. They have been widely reported in Britain. And in India
the Australian Government could not have got a worse result if it had spent
a billion dollars on a negative publicity campaign.
This column has always believed that racism
is such a serious charge that it should be levelled very carefully and that
a lot that is called racism is something else. But there is no doubt that
Melbourne has witnessed serious, vicious, violent racism in recent months.
It is infinitely more important to deal with
the problem than to try to deal with the perception. Solve the problem and
the spin will look after itself. Similarly, there is nothing more lame than
an Australian defence that points out that racism and policing problems exist
in India, too.
So what?
This is not a point-scoring game. Further,
however unjustified or out of date it is, Australia has throughout Asia a
longstanding reputation for racism. We may chafe under the unfairness of this
reputation, but if we want to deal with reality in Asia we have to understand
that it is there. Stories that fit into this stereotype run very strongly.
There is little evidence that the Victorian
Government has responded effectively. The Indians I have spoken to have noticed
no increased police presence on Melbourne trains, with the exception of the
Sydenham line. Certainly you can travel Melbourne's trains day and night for
years and never see a police officer.
The Brumby Government seems to think announcements
are a substitute for action. Remember all the fuss a year ago about the bashings
of Melbourne taxi drivers? And the decisions on installing driver screens?
Yesterday I walked along one of Melbourne's busiest taxi ranks and counted
18 cabs, not one with a driver screen.
This should be an elementary health and safety
requirement.
Wretched Australian greed is in danger of
killing our $15 billion education export industry.
At every point foreign students are mercilessly
ripped off financially and given mediocre services at best. I would be hard-pressed
in good conscience to recommend an Asian student come to an Australian university
if they could afford an American one instead.
But of course our universities, at least the
better ones, are not the heart of the problem. It is the vocational colleges
run out of a couple of rooms in a city building that are the worst exploiters
of foreign students.
Australia has done so well in attracting 400,000
students from Asia for several reasons, none of which has to do with the quality
of the education. We are cheaper than the US or Britain, we are in a more
sympathetic time zone and, until recently, we had the reputation for being
safer. Most importantly, Australian higher education leads to a track for
a permanent residency visa.
I've got no problem with that. It attracts
a lot of students and gives us citizens down the track with Australian qualifications
who can fill skills gaps and have long experience of Australia. But the system
has become ramshackle and exploitative. We do not give value for money.
There's a lot we could do much better. How
about a home visits scheme, where ordinary Australians invite foreign students
for a weekend meal? After all, foreign students are not only dollars and cents,
they're also human beings.
