a 21st century neighborhood

As we stumble forward into the new year, Australians can look back on 1996 with a mixture of pride and chagrin. In March, we abandoned the Labor government and elected a conservative coalition led by John Howard. The following month a lone gunman armed with high-powered automatic weapons murdered 35 people in a few minutes in Port Arthur, a sleepy Tasmanian tourist resort.

To his enduring credit, John Howard used this tragedy to force his Federal colleagues and all State governments to defy the gun lobby and introduce strict uniform gun laws, something the Labor party had been unable to achieve during 13 years in power. Americans might imagine a Republican President getting a law through Congress and the Senate banning automatic rifles and shotguns.

Unfortunately, having passed this test magnificently, John Howard failed another miserably. When an outbreak of xenophobia erupted in Australia, fuelled by intemperate remarks about immigration by a populist Queensland politician named Pauline Hanson, John Howard said and did nothing. Perhaps, because Ms Hanson's constituency is strikingly similar to his own (white, Anglo-Saxon, elderly) he judged it prudent not to offend them.

But John Howard was, and is, wrong. The Australia of the 21st century will not be found amongst Pauline Hanson's racist voters, insular and self-satisfied as they yearn for an Australia that never existed.

The Prime Minister would do better to drive west out of Sydney's central business district to Newtown, where I live. The main street, King Street, is a two-kilometer jumble of restaurants, pubs, bookstores, and second-hand clothes shops, nearly all in shabby buildings dating from the turn of the century. Until recently Newtown was a working class district of narrow streets and tiny one- and two-story cottages. Happily, it seems to be valiantly resisting the gentrification that has transformed so many other inner city suburbs into sleek, heartless dormitories for the highrollers.

King Street's population is an eclectic mix of races, tribes, and socio-economic classes, co-existing easily together. Asian, Greek, Nigerian, Italian, Lebanese, Thai, Indian, Samoan shopkeepers provide a wealth of goods and services.

Gays and lesbians hold hands unselfconsciously, ferals with matted dreadlocks walk barefoot, yuppies (like myself) sip soy milk cappucinos, senior citizens -- Newtown residents all their lives -- look in bemusement at the pierced and tattoed passing parade.

Not long after I moved here, a girlfriend suggested I could save time and money by shopping once a week at a mall some distance away. We tried it once. The following week she said: "I think maybe you're happier going to those small shops on King Street." As I am. Though shopping for clothes or appliances bores me to distraction, shopping for food and other necessities is an everyday delight.

For newspapers, magazines, and lottery tickets, there is Vivien and Eric Lim's news agency. They arrived from Singapore in 1985, looking for work and opportunity. Three and a half years ago they saw a King Street news agency for sale. Having never owned one or run one, they bought it. "We just drove by and decided to do it," Vivien explained. "It's a profitable, stable business."

The colors of the rainbow flag adorn Tracey Cooke's King St Chemist. Tracey arrived twenty years ago, from New Zealand, intending to stay six months. The shop he bought in 1988 has been a pharmacy for 110 years -- though only since Tracey's tenure has it marketed so directly to Newtown's high gay and lesbian population. Not long ago, when I asked for some flu tablets, Tracey's assistant Doreen took one look at me and sent me to the doctor.

On New Years Eve in 1976, Albert Homsi followed his brother from Lebanon. He married Teresa, worked in factories for ten years, then in his brother's fruit and vegetable business. Four years ago he moved to Newtown, into a shop where fruit and vegetables have been sold for over 100 years. Last year they won the award for the best fruit shop in Newtown. They deserve to win it every year.

Chicken, steak, and cat food from R.J. Fletcher, Quality Butcher. Sam Pennisi's parents came from Sicily in 1969, when he was four. What does he like about Australia? "Good people, great climate, plenty of opportunity." How was it growing up in Australia twenty five years ago when people were less tolerant and prone to calling immigrants "wogs"? "At my school 99% of the kids were wogs anyway. Coming from another wog it didn't worry me at all."

The most delicious croissants in the world I buy from Sayoen Khun who works at her brother Sen's Capital Bakery with her husband, Vannarith Chea. Over a period of fifteen years their family came to Sydney, via Vietnamese refugee camps, to escape the Cambodian civil war. Hot cross buns at easter, fruit mince pies at Christmas, French breadsticks, cherry and blueberry danish tumble from their ovens.

Not one of these shopkeepers was born in Australia. I picked those I visit most frequently, but I could have chosen others and the story would have been the same. The easy flow of my daily life, the food I eat, my health and happiness, owe much to their hard work and commitment. Yet Pauline Hanson wants to stop immigration. And John Howard lacks the courage to confront her.

Was it Thomas Jefferson who said you always get the rulers you deserve?

mrjones said:

Yes, John Howard cynically jumped on the popularist bandwagon of banning guns...we were seemingly happy to cheer as he ripped half a billion dollars off us to buy them back. Meanwhile the mental health system collapses for lack of funds, the sick are pushed back into a sometimes hostile society for lack of suitable care for them. Let the gun lobby keep their guns, they're a dying breed anyway, I'd rather spend the half a billion on developing a system of care that could avoid the next Martin Bryant. And no, John Howard did not jump on the Hanson bandwagon, no real votes there. His lack of leadership and statesmanship on the Hanson issue has shown him up as the shallow coward he is. Can you imagine JFK or Martin Luther King telling the country that they were "not going to buy into that one" He's a constitutional monarchist and what's more he's dead boring.

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Happily, Newtown seems to be valiantly resisting the gentrification that has transformed so many other inner city suburbs into sleek, heartless dormitories for the highrollers.

King Street's population is an eclectic mix of races, tribes, and socio-economic classes, co-existing easily together. Asian, Greek, Nigerian, Italian, Lebanese, Thai, Indian, Samoan shopkeepers provide a wealth of goods and services.

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