Page 5216 - Week 16 - Thursday, 28 November 1991
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presently being considered as coercive utopians, idealists who wish to impose their views and perspectives on others. They want to use their authority of government to achieve their ends.
In commenting on provisions similar to those presently being discussed, Professor Cooray confirms:
Laws already exist to adequately deal with any physical attacks which are made by one group or person against another, (whether of racist origin or not) and to deal with incitement to violence. New laws which enable prosecution at a much earlier time are both unnecessary and exceedingly vague (and therefore potentially dangerous) in their operation. Indeed, the freedom to make such statements is an important safety valve which society needs in order to lessen the likelihood of resort to physical aggression. Tensions of a racial nature are bound to develop in all walks of life and should not be suppressed. A heated public debate does not necessarily lead to, and is far more desirable than, violence.
Those in Australia who are proponents of the fashionable term "Multiculturalism", mostly politicians, journalists, and certain segments of academia (very few are actually migrants), make strange bedfellows with those who promote the latest version of the Racial Discrimination Act. Indeed, it seems that most of these people wear two night-caps. They cannot be ignorant of what Italians feel about Greeks, Ukrainians about Russians, Chinese about Vietnamese, Turks about Armenians, Indians about Pakistanis, Nigerians about Ghanaians, or Croats about Serbs - and vice versa.
Australia's attitude to all this should be that we welcome immigrants from any country, with the stern proviso that their national politics be firmly left at home.
But the transformation of theory into reality may at times be more aptly described as metamorphosis, except that this time the butterfly can be uglier than the caterpillar. One simply cannot legislate to prevent people from holding what may be racist attitudes, especially migrants who could have fought against each other in the World Wars. The best we can do is to educate and attempt to change attitudes and let time heal these wounds as new generations of Australian-born children leave these views behind. Certainly legislating to make these thoughts inexpressible is likely only to harden people's feelings and prolong the whole process.
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