COMMON VALUES': WHITENESS, CHRISTIANITY, ASYLUM SEEKERS AND THE HOWARD GOVERNMENT
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ACRAWSA e-journal, Vol. II , No. 1, 2006
‘COMMON VALUES’: WHITENESS, CHRISTIANITY, ASYLUM SEEKERS
AND THE HOWARD GOVERNMENT
HOLLY RANDELL-MOON
Abstract Introduction
The articulation of whiteness as a moral This essay posits that the ways in which
homogeneity comprising ‘common’ the Howard Government cites Christian-
Judeo-Christian values has contributed ity is reflective of an investment in, and
to the formation and representation of protection of, a white teleology of Aus-
Australian national identity as unprob- tralian nationalism. By examining gov-
lematically Anglo-Celtic. The ways in ernmental responses to media reports of
which the Howard Government cites asylum seekers converting to Christianity
Christianity is reflective of this investment it will be shown how the discursive asso-
in, and protection of, a white teleology ciation between whiteness and Austra-
of Australian nationalism. By imputing a lianness is produced as a naturalised
universal status to Australian and Chris- norm. This examination will include at-
tian values through an articulation of a tending to assumptions of secularity
‘common’ set of values reflective of a where the reproduction of a racialised
‘broad church’, Howard’s statements on construction of Christianity (as an ab-
religion and national culture attempt to stracted signifier of whiteness) is ob-
reproduce racially unmarked subjects scured within a language of national
and disassociate this location from the values as ‘common values’. Such a
investment in and protection of white connection between religion and state
hegemony. By examining governmental evidences a teleology of nationalism
responses to media reports of asylum that works to displace Indigenous sover-
seekers converting to Christianity it will eignty by affirming an Anglocentric
be shown how the discursive association identity and heritage as Australian. By
between whiteness and Australianness is suturing this Anglocentric identity to dis-
produced as a naturalised norm. Within courses of ‘the West,’ ethnicity and na-
the media reports on asylum seekers tionality are conflated into a homoge-
converting to Christianity, differentiations nous whiteness (Moreton-Robinson 2005:
based on race are subsumed by as- 23). In this way, Otherness in the form of
sumptions of moral difference that lo- asylum seekers and Muslims, are consti-
cate Christianity with Australianness. By tuted by their difference from the relig-
aligning these values with a discourse of iously inflected ‘common values’ that
secular, Western nations, the Howard unite Australia with other ‘Western’ na-
Government makes invisible a religiously tions such as the United States and Brit-
inflected cultural agenda that presents ain. Aileen Moreton-Robinson writes that
Australian values as ‘broad’ and inclu- ‘whiteness secures hegemony through
sive but underpinned by an adherence discourse by normalising itself as the cul-
to a teleology of Australian nationality tural space of the West’ (2004b: 78).
that is Anglocentric in its outlook.
Drawing on this critical insight, it is ar-
gued that the ideas embedded in how
ISSN 1832-3898 © Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2006RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
Australian values are presented and en- tional identity (Hage 2003; Standfield
acted by the Howard Government draw 2004; Moreton-Robinson 2005).
