Victorian Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Asia Engagement, Mr Hong Lim, meeting Malcolm Fraser in 1981 to discuss Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees arriving in Australia. He praised Mr Fraser for his humanity.As I write a horrifying humanitarian disaster, entirely made by successive Australian governments, is looming on Manus Island.
As a child I came into political awareness in the 1970s. The Fraser government’s open armed response to the plight of Vietnamese boat people – with the full support of the ALP – is etched in my experience as a defining feature of who we then aspired to be as a people.
We were leaving the white Australia policy permanently behind. We were strongly adhering to our UNHCR obligations and had a profoundly humane and compassionate immigration policy towards boat arrival asylum seekers.
