Adult Education and Ethnic and Linguistic Minorities in Australia

written by Patrick Crudden, Robb Mason and Shirley Randell

Nevertheless Australia is a remarkably peaceful and placid country given the potential for divisiveness in its ethnic diversity. There are up to 120 different languages spoken in households around the nation. Among my ancestors are people from Germany, England, Scotland and wales. But one of my colleagues offers an even more complex and contemporary example. She was born in Italy as were her parents. Her husband, whom she met in Australia after her family had migrated, was born in India as were his parents. Their six children were all born in Australia and they have no problem considering themselves as Australian despite their Italo-Indian heritage. While there is a relatively recent tendency to put a prefix onto Australian to make a hyphenated ethnic descriptors such as Vietnamese-Australian or Greek-Australian this is often rejected by the people so designated. As a woman interviewed for a recent newspaper article said: "I don't really like to be called Asian-Australian - Asian is everything from Vietnamese to Japanese, Korean, Indian, whatever ... I am Australian, end of the story (The Australian, 1994:1).

While Australia is multicultural, it is not multilingual despite the fact that there are many community languages spoken. Here in Finland there are two official languages: Swedish and Finnish - advertising and road signs indicate this duality. You ca expect to be recognised in both languages although I am aware that there tends to be a concentration of Swedish speakers on the west coast. In Australia the one and only language of commerce, industry, education and public transaction is English. That is the case whether you are a new settler, Australian Aborigine or visitor. If you do not speak English in Australia you are at a distinct disadvantage. Moreover, despite recent improvements, Australians whose original tongue is English are generally not fluent in another language, which makes them more like the English than other Europeans who frequently speak severeal languages.

So in one sense, with the important exception of some indigenous Australians, there are no major ethnic or linguistic minorities in Australia in the way that there are in, say, Spain with the Basques or the Ainu of Japan, people who maintain a distinctly different language and culture within a relatively homogenous larger culture. On the other hand, Australia is a country of migration, and many of the groups who arrived post World War 2 and whose first language is not English are indeed linguistic and ethnic minorities that struggle to maintain a place in Australian mainstream society. There is certainly a major issue with one particulr minority; the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the indigenous people of Australia.

Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia

Australian Aborigines and Torres srait Islanders are among the oldest known consistent occupiers of a landmass on earth. At the time the cave paintings of Lascaux in what is now France were rendered, Aborigines had been carving rock motifs and depicting symbols and scenes from their lives in caves and rock niches throughout Australia for 40 000 years. At the time of early Greek and Egyptian civilisations, Aborigines had been at home on the Australian continent for 60 000 years. The actual timing of the arrival of Aboriginal people in Australia is a matter of debate, mainly to more recently arrived Australians. For Australia's first people do not overly concern themselves with dates, prefering to contain their history in the timeless myths and legends of their Dreaming. But if there is a major calendar date of critical importance to them it would have to be 1788, the arrival of the first permanent European colonists in what is now Sydney Cove. From that time onwards Aboriginal culture was at risk of complete destruction. Even though Aboriginal people are still at risk in the 1990s, recent events tend to hold out some hope for a reconciliation between Australia's indigenous people and more recent settlers.

The Australian bicentenary of 1988, the celebration of European settlement in Australia, was not welcomed at all by Aboriginal people who saw a deep irony in celebrating 200 years of oppression. (This was akin to responses by indigenous Americans to the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage of discovery.) Yet the bicentenary in Australia was useful in that it provoked belated recognition of the destitution and destruction that had been the lot of Australia's Aborigines since the white settlement in Australia. This has been capitalised upon by the current Prime Minister of Australia, Paul Keating, who has begun moves towards restitution and reconciliation based on concepts of justice, equality and a recognition of the values of Aboriginal people.

Nevertheless the general quality of life of Australian Aborigines remains extremely poor. Infant mortality rates for Aborigines are much higher than those of other Australians; health problems such as the eye disease trachoma and dietary ailments such as diabetes are far more common. Alcohol and other chemical depen-dencies remain a widespread scourge among Aboriginal communities. Yet things do appear to be changing.

