As politicians invoke “Australian values” as a test of belonging, Australia’s own history reveals how often those values were shaped by racism, exclusion and fear of “the other”. Frances Letters writes.
IN THE DAYS around our yearly ANZAC commemoration, does anything call out louder, to both mind and heart, than the words “Australian values”? Weren’t our brave, friendly old diggers perfect examples of cheery, back-slapping Aussie values in action?
It seems that the Coalition wishes to install those words as an official norm: gateway to immigrant acceptability.
Ah, well. No one wants terrorists. Of course, we’ll hold out for those matey, egalitarian Aussie beliefs to be enshrined as government policy.
The only problem is, what exactly are “Australian values”? Alas, any glance into our history will reveal that some of them haven’t always been quite as delightfully honourable as they sound.
Since our earliest evolutionary days, deep within us all there still lurks an ancient human wariness: suspicion of “the other”. Tribalism that can erupt in sneers, snarls or screams. And ultimately, in machetes and guns. Or their ultra-efficient refinement, Zyklon B.
The first thing the new Australian Government did after Federation in 1901 was to bring in the White Australia policy.
“The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman,” declared the new prime minister, Edmund Barton.
But an appearance, at least, of British discretion was important. To cleverly camouflage the overt reference to “racially undesirable types”, a cunning government-set dictation test was designed. But... what’s this? A test in Greek? In Hungarian? In Portuguese? Preposterously, any European language could be called on to deliver the knock-out blow. Then, if necessary, another... and another...
In 1934, a Jewish anti-Nazi activist from Czechoslovakia, Egon Kisch, was refused entry despite having passed the test in various European languages. It was only that fierce ancient tongue, Scottish Gaelic, that finally dealt him the decisive blow. (Public objections, however, did eventually reverse that decision.)
Another applicant sailed through the French, German and Italian tests, but oh, dear! Couldn’t quite manage the Romanian.
A tad sleazy and ignoble, you must admit. After 1909, not one hopeful candidate forced to take the test managed a pass. The slightest “touch of the tar-brush” ensured failure.
During World War II, the Prime Minister, John Curtin, reinforced the White Australia policy with a stern declaration:
“This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race.”
But, simply “British race”? Even long after WWII, an Australian Department of Immigration document still ordered interviewers to weed out applicants who were “not pure Aryan”. Those sinister old-world words, carrying the stench of SS death camps, were still alive and kicking well into our bright new world, along with the Beatles and hippies and miniskirts.
This was the trick that kept Australia sparkling white for so long. Except, of course, for the real owners of the land.
One day in 1954, an archetypal figure appeared in our schoolyard: a beautiful, light-filled myth — for real! Margo was perfect: a little picture-book Dutch milkmaid. Round, blue eyes, milk-white skin, plaits of wondrous flaxen-gold.
The class was dazzled. At playlunch, the girls mobbed her, shrill with excitement. In the class vote for prefect, she immediately won in a landslide. The archetypal human dream come true! And yet...
Yet every one of us had been born while World War II still raged: a war fought largely to prove that millions of years of evolution had reached their majestic climax in the perfect face of the blond Aryan child. In the attempt, unspeakable horrors had come swarming out of dark crevices in the world’s psyche.
Britain, Australia and the other Allies had hurled their entire collective power at the Nazi heresy. Yet one glimpse of milk-white skin, cornflower-blue eyes and flaxen braids, and we Australian children eagerly snapped to attention.
We knew that perfect image of Aryan Herrenvolk girlhood. Knew that most precious jewel of the Master Race — despite the evidence then coming to light that it had been hideously distorted: the monstrous deaths; even Dr Mengele’s reputed experiments to turn Jewish and Roma children’s eyes blue like Margo’s by injecting them with chemicals.
And the button once pressed, all the hopes and fears of our tribal prehistory came surging up from the depths of our collective psyche. We responded with blind, eager innocence. In that sweet, white, milkmaid face, we saw the ideal for all humankind.
The realisation is terrifying — and mysterious. But why else did angels always have white skin and golden locks? Why was the blue-eyed, blonde girl always chosen to be Mary in the school nativity play? In the little “holy pictures” we kids collected, even Jesus often smiled sweetly with eyes of limpid blue from among long, golden ringlets.
Yet religion did try to answer serious questions about human differences. Yes, girls and boys, we are all children of God. A little Black child in Africa is just as dear to God as you are.
An unsettling claim, clearly dripping with wishful piety. Obviously, we were the important, blessed ones. The map itself, blotched all over with triumphant British Empire pink, proved that.
Africans were just loose-limbed, child-like beings with rhythm, who danced a lot and waited hungrily for the crusts and spinach we Aussie kids refused to eat. The Chinese were the Yellow Peril. “Inscrutable” was the word that best described them. Arabs were shifty-eyed; they sold things in bazaars and one had to be extremely rude to shake them off. Indians did at least play cricket, but they needed a very firm, controlling hand indeed.
Kipling’s ‘new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child’ were ‘lesser breeds without the Law’. Clearly inferior to us in intelligence, reasoning ability and creativity. They were, in Victorian parlance, ‘the servile races’.
So the glory, creativity and intellectual might of old empires – Islamic, Indian, Chinese – had slipped into quaint fable. They were now simply ‘The White Man’s burden’.
Miraculously, the machinery set up to extract vast wealth from colonies was invisible, expertly cloaked as it was in the piety of noblesse oblige. Ah yes! Trying to civilise these dark races was a thankless battle—but hell! Someone had to square their shoulders stoically and do it!
We’ve come so far since those bad old days. But unbelievably sly, ridiculous and shameful though these examples of bulldust now sound, it’s handy to remember them from time to time. After all, forewarned is forearmed.
Because who knows? If “Australian values” once included such ignorance and venom towards “the other”, then might we, possibly, fall back into...?
Frances Letters is a writer, journalist, meditation teacher and activist.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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