From Rejection to Acceptance--Australia's Path to Multiculturalism

Compared with many of his fellow diplomats, Steve Waters' willingness to talk about anything, anytime, anywhere is unusual.

Just out of a meeting, Waters bumps into a colleague in the office hallways and strikes up a conversation. He loves to talk about food--his experiences looking for restaurants in Taiwan, the delicious dumplings he's just discovered, the unforgettable NT$70 bowls of noodles in fried bean sauce he found in Tienmu, and so on. The two dogs he adopted in Taiwan in 1993 and has since taken to various countries and back to Taiwan are another favorite topic. Even Taiwan's cultural scene--groups like Cloud Gate and people like Lin Hwai-min and Ping Heng--and his experiences with it come up.

Soon the conversation turns to sports. Having been a rugby player as a child, he begins excitedly talking about how Australia--which as a part of the British Commonwealth has a long tradition of playing rugby and cricket--could earn world recognition in baseball and basketball.

Soccer is, of course, also mentioned; with 2006 marking Australia's first entry to World Cup finals, all the staff of the Australian Commerce and Industry Office (ACIO) were up late following the team's progress through July, so Waters officially told them that in order to get a decent sleep they could show up to work a little later than usual. In fact, Waters has even shared his excitement over Australia's World Cup debut with children in many of Taiwan's more remote schools, sending over 300 soccer balls to the schools for the children.

Steve Waters first came to Taiwan in 1972 to study Chinese, coming back in 1993 for a second stay, this time as director of the Economic Section of the ACIO. This time, coming to Taiwan as his nation's representative, marks his third long-term stay in Taiwan in over 30 years, and over this time he has naturally learned much about Taiwan. However, it was his girlfriend of over ten years, who is Taiwanese, that has been Taiwan's real ambassador for him.

Since his return to Taiwan last year, he and his girlfriend have traveled to Hualien every holiday--even Chinese New Year, when virtually every other national representative heads abroad for a break--to visit his girlfriend's Chinese-born father and Taiwanese-speaking mother.

On the streets of Sydney, people of all different races and cultures walk side by side. Thanks to a gradual change in attitudes toward immigrants, this is the multicultural face of modern Australia.

Around the world

In monetary terms, trade between Taiwan and Australia has looked pretty good in recent years. In 2005 Taiwan was Australia's seventh-largest export market, despite the two countries not sharing formal diplomatic ties, and with the price of raw materials on the rise during that year, Australian imports to Taiwan rose in price by as much as 35%.

In addition to exporting agricultural goods and raw materials, Australia also makes sizable earnings from the 100,000 tourists and over 10,000 students from Taiwan that visit the country each year. "People here like to say what they are thinking. Aussies quite like to speak frankly and they like people who'd listen to them frankly," says the brown-haired, goateed Waters. This has the benefit of making trade and negotiations much smoother between the two sides. Waters also adds that there are several major natural resource investment projects being carried out by the two nations.

Multiculturalism is the main modern standard for the avoidance of intergroup and even international conflicts, and when discussing his life as a diplomat, Waters--who specializes in trade negotiations--frequently goes back to his youth in Melbourne, where he was surrounded by different cultures.

Waters says he decided to pursue a career in the foreign service while he was still in school. "And a multicultural background certainly helps when you serve abroad. It makes people more worldly, much more sensitive to others."

After nearly eight years of growth, the Southeast Asian market area behind the Taoyuan train station remains busy even during the work week, paralleling the economic benefits immigration has brought to Australia.

Multicultural experience

The multicultural environment Waters speaks of is the result of over a century's education and changing attitudes. After once placing severe restrictions on non-European immigration through the White Australia policy (formally made law by the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, which required prospective immigrants to pass a 50-word dictation test in any European language), Australia has moved forward and opened her arms to immigration.

In the early 1850s, gold was discovered in New South Wales, sparking a gold rush. Confronted by an influx of Chinese immigrants seeking their fortunes, "we had this fear the Asians, millions of them, would come down and take all our land," says Waters. From this historical background the White Australia policy was born, which would later result in a restrictive immigration policy which also limited immigration by Pacific Islanders and other non-Europeans. After the end of World War II, the nation began to realize it needed to open itself up to immigration by all kinds of people, and to welcome their efforts to help the nation develop.

In the 1950s Australia began allowing more immigration from the Mediterranean, and then in the 1960s large numbers of immigrants began to arrive from the Slavic nations and Turkey.

