Racism is not new to Australia, and neither is industrial unrest. But the White Australia policy and the continual strikes of the 1960s seemed to be things of the past until a series of developments roughly contemporaneous with the Liberal-National Party government that has ruled for the past two years.
This weekend an ugly situation continued at the nation's main ports, as sacked dockers taunted their non-union replacements. While the announcement of an election in October is expected after the Easter break, fears that such an election would be fought largely on racism receded, with the likelihood that industrial relations would be the issue. A poll in the Bulletin magazine shows that 47 per cent of Australians approve of the 1,400 sackings while 45 per cent disapprove.
An election some six months before it was due (in March 1999) became inevitable last week after the upper house of the Australian parliament, the Senate, voted against government amendments to legislation effectively limiting aboriginal claims to native lands. The amendments had been made after the Senate previously refused the original legislation, a comprehensive package that the conservative-hued government of Mr John Howard had created in an attempt to undo concessions towards native title made by the preceding Labor government. Under the Australian system if the Senate twice refuses legislation sent to it by the lower house, the House of Representatives, the prime minister can dissolve parliament and call elections.
Meanwhile, industrial unrest has come to the fore with an intensity not seen for many years with the wholesale sacking of 1,400 stevedores (dockers) employed by one company, Patrick. Under the Labor governments of Mr Bob Hawke and Mr Keating, from 1983 to 1996, relative industrial peace reigned because of Mr Hawke's "accord" between unions, employers and government. Almost as soon as the Liberal coalition returned to power three years ago there were rumblings from the union movement, but the outraged reaction to Patrick's action, and new laws banning secondary pickets, has inflamed the industrial scene as never before. However, the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Ms Jennie George, attempted to calm things at the weekend, saying "I will not be provoked into all-out war".
Mr Howard might prefer a clean-cut issue such as the (perceived) high wages earned by dockers, but he also has tricky issues in the transition to a republic, a process which has begun but still has considerable opposition, and a number of expenses scandals which have plagued his ministers.
Although Australia's 18 million people make up a melting-pot society, especially in Melbourne and Sydney, racial prejudice has not been extinguished by familiarity. Successive waves of Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Vietnamese and Cambodians have had to put up with name-calling and resentment.
Australia's most notorious "incidence" of racism was the official White Australia policy, first introduced around the turn of the century with support of both the leading political parties of the day. When the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed a self-governing entity in 1901, the Bulletin called on the new federation's people to proclaim an Australia for Australians, and reject "Queen Victoria's nigger empire". The officers of that empire warned the federal and state governments about the White Australia policy, that, in the words of historian Manning Clark, "any discrimination based on a distinction of race or colour conflicted with the principle of equality before the law of all members of the British empire". However, the White Australia policy, with iniquitous practices such as dictation tests for entry in languages the applicant could not possibly know, survived another 60 years, until the logic of the continent's geographical position twinned with both economic and humanitarian reasons made it impossible to keep out non-white races.
But there was one non-white race (or races) the legislators could never keep out, for the reason that they had been there first, by perhaps 50,000 years. Now the supremacy of native title to lucrative pastoral or mining land has brought the whole issue of indigenous and "settler" Australians into the limelight. The Labor leader, Mr Kim Beazley, last month warned Mr Howard of the dangers of going to the people on a race issue as the Liberal premier of Queensland attacked a nativetitle claim to much of the capital, Brisbane. "We can hardly being to imagine what will become of Australia's hard-won reputation for decency, tolerance and mutual respect," Mr Beazley said. The opinion polls are now showing that his Labor Party, devastated in 1996, has a chance of returning to power. Much depends on the content of the election campaign - and the extent to which the "race card" is played.
The government claimed victory yesterday in its fight to reform the Australian waterfront. The threat of tough legal penalties prevented the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) blocking entry into Sydney dock yesterday of an Australian container ship crewed by MUA members. The Australian Endeavour became what the union admitted was the first Australian-crewed vessel unloaded by non-union workers since the second World War.