The Lucky Country

by Donald Horne

  Arguments such as these are themselves symptoms of Australia’s malaise. Some of them – the unimportance-of-the-issue kind of argument – are London arguments.

  The British link is taken seriously by other countries, particularly in Asia. Australia is sometimes considered to be a half-sovereign state, a weird survival of the colonial age, a cunningly contrived British satellite with some freedoms, a Hungary or a Poland of ‘The West’, not even a Yugoslavia or an Albania. This is an irritating and dangerous reputation to bear. It is one of which many Australian diplomats are not fully aware; Asians don’t like to tell them about it.

  Discussion still goes on about the use of the Commonwealth as an instrument of power, directing hopes and ambitions from more realistic forms of association with other nations. Australia needs sudden shocks of reorientation within its society that will divorce it from the largely irrelevant problems of the British, make it possible to speed necessary changes and to develop some new sense of identity, some public feeling of being a people who can be described – even if incorrectly – as such-and-such a kind of nation, and act at times as if it were so. Australians are anonymous, featureless, nothing-men. This modest anonymity reveals itself in the argument that Australia does not run to the kind of person we could turn into a president. Is Australia alone in the world in being unable to rig up its own head of state? This is backwater colonialism, nervous of its final responsibilities.

  When Australia becomes a republic a President might be appointed by pretending that nothing had really changed: just replace the Governor-General as quietly as possible with a President. One might think that such a dignitary would have to be elected by the people but the Australian political leaders might prefer to sneak him in through a back door. At present the Prime Minister appoints the Governor-General; he nominates someone to the Queen who then announces the appointment. As in Russia, the effective political leader appoints the ceremonial head of state. It would be possible to keep this tradition going by calling together both Houses of the Federal Parliament at stated intervals and they could formally elect the man on the Prime Minister’s ticket. Something more ambitious might be attempted – a national convention of State and Federal Parliaments. This would take the president-making away from the Prime Minister and leave the matter to be settled by horse-trading among the country’s most powerful politicians. Direct methods of election might be opposed on the argument that to destroy what is left of the mystique of the monarchy might threaten the basis of Australian democracy. I doubt that this would be so.

  In the meantime the appointment by a Liberal Government of an Australian as Governor-General – the first such appointment made by a Liberal Government – was accepted as an overdue reform and there has now even been discussion as to how the position of Governor-General might be abolished – but without Australia formally becoming a republic. The suggestion was that the constitutional provision that an Administrator can act with the powers of a Governor-General in the absence of a Governor-General could be used. The Government could simply not appoint a Governor-General; some distinguished person could then double up as Administrator to do the necessary signing of documents, and so forth, but he would not perform any public duties. This seemed a typically Australian suggestion. It is not likely to be quite as easy as that.

  5. LIVING WITH ASIA

  What is Asia?

  Before discussing Australian attitudes to Asia it should be made clear what one is not saying. Among people who take a sophisticated interest in Asia it is fairly common ground that the term is too wide in reference for any except an arbitrary geographical meaning. Asia is a place where half the world lives, located at such-and-such a position on the map. The whole concept of ‘continents’ breaks down when one comes to Asia.

  In the days of colonial conquest Europeans felt a difference between themselves and ‘Asiatics’. There were differences of pigment and bone structure; ‘Asiatics’ did not speak European languages; they had not generated an industrial revolution; they were heathens; they had let themselves be dominated by the colonialists. It may have been this fact of domination that established the differences. Professedly Christian peoples were engaged in some slaughter and considerable disruption and subjection; it was inevitable that an ideological rationalization of this would be developed. Otherwise how could the troops, functionaries and traders face each other at church on Sundays?

  Out of this guilt and the rationalization of it grew the lunatic division between an allegedly superior ‘white world’ (that was a pink and brown and light yellow and grey world as well) and an inferior ‘coloured’ world. This division was based primarily on power, not on quality of civilizations. This power was overthrown by the Japanese. As early as 1905 they defeated the Russians. In the 1930s in China the Japanese advanced and the Europeans retreated. In the Second World War they ended European power in Asia.

  ‘Asian’ once had some meaning as an opposite to ‘European’. With the liberation of Asia from the Europeans ‘Asia’ ceased to have meaning. There were no common characteristics between the races and nations that made it up. For those who find significance in the colour of skins or the shape of noses Asia is disappointing. It has all kinds of skin pigmentation; all shapes of noses. There is no pan-Asianism. There are divisions between the nations of Asia and, above all, there are immense feelings of difference between races. Race is discussed a great deal in Asia. Japanese look down on many other Asians as primitives; they are likely to find more community of interest with Australians than with Indonesians. In China, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, or in the overseas Chinese communities in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia the Chinese consider themselves to be the greatest and most intelligent race, inheritors of the Central Kingdom, the true governors of Asia and perhaps the world. Filipinos hate the Chinese and the Japanese; everyone distrusts the Filipinos and the Japanese. Everyone who is not Chinese or Indian distrusts both the Chinese and the Indians. Among the Chinese and Indians themselves there are differences of race and class. To state these differences is not to criticize Asia. It simply means that the people who live there are part of the human race and display familiar human characteristics. It can become one of the obsessions of European anti-colonialists to de-humanize people who live in Asia, to idealize them as charming puppy dogs, innocent idiots. The reality is that Asians display versatility and difference more than Europeans. Pan-Africanism and pan-Europeanism are now developing some signs of possible political reality. Pan-Asianism is not. Asia is too big, too diverse to consider itself as an entity. It is a collection of sub-continents, themselves divided.