One of the more prevalent shifts has been a concern to return to Aboriginal people the power and the resources to control their own lives. At times this has been little more than rhetoric; sometimes it has been symbolic, as in the return to the traditional owners of artefacts held in museum collections for many years or land that had great spiritual significance, such as Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock) in the centre of the Australian desert. More recently this movement has been given real teeth by a judgment of the High Court of Australia which ceded title to a part of a small island off the cast of north eastern Australia to a group of Aboriginal people on the basis that they had established an incontestable claim to a long term occupation. This judgement, referred to as the Mabo case in Australia after the claimant, the late Eddie Mabo, has given hope to some Aboriginal communities that they might be able to make similar claims, although the legal strictures against this possibility are still very tight. Nevertheless it is welcome additional support to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commossion which ha total control over $600 million expenditure on Aboriginal projects annually. The Mabo legislation aims to protect traditional dwelling places and ways of life, particularly for non-urban Aborigines.

Increasingly the broader Australian community seems more and more willing to cede to Aboriginal people some of the processes and means through which they can determine their individual and collective futures. This is entirely appropriate given that 206 years of European settlement in Australia have produced a largely dependent Aboriginal culture. On the other hand, as recently as 1985, the results of a public opinion poll that asked people how they viewed Aboriginal rights were described in the following way:

While one quarter of [Australians surveyed were] supportive on issues such as land rights, one quarter was implacably opposed. Meanwhile the other half of the population, 'middle Australia' itself, leaned towards 'opposition and prejudice through fear, ignorance, misinformation, and soft racism ... [a] prejudice which has a greater propensity to harden than to turn to sympathy' (ANOP, 1985 in Keeffe, 1992)

 

Adult Education for Aborigines

What will happen to Aboriginal people in this relatively unsympathetic context is still uncertain, but education is one of the processes that it is believed will help sustain a future for them. The following poem is taken from a volume of Aboriginal work published in 1985. It indicates the significance of education to some Aborigines.

Education is important to me

Sometimes I would sit and wonder

What the word education means.

Education is my best friend

So I had to treat him good

If I won't visit him

I'll end up in jail and die.

Education is like a rock

Which is hard to break

I need a hammer

So I can break him in half

Because he is the one

Who carries my key

The key to the door of my future

I will always follow you education.

Because in you I will find my freedom.

(Nancy Waia in Wilkinson, 1990)

This is a powerful statement in anyone's language yet perhaps the more so for an Aboriginal person because of the harsh reality of imprisonment for many Aborigines unable to make it in a white world. Yet education is not easy to make generalisations about. Aboriginal adult education, along with all education, is handled differently in each state of Australia and, as with other forms of education in Australia at this time, it is very much a political issue and the various states differ in their attitude and approach to the matter. What I will say now risks oversimplifying the subject; the alternative, detailing individual state responses, risks complicating it enormously.

Adult education for Aboriginal people in some ways is no different from the education of any dispossessed group. It provides the means to social, cultural and economic survival - all of which are inextricably woven together. When Aboriginal people are allowed to identify their learning needs, as opposed to them being identified by others, they seem to fall into at least three distinct areas:

1. basic education - those programs that can help access to further education and employment and help people live better lives in their communities: literacy and numeracy, health programs, family skills;

2. political education - the skills required to work within political structures in order to improve matters for Aboriginal people: lobbying, negotiating, meeting procedures, activist skills;

3. community development - to make local communities more self-sufficient and efficient: enterprise development, obtaining and using capital, administration and book-kkeeping (Foley, 1987)

Aboriginal people also want university and technical education and some aspire to individual self-employment, such as running their own small business.

But Aboriginal adult education is not that clear cut, for across Australia there appear to be two distinct philosophies on the delivery of such programs. Some people believe in the importance of mainstream delivery with support systems within the institution. This view stresses the importance of equivalent or comparable qualifications to those gained by non-Aboriginal students. Others hold to the importance of separate but occasionally parallel programs specifically designed to be culturally appropriate, not only to those in traditional communities, that is, to those still living separately from non-indigenous Australians, but also to those in urban and suburban areas where the concept of Aboriginality is often a subject of controversy. The common elements that pervade both these views are

* a commitment to cultural recognition

* suppoprt for Aboriginal students

* consultation with Aboriginal communities

* recognition of the importance of accessible education for Aboriginal adults (Wilkinson, 1990).

