(f) A very proactive attitude to refugees. The current crises in Timor and Fiji and the crisis in Kosovo underline the importance of allowing refugee migration on the widest possible scale when crises arise. Much of the immigration history of Australia since the Second World War and, indeed, since the Irish Famine in the 1850s, has been based on providing safe haven for refugees. This is appropriate for a new country such as Australia, and people who come to Australia in these circumstances usually make a considerable effort to make a life in Australia.This migration program should be backed up by a considerable commitment to appropriate national infrastructure and agricultural development etc, at the same time as a vast public program to remediate the Australian environment.I believe that is the kind of policy on which both the labour movement, and possibly Australian society as a whole, will settle, and quite soon. The reason that this will be so is the effect of the already established cultural diversity and ethnic mix in the new Australia, and the obvious political implications of our location in the world.The current crisis in relations with Indonesia, produced by the necessity of defending the right of national self-determination of the East Timorese people, heavily underlines the need for nailing down such a general policy on migration.
Only the kind of multicultural, diverse Australia that I’ve outlined can have a reasonable prospect of further development, or even survival, in the rapidly changing world of the 21st century. Such an Australia will have a bright future as a civilised example to the rest of the world about how to handle the migration and population question in a relatively young nation in a difficult world.
Several close personal friends of mine have recently graduated in law from the tough Sydney University evening course – one of the few significant evening course left at Sydney University in these relatively affluent times. It used to be called the Barristers Admission Board Course and is notoriously the hardest way to do law.
My personal friends are a group of four Anglo women in their late 30s and early and middle 40s and I have attended two of their graduations. They have been, from my point of view, absolutely fascinating events.
Notoriously, many people drop out of this difficult course, but nevertheless, the two graduations I attended, six months apart, averaged 140 graduates each, adding to the very large number of law graduates crowding the marketplace.
The first interesting sociological feature was that about half of the graduates were women. The second fascinating feature was the ethnic and cultural mix of the graduates. Going by names, an average 40 per cent were of some non-British migrant background: Italian, Greek, Chinese, Indian, Arabic and many others, and another 15 per cent had recognisably Irish names, suggesting that at least 15 per cent, and probably more were of Irish Catholic cultural background.
Judging by appearance, an even larger percentage than the 40 per cent had non-English-speaking backgrounds, as some people with Anglo names were of Chinese or Indian appearance. At one of the graduations I noticed two good-looking young men, possibly brothers, with wonderfully exotic Indian subcontinent-sounding names, such as Fawez Nazmi Cameron and Duncan Ismael Cameron.
Events of this sort are very emotional and moving for the graduates and their families. The majestic, gracious and pleasant old Great Hall of Sydney University, built by the racist British ruling class of the colony in the 19th century, with its impressive portraits of past vice-chancellors, on these occasions was crowded with the families of the graduates, in their infinite, moving and boistrous variety.
One had only to look around to see our new Sydney and our new Australia as it really is. What is striking at these events is the matter-of-fact, routine cosmopolitanism of Sydney life. Obviously, many of these graduates of the evening course work in law, accountancy, unions, real estate, the public service, and even nursing and teaching.
The striking thing is the genuine mix of the new and the old. The Anglo middle classes and commercial classes are still fairly strongly represented. For instance there are quite a few older Anglo men who obviously work as paralegals and have finally got their law degree, and there are also obviously confident young women of the Anglo North Shore middle-class, etc.
Nevertheless, the extraordinary ethnic and cultural diversity of the families and the graduates underlines the irreversible cosmopolitanism of our new Sydney and new Australia. At these graduations it is possible to see the future and, in terms of ethnic and cultural diversity, the future really works. It’s also worth commenting that in terms of the eccentric new class theory, all these graduates, by definition, immediately enter the so-called new class, which underlines the speed with which that class is broadening and expanding, to the point that the new class theory becomes ridiculous.