Writer in Residence

It’s official. I’m the champ. Okay, a champ. And not on the strength of my painting. Though thank you for your generous support and indulgence there. Dave, I love the footprint analogy and plan to go with it whenever I talk about the work (even though they were, before they were my young footprints, little unsuccessful barley fields way in the distance).

I’m Queensland’s multicultural champion for 2006, following on from the inaugural champ Pat Rafter. This is not an award I was expecting, I have to say.

People from a whole range of backgrounds were recognised, and some of their achievements make me feel genuinely humble to be on the list. For example (from the media release):

Mary Gavin - A founder of not-for-profit organisation Always People, Mary Gavin has dedicated the past 39 years to helping migrants and refugees settle in Queensland. Mary has also worked with the Society of St Vincent de Paul and been involved in the reconciliation process with Indigenous communities. Today she is a member of the Police Ethnic Advisory Group. She works in partnership with Griffith University’s Multi-Faith Centre and chairs the reference group for the Confronting Racism in Communities project.

Hassan Ghulam - Hassan Ghulam has lived in Queensland for 20 years. For the past six years he has been a dedicated volunteer helping other Hazara people who have fled ethnic and religious persecution.

Mahya Ghodosi - top female student in 2005 at the age of 16, Mahya Ghodosi was accepted into the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery course at James Cook University for the 2006 academic year. Townsville’s Australia Day Junior Citizen of the Year in 2006 and recipient of the 2005 Holden Science and Technology Award, Mahya migrated to Australia with her family from Iran when she was one-year-old. She helps refugee families and their children and spends her spare time after work and school volunteering for countless charities including the Townsville Ronald McDonald House, the Indigenous Children’s Services Unit Townsville, and the Townsville Multicultural Support Group.

So, what did I do with my spare time when I was 17? Mainly watched TV, kicked a football with Robert Finney and wondered why girls didn’t want me more. Major contributor to society? Not so much. Anyway, I’ve tried to be better lately.

I was chosen, apparently, as a migrant and as the founding chair of War Child in Australia and for saying on a number of occasions that I think our treatment of refugees should be dictated by humanity and compassion (not such a big thing to say really). I’m treating it as ‘champion’ the verb, rather than ‘champion’ the noun.

The Premier announced it in parliament, and that’s meant quite a few interviews with media since. I hadn’t fully factored that in to my day, so yet again it’s been lived at a rush. Have I packed for Perth tomorrow? No.

I squeeze in a run, I buy some groceries, I work a few things around the interviews. First question: ‘Why did they pick you as the champion?’ Very reasonable. Then often questions about government refugee policy. I try to keep it apolitical, since I think it’s too important an issue to lose to politics, but there’s no way of denying it has a political dimension.

Q: ‘Is multiculturalism a success, when we still see the media covering stories of racism?’
A: ‘It’s a success a million times a day, but we should also talk about it any time things aren’t successful. It’s a success when people of different backgrounds go to work, feed their families, contribute and do so on equal terms. It’s a success on the streets of my own suburb when people pass each other in comfort and safety, regardless of what language is being spoken, and who is or isn’t wearing a hijab or a business suit or their pants dangerously low. It’s a success every time you order Thai takeaway - or would you prefer a diet of instant coffee and meat and three veg? It’s a success when we acknowledge that difference is not only okay by us but can be a positive thing. But there’s no room to be complacent, and we need to work at it every day.’ Etcetera.

At around 4pm I head into town. There’s an accident on a freeway far far away, and traffic banks up and up and it’s clear I’m no traffic champion. I should have caught the train. The invitation says 4.30 for a 5pm start, and I make it around 4.58, with frantic staff tag-teaming to get me to the event before the Premier. The Premier at these things is always like the bride at a wedding. It’s wrong wrong wrong to walk in after them.

Lee Lin Chin from SBS MCs, and all goes well. One big achiever after another picks up their glass trophy. Mahya Ghodosi speaks and is charming and eloquent, winning all the audience expect me, since I know I have to speak next. Okay, she won me too, but I explain to her afterwards that speaking after the talented over-achieving young person is a no-win situation, and that if she had a gram of compassion in her body she could have been just a bit mediocre with me in mind. I don’t think she does mediocrity. She’s very nice though, and has brought her notes down to study for exams in a couple of weeks and I was a first year med student once, so I cut her some slack.

The Premier presents me with a tall elegant blue glass objet d’art, which I tell everyone will go straight to the pool room. Let me be clear at this point that I think it’s a beautiful thing, and only coincidentally phallic from some angles.

It turns out that the joke ‘does it come with batteries’ cuts across many cultures. I hear it from people from at least three or four. It’s a real ice-breaker, my award.

I’m off to Perth in the morning for a few days. I’ll try to scuttle into the occasional internet café to blog from time to time, but you’ll hear more from me when I’m back.

Here’s what I said at tonight’s event:

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Almost a quarter of Australians are migrants. Another quarter of us have a parent who migrated here. Some of us can trace our connection to this land back tens of thousands of years. There is not one way to be an Australian, and that’s a good thing.

A country that knows only one way of doing things – that can access only one solution to a problem – is ill-equipped for change. The countries that thrive in the decades ahead will be those that handle change well. Our diversity helps equip us to handle change well.

There is no such thing as a one-piece jigsaw puzzle. There are many pieces to the picture that make up Australia, and it’s a more vibrant and compelling picture because of that.

It is nonsensical to view multiculturalism as some involuntary experiment that might succeed or fail. In a highly mobile world, it’s inevitable. It is our present and our future, and it can be one of our great strengths. Tonight we celebrate achievers from a range of different backgrounds achieving in a range of different areas – because that’s how this state works, and keeps working.

I’m one of the quarter of us who are migrants. I arrived by plane from Northern Ireland in 1972. My first few days at Ascot State School were not the easiest, since far too many people came up to me saying ‘You’re the foreign kid, aren’t you? Say something.’

My mother’s first shift as a doctor in Casualty at the PA Hospital wasn’t easy either. Her first patient came in and said, ‘I’ve been a bit crook since a sheila kicked me in the nuts.’ Two weeks off the plane from Northern Ireland, there’s none of that that makes sense. My mother didn’t know what to say. The patient tried to help. He said, ‘Do you want me to drop my dacks?’ Still no good. My mother was still speechless. So he said, ‘Do you want me to drop my tweeds?’ And my mother, still mystified, thought she’d better start looking a bit more involved, so she said ‘All right.’ And the next thing she knew his pants were on the floor.

On my second day at Ascot State School, the class divided for religious instruction. If the idea of the class dividing took me by surprise, it was nothing compared with the shock when the teacher asked for the Catholics to stand and the girl next to me turned out to be one of them. My first, instinctive, thought – as an eight-year-old Northern Irish Protestant - was that I’d let my guard down. How could I not know? How could I not tell? I hadn’t consciously seen a Catholic in Northern Ireland, and I assumed that something about the look of them would give them away. Moving to this place, at that time, has taught me a great deal, and it has changed me from the person I might have been.

I know now that we do not need to be afraid of people whose backgrounds are not exactly like our own. We all share a commitment to making this state, and this country, the best they can be. And we will push them further, make them better, if our knowledge and skills do not come from the one pool, if we commit to cohesion but not at the expense of our plural identities, and if we give all Australian voices the freedom to speak and respect them by listening.

We all belong here. Whether our history here is ancient or involves more recent migration, we all belong. And we can all make this a better richer place.
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Now, must go and pack.