This split in thinking about Aboriginal education is parallelled by a split in the overall objectives of education in this area. Some people believe that Aboriginality will end up as a quaint folkloric activity with little or no real meaning, disappearing in much the same way as the cultures of many indigenous groups around the world faced with the inexorable onslaught of western, capitalist values. Should education perpetuate this disappearance by continuing to bring Aborigines into the mainstream which will inevitably corrode traditional values and culture or should there be separate but equal systems that will encourage diversity? The recent emphasis on Aboriginal languages in Australia is in part a means to reconstruct Aboriginality for those people for whom it is at risk. A recent study (Riley-Mundine and Roberts, 1990) indicated that in 1989 there were some 91 separate Aboriginal languages being supported around Australia. This development still begs the question about the overall future for Aborigines in Australia and echoes some concerns for multiculturalism as a whole that will be referred to later in this paper.

It has generally been recognised that Aboriginal adult education works best if it is organised through institutions operated and controlled by Aboriginal people. The interests of mainstream institutions and Aborigines are generally not the same. The interests of all Aboriginal people are not the same, reflecting rural-urban, modern-traditional and generational splits as well as the fact that Aborigines have always been dispersed tribal peoples rather than one united community. The establishment of training and educational institutions exclusively for Aboriginal people has been an important advance. Mainstream organisations such as the council of Adult Education (CAE), have provided many opportunities for non-indigenous Australians to learn about Abor-iginal culture. When it comes to working with and for Aborigines, however, the CAE works through an Aboriginal staff member who has extensive contacts with the Aboriginal com-munity and can help the institution to make what is offered more relevant to their needs.

There are of course many barriers to Aborigines acquiring education, some of them similar to those facing non-indigenous Australians: non-supportive family background, fear of schools and schooling, racial prejudice, negative stereo-typing, family responsibilities, low level of literacy, poor health, geographical isolation, finance and interpersonal relationship crises. Furthermore, until 1960s, Australian govern-ments implemented a disastrous policy of separating Aboriginal infants and children from their parents and placing them in white foster homes or institutions. This means thst many Aborigines over 30 did not experience a stable home life, lost contact with their families and culture, and grew up without suitable role models in terms of parenting, education and socialisation skills, Despite these enormous difficulties, across Australia, in various instit-utions and in dicerse ways, Aboriginal people are using adult education to claw back their dignity and independence. This is a faltering path and one that is embarked upon more with hope and optimism than with any massive evidence of outcomes to justify it yet. Adult eductaion is not the only answer but it continued to play a significant role in the search fo rmany Aboriginal people. The recent establishment of teh Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), a national and regional body with significant resources and powers, continues to progress issues, including education, and provides a greater voice in the community on behalf of Aboriginal people.

 

The Years of the 'New Australians'

In the 46 years from 1845 to 1991 the population of Australia grew from 7.4 million to 16.8 million, with over 5 million coming to Australia from 140 different countries. In the 1991 census, 3.7 million people stated they had been born overseas and 3.3 million of the 12.7 million born in Australia were second generation im-migrants (BPIR Bulletin 1993:59). Australia opened its gates first to the displaced people of Europe and then in increasing numbers to southern Europeans, particularly Italian, Greek and Yugoslav, followed by northern Europeans, particularly Dutch, while continuing to favour the United Kingdom and Ireland as the preferred source of migrants. Within this pattern of mass migration there was a mix of spectacular success in response to the opportunities provided by a growing economy and a free life style with disillusionmenr arising from low-level employment, financial problems, social isolation, inadequate language competence and cultural shock. There were support services bu the spirit of the times was that new Australians, like old Australians, would have to make their own way and solve their own problems.

At first new arrivals were identified within particular urban and rural localities, where they tended to congegate, but within a couple of generation many people moved to different suburbs, one wave of migrants succeede another, and the first arrivals ceased to be visible except on those occasions when they chose to be. From time to time settlers gather for national celebrations or to demonstrate a particular viewpoint about political tensions in their homelands, and, on occasion, emotions spill over into violence; most groups still work hard to keep alive in Australia the language and culture of their origins. Their enrichment of Australian development were achieved without violent upheavals and did not result in the emergence of ghettos but did reinforce the eurocentricity of Australian culture and attitudes. The CAE which was founded in Victoria in 1946, drew great strength and enrichment from the participation of middle European people, often of Jewish extraction, both as tutors and students in courses.