on racialised discourses of Western cul-
ture refracted through a ‘Judeo- Many theorists have written about how
Christian’ value system. After establishing discursive productions of Australian na-
the theoretical grounds of connections tionality are inextricably linked to white-
between Christianity, whiteness, and ness through particular sets of colonial
Australianness, a discussion will follow of and cultural knowledge (Perera & Pugli-
media reports on convert Christian asy- ese 1997; Lake 2003; Moreton-Robinson
lum seekers and the use of Christianity in 2004a; Moreton-Robinson 2004b; Ahmed
political rhetoric by the Howard Gov- 2004). Joseph Pugliese argues that
ernment. ‘whiteness is not a racial category that
necessarily inscribes or colours the body
When launching the National Multicul- en bloc, as a type of totalising or ho-
tural Advisory Council Report in 1999, mogenous thing-in-itself’ (2002: 153), but
Australian Prime Minister John Howard is subject to cultural and political varia-
argued that ‘what holds a nation to- tions that attempt to signify whiteness as
gether more than anything else are its ‘self-evidently white’ (166). Whiteness as
common values’ (Howard 1999). Else- a racially signifying category is dispersed
where Howard has argued that ‘we are as localised and particularised accord-
a society that respects all religions, but ing to different historical formations so
we should respect our own history and that ‘different people have been al-
our own traditions,’ naming specifically lowed in and forced out of Whiteness
‘our’ Judeo-Christian foundations (How- over time’ (Elder et al. 2004: 209; Supriya
ard 2004: 119). The ostensibly inclusive 1999: 136). The consolidation of various
‘common values’ Howard speaks of in English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh settler
the context of multiculturalism, are asso- ethnicities including Anglo-Celtic and
ciated in another context with one spe- Anglo-Saxon, into a broad notion of
cific set of values, Christianity. National ‘Australian’ whiteness has significant reli-
values are universalised on the one gious dimensions in Australian political
hand as ‘common’, but particularised as history. An understanding of Judeo-
Christian on the other, situating non- Christian values as signifying Australian
Christian values as secondary to na- whiteness is evident in the current dis-
tional interests. Michel Foucault defines courses of Christianity utilised by the
different discursive processes as ensuring Howard Government.
‘the distribution of speaking subjects into
the different types of discourse and the Australianness, Whiteness, And
appropriation of discourse to certain Religion
categories of subject’ (1981: 64). In view
of this, the expression of ‘common val-
ues’ raises a series of questions. Through The historicity of whiteness means, that,
which speaking position is ‘Christianity’ in Jon Stratton’s words, ‘we can take the
being accessed here? How is ‘Christian- term Anglo-Celtic to describe what is
ity’ made appropriate to the subject of now considered to be the whitest group
nationality? What might be absent in of Australians’ (1999: 163). The embodi-
Howard’s invocation of ‘Judeo-Christian’ ment of this form of whiteness is inscribed
foundations? Such an invocation re- differently in relation to culturally specific
quires the erasure of Indigenous sover- notions of religion. In ‘Multiculturalism
eignty and the displacement of migrant and the Whitening machine, or how
culture as assimilatory to a ‘unified’ na- Australians became white’ (1999), Strat-
ton maps the ways in which the idea of
2RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
culture as deriving from a racial group lian culture’ (Stratton 1999: 178). Where
shifted to the view of culture as implicitly previously there was a differentiation
signifying race. Such a discursive reposi- between ‘white, northern, Protestant
tioning expanded the conception of Europeans from the not-so-white eastern
what constituted ‘Australian’ whiteness and southern, Catholic and Orthodox
and underscored the adoption of multi- Europeans’ during the operation of the
culturalism as government policy. After White Australia Policy, this gave way to
the Second World War there was a sub- the ‘later identification of the latter as
stantial intake of migrants from Levant, ethnics’ during the advent of multicul-
and Eastern and Southern Europe, which turalism (165). It was for this reason that
necessitated the broadening of the the binary opposition between Catholic
category white (British) Australian to that and Protestants gradually relaxed its
of ‘European’. Stratton argues that ‘this power with the de-racialisation of the
was made possible by the demise of the Irish as ethnics. This is demonstrated by
thinking that allied race with nation, that the term ‘Anglo-Celtic,’ which presumes
had allowed for the idea of a ‘British the primacy of culture underpinned by a
race’, and the move away from an em- moral Christian homogeneity (172). Strat-
phasis on phenotype, ‘white’, to an em- ton writes that:
phasis on culture signalled by ‘Euro-
pean’’ (164). Underlying the Australian [B]y the time of multiculturalism, when it
Government’s broadening of the term was the culture itself that was the osten-
‘white’ for immigration purposes was a sibly privileged entity, and when this was
located in a more general moral system,
conceptualisation of whiteness as an
white was no longer utilised as a classifi-
abstraction of ‘European moral assump- catory term. Instead, ‘mainstream’, ‘real
tions … articulated in terms of accept- Australians’ and, most commonly, ‘An-
able moral difference’ (165). In this way, glo-Celtic’, all terms that evolved their
‘the idea of a common morality has current meaning during the 1980s, were
usually been tied to the claim of a used (172).
