Not many months ago, no one was giving Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard and his center-right coalition Liberal and National parties a chance of surviving at the general election. However, yesterday, when the votes were counted, the conservative politician appeared to have actually increased his government’s majority and was set for a further term of office. The Labour Party’s leader Kim Beazley admitted defeat long before the final votes were counted.
There was virtually no difference between the political platforms of either of the two contestants. Though Labour traditionally favors unions against bosses, the rough edges have been knocked off Australia’s left-of-center politics. Likewise, the Liberal Party, as the right-of-center party which dominated the continent’s politics for much of the last century, has acquired a softer outlook toward organized labor.
One of the most important policies that the two political groupings shared was that both wanted to be tough on illegal immigrants. The difference, however, was that John Howard’s government had already demonstrated the seriousness of its views this August, after a Norwegian freighter, the Tampa, had rescued 433 asylum seekers, most of whom Afghans from a sinking ship in Australian territorial waters. The Howard government kept them out of Australia.
Beazley, meanwhile, could only promise that his Labour Party would do the same if elected. Significantly, it seems as if a lot of blue-collar workers, who would normally be Labour Party supporters, chose to vote for the Liberals because of their proven toughness on illegal immigrants.
The sensitivity of the Australians to illegal arrivals in their country is odd. The first white Australians themselves landed and settled on this huge and strange continent without permission. The indigenous aborigines could not even understand the white man’s concept of property ownership. They never thought that they owned any land but always that the land owned them. The reverse concept was, to them, ludicrous.
For a long time, the predominantly white English and Irish population sought to keep out nonwhites. But the Vietnam War in the 1970s changed all that and brought a steady flow of Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants who have all brought vitality to what had been a flagging economy. In their train came large waves of immigrants from Turkey and the Balkans — Melbourne, for instance, is the city with the second largest Greek population in the world. Twelve years ago, the hidden barrier to welcoming black immigrants was finally removed.
Australians seem halfway to admitting that immigration has transformed their white Anglo-Saxon economy, but nevertheless many cannot accept that much of the economic genius of this country comes from its latest, not its earliest, immigrants. Hence the unpleasant racist undertones to this election campaign and the clear victory of Howard.
No country, not even one as blessed with space and mineral wealth as Australia, could absorb an uncontrolled flood of new citizens from a wide range of cultures. But the example of 19th century America ought to show Canberra that flows of immigration can still be accepted and used to transform a country.
