AUSTRALIA: Schools Act to Correct Race Problems

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sumegha Agarwal

SYDNEY, Sep 7 1997 (IPS) - Worried about a possible backlash from perceptions that Australia is a racist nation, universities are taking damage control measures to ensure that foreign students do not shun the “lucky country.”

Australia prides itself on being an Asia-Pacific hub for education, one where some 80 percent of its population of university and post-graduate students are from Asia. The bulk of the country’s 62,000 foreign students are from Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia.

And though there is no huge, sudden drop in the enrollment of overseas students, school officials say reports about the racist debates in Australia over the past year are high on the minds of potential enrollees.

“When our senior administrators travel overseas, this is the thing most asked about. This may come as a bit of surprise to Australians (because) to them it’s not a big issue,” said Mary O’Kane, vice chancellor of the University of Adelaide.

But the race debate, sparked by Member of Parliament Pauline Hanson’s speech in September 1996 against Asian immigration, has harmed Australia’s standing in the region and sent its multicultural image floundering. Now, analysts and university officials fear it could keep potential students away from the country.

To counter any fallout from Hanson’s views, eight Australian universities, including the oldest among the country’s centres of learning, have grouped together to give what one university official was an “accurate picture” of Australia.

The Group of Eight, as the universities call themselves, is focusing its campaign on the Asia-Pacific region, where it will set up “university information centres” by early next year to promote studying in Australia.

The group consists of the Australian National University, and the universities of Adelaide, New South Wales, Melbourne, Monash, Queensland, Sydney and Western Australia. Other universities are also running their own anti-racism campaigns and producing anti- racism handbooks. The Group of Eight is also responding to the unsatisfactory rating of universities by the ‘Good Universities’ guide, an annual reference for higher education in Australia used by local and international students.

The racist debates have been “raising a picture of Australia which is totally false and very damaging”, Kane said. “We would like to make sure that people still see Ausralia as a good place for higher education. We want to have long-term relations with neighbouring countries.”

Foreign students in Australia have mixed reactions to the race debate triggered by Hanson, who had said the country was “being swamped by Asians”.

“I didn’t know anything about it while in Malaysia and it’s only here I got to know about it, but I don’t worry about it,” said Gwen Ling, who is taking up marketing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Ali of Indonesia, who has been here for three years, says he and his friends “don’t care about Pauline Hanson”. He says the impact of the debate “is there and students are afraid, more suspicious but overall it’s not a big deal”.

Some schools say they are already feeling the effects of Australia’s image problem. Said Kane: “We’re seeing less overseas students applying since Pauline Hanson have her first speech.”

Jenni Lang, director of the international programme of the University of New South Wales, says the growth of overseas enrollment in the university has slowed down from 12 percent last year to 7 percent this year. Overall however, overseas enrollment has so far been growing by some 14 percent annual growth, officials say. Going by this trend, there should be some 90,000 foreign students in Australia by the year 2000.

In an interview, Denise Blight of the International Development Programme, Education Australia says the programme now faces the challenge of “giving an accurate picture of Australia which has been made worse by the race debate”.

“The image should be that I, an overseas student, is getting a culturally diverse, friendly, technologically advanced country to study in,” Blight added.

At a recent lunch organised by the Foreign Correspondents Association, minister for foreign affairs and trade Alexander Downer lamented the international media’s “fascination” for Hanson.

Earlier, officials said the media was reporting too much on remarks by a person whose views were not widely held by other Australians. Critics, however, noted that equally damaging to Australia’s reputation as Hanson’s remarks was the length of time it took the government of Prime Minister John Howard to dissociate itself from her racist views.

On Aug 29, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade release a major foreign policy paper rejecting racial discrimination. It said: “The rejection of racial discrimination is not only a moral issue, it’s fundamental to our acceptance by, and engagement with, the region where our vital security and economic interests lie.”

More than just cultivating its image as a multicultural centre for higher education, overseas student enrollment is also good business for Australia. Government figures show that overseas students spent 2 billion U.S. dollars in fees and living expenses in 1995 to 1996, a 21 per cent increase over the previous year. The National Institute of Labour Studies, education and training created more than 50,000 jobs in 1995 to 1996.

Meantime, Blight said: “We should be taking serious note of the race debate. There is so much discussion about racism in Australia out there. It would be foolish for us to ignore. We must continue monitoring. We can’t ignore the impact.”

Already, the foreign affairs ministry has put up a new unit, called ‘Images of Australia’, in its South Asia and South-east Asia division.

“We see a gap in our image particularly in Asia,” said Chris DeCure, who works with the unit. “Images of Australia aims to correct this gap and raise awareness of what we are. We have a good story to tell in terms of racial tolerance and multiculturalism.”