  The physical racial differences of Asians are greater than those of Europeans. Religious differences are greater (Buddhism in several varieties, Hinduism, Confucianism, Communism, Mahommedanism, Christianity). Stages of economic development are considerably greater. And while there is some sense of a common civilization in Europe there is none in Asia – except amongst those top people who are ‘westernized’. ‘Oriental fatalism’ is a convenient dream. It comes from reading religious texts or observing depressed rural communities. One could have applied these selective tests to Europe and come up with the same conclusions. The religious dogmas of Europe, with their concern for the vanity of this world and the rewards of the hereafter have been ignored by most of those who made Europe’s history. The same kind of thing happens in Asia. Ambition, conquest, enterprise are as much a part of its history as of Europe’s. What happened to Asia is that the sudden burst of creative growth in Europe temporarily overwhelmed it. It was slow to realize that the world was open, the future boundless, to gain the modern sense of constantly moving into the new. But so, for a long time, did the communities of Europe, even at the time when changes were happening. Japan, where the Europeans did not suppress or distort local initiative as they did everywhere else in Asia, moved into the New Age more quickly than the underdeveloped European nations. The Chinese entrepreneurs in Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok
and Manila are not oriental fatalists. Indian businessmen are not holy men – although the depressed rural communities in India may still be fatalistic. (Fatalism is, as it were, their only hope.) Manila bustles with sharp practice while the countryside rots – as has happened in Southern Spain, in Sicily, in Greece, and in other European countries at earlier states in their development.

  Asians are not any more unfathomable than anyone else. The truth is that we are all unfathomable. Asians are unfathomable to each other. Indians cannot understand the Chinese; the Japanese cannot understand the Indonesians; the Cambodians cannot understand the Thais; and so on. Does a Balkan European understand a Western Catholic? Do Norwegians understand Spaniards? Does anyone understand the English? I read recently a book on Japanese businessmen. It tried to distinguish them from ‘western’ businessmen. There seemed to be something familiar about the description … the nepotism, the sense of family, the continued interest in military matters, the sloth … it was also a description of businessmen in England. Europeans usually apply to people who live in Asia tests that are more objective than the tests Europeans would apply to themselves. These harsh examinations can produce a sense of Evelyn Waugh absurdity. But the same tests applied to European institutions are likely to produce the same results. Perhaps all human effort is absurd. If this is so, it is no more absurd in Asia than in Europe. Dress Sir Anthony Eden and his 1956 Cabinet up in tropical dress, move them to Vientiane and have them pursue a policy against Xiengkhouana with the ruthless ineptitude with which they pursued their Suez policy and you have an ‘unfathomable’ Asian situation.

  And what is European about the civilization that Australia is said to represent? Let us proceed beyond the official handouts: Christianity, respect for human life, belief in democracy and so on. Can we seriously describe Europe, the continent of unparalleled slaughter and conquest as necessarily practising these ideals? Are they really its distinguishing characteristics? This is the way people in Asia sometimes see the Europeans: they see them as hypocritical conquerors and murderers.

  There is more respect for human life in Australia than in most countries of Asia; Australian democracy functions without serious internal challenge; and Australians enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world, ahead of the Japanese and well ahead of other countries in Asia. But this had not always been so. Australia was first established as a miserable penal settlement where men were flogged and hanged almost out of hand and the Aborigines were sometimes hunted like animals or poisoned like dogs. In Tasmania they were exterminated. Australians are not far removed from barbarisms. Perhaps one should simply think of the Pacific as it was at the end of the eighteenth century. Think of Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Francisco, Pearl Harbor, Manila. These places were about to be unrecognizably transformed. The one great mysterious convulsion of ‘industrialization’ and ‘westernization’ has thrown them all up in their modern forms. In different ways the lives of all of us around the Pacific are being affected by the same forces. And, in the test of the sense of constantly moving into the new that is the modern spirit, Australia is not the most ‘modern’ nation in ‘Asia’; Japan is.

  The power situation

  It is not a question of Australia seeking to be understood in Asia. Australians might well begin any debate on foreign affairs with the thought that there is no chance that they will ever enjoy good relations with all the nations to their north. Australia’s problem is that it now exists in a new and dangerous power situation and its people and policies are not properly reorientated towards this fact.

