The Australia I left behind

THERE is something rather curious about Pauline Hanson’s vision of Australia.

For those who may not know her, Hanson is the leader of One Nation, the Australian political party she founded in the 1990s.

She has spent much of her political career campaigning against immigration and multiculturalism, and she now wants Australia to become a more “monocultural” society.

She also wants fewer migrants and international students.

And, apparently, cheaper cigarettes.

It is quite a combination.

I was a Malaysian living in Australia for 13 years. I studied, worked, made friends and became familiar with a country that was not the one I grew up in. Then, eventually, I came home to Sarawak.

So when I hear arguments about who should be allowed into Australia and what Australia should look like, I find myself paying a little more attention.

Hanson has made no secret of the fact that she believes she could become Australia’s prime minister. Earlier this year, she said she believed she had the ability to do the job, while considering a run for the House of Representatives. 

Which makes a recent interview rather interesting.

In a News24 documentary, Hanson was asked whether, if she became prime minister, she would want to visit Jakarta and meet Indonesia’s president. She could not remember his name. She also struggled to name Japan’s prime minister. 

Now, I am not suggesting every politician needs to memorise every world leader. Names escape people. I have forgotten the names of people I have actually met, so I am hardly going to demand perfection from anyone.

But Hanson later defended not knowing the Indonesian leader, saying she had not looked him up because she did not need to know.

There is, however, one small problem.

Indonesia does not have a prime minister.

It has a president.

His name is Prabowo Subianto.

And that left me wondering: if you are asking Australians to trust you with the prime ministership, surely knowing who leads one of Australia’s closest neighbours is not an unreasonable bit of homework?

I would have thought foreign policy came with the job description.

Perhaps I am being old fashioned.

Perhaps the new approach is to become prime minister first and look up the neighbours later.

After all, there is Google.

The irony becomes even more interesting when the same political conversation is about migrants being expected to understand Australia, learn the language, follow the laws and integrate into society.

Fair enough.

But perhaps those making decisions about migrants should also know a little about the countries and people they are talking about.

After all, it is difficult to have a serious conversation about the rest of the world if you are not entirely sure who runs part of it.

And this is where I find the migration debate particularly interesting.

People are not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. They are students, doctors, workers, neighbours, colleagues and friends.

Some arrive with two suitcases and build a life. Others spend years abroad before eventually packing those suitcases again and going home.

Migration is rarely as tidy as a statistic suggests.

As a Sarawakian, I also find the idea of a “monocultural” Australia rather difficult to imagine.

Sarawak is hardly a monocultural place. We grow up surrounded by different cultures, languages, religions and traditions.

We celebrate different festivals, eat different food and sometimes speak completely different languages at home.

And yet, somehow, we are all still Sarawakians.

That does not mean everything is perfect. It simply means diversity is not particularly exotic to us.

Perhaps that is why the idea of making Australia more monocultural feels strange to me. I lived in a country where people from different backgrounds were part of everyday life and then returned to a place where cultural diversity is equally woven into the landscape.

Of course, Australia can have a conversation about immigration.

It should.

Housing, infrastructure, jobs, schools and public services are serious issues. Governments should be able to discuss how many people a country can reasonably accommodate.

But there is a difference between debating immigration policy and making people feel that their background makes them less entitled to belong.

Then, just when the conversation is becoming rather serious, comes the cigarette proposal.

One Nation wants to slash tobacco excise by 75 per cent, which it says could bring the price of a legal packet of cigarettes from about $46.50 (approximately RM133.94) to around $21 (RM60.50) or $22 (RM63.37). 

The party argues that cheaper legal cigarettes would help undercut the black market, while health experts warn that making cigarettes cheaper could undermine decades of tobacco control. 

So let me see if I have understood the campaign strategy.

Less migration.

Less multiculturalism.

Cheaper cigarettes.

I can almost hear the election slogan now: “Fewer Migrants, Cheaper Cigarettes.”

It may not be the most conventional vision of national renewal, but at least nobody could accuse the campaign team of being vague.

Jokes aside, there is something worth thinking about.

Australia has been shaped by migration. So has modern Malaysia. So has Sarawak.

People have moved, settled, married, traded, worked and built communities for generations. The movement of people is hardly a new invention.

I know this because I was one of those people who crossed a border and built a life somewhere else.

I did not become less Malaysian because I lived in Australia.

And I did not stop being connected to Australia simply because I eventually came home.

That experience has made me wonder whether belonging is really as simple as politicians sometimes make it sound.

Is someone less Australian because their parents were born elsewhere? Is someone less Malaysian because they spent years overseas? Does living somewhere else mean you stop belonging to the place you came from?

I do not think so.

People are rather more complicated than that. We leave, we learn, we change and we carry pieces of the places we have lived wherever we go.

Perhaps that is the part of migration we forget when people become numbers, countries and categories.

I came home to Sarawak.

I am still Malaysian.

And Australia remains one of the chapters of my life.

Perhaps that is enough.

Because belonging, like politics, is rarely as simple as putting people into neat little boxes.

And perhaps before deciding who belongs where, we should first make sure we understand the world outside our own front door.

The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.