By Nick Soudakoff
CANBERRA — More than 200 people attended the Strategies Against Racism forum at the Workers Club in Canberra on August 23.
The forum, coordinated by the Council for Civil Liberties of the ACT, the Ethnic Communities Council of the ACT, Community Aid Abroad and Racial Respect, was publicised as "a working forum to combat racism in Canberra".
The forum brought together a large number of community groups, organisations and individuals with an interest in combating racism. Speakers talked of the need for education, for government to take a lead against racism and for Australia to uphold the United Nations Convention on Human Rights.
Unfortunately, most of these contributions failed to take up government policies that create conditions where racism flourishes.
This was perhaps not surprising given that many of the speakers were connected to the Labor Party. Another was Kate Carnell, Liberal chief minister of the ACT.
One of the few speakers who did take up the racist nature of government policy was Jason Glanville, former national indigenous youth project officer with ATSIC. He highlighted the racism of John Howard's refusal to offer an official apology to Aboriginals at the Reconciliation Conference in Melbourne and his refusal to adopt the recommendations of the Report of the Inquiry into Stolen Children.
Elaborating on this theme during discussion, Martin Iltis, from the Campaign Against Racism, pointed out that any movement to tackle racism must take up the institutionalised racism of successive governments.
According to Iltis, an anti-racism movement has to mobilise against explicitly racist policies like cutting Abstudy and migration intake. Also, it needs to reject austerity policies, which always result in government scapegoating the least privileged members of society.
Typical of most speakers' inability to suggest real measures to combat racism was Michael Lavarch, attorney general in the previous Labor government. He correctly observed that many people are turning to the likes of Hanson in these times of austerity, but failed to acknowledge the direct role governments, including the one he served in, have had in creating this situation.
The need for an anti-racist movement independent from the major parties became very clear during a cynical contribution from lobbyist Richard Farmer, who argued that the anti-racist movement need not have an orientation to involve as many people as possible, but should focus on influencing the major parties.
"It was a pity that the forum did not have much discussion on concrete ways to combat racism and involve people", Iltis told Green Left Weekly.
"The actions outside One Nation meetings organised by Campaign Against Racism have been fantastic in the number of people they have mobilised. The demonstration organised for 7pm on September 3 against Howard's racism and job cuts outside Old Parliament House is a good way to extend the campaign, because it shows the link between government policy and racism."