Sequence 2: Hieu Van Le
First experience in Australia
When we arrived in Darwin (1977) on that leaky boat, we came with our pieces, our threads of culture, and we were stitched back together again – stitch into the rich fabric of this country, such that we became part of it and it became us. My wife and I, and 39 other Vietnamese boat people, spent a week in an abandoned quarantine centre in Darwin. We then went through an intensive interviewing process for assessment of our claimed refugee status. We received medical checkups and immunisations in preparation for a transition into Australian society. One night at the centre be heard the sound of a bus arriving, followed by a knock on the door. We were told to get on a bus, and we were taken to an airport in darkness. At dawn, we arrived in Adelaide. Not long after we settled into the Pennington Migrant Hostel, north of Adelaide, we saw ‘Asians out’ racist graffiti on the walls of our new neighbourhood.
At that time there were people in the surrounding community who were unsettled by our presence, complaining loudly to the government. These new Vietnamese arrivals were not welcome. They claimed that we took their jobs and that our children should not be accepted into their schools. A record of debate in State and Federal Parliament, in the late 1970s, gives us a hint of the unease felt by some towards Indo-Chinese refugees. In the Senate, a Minister was forced to reject claims by some unionists that some refugees were ‘former pimps, brothel keepers and other undesirable people’. In the South Australian lower house, one MP raised the belief among farmers that the boats posed a “catastrophic disease threat to Australia, sheep and cattle population”. Foot and mouth disease, anthrax, and tuberculosis were all in danger of being introduced into Australia, apparently. I recently released document show that Federal Cabinet was warned in 1979 that the Indo-Chinese refugee problem ‘threatens to precipitate a regional crisis of major dimensions’. That same memorandum says that ‘If the refugee problem were to get out of control. It would impose very serious strains on the unity and character of Australian society’. ‘This new situation has all the ingredients for the most controversial and divisive issues in Australian history,’ the document says.
Source: Mr. Hieu Van Le (AO), ‘Annual address on immigration and citizenship’, Canberra, June 16, 2011, pages 8–9
Inquiry questions
- What was the immigration process for Mr Le and the others?
- How and what signs of racism were expressed at the time?
Back to Sequence 2 The Globalising World: Changing policies and Australian identity History Year 10