common religious heritage, a claim that
equates ‘white’ people with Christianity, The political implications of articulating
or a ‘Judeo-Christian value system’’ whiteness in terms of a moral homoge-
(Stratton 1999: 165; Dyer 1997; Dyer 1999: neity means that a residual discourse of
458; Hall 1992: 289; Asad 2003: 166). Christianity inflects and informs political
institutional structures and arrangements
The gradual understanding of cultural in Australia. This is a useful way of under-
variation within whiteness, underpinned standing the Howard Government’s ex-
by common religious identifications with cavations of an Anglo-Christian subjec-
‘a Judeo-Christian value system,’ leads tivity and Howard’s cultural agenda for
Stratton to propose that the adoption of ‘mainstream’ Australia. Howard’s 1996
multiculturalism by the Fraser govern- Federal Election campaign was prem-
ment in the 1970s was underpinned by a ised on an aim to re-centre the notion of
cultural plurality (1999: 165). This policy a unified Australia in comparison to a
aimed ‘to solve the problem caused by perceived privileging of diversity under
the failure of assimilation’ of marginal the Keating Government. In an interview
white groups, from nationalities such as for the book 100 Years: The Australian
Italy and Greece (Stratton 1999: 170; Lo- Story by Paul Kelly, marking the 2001
pez 2000, p. 2, 3; Cox 1987, p. 245, 246) Centenary of Australian Federation,
through recourse to ‘a set of moral and Howard argued that ‘unity and diversity
cultural assumptions that would make are both important’ but ‘I want Australia
easy assimilation into the unitary Austra- to be distinctive, to have Australian
3RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
characteristics that are different from 2005: 22). As Moreton-Robinson points
English or Irish or French or Italian or Chi- out, ‘the core values which were dis-
nese–quite different’ (Kelly 2001: 251). played by diggers on the battle fields
Ghassan Hage describes Howard’s in- are never linked to their colonial origins
vocation of cultural values as a trans- and the part they played in claiming the
historical reproduction of an Australian nation as a white possession’ (22). The
essence, ‘these values are Australian in pervasive ideal in Howard’s ‘broad
a ‘strong’ sense: they differentiate Aus- church’ is an ‘equation … between
tralians from other people in the world. whiteness and assimilation’ (Stratton
They trace what Howard considers a 1999: 177). This is expressed in Howard’s
unique ‘Australian way’’ (2003: 70). metaphor by adding ‘extra pews’ to an
already existing moral structure or value
This cultural agenda for a distinctive but system. Stratton argues that the notion
homogenous Australian national identity of cultural diversity as being unified by a
is religiously inflected through the mobili- common identification of Australian val-
sation of a pan Anglo-European subjec- ues produces an opposition between
tivity. When launching the magazine culture and morals that situates moral
and website The Conservative, Howard difference with racial difference (170).
described the Liberal Party as ‘a broad The assignation of Judeo-Christian val-
church’, saying, ‘you sometimes have to ues to Australian nationality by Howard
get the builders in to put in the extra reproduces a cultural homogeneity un-
pew on both sides of the aisle to make derpinned by racialised discourses of
sure that everybody is accommodated’ religion that constructs Australianness as
(2005b). The term ‘broad’ can be seen ‘white’.
