By Helen Basili
Mounting controversy over immigration policies and native title in the last few years have left many people asking if there has been a corresponding increase in acts of racism.
There are numerous barriers to measuring whether racism has been fuelled by the conservative political climate where the likes of One Nation flourish.
While Race Discrimination Commissioner Zita Antonios notes in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's 1997 annual report that "formal complaints statistics are notoriously unreliable indicators of the many forms of racism in our community", it is nevertheless alarming that complaints of racial discrimination received by HREOC's central office sky-rocketed from 154 in 1995 to 375 in 1997, almost 150%.
NSW Anti-Discrimination Board president Chris Puplick has questioned the increase in race vilification complaints to his service: "Are the racists and bigot on the rise or are people now more prepared to stand up for their legal rights to fair treatment?"
Regardless of what the numbers suggest, however, many people from non-English speaking backgrounds have been hurt by the comments of Pauline Hanson and the failure of the federal government to significantly oppose her. The fear of what might happen is omnipresent.
Gary Cachia is a multicultural youth worker who lives and works in Fairfield in Sydney's western suburbs. He says of the changes he has noticed in the past few years: "It's like going back to the gold-rush era in terms of attitudes. People used to get money for killing Chinese back then."
According to Cachia, Asians are the most common targets for racists, a fact he attributes to Hanson's widely publicised comments about Australia "being swamped by Asians".
Anglo-Australians are not the only ones responsible: "Kids [from other ethnic groups] are picking up on anti-Asian sentiments in the broader community and adopting them. This didn't happen before."
Recently, Cachia's Vietnamese-born wife Lin has experienced racist taunts in the streets of Fairfield. "People scream 'go home nip' out of car windows. These are things she hasn't heard since she was a little kid. It's the type of thing her parents copped when they first arrived [by boat from Vietnam]."
Nooria Mehraby, formerly a doctor in Afghanistan, counsels Afghan survivors of torture and trauma from a service in south-west Sydney.
Mehraby is encountering an unusual obstacle to the treatment process. Her clients are becoming increasingly agitated and distressed by the policies of One Nation. "Many of them don't understand English. They don't realise that the views of Pauline Hanson are not the policies of the government, and they think they will be forced to leave Australia in five years time.
"These people have had multiple losses. They just can't tolerate it [Pauline Hanson's views]. It's increasing their levels of stress."
Ironically, Hanson's comments have been a disincentive to learning English and other aspects of Australian culture for many people. "How can they become Australian when they think they will have to leave in five years time? How will they adjust themselves? They feel like refugees in another country", Mehraby said.
Tiep Nguyen, one of Mehraby's colleagues, describes an all-pervasive "paranoia" that has resulted from One Nation's propaganda. "It has generated a certain level of caution in the way the Vietnamese community behaves", he remarked.
This feeling echoed by Cachia and Mehraby. "It's almost like paranoia. They feel they will be discriminated against, that they won't have access and equity in areas like employment", said Mehraby. Cachia points out it's not just paranoia, that the feeling of being under attack is all too real.