‘Racial suicide’: The re-licensing of racism in Australia

Race & Class

Volumn 39, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 1-19

  Perera, Suvendrini ^a   Pugliese, Joseph ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84997908157     PISSN: 03063968     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030639689703900201     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York, Grove Press, 1988), p. 41.
2. Quoted in Jodie Brough, ‘Mabo champion bows out with one final barb’, Sydney Morning Herald (27 June 1996), p. 3.
3. The government has also attempted to impose a two-year ban on the following for new migrants: the carer's pension, widows' allowance, disability wage supplement, mature-age allowance, special benefits, partners' allowance, maternity allowance, seniors' health cards and family payments. These bans are currently being opposed in the upper house by opposition parties, but the government has announced its intention to resubmit the bill and, if it is rejected again, has threatened to use it as the occasion for a double dissolution of parliament. Although this opens the chilling prospect of a general election fought on the issue of migrant benefits, it is one that the government has obviously not hesitated to contemplate. See Karen Middleton, ‘Migrant welfare clamp blocked’, The Age (27 November 1996), p. 2.
4. Toni Buti (ed.), After the Removal (Perth, Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, 1996), p. 23.
5. Quoted in Lisa Mclean, ‘Forced removal of children “an Australian holocaust”’, Sydney Morning Herald (14 February 1996), p. 4.
6. Ben Mitchell, ‘Howard faces new rebuke on race debate’, The Age (12 December 1996), p. A5.
7. Quoted in David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (London, Verso, 1991), p. 93.
8. Joe Wakim, ‘Time for a lead on cultural diversity’, letter to the editor, The Age (9 October 1996).
9. Quoted in David Leser, ‘Pauline Hanson's bitter harvest’, Good Weekend (30 November 1996), p. 25.
10. James Woodford, ‘MP debuts with attack on Asians’, Sydney Morning Herald (11 September 1996), p. 3.
11. Bill Schwarz, ‘“The only white man in there”: the re-racialisation of England, 1956–1968’, Race & Class (Vol. 38, no. 1, 1996), p. 73.
12. See, for example, Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese, ‘The limits of multicultural representation’ in Communal/Plural (No. 4, 1994), pp. 91–113.
13. Henry Lawson, Stories, poems, sketches and autobiography, edited by Brian Kiernan (St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1991), p. 82.
14. Angela Bennie, ‘Poetry's redneck rebel’, Sydney Morning Herald (10 September 1994), p. 9A.
15. Helen Chung Martin, ‘Globalising Australia’ Conference, La Trobe University (20 June 1997).
16. Natalie Jane Prior, ‘The Demidenko Diary’, The Age (6 January 1996), Section E, p. 1.
17. Greg Roberts, ‘The hidden Hanson’, Sydney Morning Herald (9 November 1996), p. 41.
18. The success of this ploy is revealed by the strong public support that Hanson has achieved. According to a November 1996 poll, the majority of the Australian public has, firstly, indirectly endorsed Hanson's agenda by fully supporting the prime minister's refusal to condemn her racism. (The government's vote stands at 48 per cent, while the opposition, nationally identified as pro-multiculturalism, has scored its lowest post-war rating, 34 per cent, five points below the vote recorded in the March 1996 elections.) Secondly, those polled have directly endorsed Hanson's call for the reduction of Asian migrants (53 per cent agree, 36 per cent disagree); for a short-term freeze on immigration (62 per cent agree, 36 per cent disgree); that the federal government treats Aborigines over-generously (55 per cent agree, 34 per cent disagree); that there should be compulsory twelve-month national service for 8-year-olds (48 per cent agree, 47 per cent disagree). See Michael Millet, ‘PM refuses to change approach on Hanson’, Sydney Morning Herald (6 November 1996), p. 2
19. Michael Millet, ‘Hanson agenda splits the nation’, Sydney Morning Herald (5 November 1996), p. 1.
20. Pastoral leases, a uniquely Australian institution, refer to the granting of leases to coloniser-farmers for grazing sheep and cattle from 1848 onwards. Earl Grey, Britain's secretary of state for the colonies and member of the reform-minded Exeter Hall group, directed that, although farmers were to be allowed access to the land for grazing and limited cultivation, ‘these leases are not intended to deprive the natives of their former right to hunt over these districts or to wander over them in search of subsistence in the manner to which they have been accustomed’ (quoted in The Frontier, Dir. Bruce Belsham, episode 2, ABC TV, March 1997). In effect, this ruling did not prevent a number of farmers from treating the leasehold as private property and exterminating their indigenous inhabitants, or, at best, commandeering them as free labour.
21. Peter Yu, ‘Co-existence a reality’, The Australian (1 April 1997), p. 15.
22. Quoted in Martin Flanagan, ‘Sharing history in a wide brown land’, The Age (5 November 1996).
23. Quoted in Michael Millet, ‘“Battlers” rally to Libs, says PM’, Sydney Morning Herald (19 November 1996), p. 3.
24. Quoted in Michael Millet, ‘Letter comes back to haunt Howard,’ Sydney Morning Herald (23 November 1996), p. 2.
25. Quoted in Nicki Savva, ‘PM lashes out at his Asian critics’, The Age (30 October 1996), p. A2.
26. Pier Paolo Pasolini, ‘Gennariello’, in Lutheran Letters, trans. Stuart Hood (Manchester, Carcanet Press, 1983), pp. 21–22.
27. See, for example, Dai Le, ‘Migrants face new fear’, Sydney Morning Herald (11 November 1996), p. 15;
28. Geoffrey Cousins, ‘Today's pride and prejudice’, address given to the AM Club (21 November 1996);
29. Jennie Eldershaw (radio presenter), ‘The Race Debate’, Triple JJJ ABC radio (1 November 1996).
30. John Hirst, ‘Unity in a tolerant diversity’, The Australian (18 October 1996), p. 15.