to denote an abstract whiteness capa-
ble of absorbing cultural diversity, but This relationship between ‘whiteness’
one that is nevertheless underpinned by and a ‘common morality’ informs other
a ‘church,’ by an adherence to a areas of government policy and has ef-
common morality that is religiously fects in relation to the operation of the
transposed to mean ‘national values’. secular and non-secular in political dis-
For example, in an address marking the course. Judith Brett, for example, has
ninetieth anniversary of Gallipoli, How- demonstrated how in early twentieth
ard argued that Anzac Day has an century Australian politics, Protestant
‘eternal place in the Australian soul’ due conceptions of individualism as liberal
to the sacrifice of ‘Australians who have and democratic tended to obfuscate
died in war and for peace in our name’ Protestantism through the use of secular
(2005a). He went on to say ‘they be- language. Based on moral and there-
queathed Australia a lasting sense of fore racial difference, this cast non-
national unity’ (2005a). In order to iden- Protestant forms of Christianity, such as
tify as Australian, one requires a subscrip- Catholicism, as well as other faiths, as
tion to an underlying set of values, a overtly religious and incompatible with
‘democratic temper’, ‘questioning eye government operations (2004: 40, 54).
towards authority’, ‘easy familiarity’, Religious values that privilege specific
‘courage and compassion’ (2005a), all forms of whiteness can be rendered in-
of which reproduce a trans-historical visible through the assumption of
Australian essence. The imputation of secularity.
the Anzac solider into a national subject
‘implicitly excludes non-white migrants Talal Asad has argued that the secular
and Indigenous people from holding conceptualisation of religion as outside
such core values’ (Moreton-Robinson of politics is specific to a modern West-
4RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
ern ideal of government. But rather than that Asad highlights how certain religions
simply differentiating religious matters are made compatible with secular gov-
from political ones, secularism has the ernments through liberal democratic
effect of producing the paradigms principles, this conflation of culture, mo-
through which religion is understood. rality, and nation is underpinned by a
racialised discourse of religion. The dis-
[T]he insistence that religion has an cursive positioning of a pan Anglo-
autonomous essence–not to be con- European subjectivity as embodying
fused with the essence of science, or of Judeo-Christian values affirms a teleol-
politics, or of common sense–invites us to
ogy of Australia as a white, western na-
define religion (like any essence) as a
transhistorical and transcultural phe-
tion. In the case of convert Christian asy-
nomenon … This definition is at once part lum seekers, their representation in news
of a strategy (for secular liberals) of the reports and government commentary is
confinement, and (for liberal Christians) underpinned by perceptions of racial,
of the defense of religion (1993: 28). and therefore moral difference, that
supports their location outside of the na-
When the intersection of religion and tion by government policies such as
politics in secular governments is thought mandatory detention. These strategies
to occur in a positive sense, the religion of exclusion reiterate an understanding
in question is framed as commensurate of Australian culture as Anglocentric
with democratic principles. through a discursive association be-
Only religions that have accepted the tween whiteness and Christianity.
assumptions of liberal discourse are be-
ing commended, in which tolerance is ‘Detainees Who Find Christ’
sought on the basis of a distinctive rela-
tion between law and morality (Asad
2003: 183). On the 21 March 2005, the Sydney Morn-
ing Herald reported that the refugee
It can be further noted that the relation claims for thirty long-term detainees,
of specific religions to political spaces, predominantly from Iran and Iraq, were
even as secularism is upheld, is marked being reviewed due to their conversion
by processes of racial inclusion and ex- to Christianity. The cases were reas-
clusion. Moreton-Robinson draws atten- sessed on the basis that the detainees
tion to how ‘whiteness is constitutive of would most likely face religious persecu-
the epistemology of the West’ (2004b: tion if deported, particularly under the
75). In this way, white relations of power Iranian theocratic government which
and knowledge are represented as self- reprimands conversions from Islam (Sec-
evident and normal: ‘It is an invisible re- combe and Morris 2005). The reviews
gime of power that secures hegemony formed part of the Cabinet’s considera-
through discourse and has material ef- tion of approximately two hundred long-
fects in everyday life’ (75). If Judeo- term detainees on 21 and 22 of March
Christian religious values are the founda- (ABC 2005a; Hurrell 2005a: 23). This story
tions of Australia’s secular government, was subsequently picked up by other
as Howard argues, it is because there is news outlets and generated debate
a moral compatibility between Christian- concerning the legitimacy of the con-
ity and Australianness. National values versions in terms of a possible Christian
are asserted religiously whilst a discourse bias by the Government that may exhort
of secularity masks the specificity of more asylum seekers to convert to gain
these values so they can be presented citizenship; resulting in what an AAP feed
(like Australian national identity) as a described as ‘copycat Christian conver-
transhistorical essence. In the same way sions’ (AAP 2005a).
5RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
The headline for the front page Sydney key to asylum’ (Hurrell 2005a), and ‘No
Morning Herald story, ‘Detainees who special treatment for Christian converts
find Christ may be allowed to stay,’ in detention’ (AAP 2005a) makes sense
conveys the implicit assumption that only in the context of an already existing
Christianity is the dominant religion in alignment between Australian values
Australian society, following that those and Christianity.
who are not allowed to ‘stay’, asylum
seekers, belong to a religion other than Further, questions of religious bias by the
Christianity. This use of a stable and un- Government with respect to asylum
shifting Christianity is expressed as an seekers are refracted through the ra-
opposition between an imagined cially informed policy of mandatory de-
Australian ‘Us’ and an Other asylum tention for ‘illegal arrivals’. As Stratton
seeker ‘Them’. Because Christianity is observes, the detention of ‘illegal arri-
attached to the Australian ‘Us’, this vals’ who come primarily from South-East
binary is also overlain with a discursive Asia (2004: 236), can be contrasted with
association of whiteness and the non detention of illegal overstayers,
Australianness so that racial difference is the majority of whom are from the
subsumed by a language of ‘values’ United States and the United Kingdom,
difference. This demonstrates the ways in countries considered ‘‘white’ within the
which cultural values are racially marked definition Australia uses’ (223). This points
and religiously informed. to ways in which ‘the Australian border is
more likely to be permeable’ for those
A number of points can be made in rela- identified as ‘white’ (Stratton 2004: 223;
tion to the discursive framing of religion Tascon 2004; Perera 2005). An assump-
and Australianness in the news stories tion of racial and hence moral differ-
about the conversions. When replying to ence from white Australians informs the
suggestions of Christian bias in the Cabi- stories about convert Christian asylum
net reviews, Howard stated ‘there’s no seekers. This is despite for example, the
denominational or religious-specific previous detention of Iranian and Iraqi
clause in the administration of our immi- Christians, as well as Mandeans who
gration policy’ (AAP 2005a). Asylum share with Christians a reverence for
seekers converting to Christianity make John the Baptist (Mercer 2002), which
visible a whole series of suppositions none of the stories from the headlines
about Christianity in Government rheto- mentioned, nor that some asylum seek-
ric. The possibility, presented by news ers are not religious at all but may form
reports, of religious partiality by the ethnic or cultural minorities within their
Government in relation to asylum seek- country of origin. Asylum seekers are
ers, supposes an already preferential framed within a naturalised cultural de-
treatment of Christianity by the Howard terminism that subsumes overt refer-
Government. However, the question of ences to racial difference with moral
religious priorities, or lack thereof, does difference. The Howard Government
not contest the Howard Government’s exploited this naturalised understanding
access to a discourse on ‘Christianity’. of moral difference in the 2001 Federal
The print media reports reproduce a Election campaign by characterising
similar cultural causality between white- asylum seekers ‘as ‘indecent’, unfit to
ness and Christianity that Howard’s become ‘decent’ Australians’ during the
‘broad church’ draws on. The logic of children overboard scandal (Osuri and
the headlines ‘Detainees who find Christ Banerjee 2004: 161, n.4).
