The Racial Hatred Act: Case study 5

Introduction:

• interpretation of complex research findings, surveys, and polls
  in news stories

Reports:

• 'Federal laws blamed for Sydney's welfare ghettos',
  Paul Sheehan, The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 July 96
• 'Ethnic ghettos claim 'irresponsible',
  Illawarra Mercury, 2 July 96
• 'Urban Ghettos', Melbourne
  Yarra Leader, 8 July 96

Comment:

• The following journalists/editors comment on their coverage of Ernest
  Healy's report.
• The Sydney Morning Herald's
  Paul Sheehan
• AAP's Margaret McDonald
• The Illawarra Mercury's Peter
  Cullen
• The Melbourne Yarra Leader's Bob
  Osburn
• Ernest Healy, researcher
  and author of 'Welfare benefits and residential concentrations amongst
  recently arrived migrant communities' on how his report was misinterpreted
  by the media.
• The Federation of Ethnic Communities
  Councils of Australia comments on the harm done to communities
  through the use of loaded language and offensive terminology in the media.

Please note that none of the reports in the case studies have been the
subject of complaints or queries under the Racial Hatred Act.

Federal laws blamed for Sydney's welfare ghettos

By Paul Sheehan, 1 July 1996

Racial ghettos are forming in Sydney as a result of federal government
policies.

Unpublished data from the Department of Social Security reveals the
formation of ethnic enclaves marked by very high unemployment, welfare
dependency and welfare abuse - the classic warning signals of ghetto-formation.

One of the highest and largest concentrations of welfare dependency
on the country is among Vietnamese-born immigrants in Fairfield, says Ernest
Healy, who surveyed the data and published his findings in the latest issue
of People and Place, the journal of the Centre for Population and
Urban Research at Monash University.

Other high concentrations of single-group welfare recipients in the
city are found in Blacktown, Bankstown, Canterbury and Campbelltown.

The ethnic concentrations in these enclaves are mainly Vietnamese, Lebanese,
Turkish and Yugoslav-born populations, with the Vietnamese forming by far
the largest single welfare cluster.

The social security data shows that just under 40 per cent of all Vietnamese
living in NSW are concentrated within a few postcodes in an around Fairfield,
especially 2166 in Cabramatta.

The concentration of chronic welfare recipients in this small area is
even higher - nearly half (47%) of all unemployed Vietnamese in the State
are clustered in and around postcode 2166. Nearly two-thirds of these are
long-term unemployed.

Not only are these figures very high, they are also bogus. The real
unemployment rate among Vietnamese is much lower. This has been an open
secret in Sydney for years, and it is acknowledged by Ernest Healy in his
study:

"An exploitative informal labour market based on the clothing industry,
and related social security fraud, has assumed major proportions."

A Herald source within the Department of Social Security says
there is a culture of widespread welfare abuse within sections of the Vietnamese
and Chinese communities.

"About 90 per cent of the clients I see are not entitled to the
benefits they are claiming," said the source, who added that the Vietnamese
were not the worst abusers of the system: "The most cynical groups
are from the PRC (People's Republic of China, the so-called Bob Hawke special
immigrants)."

The biggest single contributor to rorting of unemployment benefits is
the garment outsourcing industry, dominated by Vietnamese workers. Ernest
Healy writes that the high rate of Vietnamese participation in this home-based
industry is caused by "the interaction between the federal government's
deregulatory policy and its immigration policy. "The two processes
facilitated the rapid emergence of an exploitative labour market based
on residentially concentrated minority populations."

This phenomenon is being fed by a chain-reaction under family sponsorship
immigration laws, in which many immigrants who are receiving welfare benefits
are now sponsoring relatives, especially marriage partners, to Australia.

Many of these new immigrants, who are mostly women, then either join
the ranks of the unemployed, or the informal labor force, or both.

This year, an expected 35,000 immigrants will be sponsored as spouses
or fiances, with the two biggest source countries being China and Vietnam.

This program has grown so large that it constitutes more than a third
of expected total immigration for 1995-96.

This latest study is significant because it used access to the entire
national data base of the Department of Social Security, and it disputes
the conventional dogma that racial concentrations of immigrants are essentially
transitory.

The formation of these enclaves runs counter to the traditional trend
of dispersment and assimilation as various immigrant groups grow more established
in Australia.

That this reversal is happening is largely the result of a cocktail
of unco-ordinated federal government policies and lack of policies.

These policies also ignore public opinion. For example, a national McNair
poll conducted two weeks ago found that Australians, by a two-to-one majority,
are apposed to the present immigration rate - running at just under 100,000
a year - largely because it is seen as contributing to high unemployment
and high welfare costs.

These popular misgivings are borne out by the Healy study, which found
that among settler arrivals in 1994 who intended to work, the percentages
still receiving unemployment benefits as of August 1995 were very high
among some immigrant groups:

Russians (62 per cent unemployed), Lebanese (56), Vietnamese (54), former
Yugoslavia (51) and Chinese, not including Taiwan (47). In contrast, the
figure for Hong Kong was 4.1 per cent, and for South Africa 2.9.

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