Chinese Australians owed apology for discrimination against forebears
The worst anti-Chinese riots in Australian history occurred 150 years ago today on the Burrangong goldfields of Lambing Flat, near Young, NSW. Anti-Chinese immigration laws had been introduced six years earlier, in 1855, by the Colony of Victoria and every colonial government followed with similar legislation.
This eventually led, upon Federation, to the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 or the White Australia Policy, which was in place until 1973. For nearly 120 years the Chinese were treated in this country as lesser human beings.
Why then have Chinese Australians, who were subjected to discriminatory policies for such a long period, not done anything to right these wrongs? Surely we do not have to wait as long as the first citizens of this country to get an apology and be recognised for the contributions we have made to the country we call home. It is only now that there are stirrings in the Chinese Australian community to have past wrongs recognised for what they were.
The beginnings date back to the Gold Rush when, to restrict the number of Chinese entering Australia, Victoria passed an act to regulate the conveyance of passengers to Victoria. South Australia followed with an act to make provision for levying a charge on Chinese arriving in South Australia, while NSW enacted the Chinese Immigrant Regulation and Restriction Act of 1861. These acts applied an entrance or head tax, as well as regulating the number of Chinese passengers a ship was allowed to carry.
These discriminatory practices led to the infamous White Australia Policy, which incorporated a dictation test (not necessarily in English) and was aimed at keeping non-whites (mainly Chinese) from entering Australia. The dictation test remained until 1958 and the last vestiges of the policy were removed by Gough Whitlam's Labor government in 1973. Little did I know when I arrived in Sydney as a New Zealand citizen in 1964 that the Immigration Restriction Act applied to me and I (unlike white New Zealanders) was required to have an entry visa.
Other countries, such as New Zealand and Canada, followed this Australian precedent of using a head or poll tax as an immigration restriction measure. New Zealand adopted the practice with a £10 entry tax, later increased to £100 (my father was one of those who had to pay), and Canada imposed a poll tax on the Chinese in 1885. The tax was repealed by Canada in 1923 and by New Zealand in 1944.
The Chinese in New Zealand, Canada and the US have received apologies and reparations for these discriminatory policies. On Chinese New Year in 2002, the New Zealand prime minister, Helen Clark, said: "I wish to announce today that the government has decided to make a formal apology to those Chinese people who paid the poll tax and suffered other discrimination imposed by statute, and to their descendants.
''With respect to the poll tax we recognise the considerable hardship it imposed and that the cost of it and the impact of other discriminatory immigration practices split families apart . . . We believe this act of reconciliation is required to ensure that full closure can be reached on this chapter in our nation's history."
Her government contributed $NZ5 million to establish a Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust. But people who paid the tax were not personally compensated.
In 2006, the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, apologised for the Chinese head tax, offering a ''symbolic payment'' of $C20,000 to surviving payers of the tax and their spouses. An additional $C10 million was added to the $C25 million already put aside to finance cultural community improvement projects and a ''national recognition'' education program.
In 2009, the California legislature approved a bill apologising to Chinese Americans for racist laws dating from the 1852 foreign miners' tax aimed at Chinese immigrants, to other laws such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act passed by the US Congress. The bill also recognises the contributions that Chinese immigrants made to the state, particularly their work on the Transcontinental Railroad.
Surely, it is past time that this issue be addressed and redressed in Australia. At a conference organised by the Chinese Community Council of Australia, on the theme of ''Finding the Chinese Australian Voice'', the following resolution was passed: "That this conference resolves to ask the CCCA national executive to Lambing Flalook into the Lambing Flat incident and other discriminatory policies against the Chinese with the possibility of asking the Australian government for an apology and to acknowledge the contributions of Chinese Australians."
The Chinese Australian community, which comprises about 3 per cent of Australia's population, is a diverse group ranging from those whose forebears came to this country in the 1800s to those who have arrived in recent decades. For those whose ancestors came in those early years and suffered all sorts of insults and indignities, let those who arrived more recently appreciate what the community suffered for them to now be equals in a multicultural Australia.
The China of today is not the same China that the early Chinese came from and the Australia of today is also not the one our forebears came to.
It is time for Chinese Australians to shake off the vestiges of the White Australia Policy and the mantle of inferiority and play a greater role in the public life of Australia. I would like to think that history is important and that the Chinese at Lambing Flat did not suffer in vain.
Daphne Lowe Kelley is president of the Chinese Heritage Association of Australia and the 2011 recipient of the NSW Premier's Jack Wong Sue Award for Voluntary Service Beyond the Chinese Community. Her grandfather came to Australia more than a century ago.
Daphne Lowe Kelley
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