Lucky country's dark corners

It has not been a good week for the Australian soul.

Vilified as racist abroad and torn between anger and guilt at home, the nation is once again peering into its dark corners in the wake of a series of bashings of Indian students.

The beatings have raised hysteria in India, strained relations between Canberra and New Delhi, and put at risk the multi-billion dollar industry of educating foreign students.

It is not just India. The Chinese embassy in Canberra has complained of attacks on its nationals studying here, and demanded better protection from Australian authorities. More than 130,000 Chinese are enrolled as foreign students.

Australia is also smarting from the parting comments of American Sol Trujillo, the former head of telecommunications giant Telstra.

Born in Wyoming to Mexican parents, Trujillo, tired of cartoonists drawing him in a sombrero and furious at the one-word "Adios" farewell from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, lambasted Australia on the BBC.

"I think by definition [Australia is racist]," he said.

"There were even columnists that wrote stories that said it was. But you know, my point is, is that you know that does exist and it's got to change because the world is full of a lot of people and most economies have to take advantage, including Australia, of a diverse set of people. And if there's a belief that only certain people are acceptable versus others, that is a sad state."

In sport, Cronulla Sharks rugby league captain Paul Gallen was fined A$10,000 ($12,650) and stepped down from the captaincy after admitting he called St George Illawarra forward Micky Paea a "black ****".

Paea is an Australian of Tongan descent.

And in Camden, a semi-rural community on the southwestern outskirts of Sydney, locals cheered as the New South Wales Land and Environment Court vetoed a hotly contested proposal to build an Islamic school.

The court based its decision on zoning grounds, but the objections of locals were far more forthright. Church leaders complained the school would be a beachhead for a subculture not compatible with broad Australian egalitarian culture, and a religion driven by a powerful political agenda and an ideology for world domination.

Among the most prominent opponents was farmer and small businesswoman Kate McCulloch. Wearing a hat draped in Australian flags she told reporters: "They take our welfare and they don't want to accept our way of life ... I'm sorry, I just don't want them in Australia."

McCulloch has been named as "the next Pauline Hanson", after the xenophobic founder of the One Nation Party, which soared briefly on a blend of racism and anger at big government and big business.

This week McCulloch announced she would stand for One Nation in the local federal seat of Macarthur at the next election.

Faced with this rolling wave, Australia has been agonising over the perception of others abroad and at its own fundamental psyche: newspapers, television, talkback radio and the internet have been flooded with debate over whether or not the nation is at its roots racist, or whether racism exists at levels no greater than any other country.

"Why is it that every time somebody holds a mirror in front of us we start to get defensive ... instead of a dispassionate debate and analysis," said one member of an internet debate.

"Australia is the only country in the Anglo-Saxon world where racism is practised unashamedly."

Others rejected the claim: "By any measure Australia is one of the most tolerant or accepting nations and that fact should not be overlooked in blowing up the times racism does rear its ugly head here."

From the (mostly informal) polls that have been made, Australia is divided about itself. An Age website poll - with the disclaimer that it was not scientific - said 47 per cent believed Trujillo was right in saying Australia was racist, compared with 53 per cent who disagreed.

In a Fairfax poll made after the 2005 Cronulla violence involving Lebanese and Anglo combatants, 75 per cent agreed there was underlying racism, but 56 per cent supported existing - or higher - levels of migration, and 81 per cent backed a policy of multiculturalism.

And an informal survey of internet opinions following the attacks on Indian students showed about 40 per cent considered Australia racist, 54 per cent rejected the notion, and about 6 per cent wanted Australia for "Australians".

This is not a new agony, given the nation's treatment of Aborigines, the 19th century enslavement of labourers from the Pacific, and the infamous White Australia policy that endured until the 1970s.

This gave birth to the uniquely Australian "history wars" among the nation's academics and historians, beginning in the 1960s and continuing since. One body of thought accepts a history of genocide and repression of Aboriginals; the other condemns this "black armband" view and argues that most of these claims are inaccurate, misleading and even the product of lies and invention.

What is not in dispute are the conditions facing indigenous Australians today: a 17-year gap in life expectancy, much higher rates of disease, unemployment and crime, and lower rates of education and housing.

A Flinders University study this week found that 84 per cent of Aborigines commonly experienced racism in dealings with government agencies and jobs, and two-thirds met with it in shops, cafes, sports and their neighbourhoods.

A Human Rights Commission report to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in March also pointed to new forms of racism, moving from a basis of skin colour to allegations of social and cultural incompatibility.

"Islamophobia, for instance, takes this form," the report said.

Camden's rejection of an Islamic school follows studies that have shown increasing intolerance of Muslims, spiked periodically by overseas events such as the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US and the Bali bombings, and conflicts between young Lebanese and other beachgoers in Sydney.

The Commission also reported discrimination and prejudice against African migrants - including violence and vilification in schools - and has previously noted continuing racism in sports.

Nor were the recent beatings of Indian students unexpected by many. Community and student bodies had reported increasing violence against foreign students, and Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma said that after four years of rising levels of hostility the issue had been raised at last year's annual meeting of the Australia-New Zealand Race Relations Roundtable.

But there is also strong evidence that while present, racism is not endemic. Australia is one of the most racially and culturally diverse nations in the world, with the most recent census showing that 44 per cent of its people were either born overseas or have at least one foreign-born parent.

In raw numbers, 4.4 million Australians - a quarter of the population - were born in more than 200 other countries, with a further eight million having at least one parent born abroad.

In 2007-08, 376 complaints of racial discrimination were received by the commission.

Across Australia there is a massive effort to absorb migrants and their cultures. Tough laws outlaw discrimination and racial hatred.

In the present crisis, the National Union of Students is working with the Federation of Indian Students in Australia. While noting concern for the security of international students at Newcastle University in NSW and Queensland's Griffith University as well as in Melbourne, both bodies reject the notion of Australia as a racist nation.

And with a new federal task force and state measures swinging into place, Australian society has been publicly praised by many expatriate Indians and community leaders furious at the hysteria raised by the media in their homeland.

One expatriate wrote on news.com.au: "Australians are not racist in general. They are fun-loving and friendly people ... Violence has nothing to do with race."

Expatriate Rajni Luthra agreed, writing on the Asian Lite website that it was time for reason to speak out: "It's not as if the Australian people have declared Jihad on Indians here ... Most of us here are as safe as citizens of any other race, and have not experienced racism any more than we probably had in India."