marinabaysands: Former Howard government minister

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The Sydney Morning Herald

National Times

Date

February 4, 2013
Category
Opinion

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Comments 19

Amanda Vanstone

Former Howard government minister

View more articles from Amanda Vanstone

The ALP accused Howard of racism on border protection policy that has become the bedrock of Gillard’s agenda.

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Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.

As the September 14 election approaches, we will no doubt hear more from both major parties on the issue of border control. At least we have agreement on some aspects of this policy area. Both parties understand that there are many, many more refugees in the world than we can afford to accept. They agree that the government decides how many we can afford to take and they agree that those who come by boat, because they can afford to pay a people smuggler, should not have an advantage over poor refugees waiting in camps. Offshore processing is an essential and agreed part of achieving that aim.

If Labor really wants to stop the boats, it should toughen up and agree to reinstate temporary protection visas (by any new-fangled name they may choose to make it look a bit different) and to cut off family reunions. We will have to wait and see if that reality dawns. Labor has come kicking and screaming to adopt so much of the Howard policy agenda. This extra little bit shouldn’t be too hard. It would certainly blunt the Coalition attack on the ALP in coming months.

As immigration minister in the Howard government, I am pleased that Labor has at least accepted some of our border protection policies. But I am also irritated. Why? Because Labor constantly sought to portray my party as a bunch of old racists.

The coward’s way, which was frequently chosen, was to call John Howard a dog whistler. This sort of rubbish can easily be peddled through interest groups and those commentators keen to use the opportunity to define themselves as being opposed to racism. Now that Labor has similar policies to Howard’s, I do not hear them whistling any dog tunes. Funny about that. Perhaps Labor sought to portray the Liberals as racists to assuage some guilt about the ALP’s past, or at very least to divert voters’ attention from Labor’s record.

If you know any servicemen who served in Timor during World War II, you might ask them about the extraordinary role played by the Timorese criados in helping our troops. While you’re there, ask them about the anguish of knowing that we refused to open our hearts and evacuate these people who risked their lives to save Australian lives. We left them behind to face an unsafe and unhappy future.

Then there’s former Labor leader Arthur Calwell. He should rightly be acknowledged as the father of our modern immigration system – although you will not hear a Labor person admitting that Robert Menzies, as the then opposition leader, played a critical role in getting it accepted and laid the first brick in Australia’s bipartisan approach to immigration by urging the government to be adventurous rather than cautious.

But there was a darker side to the policy; there was a rule (which proved ineffective but demonstrated intent) that there should be 10 Britons for every non-white alien. And returned servicemen with Japanese war brides found Calwell not only unmoved by their desire to bring their wives home but bitterly opposed. He said that while ”Any relatives remain of Australian soldiers dead in the Pacific battlefields”, it would be ”the grossest act of indecency to permit any Japanese of either sex to pollute Australian shores”.

Calwell fought vigorously after the war to have Chinese, Malay and Indonesian wartime refugees deported. He had a special bill drafted to deal with one, Mrs Annie O’Keefe, an Ambonese woman with eight children who had fled to Australia with them. Her husband had died fighting the Japanese and she had remarried an Australian. Only the good offices of the departmental secretary saved her.

Then there’s Calwell’s infamous line about two wongs not making a white. Some argue it was taken out of context, but not that it wasn’t said. Calwell was a zealous supporter of the White Australia Policy. In contrast, only a few years later, under the Liberals, Paul Hasluck, as administrator of the territories, was able to secure agreement that Chinese and mixed-race people in Papua New Guinea were able to settle in Australia and become Australian citizens.

Getting closer to the issue of border protection, one might find former Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew’s biography illuminating. He was particularly affronted by the Whitlam government’s proposal that Singapore should allow some 8000 Vietnamese refugees to disembark there, whereupon Australia would choose less than 200 to accept here. Singapore could worry about the others.

Whitlam was not a racist. As former Labor minister Clyde Cameron tells the story, Whitlam’s opposition was more political. Cameron and Whitlam’s deputy, Lance Barnard, had organised a flight in April 1975 to bring Vietnamese orphans and babies to Australia. Cameron says Whitlam justified cancelling the flight by saying he wasn’t having ”Vietnamese Balts coming to Australia”.

If you believe Labor, you might believe it was only because of Whitlam that the White Australia policy was undone. You might be surprised to know that the father of Australian multiculturalism, Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki, concluded that the policy ”had its demise at the hands of mainly Liberal ministers and finally of the Whitlam Labor government”.

The Australia prime minister Lee Kuan Yew most admired was Menzies. The postwar Menzies government was a strong supporter of the Colombo Plan, a key element in our early relations with Asia. People with long memories understand the forward and outward-looking policies Menzies implemented. Lee said Menzies understood ”that sentiments and ties of kinship could not displace the realities of geopolitics and geoeconomics in the post-imperial world”. That understanding from an Australian can be phrased another way: The Asian Century is around the corner. And yet Julia Gillard seems to think she discovered it!

