While
the word xenophobia may have left Pauline Hanson looking puzzled in the
late 1990s, her political views were a touchstone in the development of a
mounting and recurring fear of foreigners in Australia. On December 6 and
7, several years on from the rise of “Hansonism”, a major national
conference entitled Fear
of Strangers – wogs, refos and illegals in the popular imagination,
will be held in Adelaide to put these issues under the spotlight.
The
free public conference is being hosted by UniSA’s Hawke Research
Institute and The Australian National University’s Herbert and Valmae
Freilich Foundation. Conference venues include the Art Gallery of South
Australia, Elder Hall and the Mercury Cinema.
Director
of UniSA’s Hawke Research Institute, Professor Alison Mackinnon says the
conference will open debate on a wide range of important and recurring
issues in Australian cultural development, on racism, and past and future
population anxieties. Participants will explore ways in which this
xenophobia has been represented in the past as well as today. The
presenters will focus on their personal experience as well as their
research and writing.
“This
will be an invaluable opportunity for anyone concerned about the issues or
challenged by them, to access some well considered and researched
information,” Prof Mackinnon said.
“We
hope it will be an antidote to all the hype and hearsay and offer a real
opportunity to reflect on population issues in Australia in all of their
complexity, focussing particularly on recurrent fears of newcomers.”
Key
presenters include Ralph Elliott, Peter Mares author of Borderline: Australia’s response to refugees and asylum seekers in the
wake of the Tampa; Sonia Mycak; James Jupp, Australia’s leading
authority on immigration and author of From
White Australia to Woomera; Andrew Riemer, well known critic and author of The
Hapsburg Café, and
Inside:Outside; David Walker, author of Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia; and local food
and wine expert, Barbara Santich.
On
Friday December 6 Dr Margaret Reynolds National President of the United
Nations Association of Australia will give a free public lecture at 6 pm
entitled Why
is Australia so paranoid about refugees?
At
8 pm on Saturday December 7 there will be a free screening of Mike
and Stefani at the Mercury Cinema.
The
1952 film directed by Ron Maslin Williams is a documentary made
originally for the Department of Immigration in order to demonstrate that
the way Australia was choosing who could resettle here as a
"displaced person" was rigorous and that"undesirables" were not being allowed to enter Australia.
The film follows Mike and Stefani, a Ukrainian couple from their wartime
experiences through to refugee camps in Germany and culminates in actual
footage of the selection interview. The film was never widely released,
partly because the footage of the interview was so harrowing.
Now, 50 years later, and in different historical
and political circumstances, the film nonetheless resonates with
contemporary concerns. This showing of Mike and Stefani will
be introduced by Dr Deane Williams (Monash University).
The conference is free but bookings should be made
through Debro Thaw at debro.thaw@unisa.edu.au
Media
contact: Michèle Nardelli (08) 8302 0966 or 041 8823673
email: michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au