 

Inflow of Settlers from Asia

Meanwhile Australia ceased to be primarily dependent on Britain for trade and economic development and built up its trade to some extent with Europe; but geography pre-dominated over history, and trade and economic links with Asia and the Pacific rapidly overtook and surpassed the European connection. in addition the White Australia Policy, introduced by the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 on federation, which prohibited the immigration of any people of colour was overturned.

Settlers from Asia began to arrive in Australia in incresing numbers. The Policy was gradually relaxed in the 1950s and 1960s and abolished in 1973. The extent of change since then may be estimated by comparing figures. Of 94 354 settlers in 1981 - 82 there were 62 841 from the United Kingdom and Europe as against 31 513 from the Asian Pacific region. In 1990 - 91 the figures were in reverse order with 32 333 from the United Kingdom and Europe and 60 906 from the Asian Pacific region.

At present the tendency is to control the inflow of migrants more tightly and reduce the annual quota due to high levels of unemployment, currently 10 percent of the workforce. This policy is reinforced by prejudice, which is significant without being dominant in Australian society, but there has been little violence towards people of Asian background and little reason to believe that their acceptance in Australia will be any less complete than that of European peoles a generation or two earlier. Official recognition of Australia as a multicultural society means that people from the Asian Pacific region like the Europeans who preceded them will be welcome to retain their culture, language and traditions provided they do so by means that do not conflict with Australian law and basic social values.

 

National Priorities for Language and Literacy Council of Adult Education Response

Against this background the Australian Language and Literacy Policy, formally adopted in 1991 and currently being implemented, can be seen as a major turning point for education and for Australia as a nation. The policy takes the view that literacy problems trace back both to pressure on the school system through the migrant intake and to the reluctance or incapacity through work and family demands of older migrants to set aside the time and effort needed to learn the language of their new country.

The Commonwealth Government has addressed the latter problem persistently and with a substantial allocation of resources through Adult Migrant Edcuation Services, which catered for 90 000 participants in 1990-91. This included 80 per cent of newly arrived settlers but it is acknowledged that there is a large backlog of people with fundamental English language problems. The program concentrates on a client group defined by length of residence rather than proficiency in English as a Second Language (ESL) intervention program for job seekers. Demand over the years has been so great, however, that the focus of effort has been on helping newly arrived people to achieve a reasonable command of the English language or to assist people to have their vocational qualifications recognised or improved. The CAE, like most adult educational agencies throughout Australia, has provided ESL programs for people in the community and has found the demand exceeding available resources. It is estimated that 360 000 adult migrants have little, if any, command of English, a fact which virtually excludesthem from employment opportunity or security and confines them to poorly paid jobs at best.

In 1993, over 1 000 individuals participated in adult English language and literacy programs at the CAE. The number has incrased as the result of additional funds flowing from the federeal government's Australian Language and Literacy Policy. The ESL programs are year long and vary in contact hours from four hours per week to fulltime. Participants in one fulltime program at the CAE included adults from the following language backgrounds - Cantonese (5), Vietnamese (3), Mandarin (2), Polish (2), Spanish (2), Laotian (1), Farsi (1), Japanese (1), Korean (1) and Greek (1). The composition in this class again reflects the more recent patterns of immigration to Australia. The CAE works closely with other providers of Australian-English tuition, in order to place students in a course which best meets their language development needs. The CAE also provides language tuition in workplaces for workers whose continual employment is at risk because of low level language and literacy skills. An increasing number of participants in these programs are long term residents of European background who can communicate orally but whose written English language skills are insufficient to meet the changing demands of their work environment.