may be allowed to stay’ (Seccombe
and Morris 2005), ‘Switching religion no
6RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
The news reports of asylum seekers con- ‘racial suicide’ (1997) where the cul-
verting to Christianity work to support the tural compatibility of Christianity with
Howard Government’s framing of Aus- Australianness is viewed as vulnerable
tralian national identity as ‘white’ by the embodiment of seemingly An-
through a racialised discourse of religion glo-Australian religious values by asy-
that conflates cultural difference with lum seekers whose corporeal differ-
moral difference. Goldie Osuri has theo- ence signifies a racial difference from
rised that the discursive production of whiteness. As Pugliese discusses else-
Australian nationality through the media where, the
and its relationship to the Australian na-
tion-state is exercised through ‘newsme- ‘contingent ethnic variations [of white-
dia governmentality’. That is, ness] and its necessarily semiotic status
generate the possibility for it to be de-
the interplay between the right of free fined topically–in the context of systems
press in a parliamentary democracy and of differential, and often contradictory,
disciplinary mechanisms of normalization, relations that may incorporate a singular
manifests itself in a concentrated man- body’ (2002: 153).
ner on the newsmedia especially as it
concerns those who are perceived to be This ‘historical mobility of whiteness’ (165)
‘other’ than a particular norm (2000: is precisely why conversions to Christian-
211). ity by asylum seekers pose a ‘threat’ to
the security of Australian citizenship be-
The policy of mandatory detention for cause they undermine the idea of a
asylum seekers is justified by the Howard stable, essentialised Australian identity.
Government as a security measure to Consequently, for Ferguson, the conver-
protect Australian borders (Perera 2002). sions can only be read pejoratively as an
In the reports of convert Christian asylum attempt to assimilate to this national
seekers there is a conflation of national identity rather than a reorientation in
security with the security of Australian religious identification.
values through the questioning of the
legitimacy of the conversions. It is this changeability in religion as ex-
trapolative to issues concerning the un-
The then Opposition Immigration stable nature of Australian citizenship
spokesman Laurie Ferguson was that underpins the newsworthiness of the
quoted in several articles urging the stories. The mainstream media is com-
Government to assess the authenticity plicit in the ways in which Christianity is
of the conversions saying, ‘I would be made appropriate to the subject of na-
prepared to put a large amount of tional identity through the privileging of
money on at the TAB for a significant those able to access discourses on Chris-
number of conversions (to Christianity) tianity. There were no Iranian and Iraqi
to occur now’ (AAP 2005a; Hurrell Christian spokespeople mentioned in
2005a: 23). Ferguson’s comments ex- these articles. By contrast, those affili-
press the idea that refugees cannot ated with mainstream Christian religions
genuinely convert to Christianity and and Islam were quoted extensively; the
Australian values unless it is a ‘ruse’, president of the Uniting Church, Rever-
which presumes an intrinsic investment end Dean Clayton (who supported the
in Christianity and Australian values is some of detainee’s religious conversions
only called into question for non-white and applications for citizenship), Sydney
subjects. This anxiety over Australian Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen,
citizenship recalls what Suvendrini Per- members from the Family First party
era and Joseph Pugliese refer to as (which has links to the Pentecostal As-
7RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
semblies of God church) and the presi- whiteness and Australianness in govern-
dent of the Lebanese Muslim Associa- ment policy, and secondly, that his
tion, Keysar Trad (Seccombe and Morris rhetoric of Australia’s ‘Judeo-Christian’
2005; AAP 2005a; AAP 2005b; AAP foundations excludes certain subjects,
2005c). That the only non-Christian relig- such as Indigenous peoples, migrants,
ion mentioned in the news stories was asylum seekers–those construed as non-
Islam, demonstrates the racialised ways Christian, from national identification.
in which religion is understood to relate
culture and morality to nationality along Policy toward asylum seekers is also im-
a binary of Christianness-Australianness bricated within the discourse of the ‘war
and Other. This may have been chal- on terror’ that is expressed ‘via a cultur-
lenged since all the Christians men- ally imagined ‘West’ versus a culturally
tioned above stressed their opposition to constructed Islam’ (Osuri and Banerjee
mandatory detention regardless of a 2004: 158). Within this particular context,
‘fear’ of inauthentic conversions. How- racial difference is made visible to the
ever, the primary newsworthiness of the extent that supposed differences in ‘val-
story was supported by the idea that ues’ become inflated. The orientalist as-
conversion to Christianity by asylum sumption that constructs the West in op-
seekers is unique or out of the ordinary, position to Islam works to homogenise
as well as the Howard Government’s differences within each binary term and
views on Christian asylum seekers that link the West and Islam to a correspond-
makes the speculation of religious bias ing set of essentialised representations
news. (Kabbani 1986; Said 1991; Hall 1992). This
dichotomous logic works to privilege an
The ways in which Howard mutes and association between a Western and
deploys whiteness and Christianity is not white subjectivity to the extent that dif-
monolithic but contextually shifting. The ference is reproduced as an Othered
invocation of a trans-historical Australian subject position (Frankenberg 1993: 193).
