Dents in Australian optimism
 
Philip Bowring IHT
Saturday, December 7, 2002
After Bali and drought
 
SYDNEY Two months ago, Australia was in cruise mode. With minimal social divisions and an economy near the top of the OECD growth league, optimism reigned. But two events have resurrected old issues that may linger long after immediate pain has gone: the Bali bombing and the worst drought in 50 years. In different ways, both go to the heart of the question: the size and culture of the population of a small nation in a big country which lies in the East but thinks of itself as part of the West.
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The drought's economic impact on a largely urban nation is much less than in the past. GDP growth will be just 0.5 points lower at 3.0 percent. The wheat harvest may be down 60 percent, with farmers suffering huge losses, but the urban impact is minimal. Sydney's many golf courses are still being watered. Yet the drought and the bush fires that have been ringing Sydney are reminders that Australia is not only the driest continent but has some of the least predictable long-range weather patterns. Most people look on Aus-tralia as an empty continent that can absorb immigrant-driven population increases for decades to come, but the drought has given new voice to those who worry about the fragility of its ecology. In many areas, overuse has gradually been diminishing thin topsoil.
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Overuse has been encouraged by cheap water. The drought will probably lead to major changes in water resource management and pricing. It may boost the Greens as alternative opposition to a directionless Labor Party. It will boost the appeal of those arguing for zero population growth, although they are unlikely to prevail in a nation with a low natural birthrate and an underlying belief in the merits of immigration. Bali and the general ferment in the Muslim world are implicitly again raising issues about what sort of newcomers Australia should accept. For more than 20 years, multiculturalism has been the cornerstone of immigration policy. All nationalities, races and creeds were welcome to apply. Qualifications were essentially nondiscriminatory. Asians, from South Asia and Middle East as well as East Asia, have become the largest immigrant group. Despite the "white Australia" history, anti-non-European-immigrant populism has failed to take root. Integration has been generally successful.
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If a backlash against Muslim migrants took root, could it spread to others from outside the Anglo-Celtic, Judeo-Christian core of Australian culture? Bali followed on a crisis over boatloads of asylum seekers, many of them Afghan, which was cynically exploited by Prime Minister John Howard to help his November 2001 re-election.
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Post-Bali strains in relations with Indonesia and Malaysia should prove temporary, despite Howard's best efforts to infuriate all his neighbors by claiming rights of preemptive strike and playing the role of "deputy sheriff" to the United States. But some of Australia's Muslims – more likely of Turkish, Lebanese or Pakistani origin than from Southeast Asia - have been on the receiving end of abuse. One prominent right-wing Christian suggested that the chador be banned in case bombs were under the veil. The remark struck a chord among some Australians, and government ministers appeared reluctant to criticize such comments even though they ran contrary to multiculturalism.
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The position of Muslims, or at least of the more fervent ones who take advantage of Australia's tolerance of confessional schools in an effectively secular society, could be a challenge to liberal multiculturalism. How much diversity can the system bear?
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Identification with America over Sept. 11 and support for the Afghan war and the campaign against Iraq have been evidence of Australia's Western inclinations. Bali has underlined these. Media eager for "terror threat" stories and a government eager to justify new security laws compromising habeas corpus have revived self-perceptions that Australia may be a Western outpost in a dangerous Asian world.
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Australians are probably too optimistic, too wary of isms, too instinctively anti-authority to be frightened into changing their lifestyles or losing liberties. Economics and immigration as much as geography now tie them to Asia, or at least to East Asia.
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But drought and Bali are causing some to think more about a future which had been taken for granted, a future with neither limitless natural resources nor limitless tolerance for social and religious practices out of line with local norms. International Herald Tribune

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