AFN vol 44 No 4 Oct-Dec04 - Australian Fabian Society

PAGE 8
Opportunities lost
FREE THINKERS
Australia is still hopelessly monolinguistic, and it’s holding
our development back, argues Greg Barns.
Australian Fabian News
October–December 2004
Talented Australians expand their
horizons by studying in the US and
the UK. They adore working in cities
like New York and London, and
upgrade their skills in public and
private sector organisations across the
Anglophone world.
But what if it were unexceptional for
Australians to study in Hanover or
Helsinki, routinely fast-track their
careers in Budapest and Buenos Aires,
and participate in peer-to-peer
exchanges with institutions in Seoul
and Stockholm? This cannot happen
unless Australians start looking and
learning beyond the English language.
There is only so far you can go in terms
of understanding potential friends, and
enemies, without mastering their native
language and its nuances.
Most of us agree that all Australians
should speak fluent English, and that
this aim is a core component of working
multiculturalism. Yet we almost
completely ignore another more than
200 languages spoken in this country,
and Australians come from more than
200 birthplaces. Despite the unusual
depth and breadth of these linguistic
resources at our disposal, Australia’s
cultural, educational, political and
business experiences are primarily
conducted through the medium of the
English language. According to the
Australian Bureau of Statistics, only
around 15 per cent of the Australian
population speaks a language other
than English at home. Worse, there are
no signs of up and coming generational
change. In Victoria, for example, only
8 percent of Year 12 students study a
language other than English.
Other Western nations don’t share
our blind, dumb spot. Half the
population of Europe is bilingual. In the
US, 11 per cent of the population speaks
Spanish – including George W. Bush, a
man who proudly boasted he had never
been to Europe until he became
President in 2000. British Prime
Minister Tony Blair famously and
fluently addresses French President
Jacques Chirac and the French
Parliament in their own language.
The opportunities offered by our
evolving racial demographics were
something that Gough Whitlam and
Malcolm Fraser recognised in their
pursuit of multicultural policies that
were more than skin deep. Their open,
pluralistic approach to these matters
culminated in the introduction of Paul
Keating’s Asian Languages program for
schools in 1995. Keating recognised that
speaking the languages – and thereby
accessing the culture – of Asia was vital
to Australia becoming a genuinely long
term member of the region in which we
live.
John Howard cancelled that program
in 1999. Was this part of Howard’s
strategic backlash against ‘political
correctness’ and Keating’s ‘vision
thing’? Or was it because multilingualism
threatens the vision of ‘one
nation’, where language is used to
enforce ‘belonging’ in its narrowest
sense? Current Howard Government
spending on teaching young
Australians languages other than
English is woefully inadequate. It
announced in the 2003 Federal Budget
a minute total of $104 million for
languages education, out of a total
education budget worth $16 billion.
It’s not just our politicians who seem
to care little about the opportunities lost
to Australians through incompetence in
other languages. The Business Council
of Australia, an influential group
representing the ‘big end of town’ and
spending millions of dollars on research
and advocacy each year, failed to
include language issues in its otherwise
admirable 2002 ‘Future Directions’
project. Yet as Tony Liddicoat, president
of the Australian Federation of Modern
Language Teachers Associations told
The Age on October 20 last year: “You
do need English plus another language
to be really competitive in a whole lot
of jobs’.”
www.fabian.org.au
Let’s stop denying the reality and the
possibility of what Australia could and
should be in the 21st century. Let’s do it
not just to make more money,
understand art films or enhance the
intelligence of our spying and
surveillance. Let’s do it to combat the
innate conservatism that’s allowed fear
politics to get such a tight grip on us in
recent years, and which prevents our
democracy maturing to embrace
overdue constitutional reforms such as a
republic. For the capacity to understand
other cultures, values and perspectives
will bring a greater preparedness to
reform our own society – imaginatively,
and in ways that will really work for
Australia.
Greg Barns is a Hobart based writer
and lawyer. This is an edited version
of an article that first appeared on
25 August 2004 in the new weekly
online magazine, NewMatilda.com,
which promotes independent political
analysis and public policy development.
Fabian members can subscribe online
at a 20 per cent discount by quoting
the promotional code ‘Fabian’ at
http://www.newmatilda.com