`Fight Racism Dinner'

By Bill Mason

BRISBANE -- "My thanks go to Resistance for their support for East Timor and the East Timorese people", Leila Corte-Real, a representative of the Timorese community in Brisbane, told a Fight Racism Dinner held at the Resistance Centre here on November 30.

Some 80 people attended the dinner, organised by the Democratic Socialist Party as a fundraiser for Green Left Weekly.

Corte-Real expressed concern over the discriminatory treatment being imposed on East Timorese refugees in Australia, who are being denied refugee status. She concluded by offering her "vision" of a country in which Pauline Hanson would be an immigrant and could experience the "respect and support" she denies migrants, so as to "teach her the wrong she has done".

Anthony Lee, from Queensland Chinese Community Voice, and an activist in the Anti-Racism Campaign, urged that "extremists such as Pauline Hanson should not be allowed to take the centre stage of Australian politics".

He accused the Howard government of "deliberately attacking indigenous people, migrants and the poor", and called for a society in which diversity is a source of strength, not division.

Ruth Ratcliffe, speaking for the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, slammed the major parties for fostering the conditions for the rise of Hanson and racist attacks.

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