In the past ten years there has been a significant turnaround in the recognition of language and literacy issues of this kind. A major 1989 study of literacy in Australia focussed attention on these broader dimensions of literacy, that is , the use of 'printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals and to develop one's knowledge and potential' (Wickert, 1989) With the impetus of International Literacy Year (1990) funding of adult literacy provision and infrastructure surged and by 1991-92, $11.51 million was provided for these purposes. By now, literacy funding and practice is difficult to specify being dispersed among labour markeet, Skillshare, vocational workplace, new arrivals and other programs auspiced by a host of local, state and national agencies. It is now well understood that up to one million Australians do not have sufficient English language skills to meet the requirementsof work and competence. The Commonwealth Government addresses this problem by a national strategy which relies on collaboration of industry and of community agencies. The argument, significant in view of Australia's place in global affairs, is that more attention must be given to enriching the intellectual and cultural life of the nation if Australians are to communicate with the rest of the world and secure their future economic wellbeing. Hence the government is determined that Australia will increase its strength in languages other than English. This is a new step for a government which has never before recognised its multilingual population as an asset to be developed and cultivated or, for that matter, looked beyond those who are already bilingual to those who need to be bilingual to be effective negotiators on Australia's behalf. This policy comes as welcome news to organisations like the CAE which provides a large program of international languages, some 27 in all, ranging from Arabic to Vietnamese. These courses attract over 4 000 enrolments annually.

In recent years there has been a discernible incerase in demand for Asian languages, and the program now includes Cantonese, Mandarin, Indonesian, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog (Filipino). This trend reflects the changing relationship that Australia has with its near neighbours, with increasing proportions of new migrants coming to Australia from East and South East Asia, and more Australians travelling to these countries for business or cultural tourism reasons. students enrolling in Asian languages tend to do so for work or tourism-related purposes, although many enrol for general interest as well. Some students undertake learning a new language because it is the language of the parents or grandparents, or because they have married into a family whose first language is other than English. The CAE is acutely conscious of the poor understanding that Australians have of the languages and cultures of other countries in our region and has sought to address this through a great variety of courses to which there is at best a moderate public response.

In summary the key goals of the national policy are that:

* all Australians should have sufficient English language literacy to participate in Australian society;

* the learning of languages other than English must be expanded and improved;

* Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages should be maintained if still transmitted and there ahould be provision for recording them;

* Language services (interpreters, translators, libraries, media) should be expanded.

 

Multicultural Adult Education More Broadly

Australia is just coming out of an economic recession. The unemployment rate of over 10 per cent is high by OECD standards but not as problematic as I know the figure to be here in Finland. The previous good times hid a number of problems characteristic of minority group employment within Australia, problems that have become more acute as econnomic circumstances have worsened. Many of the people referred to above, those who had not developed adequate English language skills, were able to find work in factories producing or assembling a myriad of products from clothing to cars - then times were good. Their lack of English language skills was not a problem as long as the techniques and succes of mass production did not demand it. The economic downturn and the movement to free trade and low tariffs very strongl pursued by the Australian Government exposed these industries to vigorous international competition and, in effect wiped many of them out, resulting in significant unemployment. Those people, men and women with little language skill and generally low levels of education have found it extremely difficult to get back into paid workforce. New jobs in the service and tertiary industries put a premium on language skills thus excluding many of them, and jobs in the old manufacturing sectors are unlikely to return. New manufacturing jobs require a greater level of team skills and technical sophistication and again exclude ethnic adults with low English skills.

These sorts of problems were not recognised until relatively recently. Concern for overseas-born Australians with low language skills displaced in such a way has not been a priority other than under the general concern for unemployed people as a whole - which is sub-stantial, however. There has been a con-siderable amount of money spent on training and retraining programs for unemployed people within Australia but until recently, when the Department of Employment, Education and Training began to appoint community liaison officers to work with such groups, little special concern for the plight of people from different language backgrounds had been evidenced. It is now possible for adult education organisations and language-specific community groups to seek funding to provide special programs for older and younger Australians, out of work and with little or no employment or imncome prospects unless their language skills are improved.

The main concentration in adult education for such people is on English language acquisition and training for work. How multicultural groups deal with the diverse range of learning needs other than those dealtwith through the schooling and training provided by the state has not been the subject of much interest or research. The CAE recently received a grant to put together a book on the early experiences of older Spanish-speaking peoples now living in Australia. This work, which is in effect a composite oral history in two languages (Iuri and Ferber, 1994) is but one small step in understanding this process. Many people from multicultural communities rely on organi-sations and associations of their own formal and informal ethnic groupings to provide them with social and mental stimulation. Most of this work is done within the civil or voluntary sector, people work on behalf of others to provide the necessary services, information and learning. If you are an Eritrean living in Australia your work major source on information is likely to be your family or other members of your national community living in the same city. The same can be said for older Spanish-speaking people who migrated from different countries, mostly, but not exclusively in the South American continent. For some significant groups such ass those people who migrated to Australia from Germany, Italy and Greece, for instance, their countries of origin have at times established quite large and significant cultural institutes which provide learning and cultural opportunities. Sometimes those groups have also been fortunate to have local libraries purchase holdings of books in their own languages although this only covers a few of the community languages spoken in Australia. Community language newspapers can also be a significant purveyor of information and ideas for members of those language communities but the depht and utility of that service very much depends on the editorial policies of the various papers involved. Interestingly, 'Suomi', the Finnish newspaper in Melbourne is recognised as one oldest ethnic newspapers in Australia having commenced publication in 1927.

