Thanks Pauline, but Australia is still a great country

These are red-letter days: Pauline Hanson is apparently leaving Australia. A friend of mine even purchased a bottle of champagne as soon as he heard the news. But as with all things in Pauline-land confusion soon reigned. There was a report in The Australian that Hanson was only going on a holiday. This was soon followed by a press statement from Woman’s Day and Hanson herself confirming that she was going indefinitely.

As Tim Soutphommasane noted in the Guardian there is a genuine irony to Pauline Hanson ending up as an immigrant and it gets even better when you think about what she is about to encounter. In The Times Devika Bhat has written a column dreading the arrival of Pauline. I almost feel like writing her a letter of apology. Sorry Devika, but we have a no returns policy.

I hope she has a great time in the UK. I really enjoyed my last trip there - I really loved how it managed to be both, vibrant, diverse and multicultural, and quaintly English at the same time. But I take issue with one of Pauline’s parting shots: that Australia is not the land of opportunity. This is simply not true. Australia is a country where anybody who wants to build a better life can do just that. Ask any migrant. Ask anybody in this country with an ounce of ambition. There are three reasons why Hanson is wrong (again). Australia is still a great country.

First, our democracy is robust enough to handle genuine divisions on immigration and culture without degenerating into violence. It is true that we have had tumultuous debates on race and culture. It is true that there have been attacks on Indian students and we did have the Cronulla riots in 2005. But Australians of every hue were shocked and disappointed by those events. Moreover, in a decade where race crept into mainstream politics, Cronulla was the only major ethnic conflict.

Generally, we do not have a culture of political violence. In Britain the British National Party (BNP) is associated with thuggery. It may have made an attempt to clean up its act in terms of language and behaviour, but the association still remains. As Soutphommasane notes in contrast the One Nation Party did not attract violent fellow travelers. That element probably does exist in our country but it isn’t as numerous or as dangerous.

The attacks on Indian students can be understood as the result of the confluence of a number of factors. Economic factors might have played a part. But a more simple explanation could be that an increase in student numbers, which was not met with corresponding levels of service by education providers, meant that students were living in slightly “dangerous” areas. Students who would have seen danger signs at home were oblivious to the dangers in disadvantaged parts of Melbourne. They weren’t told by their institutions to be wary of certain situations. Similarly, students working late night jobs and using public transport are vulnerable to the type of violence that people in those situations, regardless of race, might ordinarily face. There is a violent sub-culture around alcohol and drugs and it extended to Indian students because they were working the type of late-night jobs that made them vulnerable.

It is unfortunate that some sections of the media used the problem to suggest that Australia is a racist country. To tar all Australians with the racist tag on the basis of the actions of some ne’er do wells, some of whom were non-white, is not only contradictory, it is untrue. It also ignores the reality on the ground of generally quite harmonious relations between white and non-white Australians. It ignores the seriousness of drug and alcohol related violence.

Either way, regardless of the causes, violence is not acceptable in Australia. Our politicians may not have proved capable of making intelligent statements on the subject, but the overwhelming majority of Australians were appalled at the attacks on Indian students.

We do have a genuine divide on multiculturalism and immigration. Both sides have strongly held views about the future of Australia. There is a lot at stake. But these things will be worked out through the normal democratic processes. Personally, I’m more concerned that every few years the ABS revises its population estimates for 2050 upwards by a few million. It’s almost a tacit concession that they got it wrong the last time. Bernard Salt has noted an interesting trend in both the ABS predictions and the Inter-Generational Reports. At this rate the population estimate could jump from 34 million to 50 million over the next few reports. At that point Monash University’s population researchers are likely to go into a media-meltdown. Of course, these are all just “estimates”.

The next reason why Hanson is wrong is that Australia is an increasingly cosmopolitan and diverse country. There is no way around this; globalisation has changed Australia. When I went to law school, more than a decade ago, even the brightest of my classmates were not overly focused on world affairs. I experienced profound culture shock when I went overseas for a year and studied for six months in Singapore and then for six months in the United States. The law students at the National University of Singapore had an acute understanding of international affairs. They were well versed on the politics and economics of the Asian region, as perhaps one would expect, but they were well across international affairs elsewhere. The students in the United States were similarly globalised in their world view. They had a strong appreciation of the economics, politics and culture of other nations which belies the usual stereotypes about Americans.

These days, Australian students are as globalised as their counterparts elsewhere. Our graduates were always world class but there are now a lot more Australian students that fit into that category. Many of our graduates would not be out of place at elite institutions overseas. The more attuned that students have become to opportunities around the globe the more accomplished they have become in their studies and extra-curricular achievements. There might be too much pressure on undergraduates but it’s hard not to be impressed by the growing quality of their achievements.