essence articulated through an Anglo- In this way, the disproportionate media
Christian self is an ideal used to conceal coverage of Islam positions Christianity
difference and contradictions. Howard’s as a minority within representations of
position that there is no ‘specific’ reli- asylum seekers.
gious clause expressing bias in relation to
reports on convert Christian detainees is The Howard Government’s use of
a claim to the secular operation of im- Christianity is also situated within a
migration policy. This externally consti- presentation of Australia as a Western
tuted concept of secularity presumes a nation in a global political context.
divide between religion and govern- Goldie Osuri and Subhabrata Bobby
ment policy that enables the displace- Banerjee theorise this representation of
ment of whiteness and the racially in- nationality as both localised and
formed practice of mandatory deten- global within a colonial framework of
tion through a discourse of ‘Australian’ white diasporas
values. These ‘values’ obfuscate the re-
lations of power and knowledge that where the ownership of Australia as a
sustain Howard’s cultural agenda. In this white, Western country is articulated
way, by answering the possibility of reli- through its political, cultural and military
alliances with the United Kingdom and
gious bias through a presumption of
the United States (2004: 160)
secularity, Howard’s comments perform
a double erasure. Firstly, by invisibilising and is ‘based on the attempted erasure
the discursive association between of Indigenous populations as native’
8RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
(159). For example, Howard describes happy there. But you won’t be happy in
Australian heritage by saying Australia (Maiden 2005).
we are a nation whose roots are West- Costello portrays an antithesis between
ern, British and other European, we have supposedly extreme Islamic values and
strong links with North America, both his- secular democratic values by reproduc-
torically and based on our common val- ing a religious discourse underwritten by
ues and commitments (Kelly 2001: 249). a cultural determinism that combines
race with moral difference. This dis-
The presentation of Australianness as course has been used to justify equiva-
ethnically consistent with countries such lences between terrorism and Islam and
as Britain and some (‘other’) parts of has had negative effects on the lived
Europe affirms an Anglocentric teleology experiences of those who identify as
of Australian national identity as West- Muslim since the September 11 attacks
ern. Osuri and Banerjee write that (Akram 2002; Kampmark 2003; Imtoual
2005). The notion of secularism that
these relationships may not always be
Costello appeals to represents Islam as
expressed or referred to, but they may
be mobilised in specific circumstances
undemocratic because religion and
where the legacies of colonial histories government are combined, and forms
underpin differentiations based on race the basis of critiques of ‘fundamentalist’
or culture (2004: 159). Islamic subjects as over determined by
religious principles that undermine liberal
Similarities in Judeo-Christian religious individualism. This ignores the various
identifications form an important ele- government mechanisms such as the
ment to these ‘common values’. opening of parliament services with the
Lord’s Prayer and the swearing in of
The ways in which moral differences be- Members and Senators on the Bible pre-
tween Anglo-Australians and those iden- sent in the current Australian govern-
tified as ‘Other’ relies on an abstraction ment’s operations (Maddox 2001: 109,
of religious identifications, that benefits 115), and in addition, obscures the ways
whiteness, can be extrapolated into the in which Islam and Christianity share a
context of the ‘war on terror’. The mobili- common religious heritage (Said 1991:
sation of cultural difference can be used 103, 104). There is a double movement
to signify an opposition to an imagined that allows a reading of Islam to meto-
‘kinship of whiteness’ (152) that situates nymically stand in for an undifferenti-
Western nations as morally homogenous. ated discourse of politics but separates
Preceding the Meeting of Islamic Lead- the Christian influences from Australian
ers at Parliament House on the 23 Au- parliamentary arrangements as apoliti-
gust 2005, Federal Treasurer Peter cal. As Edward Said indicates, ‘one
Costello asserted that fundamentalist would no more think of using … the Bible
Muslim clerics hold values that are not to understand, say, the House of Com-
congruent with Australia. He went on to mons’ (93) as a basis for comprehending
say that Australia: all Western systems of government. But
the invocation of secularity allows Islam
[I]s a secular society, with parliamentary to be misconstrued as overtly religious
law, part of the Western tradition of indi- and makes invisible how Australian cul-
vidual rights … If you are looking for a tural values are racially marked and re-
country that practices theocracy, sharia
ligiously informed.
