Downtown Beirut during Lebanese civil war (1976). |
IMMIGRATION
authorities warned the Fraser government in 1976 it was accepting too many
Lebanese Muslim refugees without "the required qualities" for
successful integration.
The Fraser cabinet was also
told many of the refugees were unskilled, illiterate and had questionable
character and standards of personal hygiene.
Cabinet documents released
today by the National Archives under the 30-year rule reveal how Australia's
decision to accept thousands of Lebanese Muslims fleeing Lebanon's 1976 civil
war led to a temporary collapse of normal eligibility standards.
The emergence of the
documents raises the question of whether the temporary relaxation might have
contributed to contemporary racial tensions in Sydney's southwest, which
exploded a year ago into race-based riots in Cronulla.
Former prime minister
Malcolm Fraser rejected yesterday any link and said modern Muslim youth felt
alienated because governments had not done enough to help them integrate into
the general community.
"I suspect the schools
weren't equipped (and) I suspect the communities weren't equipped," Mr
Fraser told The Australian.
But demographer Bob Birrell
said the relatively depressed nature of Sydney's Muslim community could easily
be linked to the lack of education and work skills of the 1970s migrants.
John Howard was accused of
inflaming public hatred towards the Islamic community last February when he
warned that aspects of Muslim culture posed an unprecedented challenge for
Australia's immigration program.
PM Malcolm Fraser and his Treasurer John Howard. |
"I do think there is
this particular complication because there is a fragment which is utterly
antagonistic to our kind of society, and that is a difficulty," he told The Australian then.
"You can't find any
equivalent in Italian, Greek, or Lebanese, or Chinese or Baltic immigration to
Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad, but that is the
major problem.
"I think some of the
associated attitudes towards women (are also) a problem."
Mr Fraser's first full year
in office, revealed in the papers released today, saw a frenzy of
decision-making, with the cabinet making more than 2000 decisions and receiving
more than 50,000 pages in submissions - twice the workload shouldered the year
before by the Whitlam government.
Troubled by a deteriorating
economy, the government unleashed a razor gang to slash spending. The abrupt
ideological shift from free-wheeling Labor idealism to economically dour conservatism
triggered cabinet policy tensions and an epic battle between Mr Fraser and the
bureaucracy on economic policy.
In September 1976, as a
humanitarian response to the civil war raging at the time between Lebanese
Christians and Muslims, cabinet agreed to relax rules requiring immigrants to
be healthy, of good character and to have a work qualification.
Former Aus PM Malcolm Fraser. |
The war claimed 50,000
lives and displaced 600,000 people, many of whom fled to Cyprus, where
Australia set up processing facilities in the capital, Nicosia.
Australia accepted 4000
Lebanese immigrants in 1976.
A cabinet submission of
November 30 called for a return to the normal arrangements. The Fraser
government boosted immigration numbers from 55,000 in 1975-76 to 70,000 in
1976-77.
Mr Fraser told The
Australian that cabinet had relaxed entry qualifications as a humanitarian
response to the Lebanese civil war in line with Australia's international
responsibilities.
He said it would be wrong
to assert that current tensions in the Muslim community came about because his
government had allowed "bad people" to enter the country.
Current racial tensions
related to people born in Australia - not the immigrant refugees, he said.
"From my point of
view, I think the education system and the community have got to take a pretty
fair part of the blame (for current problems)," Mr Fraser said. "If
there were known to be problems in relation to the Lebanese, maybe the very
pertinent question is: why weren't some special efforts made to ward off future
difficulties?"
Immigration minister
Michael MacKellar told colleagues in 1976 officials had cited concerns about
health and character requirements, personal qualities and the migrants' ability
to integrate.
Whereas earlier Lebanese
intakes had involved an even split of Christians and Muslims, the submission
said 90 per cent of the migrants were Muslims and that a high percentage were
illiterate and unskilled.
The officials had warned
that many refugees were misrepresenting their background during interviews in
"deliberate attempts to conceal vital information", Mr MacKellar
reported.
Violent Muslim protests in Sydney (2012). |
The Commonwealth Employment
Service and Department of Social Security had reported difficulties at Campsie,
in Sydney's southwest, which had a high proportion of migrants. Half were
unemployed, and local schools were reporting fears they would run out of
classrooms.
Cabinet agreed with Mr
MacKellar and authorised him to issue a press release attributing the decision
on curbing the intake to concerns about a lack of work opportunities for the
migrants.
Mr Fraser said he would be
surprised if no mistakes had been made by immigration officials over the years,
but that Australia had "done pretty well" out of the refugee intakes
from areas of civil conflict.
Lebanese-Muslim Gang-rapist Skaf. |
Dr Birrell said this reflected the lack of work skills and education of many of the refugees who arrived in the 1970s.
(Unfortunately the offspring of those bad Muslim Lebs are now forming the criminal gangs and, together with their fundamentalist-Islamist cousins, terrorizing the native Australians and other immigrant Australians like us into submission by murders and extortions like in the so-called progressive European countries with large population of Muslim immigrants.)
Related posts at following links:
Vicious Lebanese-Muslim Crime-gangs Running Sydney
Muslim Protests Turn Violent in Sydney