Born after WWII, Waters grew up in the 1950s and 60s, when immigrants were moving into cities around Australia in large numbers. "Back then a lot of Greeks and blue-collar Lebanese lived in the suburbs of Melbourne, while a lot of Italians decided to set up businesses along Lygon Street, a busy part of town," Waters recalls. Then in the 70s they began to see an influx of Vietnamese refugees, fleeing from the civil war, who tended to congregate in Richmond. More recently, the majority of immigrants have come from China.

With immigrant numbers continuing to grow, in 1975 the federal parliament passed the Racial Discrimination Act, enshrining in law the ideal that all Australians should be treated equally and not discriminated against on the basis of skin color, ethnicity, or religious faith. This act was the final nail in the coffin of the White Australia policy.

Coming into contact with a new culture can be confusing for people who've never had to deal with cultures other than their own, as Waters points out. For immigrants, the natural response is to start judging things according to what's different from their own culture, especially the negative things. For Waters, though, growing up in a multicultural environment taught him how to find the good in the differences too.

Immigrants can enrich the life of a city through the different cultural assets they bring with them, as well as adding to the tourism resources of that city. When Italian immigrants started concentrating around Lygon Street, the street became a hub for cultural variety, and tourists began to pour in. It even became a must-see stop for visitors to Melbourne. Other Australian cities, too, are full of European, Middle Eastern, and Asian restaurants, and now, "People often ask 'What's Australian food ?' and we can't answer," jokes Waters.

Of course, there were other effects; business improved in the area, and rents around Lygon Street rose and rose, as did the cost of living, and the economic pressure on some of the earlier immigrants became immense.

The other major effect was that as they saw more and more people of different races coming into the country, and started dining at restaurants run by people of all kinds of backgrounds, the fears the predominantly Caucasian population of Australia once had about other races started to disappear.

Language is a crucial tool in overcoming fear and discrimination. Where Taiwan makes many immigrants take a Chinese test when they come into the country, Australia has a more progressive method: originally immigrants had to pass a language test in a European language, but with the passage of the Revised Migration Act in 1958, that requirement was abolished. Says Waters, "Initially the idea was that when people came into the country they should become like the people like that were already there. Now we believe in multiculturalism, so we want people coming into the country to maintain their traditional cultures and languages."

"Actually, I've met Australia's richest Taiwanese man before--he's running a hugely successful chain of retail stores now, and when he arrived he couldn't speak a word of English," Waters says by way of example.

Time heals all wounds

"Of course, Australia's still not totally free of racial tension, particularly since the 9-11 attacks in the US," he admits.

Last year, the fatal beating of Middle Eastern immigrants by crowds of white Australians at a Sydney beach, accompanied by the waving of Australian flags and the chanting of racially derisive slogans, sent shockwaves through the nation, and made news around the world.

In December 2005, after an altercation one weekend between three white lifeguards and a group of Middle Eastern youths on a south Sydney beach, text messages began being sent around the community telling people to meet at the beach the next weekend. On the 11th of December over 5000 Australian youths, mostly white, congregated at the beach waving flags and chanting anti-immigrant slogans, yelling for the predominantly Lebanese immigrant community to leave Australia and clashing with riot police. By the time things subsided, dozens had been injured or arrested. The incident created much nervousness in the immigrant community, including the overseas Chinese community, and has become known as the most serious race riot in Australian history.

"Where you tend to find the greatest sensitivity is not among the people who have been there for a long time, but the new people. The second-largest group tends to have problems with the largest group. However, over a period of time, they get over it. The toughest time for migrants is the first four or five years, because they are starting a new life, building a family in a new country. After they settle down, people around them start to get used to them, and problems began to disappear."

Into Taiwan

Lately everyone's talking about globalization, but what does that mean? "Certainly, in my work, it's lowering the barriers to trade," says Waters, "but globalization also means the movement of people."

Just like it's competing globally in the high tech industry, Taiwan is also competing with other countries for skilled workers, but "One of the problems Taiwan has is there is a lot of over-regulation. When a businessman comes in and he wants to get a residency visa, the process usually takes a long time. Much of the first week when somebody arrives here, they don't get a chance to work--they're just trying to fill the forms--whereas in other countries, you can do it in a day."

Waters also emphasizes that the huge number of Southeast Asian immigrants and laborers in Taiwan could also be a huge asset to Taiwan if properly dealt with. Taiwan should treasure them and make the most of the opportunity they present.