At the current trajectory, severe climate change will become a reality and many of the island nations in Oceania, especially atoll countries, will need to find new, sustainable places to live. Some may move internally within Oceania, but others will search for homes in larger nations with greater security and opportunity. The most logical destination for those who decide to leave the region would be Australia or New Zealand. To ensure adequate preparation for this large-scale movement of people, anticipated hosts must examine the economic and physical challenges of welcoming these communities as well as the myriad of social implications from bringing different groups of people together. In this context, race will play a large role in how these islanders are accepted into the larger social fabric of the countries to which they move and what resources will or will not be made available to them. This is two-part blog examining race relations in Australia; Part I, serving as a historical analysis, and Part II, as a contemporary overview of the situation, will be condensed and explained below.
Part II: Contemporary Australia
Oftentimes, when thinking of Australia, most non-Australians envision Steve Irwin, the Hemsworth brothers, Heath Ledger, and other good-hearted, eccentric celebrities who embody the “carefree” Australian spirit. The true face of Australia, however, is much darker- both literally and figuratively. While filming for the Daily Show with John Stewart in 2013, John Oliver stated, “Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I’ve ever been in. They’ve really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper.” Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people have lower health standards, live in more impoverished neighborhoods and regions of the nation, and have a generally lower standard of living than their white counterparts. But there is a strong component of Australian society that believes that the indigenous population receives too much assistance from the state and relies on the institutions more than their own self-sufficiency.
Equity vs Equality
This debate represents a larger, more important debate in Australian society: the importance of equity vs equality. Equity is the quality of being fair and impartial while equality is the state of being equal or the same. In other words, equity is giving each person what they need to be successful and equality is giving everyone the same thing. The image below depicts this difference perfectly. The three boys are different heights but all three want to watch the baseball game. Equality would mean giving each boy one box to stand on, regardless of how it affects their view. Equity would mean giving however many boxes each boy needs in order for them all to have the same view. In the Western world, people use these words interchangeably while discussing social stratification, but they are inherently different ideas.
These principles are applied to other aspects of life such as healthcare, housing, job opportunity, and education and are the crux of many debates of government interference and support. In Australia, the debate around the welfare system is situated firmly within this dichotomy. Are the indigenous people given too much assistance? Are they too reliant on the state? Or, does the state not take into account the inherent, systemic differences that require additional support? These are all questions over which the nation argues in terms of the indigenous Australian population. If and when climate immigrants move into Australia, these issues will only be exacerbated as nationalism will also play a dominant role in how much support the Australian government should give to this large population of non-nationals.
White Nationalism in Australia
To shine a light on the question of nationalism’s importance in terms of racial and economic equity and equality, one must first examine the Cronulla Race Riots of 2005. In December 2005 white lifeguards had a verbal altercation with four men of Middle Eastern dissent on the North Cronulla Beach that resulted in a fist fight and one of the lifeguards hospitalized after he fell and hit his head. A week later, after much media coverage both true and fabricated, approximately 5,000 people gathered on the beach. The gathering was harmless at first but quickly devolved when the crowd saw a man of Middle Eastern dissent walking on the beach. The crowd began yelling and throwing things at the man and when he tried to find refuge in a nearby pub, members of the crowd dragged him out and attacked him on the street. The police were called and quickly resolved the situation, but throughout the day 25 racial minorities were attacked, as well as one police officer, by the crowd that constantly chanted, “Fuck of Lebs!” (believing that the men were from Lebanon), “We grew here, you flew here,” “Aussie Pride,” and numerous other chants.
The police, in riot gear, eventually gained controlled of the crowd and the violence died down. But the following day rioters left various messages on buildings and signs, such as, “We came in planes yous came by chains u convict dogs,” and “we fear no ozy pigs.”
Adequate Preparation
The Cronulla Race Riots are an important vignette in Australian race relations because it demonstrated how fragile the Australian system has become. All it took was a tiny spark to ignite a fire that resulted in a full-blown riot that was begun on the basis of race and nationalism. The ethnocentricity of the rioters’ chants and messages shows a deeper strain of white nationalist sentiment in Australian that is often dormant but lays just below the surface. When these non-white climate migrants arrive in Australia and resources are further divided amongst the people to accommodate these new arrivals, will the government deal with another Cronulla incident? Or multiple across the nation? Or will the government begin developing institutions whose sole purpose is the integration of these migrants within the larger Australian context? These problems must be addressed before these new arrivals begin pouring into Australia from Oceania or else national security will be drawn into question.
This analysis is by no means complete as race is complex and perceptions of race are a constantly changing aspect of life. There are numerous positive interactions between white and indigenous Australians, but to be prepared for the arrival of large numbers of non-white climate immigrants, one must examine the darkest recesses of the Australian situation and hope for the best possible scenario while preparing for a repeat of these worst-case situations.
Australia, like the United States, has a deep history with race and racial injustice that has molded their society today. While they do have a long way to go until they achieve racial equality, they have institutions in place that help deal with these problems. The Australian Human Rights Commission and the Creative Spirits Organization track both the positive and negative relations between the white and indigenous populations around Australia. As more climate migrants enter Australia in search of refuge and new opportunities, these groups will serve as the leading organizations that will follow the social integration of these migrants into the larger Australian society.