Launch of Wentworth Area Health Services'- Preventing Racial Harassment & Discrimination Guide
Speech by Zita Antonios, Race Discrimination Commissioner, 22nd July 1998, Sydney
Let me begin, as we at the Commission always do these days, by acknowledging the Darruk people, the traditional owners of the land upon which we meet this afternoon. I understand there are representatives of the Darruk Nation present and I pay my respects to you.
Now, I know in making this acknowledgement that I may have upset some people present - people who think that by my doing this I am being racially discriminatory to non-indigenous people - people who think that through this act of "political correctness" I am bestowing a privilege on Aboriginal people. But this is not the case at all. It is simply an act of courtesy, a way of showing respect to a group of people who in the past in our country have been showed very little respect and whose rights have been too often ignored.
And moreover, I also pay my respects to all of you. It is a great pleasure for me to have the opportunity to address so many people who are providing health services to the Wentworth area. You are charged with a huge responsibility, as the work you perform and the services you provide are crucial to the health of our community.
Of course, the health of our community is not only about hospitals and medicine. My esteemed former colleague and former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Dodson, described health as,
...not just the physical well-being of the individual but the social, emotional and cultural well-being of the whole community ...
and it is this holistic approach to our community's well being that I would like to focus on today.
Australia is a very diverse mixture of people. At the core are more than 300,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples - the first peoples, with an unbroken cultural association with the land and waters going back at least 50,000 years. Much more recently, other people have arrived from all over the globe. In the last fifty years, 5 million immigrants have come to make a home in Australia. Australia's diversity is drawn from some 150 cultures around the world in addition to the distinctive indigenous cultures.
The 'social, emotional and cultural well-being' of the whole Australian community depends on mutual respect - I repeat, mutual respect - between all groups within the country. When this happens you have a healthy society and a strong society.
However, when racism is allowed to flourish, as it has been recently, the society becomes sick and dysfunctional. Racism pits one group against another, causing bitterness and hatred. It festers and pollutes like an untreated sore. It stops children learning properly at school; it prevents people from getting jobs. It saps the country's strength and leaves it weak.
But why have these feelings of confusion, resentment and anger emerged within our society? It is not hard to identify a combination of economic and social factors which might be seen as catalysts of discontent. High levels of unemployment, the privatisation of public services, the debates over republicanism and native title, the rate of rural suicide and the withdrawal of services in rural communities are just some of the factors which have cumulatively, over time, eroded security and reduced our society's threshold of tolerance.
Australians are not impervious to anxiety, insecurity and fear and it is understandable that many Australians feel disenfranchised by social and economic forces beyond their control. But recently, for a significant number of Australians, this social malaise has manifested itself through finding fault-lines within our country based on race. And while economic hardship and social vulnerability is no excuse for racism, the illogical answer to our social and economic ills is to strike out at those who are different, particularly those who are visibly different.
Many people think that living in a democratic society like Australia is enough to ensure that discrimination does not occur. But my experience and no doubt many of your own experiences, tells us otherwise. In fact the workshops leading to the development of the preventing racial harassment and discrimination package showed that for many of you here today, discrimination is indeed a reality.
Cultural insensitivity is bad in any context, but cultural insensitivity in the health profession is potentially life threatening. Providing people with access to information in their own language, or ensuring that interpreters are available and used is not providing people with special privileges or advantages, it is addressing disadvantage.
Many people of non-english speaking background and Aboriginal Australians may be seriously disadvantaged by their inability to communicate effectively within a system which is daunting and unfamiliar. Medical emergencies are traumatic for all of us, imagine how much more so for those who cannot deal effectively with the system.
We talk easily today about giving people equal opportunity but it is worth thinking a little more about what phrases like "equal opportunity" and "equality" actually mean. In some situations equality requires being treated exactly the same as any other person. So, for example, if a real estate agent refuses to offer rental accommodation to a Somalian refugee simply because she is black, this is unequal and unfair treatment. Equal treatment will occur when she is offered housing on the same conditions as any other customer.
However, for a Bangladeshi man with poor english skills to enjoy the same standard of care within the health system, there is no equality in treating him exactly the same as any other patient. For a start he may need translation services to ensure that he understands what is going on in a hospital that speaks only in highly technical english. In addition, there may be other cultural or religious issues which must be considered in ensuring that he receives the high standard of care that we all expect when we are admitted to hospital. Giving this man exactly the same treatment as that received by an Australian born man who is familiar with both the english language and the Australian health care system, is clearly not equitable. So the message is treating people the same doesn't always mean you're being fair.
In only two decades we have come from a situation where the infant twin sons of a Turkish woman died because she was unable to communicate to medical staff what type of poison her boys had taken. At that time, in Australia's not too distant past, there was no interpreter service available for her to access. I don't think the provision of an interpreter would be seen as offering some sort of special privilege to that woman. And yet, this is precisely how some people view special policies for Migrants or Aborigines. They are wrong of course. There is no unfair advantage in recognising and acting on disadvantage.
And so I would like to commend the Wentworth Area Health Service in taking this important step to tackle discrimination at the workplace level. This is important, because discriminatory attitudes in the workplace spill over into other areas of daily life. In the health field, above all others, the consequences of this can be dire.
The good news is that there still remains a great deal happening in the area of equal opportunity and non-discrimination in employment and the workplace, and initiatives like the preventing racial harassment and discrimination package give me even further cause for optimism. It is great to see that policies and strategies are being developed not only at all levels of government, but also extensively across the private sector.
It is no easy task to unravel the mass of State and Federal Government legislation which governs anti-discrimination. Despite the existence of legislation, these mechanisms should be used as a last resort. All businesses, whether they are government or non-government, should implement workable anti-discrimination guidelines and policies and appropriate training at the organisational level, just as you at the macquarie health service are doing now. In the majority of cases, this will diffuse or deflect the need for recourse to formal legislative dispute resolution.
A strong message flows from this preventing racial harassment and discrimination package. It is that all individuals, every one of us, can make a difference by speaking out against racism and speaking up if you are a victim of racism. You should never underestimate the potential you all have on an individual level to confront and challenge discrimination. I know that often it is hard to speak out, but none of us can afford to stand by and allow racist behaviour to go unchallenged.
Many organisations increasingly understand this reality. The Wentworth Area Health Service's approach to developing the preventing racial harassment and discrimination guide paid close attention to first hand experiences and feelings of those staff involved in focus groups who had themselves suffered racial discrimination. The views of these individuals have been valued and are reflected throughout this project.
In closing I once again commend the efforts of the Wentworth Area Health Service to combat workplace racism. In striving to create good health, we must think not only of good physical health on a personal level, but also more broadly of the well-being of our community and of the spiritual health of the Nation. With this sort of health, diseases like racism cannot survive.
Last updated 1 December 2001
