Introduction & Organisational Overview

							         CCCAV’s Response to the National Anti-Racism
         Partnership & Strategy Discussion Paper 2012

Introduction & Organisational Overview
The Chinese Community Council of Australia, Victorian Chapter (CCCAV - http://cccavic.org) is a
voluntary community based and non profit social enterprise, and a state chapter representation of
its national office, Chinese Community Council of Australia (CCCA).

The role of CCCAV is to advocate and represent the identity and interests of the Chinese community
in Victoria and to foster a spirit of cooperation and unity amongst Victorians of Chinese descent from
Mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan and other
parts of the world. Its activities include civil rights advocacy and community education, community
development and community service innovation that strengthens the safety and resilience of the
Chinese community; develops their profiles and empowers them to contribute to 21st century
Australia’s cross cultural maturity, leadership, enterprise, innovation, nation-building and
internationalisation excellence.


Responding to Inquiry Objectives
Addressing racism is a risk management exercise – involving 3 courses of actions: (a) preventing
racism; (b) mitigating racism when it happens; (c) containing the impact of racism events.



Objective 1: Create awareness of racism and how it affects individuals and the broader community

This objective is about preventing racism. In addition to education programs that foster better
understanding and embracing cultural diversity, other education strategies can also include:

        1. Knowing and avoiding situations and places where racism incidents are most likely;
        2. Knowing and exercising personal safety & protection actions
        3. Knowing one’s civic rights, where to get help and how to leverage the Australian legal
           system to penalise the racist offenders and accomplices.



Objective 2: Identify, promote and build on good practice initiatives to prevent and reduce racism

Youths (including international students) are more exposed to racial incidents and hence targeting
education and best practice initiatives at this segment is priority 1.

Workplace incidents tend to occur more in smaller organisations and blue collar sector, as
institutional and white collar organisations have governance compliance and policies that often
discourage discrimination of all types, including racism. However it is also appropriate to ensure
there exist quality discriminatory policies and compliance practices (including education/training
programs) put in place in enterprise environments.
It make sense to have a central government / public portal of racial policies and reporting channels,
and case studies which links to all appropriate national and state government websites eg DEEWR,
and also making sure the public knows about the public information sources. The case studies can be
categorised into everyday application scenarios of racial incidents, sharing insights about the
personal and legal impacts on, the civil rights of and consequences on victims, offenders and
accomplices. These case studies will help educate the public about the different contexts of racial
incidents, what and what not to do, etc and provide then with secondary life experience knowledge.



Objective 3: Empower communities and individuals to take action to prevent and reduce racism and
seek redress when it occurs

Commentaries to Q1 and 2 also address this question. The key community learning goal for the
community is to understand the management of racism is a risk management concept and acquiring
them to response with smarter preventative, mitigation and containment approaches.

The risks management education approach should also include different scenarios of possible racism
occurrence and severity impact for different target groups and to the individual level of what safe
and life protecting/saving measures can actioned.

There is too many bureaucratic approaches to dealing with racism which does not equip the people
at grass roots level to deal with and recover well from real situations, which sometimes are life
threatening, as evident in the recent racially incited bashing and robbing of 2 Chinese international
students in Sydney, or even in more worse situations like the 2005 Cronulla riots. Simply said, more
racism mitigation and containment knowledge and skills development need to be included in
community education and public information resources.

Partnership with public safety community programs (like neighbourhood watch, volunteering
groups) and even institutions like universities, TAFE, public transport organisations to provide safety
and security services especially for people travelling alone and late in isolated areas.


Other Commentaries
The National Anti-Racism Partnership & Strategy has good intent but it also need to include
addressing two matters:

        1. The concepts of acculturation to help new ethnic groups better assimilate and
           integrated into the Australian culture that is based on existing citizenship ethos has
           never been a strong driver in many legacy and existing multiculturalism / cultural and
           linguistic diversity (CALD) initiatives, including this anti-racism strategy direction. One
           key reason settled migrants are less prone to racism that new settlers is because of
           acculturation, these people have learn to understand and embrace the Australian
           citizenship ethnos and share common sovereign and social values and beliefs.

        2. The concept of reverse racism is often missed out in multiculturalism / CALD initiatives.
           It has also evolved another meaning. The first context is that white Australians are being
           discriminated by multiculturalism/CALD priorities. The second context is that some new
            settlers (and even some settled migrants) have racist views / beliefs / etc (often implicit)
            about existing citizens/residents. This new perspective of reverse racism will grow as
            transnational citizenship and mindsets increasingly develops as a result of globalisation,
            multiculturalism and asylum migration issues, creating future sovereign loyalty and even
            new forms of multicultural issues, not known in public domains yet.

The time has come that we need to consider solutions/strategies that balance cultural diversity and
acculturation, so that all new and old citizens and permanent residents can be more capable of
embracing and integrating cultural diversity AND common Australian citizenship values. Such
balancing strategies will also better prepare Australia to deal with the emerging issues of
transnational reverse racism that are growing as a result of globalisation. Racism is an outcome of
the imbalance and trying to contain racism without fixing the root causes is a reactive and ineffective
problem solving and risk prevention approach.

Another missing link in educating the public about multiculturalism, CALD and anti-racism virtues is
learning and teaching people about cross cultural communications and management. Currently,
there is too much preaching and learning about accepting and catering for cultural and linguistic
differences, but not delivering higher knowledge and capabilities to manage such differences in
everyday living or in multinational workforce. The sophistication of many CALD training programs in
governments and non profit organisations is very low and it is time to review and upscale CALD
capability development to expand into more advance cross cultural skills development.


Conclusion
The success of anti-racial partnership and strategic initiatives and implementation programs can only
be effective and pragmatic if the individual is equipped with the knowledge and skills to deal with
explicit and implicit racial situations. This means lesser follow up papers writing and “feel good”
public engagement forums/information sessions. Instead, be resolved to committing pragmatic foci
and resources to developing education/training series and public safety partnership arrangements
for the community to deal with and manage effectively cultural diversity in everyday safer and also
life threatening situations.

CCCAV will be most willing to collaborate with Racial Discrimination Commission office to develop
the recommended public training and public safety partnership programs that can empower every
individual in knowing what and how to respond to dealing with cultural diversity differences,
including racial risks. In particular, we can pilot these recommendations’ implementation for the
Chinese and international student committees in Melbourne.