Australia’s Asian-language capability has declined for decades, weakening our ability to understand and engage with our neighbours. Labor’s new language program may make a difference.
As foreign minister, Gareth Evans used cheerfully to say of Australia’s neighbours, “They’ll all learn English”. Which for many was true: but China and Japan now have more people with language skills in prominent positions than Australia does. Evans’ then counterparts in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and South Korea are English-speakers, and so are their successors and colleagues.
Understanding and communicating easily with China and Japan is critically important for Australians in government, business, academia and media. Everyone can now access translation online.
For 30 years, Australia built a leading per-capita capacity in Asian languages from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, with many Australians living and studying for extended periods in Asian countries. Then the well-documented decline in Asian studies in Australia began. Prime Minister John Howard undermined Asian languages along with multiculturalism, declaring that Australia didn’t have to change to be who it was in Asia, and dismissing speculation about whether Australia was an Asian country.
The Liberal Country Party coalition – seeking to minimise anti-Asian support for Pauline Hanson – introduced an Anglo-cultural identity and values questionnaire to be put to people seeking Australian citizenship, that recalled the era of Menzies and the White Australia policy. Now One Nation reminds us of it again.
Senator Hanson has, as she says, advocated anti-immigrant, anti-Asia policies persistently for 30 years. Indeed, Howard copied Hanson’s lines, for example “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. That’s something all governments have the right to do, but Howard’s subtext was anti-Asian, and she has repeated it since, adding Muslims.
We should therefore not be surprised by Hanson’s recent remarks. She deplores the presence in Australia of 32 per cent of residents born elsewhere (in unspecified countries) recorded in the last census, and the 23 per cent of people in Australia who don’t speak English at home (although many speak English elsewhere). She now wants those seeking immigration to learn English. She links the housing crisis to mass migration and rejects multiculturalism in favour of a white Australian monoculture. She wants SBS with its language programs shut down.
Now, the Coalition seeking the populist vote may again pick up One Nation’s policies. This puts the future of Asian languages on the line, just when Labor has at last made a little-reported but potentially positive move. On 6 May, three ministers made statements on strengthening Asian language education: Julian Hill, Assistant Minister for International Education, for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs; Senator Penny Wong, Minister for Foreign Affairs; and Dr Anne Aly, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Small Business and International Development.
The government’s Fluency in Asian Languages program directs $2.5 million to support for Asian language learning, shared between nine organisations across Victoria, NSW and the ACT. As part of its $25 million Community Language Schools program, this will be for students in Years 7 to 12. It promises to “remain engaged in language learning and aim to build fluency in more than 15 Asian languages and strengthen cultural literacy”.
Languages to be supported by grants include Bengali, Burmese, Filipino, Gujarati, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Malayalam, Mandarin, Nepali, Punjabi, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese and Yue (Cantonese). University projects included in the grants are at Sydney, Melbourne, Macquarie and ANU. That range is very broad and perhaps not deep, but it may show the value Australia belatedly places on Asian-language capacity in our community.
The ministers acknowledged that a “sustained decline” in Asian language learning has weakened Australia’s Asia-capability, with “consequences for our social cohesion and national interests”. As well, they recognised the benefit of having more Australians capable of speaking the languages of our largest trading partner and neighbours, opening employment opportunities and career paths for students, and growing economic ties with our regional friends and neighbours.
For Australia to lose one generation of Asia-literacy is careless; to lose another may be intentional and irretrievable. But it’s encouraging to see ministers now mentioning ‘Asia-capability’, an expression that featured prominently in Ken Henry’s 2012 white paper, Australia in the Asian Century, which set a series of goals for Australia to achieve by 2025.
Those relevant to Asian languages were:
- Studies of Asia will be a core part of the Australian school curriculum.
- All students will have continuous access to a priority Asian language – Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese.
- Our leaders will be more Asia literate, with one-third of board members of Australia’s top 200 publicly listed companies and Commonwealth bodies having deep experience in and knowledge of Asia.
The optimism of Dr Henry and Prime Minister Gillard turned out to be pious, particularly because they suggested that the funding for these ambitious initiatives might mainly come from business, on the assumption that the private sector would benefit from them. With no budget, and subsequent changes of government, little was heard of the Asian Century white paper for over a decade, although ministers were repeatedly sent reports and protests about the decline of Asian studies and Asian languages.
Those representations now appear to have moved the Albanese government to act. If it does so without further delay, another generation of teachers, researchers and students of Asian languages may not be lost. The positive effects of language learning could help to reverse the decline in Australia’s relations with China particularly and revive some of our lost influence in the region.
But the Fluency in Asian Languages program was announced just over a month before Senator Hanson’s National Press Club ‘manifesto’. Her policies are just the opposite of this ALP initiative. How the government implements its long overdue program in the face of One Nation’s predictable hostility should be watched.
Dr Alison Broinowski AM is a former Australian diplomat and a member of Australians fr War Powers Reform