One of the other things that struck me about how cosmopolitan Australia has become in my lifetime, was when the war in Sri Lanka reached its conclusion and people began fleeing that country by boat. My ethnic background is Sri Lankan Tamil - Jaffna Tamil at that - though being born here I’ve never set foot in Sri Lanka. But I was surprised at how knowledgeable ordinary Australians were about the conflict. Their knowledge outstripped mine. Bear in mind that this concerns a conflict in a minor South Asian nation. It shows how outward looking our country has become.

Australians are engaged with the world around them. Many Australians do vital work in the region in development under various programs for government and non-government organisations. Australian graduates also do useful work as youth ambassadors.

The third reason why Hanson is wrong is that migration hasn’t changed the core values of the nation. There might be a few politicians and media commentators willing to play off some nasty under-currents, but Australia is still the land of the “fair go”. That commitment to egalitarianism is a common trait in this country. It has not been diminished by demographic changes. Nor has it been diminished by the attempts of some politicians to build up an insider-outsider culture for their own political gain. The best evidence of this is the success of migrants and the uptake of higher education across the board by young Australians.

Higher education is now open to more Australians than at any time in our nation’s history. We still have a way to go in ensuring that each young Australian has the opportunity to attend university. But the growth in universities since the 1980s and our commitment to maintaining regional universities means that more Australians are getting that chance. Leaving aside our brief and perhaps financially irresponsible period of free education, this is a better deal than the mythical glory days of the university when you needed to be either extremely intelligent, in which case you may have got a scholarship, or to have attended an elite private school, in order to get a place at university.

Pauline Hanson tried to divide Australia. She made some people feel bad about being Australians. She tried to pass off blatantly racist statements as genuine contributions to public debate. Thankfully most Australians are too smart to fall for that.

Hanson enjoyed a brief political career playing off the fears of ordinary Australians in relation to immigration. At the time Australia was emerging from the 1990 recession. The economy had undergone structural change and a sizeable number of people had lost their jobs while still in their prime working years. Many of these people were genuinely looking for a voice in Australian politics. When the economy began to grow again, largely due to our openness to trade, they abandoned Hanson and came back into the mainstream.

Hanson peddled myths about immigration. She mixed a dash of truth with liberal helpings of falsity and exaggeration. She preyed on fears about migrants taking jobs away. She had a bit of luck in that she rose to prominence when the tail-end of the 1990 recession was still being felt and when the realities of globalisation and the new-economy-old economy divide were beginning to be understood. For example, it is true that globalisation has winners and losers - skilled workers win and the unskilled workers generally lose. Though, this would also be true of a closed economy as well. Most Australian workers have skills of some sort, but people who are relatively lowly skilled, can be easily displaced by an influx of labour. But at the same time it is equally true that more people means more demand for goods and services which in turn leads to more jobs. Hanson never mentioned that last part.

Ultimately Pauline Hanson failed as a politician because she wasn’t good enough to cut it at that level. Her policies would have been disastrous for Australia. Her suggestion of simply “printing more money” would have induced inflation. If she actually had shut us off from trading with other nations we would not be enjoying today’s prosperity. China and India would not be buying our natural resources and we wouldn’t be able to buy cheap imported goods. International trade has made us wealthier and international engagement is enriching.

As an academic, I cannot help but think that if Pauline Hanson had gone to university and actually met people from a range of different backgrounds that she might have had a different outlook on life. I am not for a moment suggesting that a university education is the be all and end all. You do not need a university education to be economically successful and a lot of intelligent people do not have and do not need a university education. Not everybody who goes to university is outward looking and lots of well-travelled and open-minded people have never set foot in a university. But if Hanson had gone to university she might have been taught to substantiate her arguments thereby curing her tendency to make wild ambit claims. She might even have had a year abroad and maybe met people from other countries. She could even have gone to my alma mater and enrolled in Asian Studies and maybe picked up some courses in basic macroeconomics. The possibilities are endless.

So Pauline Hanson can leave Australia, deriding us as she goes. But she leaves a nation with immense potential. We have a lot of talent coming through the ranks. They are heading on to bigger and better things. We gave Pauline Hanson a pretty good run. For somebody who knew very little she profited quite a bit from her ignorance and outspoken nature. I suspect that the real reason she’s leaving is because she can’t milk her celebrity any further. The free ride is over, though this latest saga will no doubt help her to sell her house.

Soutphommasane writes that the legacy of Hanson can be seen in the tattooed youths who draped themselves in the Australian flag at Cronulla in 2005, just as Hanson did in 1997. But those youths don’t represent the best of this country. For the record, Hanson was mirroring Cathy Freeman’s pose of a few years earlier. My most vivid recollection of the Pauline Hanson era was a photograph of a white Australian surfer leaping into the water while carrying his surfboard. On the board he had written, “One Nation: No Explanation. The ugly Australian does not speak for me.” I remember that because it was a kind gesture. It was a reminder that the odd bigot does not speak for an entire nation. When Hanson goes I’m going to hang onto that memory.