  Asia is the place where western European colonialism first collapsed, pushed over by the Japanese. (Africa was an afterthought.) The Europeans tried to force their way back after the Second World War but their strength dribbled away in lost colonial wars, or gestures of realistic magnanimity. The romance and the rackets of European imperialism were over. National armies filled the barracks that the colonialists built and national presidents moved into the governors’ palaces. For Australians this has produced a new world in which old attitudes are meaningless.

  It is not surprising that a strong sense of imminent catastrophe marked Australia’s initial awareness of Asia. The threat of Japanese invasion made a macabre opening to Australia’s new interest in its environment and the sense of possible disaster remained as the Communists swept into power in China and, among the disorders of the nationalist revolts in the countries fringing China, there were strong movements of Communist insurgency. Then the Korean War, the Malaysian Confrontation and the Vietnam War all demanded Australian military expeditions. The subcontinent of South-East Asia, to which Australia appends, remains potentially the most unstable area in the world. In this quarrelsome, insecure, unpredictable situation, what is surprising is that Australian policy developed unexpected subtleties. Out of the mess of confrontation between Soekarno’s regime and Malaysia and the later separation of Singapore and Malaysia Australia, although intervening, managed to retain friendships all round. There is no other nation of the ‘West’ of comparable size that has had to concern itself with such continuing active diplomacy and military commitment as Australia has had to exercise since the Second World War.

  In a world where racialism is now correctly classified as a disease, Australia has the reputation of being racialist because of its ‘White Australia’ policy. Sir Robert Menzies said on British television: ‘Oh, we don’t call it that now.’ But although there has been some minor (if secret) reform nevertheless Australia quite clearly practises immigration discrimination against every country in Asia. It encourages and subsidises migration from Europe, including the migration of those who do not speak English, yet it conducts such rigorous (and secret) tests against Asians that very few Asians get in. This is taken to be racialist by Asians and so it is, in effect, whatever its motives. It causes Australia to be distrusted by every nation in Asia.

  This policy is sometimes likened, and even confused, with Australia’s past ill-treatment of its Aborigines. Things are improving in attitudes towards the remaining 100 000 Aborigines and part-Aborigines but there is still truth in the statement made some years ago by Paul Hasluck: ‘When we enter into international discussion and raise our voice, as we should raise it, in defence of human rights and the protection of human welfare, our very words are mocked by thousands of degraded and depressed people who crouch on rubbish beds throughout the whole of this continent.’ Asians do not worry much about the Aborigines. (Their treatment of their own Aborigines is often worse than Australia’s. Besides the Aborigines are ‘blacks’ and there is probably more prejudice against ‘blacks’ in Asia, than in Europe, or in Australia.) However, the Aborigines are taken to be victims of the ‘White Australia’ policy and the policy is often described as an Australian ‘apartheid’.

  That such a suburban and unambitious people as the Australians should become one of the last colonial powers is an accident of geography. Yet the Australian administration of New Guinea (though New Guinea is modestly described as a ‘territory’) has been undoubtedly colonial, however well-meaning it might seem to the innocent – and largely uninterested – minds of Australians. In the early 1960s the worst that happened to Australia were reprimands from the United Nations Trusteeship Council for not speeding up its training of New Guineans for self-government. But it seemed clear that the accelerated development towards self-government that Australia initiated in 1964, with a House of Assembly that had a majority of indigenous people, would develop a momentum towards independent nationhood for East New Guinea that would catch Australia unprepared.

  Asia is the only part of the world, apart from the Caribbean, where there are both high population density and high population growth. At present rates, in forty years it will hold – if that’s the word – a billion people more than all the world does today. Australia is the least densely populated country in the world – almost 3 000 000 square miles of it, sixth-largest nation in area and fewer people than Holland. That a large
part of it is desert, and another large part extremely arid is not believed in Asia, or considered to be relevant. To Asians, Australia is a great unexploited ‘continent’. I remember facing a roomful of disbelieving Filipinos and trying to explain that although Australia could accommodate incalculably more people in its industrial and fertile areas, nevertheless a large part of it was desert. Finally, I asked for an atlas and pointed to the great blob of yellow that takes up two-thirds of Australia on the rainfall map, third-biggest yellow blob on the rainfall map of the world. The Filipinos still did not believe that this was desert. They wished to believe that south of them there was a ‘continent’ of great richness that could provide a solution to everybody’s problems. Australia should try to get itself reclassified as an island. It sounds less interesting.

  There are other empty areas in Asia – Manchuria, the north and north-west Provinces of China, Sumatra, Thailand. But low population density in Australia creates animosity among Australia’s neighbours because it is associated with such high prosperity. Australia enjoys almost unparalleled prosperity while in Asia there are some of the most destitute populations in the world. Australia has not the resources to play Lady Bountiful to all Asia but per capita national income in Australia is sixteen times that of Asia. Despite its internal democracy, Australia plays an aristocratic role in the society of Asia – rich, self-centred, frivolous, blind.