There is no doubt that after two generations of sustained migration to Australia since World War Two there is considerable interest in what has been dubbed cultural retrieval - the pursuit of knowledge and skills pertaining to cultures of origin. Much of this has been very recent. For example it is suggested that the people from Hungary who arrived in Australia immediately after World War Two had little contact or interest with their home country. Many of them had strong political beliefs and left Hungary because they saw no future in their homeland under a political regime with which they had no affinity. They therefore did not seek to maintain connections with it. Hungarian arrivals after 1956 were somewhat different and often sought to keep contact with their homeland. After 1989, however, there has been a major flow of information and peoples back and forth and one now old, but well-known member of the post-war Hungarian community in Australia, has returned to live on Hungary where apparently he writs regular letters to the Hungarian government suggesting how they should be running the country. Most of the post-war migrants to Australia, are content to make Australia their home but they and their children are often very interested in understanding and maintaining facets of their cultures of origin. This is a growing aspect of adult education that is catered to by both cultural groups and mainstream educational organisations including the CAE. The situation of older overseas-born Australians now beyond working age and often lonely and sometimes alone and with poor English skills is becoming the subject of some special attention as indicated by the prior reference to the older Spanish-speaking community.

 

A Future for Multiculturalism?

What will be the future of Australia? It is extremely difficult to make assumptions about this. Obviously some ethnic communities will lose contact with their cultures of origin because they are small groups, will eventually intermarry and lose their cultural roots. In other cases ethnicity will be maintained by persisting with folkloric activities that can sometimes be maintained more powerfully in Australia than in some cultural homelands. It is a joke in Australia, but one that has foundation, that if you want to see Greek dancing don´t go to Greece, come to Australia where dancing has been kept as part of the ethnic group´s desire to maintain its cultural significance even after it has been lost or watered down in the country of origin.

But will multiculturalism be more than folkloric? A few years ago it would have been easy to say that such contacts would wear thin and ultimately die away, leaving most new settlers in Australia with only race memories as it were; stories, songs, tales and legends of their origins. Now the new technology makes that assumption questionable. In addition to Greek community newspapers, two Greek radio stations operate in Melbourne broadcasting in Greek or mainly in that language. What will new television technology mean, the cable and the satellite? The relatively simple technology of the radio already has a worldwide impact. Australia has a national broadcasting station
that relays programs to the world. A radio presenter recently announced around the world asking what had happened. At least one of the calls was from Helsinki. So the radio has power to penetrate the world. What will the new computer technologies and the information superhighway mean for maintenance of cultural diversity when it will obviously be possible to plug into audio and video productions from around the world in any language you like? Will this mean that multiculturalism will mean a continuation of ethnic diversity? I cannot answer that last question finally but I do think that the new technology will make it very much easier for people around the world to sustain their ethnicity through linkages with other people both in their home countries and in other places.

 

Conclusion

Multiculturalism is still an open subject in Ausralia but its current reality is almost completely accepted. As the current Australian Minister for Immigration, Senator Nick Bolkus, a man with Greek parentage said recently:

Multiculturalism is established and despite problems we´ve had with some communities [the Macedonian reference], overwhelmingly we make it work and in all respects we make it work much better than in any other part of the world. (The Australian, 1994:2)

You might have to forgive the enthusiasm of the response of a political figure because if multiculturalism includes th lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders then Australia still has a long way to go to be the world standard setters. However, despite that and occasional setbacks such as the matter of Cambodian boat people recently, Australia is progressing in this area and certainly deserves some accolades for its general lack of ethnic tensions and its attempts to provide and encourage educational programs that can assist with this development.