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defining social and political aspects of the ‘good society’. Whether that translated into
increased self-reliance in national defence, closer alignment with the United States, or even an
outright split with Great Britain, it seemed to many Australians that ‘race, viewed as culture as
well as colour, was the common denominator’ in society (Meaney, 263).
Ouyang Yu notes that ‘Nationalism combined with racism finds in the Chinese a
convenient scapegoat and a necessary antithesis’ (Ouyang Yu, 1995, Invasion, 74). He points
to the ‘projection of paranoia’ which led to the invasion hysteria—also describing origins of
the ‘looking-glass’ metaphor of the Australia/Asia relationship—where a society’s
‘unacceptable impulses’ such as a recognition of self-reproach or self-distrust are attributed to
others. The projection can also result ‘from splitting the world into good/bad and
superior/inferior dichotomies’, whereby the existence of the bad and inferior within oneself is
denied and projected on a scapegoat. The cultural, religious and racial differences made the
Chinese ideal scapegoats, and the resulting fear and hatred of them as an undesirable ‘Other’
was deep and enduring (Ouyang Yu, 1995, Invasion, 75).
A recent example of this genre is John Warwick Hay’s The Invasion, a novel of the
surprise atomic attack and invasion of a naïve and defenceless Australia by the sinister South
East Asian Republic. The Asians are all depicted with contempt, especially the stupid,
untrustworthy and unhelpful Chinese cook who gets the station owner’s outraged scorn from
the very first page. Even proving able to survive in the bush when the whites would starve
only lowers him to the level of the Aborigines, whose usual moniker, ‘jackaroos’, equates them
with kangaroos. The white Australians are rough and tough men, acting according to passion
when they are wrong and to cool cunning when right. The Asian soldiers are lazy and careless
malingerers, and the Asian subordinate officers are cowards. The commanding officer is an
uncouth, crude, professional soldier who belches after eating too fast, hates Australia from his
first day there, and is so full of intolerance that he wonders how any country could allow such
a potential traitor as the ‘half-caste’ Lucas to live. The Asian considers being half-caste a
fundamental flaw and reason enough to turn against one’s country. The Australians are
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