Amanda Vanstone was minister for immigration in the Howard government.

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19 comments so far

Labor is only interested in what is happening internally within the ALP, nothing more.

The only concern now I have is the extent of damage they will do as they reek their revenge with their envy politics. Clearly the WORST government on record and with more scandals to come. More internal fighting, more internal reviews–what about working for the middle australia who work hard and pay the taxes that keeps these parasites in their jobs!

Commenter
paulk
Location
melbourne
Date and time
February 04, 2013, 7:42AM
Now, now, Amanda. Please don’t go reminding the ALP of the facts and the truth.

Strewth, next you’ll be telling us that the Labo(u)r Party would only join the first national government following Federation on condition there was implemented a “White Australia Policy” !

Oh, and it should be remembered that Australia’s early republicans were also enthusiastic supporters of the WAP.

Commenter
JohnB
Location
Melbourne
Date and time
February 04, 2013, 7:48AM
Although it makes me choke when I say it , I agree with Amanda on this subject. Now before the men in the little white coats come for me ,let me put on notice, that while i agree with her sentiments I find some of her comments as to personalities some what owing more to political bias than to the actual happenings.

Commenter
srg
Location
nambucca heads
Date and time
February 04, 2013, 7:56AM
Labor seem to like re writing history.
They seem to think the average person has the memory of a gold fish
and constantly treat us as such.
Mark Dreyfus latest comment about Pyne’s Nazi comment is a good example.

Commenter
J Walker
Location

Date and time
February 04, 2013, 8:09AM
- Actually Pyne was not reported making a Nazi remark as such, but likening the current shenanigans of the federal ALP to the movie “Downfall” which was about the unravelling of Hitler’s regime.
  Dreyfus, on the other hand, was the one who made a DIRECT comparison between the Libs and Joseph Goebels, the Nazi propaganda minister.
  
  It’s called hypocrisy, but what else could we expect from the ALP.
  
  Commenter
  JohnB
  Location
  Melbourne
  Date and time
  February 04, 2013, 9:47AM
“They agree that the government decides how many we can afford to take and they agree that those who come by boat, because they can afford to pay a people smuggler, should not have an advantage over poor refugees waiting in camps. Offshore processing is an essential and agreed part of achieving that aim.”

It’s a shame that they were not able to come to that realisation prior to demolishing Howard’s successful Pacific Solution policies. TPV’s are now long overdue but I doubt that the boat arrivals will cease anytime soon. The door has been left ajar for way too long.

Commenter
liklik
Location
sydney
Date and time
February 04, 2013, 8:10AM
Waiting for J. Fraser, Ross, etc to try and turn the facts of this story around….next they’ll be trying to tell us that the ALP Govt have ‘world’s best practice’ policies in place when it comes to border protection!

Commenter
MTK
Location
Port Melbourne
Date and time
February 04, 2013, 8:11AM
Given that the Media are solidly against Labor and solidly for the Coalition, I for one am not surprised that the government is trailing.

Any group of people who are vilified all day everyday in almost every newspaper, TV and radio station will find their popularity dropping.

For those who maintain that the propaganda does not affect the polls /vote: Why did the labor vote rise 3% over christmas?

A pause in the propaganda campaign perhaps?

Commenter
James Adelaide
Location

Date and time
February 04, 2013, 8:12AM
Given that the Media are solidly against Labor and solidly for the Coalition, I for one am not surprised that the government is trailing.

Any group of people who are vilified all day everyday in almost every newspaper, TV and radio station will find their popularity dropping.

For those who maintain that the propaganda does not affect the polls /vote: Why did the labor vote rise 3% over christmas?

A pause in the propaganda campaign perhaps?

Commenter
James Adelaide
Location

Date and time
February 04, 2013, 8:14AM
People movment across the globe is a massive probably and we in Australia are not isolated from it, have a look at the Syria to Turkey “migration” some 3000 per week we have 3000 per year?? also have a look at the sub -continents people movements

TPV were proven not to work because all they promoted were families that were left behind just got on the next boat. Did the pacific solution really work?? many people were still relocted off Nauru what may have worked before does not mean it will work again.

The current policy on asylum seekers is a bipartisan one by and large so any “failings” in it then both parties that must share the blame. Immigration in its raw term is required especailly with slowing birth rates coupled with an aging population.

The malaysian solution the LNP fear not because they are not a signatory to the Refugee convention but because they no this will be a big deterrent and once successful they will be unable to score any political points from it

In the big scheme of things unauthorised martime arrivals are no big deal they are just pawns in a political game

Commenter
Buffalo Bill
Location
Sydneys Northshore
Date and time
February 04, 2013, 8:21AM

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