Country matters
In the NSW town of Young, Peter Browne investigates a working solution.
Mohammad Husseini is one of around 70 Afghan refugees working at the Burrangong Meatworks in Young, an hour-and-a-half's drive north-west of Canberra. He's a serious, quietly spoken young man with a good command of English, and he's been working at the abattoir for nearly a year. 'I like the way people live here,' he says, 'so peaceful, friendly people, where you can access justice. Anything's possible here, so I'd like to be here.' But like all the Afghans at Burrangong, Mohammad is on a three-year temporary protection visa, which means his future in Australia is uncertain, to say the least.
Tony Hewson, human-resources manager at Burrangong, says the men were a godsend for the company, which has had long-term problems attracting workers. He wants Philip Ruddock and his department to let them stay when their visas begin to expire next March. Predictably, the minister says there'll be no exceptions to the rules: if they want to be considered for permanent settlement, Mohammad and his countrymen will have to go back to Afghanistan and apply under the skilled migration program. There's a suggestion that they might get preferential treatment, but they'll still have to make the trip-at their own, or the company's, expense.
It sounds like another bleak episode in Australia's official program of hostility towards asylum seekers and refugees. But the stand-off brought with it some good news as well. In April the Sydney Sunday Telegraph reported that the people of Young had rallied around the men in the face of the government's intransigence. In a 'fascinating reversal of stereotypes', the paper reported, 'the people of Young are battling the federal government to stop the boat people leaving.' The mayor had written to the immigration minister supporting the abattoir's bid to have the men stay on. Local teachers were providing free English lessons. 'Meeting these people face to face makes you realise they're just people like you and me,' Andrew Graziani, an employee at the abattoir, told the Telegraph.
By the time I visited Young late last month, the good news had begun to unravel. According to a report in early May in the Sydney Sun Herald, Mrs Gay Maxwell, a long-term resident of the town, didn't want to be tarred with the tolerant, multicultural brush, so she'd begun collecting signatures on a petition opposing the presence of the men. 'The media has been reporting that we all welcomed them with open arms,' she was quoted as saying, 'but we've never had a chance to put the other side of the story.' But when I asked Mrs Maxwell for an interview she didn't want to discuss the issue and doubted that any of her supporters would want to speak to me either. She did say that the men were 'illegals'-they aren't-and that they had taken jobs away from locals-which the local employment agency, Mission Employment, denies.
Although support for the men was strong among the people I met in Young, there are reports that at least some of them have been threatened and abused in the streets of Young. A group of the men, it seems, want to leave the town.
Their distress would have intensified in early June when a leaflet began circulating in Young calling on the locals to act to 'save' the town from 'the blight':
What's in store for Young very soon? Rape-gangs, shootings of police officers, drugs, muggings, house-breakings, murders and unemployment? It starts with contract labour at Burrangong Meat Processors. Some call it multiculturalism. Ordinary people know it's the takeover of our towns, our country!
It's a fair bet that, coming from the Australia First Party, these views reflect only a small body of opinion in Young. When I called the mobile phone number on the leaflet I was greeted by a man in Sydney who didn't want to give me his name. He said that the leaflet was written by a group of people in Young whom he couldn't name, and that he couldn't comment on its contents either. He told me he'd ask the president of Australia First, Diane Teasdale, to phone me to discuss the leaflet. Ms Teasdale lives in Shepparton, Victoria, even further from Young than the unnamed man in Sydney. She hasn't phoned back yet.
Since then, The Sydney Morning Herald has revealed that the man on the mobile phone is Jim Saleam, a former leader of the far-right organisation, National Action. According to the paper, 'Dr Saleam was jailed for 31/2 years in 1991 for possessing a firearm and organising a shotgun attack on the home of the African National Congress's Sydney representative.'
Tony Hewson thinks the leaflet is so ludicrously extreme that it will actually increase support for the men in the town. But the Afghans in Young-and the other 8000 temporary protection visa-holders around Australia-deserve a much stronger show of political support. They are, after all, refugees-and are accepted as such under Australian law. The local federal MP, Alby Schultz, is hostile towards anyone who's arrived by boat. Premier Bob Carr is a vocal supporter of a tough stand against refugees and asylum seekers. And the federal ALP is still floundering around, unable to summon the courage to reject the failed pragmatism of the Beazley years. Despite the warm welcome they've had from many people in Young, Mohammad and his friends have good reason to feel uncertain about their future in Australia.
Peter Browne works at the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University and produces The National Interest on ABC Radio National.
Cartoon by Dean Moore.
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