Ethnic communities mobilise against One Nation

SBS World News Radio: Australia's ethnic communities are mobilising against One Nation leader Pauline Hanson once again, 20 years after she first entered federal parliament.

Ethnic communities mobilise against One NationEthnic communities mobilise against One Nation

Ethnic communities mobilise against One Nation

The newly elected, or re-elected, senator will be joined in the upper house by three other One Nation senators, giving her significant cross-bench influence.

But Chinese and Muslim community leaders say her policies are racist and damaging, and they say they will work together to oppose them.

Alliances are being formed between ethnic and religious communities as shared concerns over the electoral success of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party bring them together.

Many Chinese-Australians have not forgotten how they were targeted 20 years ago when Ms Hanson captured national attention as a newly elected, independent MP.

That is when she controversially claimed, in her maiden speech to federal parliament, that Australia was in danger of being "swamped"* by Asians.

Two decades later, the One Nation leader's views have not changed.

She made that clear at a post-election press conference.

"Well, you can ask a lot of people in Sydney, at Hurstville, or some of those other suburbs. They feel that they have been swamped by Asians."

The Chinese Australia Forum's Kenrich Cheah says Pauline Hanson's political comeback now as a newly re-elected senator was unexpected and is cause for concern.

"Very concerned. I mean, the fact that she was able to win the seat in the first place is a shift back to what happened back in the '90s. Back in the '90s, the Chinese community bore the brunt of her attacks."

Ms Hanson now also sees a new threat.

She is calling for a royal commission into Islam, for mosque surveillance and for a ban on Muslim immigration.

Kenrich Cheah says Chinese community leaders fear history is repeating itself in Australia, but with Muslim communities the main target of what they call Ms Hanson's racist policies.

"We feel we need to stand side by side with the Muslim community in solidarity against racism, against discrimination. She's attacking the Muslims today. She could be attacking the Chinese tomorrow. She could be attacking the Indian community the next week. Any attack on any minority group is an attack on all minority groups. So we need to stand together and fight against her."

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils' Keysar Trad says Chinese community support is very welcome.

"Well, we're very grateful that the Asian and the Chinese community have come together to speak out against Pauline Hanson. I would love to see people from all backgrounds, especially Anglo-Australians, stand up and speak out and say, 'Not in our name,** Pauline.'"

Battle plans are being drawn up, including discussions about how different communities can work together to oppose Ms Hanson's policies and views.

The Chinese Australian Forum has launched a social-media campaign.

And a group of Australian Muslims have set up a new FactCheckOneNation website to address many of the claims made by Pauline Hanson and her party.

Indian Muslims are also mobilising against her.

Abbas Raza Alvi is president of the Indian Crescent Society, representing more than 5,000 Indian Muslims in Australia.

He says his community will cooperate with other communities to jointly oppose Ms Hanson.

"When she is mentioning that Muslims are not welcome or Indians are not welcome, I think these are racist comments and should not be mentioned by any elected member of parliament. All ethnic communities, whatever background they are, whether they are from European background, Middle East, Chinese, Indian ... whatever the background you think, PNG, they should all unite and should reject the promotion of racism in Australia."

And the groups have another message for politicians: do not change the Racial Discrimination Act.

There is concern over possible renewed attempts to either weaken or drop the legislation, including Section 18C that makes racial vilification unlawful.

Kenrich Cheah is among the ethnic-community leaders saying they are prepared to send delegations to Canberra to ensure those protections are not wound back.

"We will definitely be opposing that, along with leaders from the Muslim community, other Chinese leaders, Subcontinental leaders, Vietnamese leaders, Jewish leaders. We'll all be banding together, like we did before, to make sure that this doesn't happen, to protect the interests of our communities."

Keysar Trad says such pressure will be needed.

"Much of the damage has been done. We just need to make sure that enough pressure is put on the Coalition not to make any deals with Pauline Hanson. Unfortunately, having somebody with her views in there, it will mean that politicians will pander to their dark side in order to get some of their other laws put through, and she will profit from that by making life difficult for minorities in Australia."

Pauline Hanson has made it clear she is not backing down, particularly over her comments on Islam.

"This a debate that we need to have, about Islam. And I think that we should have the debate. Let's talk about it. Let's see the impact that it is having on our country. Why have we got so many migrating to Australia? And they're using our system here to breed more people in this country. We have problems now. We can deal with it now."

Newly elected One Nation senator from New South Wales Brian Burston has described Islam as an infringement on Australia's culture.

He, too, staunchly defends his position.

"At the moment, they're living in enclaves, if you like -- Lakemba, for example, (in Sydney) is full of a Muslim community. They haven't assimilated. They are an infringement on our culture. And, because we're described as 'multicultural', those individual cultures, the Muslim -- well, that's a religion but, still, a culture -- be it Jewish, be it whatever, they're living in areas together, rather than assimilating like Greeks and Italians have over the years. That's what I mean by that, 'infringement on our culture.'"

Mr Burston defends himself and the party against claims they are racist.

"I'm pro-Australian. I'm not racist. I have a Sri Lankan son-in-law and, obviously, two grandchildren that are part Sri Lankan. I have had Chinese doctors all through my adult life as GPs. So, if I was racist, I'd be demanding that I only deal with Australians. I think it's a nonsense argument. The Islamic situation that has arisen, it's only arisen in the last about four years, since the fall of al-Qaeda and the rise of ISIS, and it's on everyone's mind at the moment, border security, national security, personal security. So, I think their argument is ill-founded that we are racist. I'd be happy to sit down and discuss that issue with them."

But Kenrich Cheah says he is concerned about the impact of Pauline Hanson and her party's political comeback on the country's international reputation -- and on tourism to Australia.

"There's plenty of concerns there, especially in the tourism market. Australia gets a lot of its tourism dollars from Chinese tourists, Asian tourists. And in terms of economic ties, some of our biggest import and export partners are in Asia and around the world. So why would we want to jeopardise that?"

Chinese visitors make up the biggest part of Australia's surging tourism market.

And the Transport and Tourism Forum's Margy Osmond says it is a very sensitive market.

"The potential to radically damage a market that is, increasingly, the most important slice of our inbound market is significant. We don't need to have mixed messages in the marketplace that, in some ways, suggest people won't be welcome."

 

 


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7 min read

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By Vesna Nazor, Greg Dyett

Presented by Sacha Payne



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