It's just not cricket, say the poor Poms
Every few years there comes an event that brings with it a rash of complaints under New South Wales' racial vilification laws: an English cricket tour to Australia.
This revelation has come with the publication of a study of complaints to the state's Anti-Discrimination Broad which found that Anglo-Celts - not Asians or Aborigines - headed the list of complainers.
While Aborigines lodged 20 per cent of complaints and Asians 12 per cent, the University of Wollongong study found 22 per cent were from those of Anglo-Celt origin. High on the list was being called 'whingeing Pommy bastards'.
The board's president, Chris Puplick, says those of Anglo-Celtic origin tend to be 'hypersensitive' to comments about their background and when the English cricket team tours, complaints increase.
'Television commentators saying that Poms would play better cricket if they washed more can often upset some people,' he says.
The board says most complaints from Anglo-Celts are rejected and 80 per cent of the total are either rejected or withdrawn.
'Many [of the Anglo-Celt complaints] are issues of hypersensitivity, rather than indicating an extent of ethnic and racial hatred,' Mr Puplick says.
About four per cent of complaints are sent for tribunal adjudication - a finding that led to calls for a phasing out of the racial vilification laws as no longer needed. Mr Puplick rejected those calls.
With anti-Asian racism in the headlines lately the results of the study have caused surprise. But not to Mr Puplick, who says Anglo-Celt complaints tend not to be as serious as those from other racial groups and are often 'lacking in substance'.
He had a warning for those who took the results to mean racism Down Under has been exaggerated. The study used data from 1993 to 1995, he said, but since then the 'profile of cases and their complexity' had changed.
'Since 1995 the so-called 'Hanson-effect' has been felt by many people in this state and elsewhere,' Mr Puplick said, referring to the rise in racism which followed the anti-Asian immigration speech of independent federal member of parliament Pauline Hanson.
'The rise in enquiries and complaints to the Anti-Discrimination Board has been significant and their seriousness has risen . . . more Australians have been subject to greater levels of personal abuse, threat, vilification and intimidation on the basis of their race or ethnic origin than in the past.' So those who want to weaken the state's racial vilification laws should forget that idea, Mr Puplick said. 'If anything, we need better laws, not a weakening of the ones already in place.'