law–which is anti-Western–there are
those countries in the world … you will be
9RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
In addition, Costello’s remarks denote a Howard’s ‘broad church’ as representa-
white diasporic colonial relationship with tive of government intervention deploys
similar Western nations, such as the an understanding of the nation ‘that in
United Kingdom. He repeats comments its denial of Indigenous sovereignty is
made earlier in August by British Prime perceived to be a white possession’
Minister Tony Blair who argued that ‘fire- (Moreton-Robinson 2005: 21). Along
brand (Islamic) clerics’ could be poten- these lines there are overlaps in the
tially deported as all British citizens have treatment of both Indigenous peoples
a ‘duty … to share and support the val- and asylum seekers ‘surrounding the is-
ues that sustain the British way of life’ sue of land’ and Australian national
(Burchell 2005: 6). Australia’s national identity (Tascon 2004: 239). The ‘broad
identity is linked to other ‘white’ Western church’ attempts to organise the Austra-
countries through a moral distinction to lian nation into various heterogenous
that of Islam whilst discourses of secular- pews with a ‘common’ set of values. This
ism simultaneously exclude how dis- structure implies that the nodal point for
courses of Christianity are entrenched in the church, the pulpit, is occupied by
the presentation of Australia as ‘white’. the Federal Government of Australia
These ideas pervade news reports of the whose sovereignty works to unify and in
legitimacy of convert Christian asylum some sense construct a ‘broad’ national
seekers and the potential for religious identity. Given this national identity
favourability by the Government. Immi- works to displace Indigenous sover-
gration Minister Amanda Vanstone ar- eignty, this ‘church’ is invested in the as-
gued that the reviews of asylum seekers sociation between Australianness and
who had converted did not constitute whiteness as culturally commensurate,
‘a compassion being allocated to Chris- and is consolidated through govern-
tians as opposed to Muslims’ (ABC ment policies. Revelations that the for-
2005b). However, the representation of mer Department of Immigration and
Christian asylum seekers by the news Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (now
media and governmental commentary renamed the Department of Immigra-
on religion complicate Vanstone’s tion and Multicultural Affairs) had wrong-
statement. The discursive association fully deported at least two Australian
between Christianity and Australianness citizens, Vivian Solon and Cornelia Rau,
depicts convert Christian asylum seekers prompted the establishment of a non-
as ‘suspect’ in using the possibility for judicial inquiry headed by former Austra-
persecution under the theocratic Iranian lian federal police commissioner Mick
government as a means to garner citi- Palmer (Hurrell 2005b: 5; Marr 2005a: 27;
zenship in Australia. On the other hand, Marr 2005b: 9).
secularism renders fundamentalist forms
of Islamic law, of the kind practised in The investigation, known as the Palmer
Iran, incompatible enough with Austra- Report, was tabled in Federal Parliament
lian law that Costello suggests some on 14 July 2005. In response, Minister
Muslims should leave the country. Both Vanstone argued the Department could
of these discursive representations form cope with criticism and ‘cultural’
part of the same process that grounds change because the Liberal Party was a
Australianness to an Anglocentric ‘broad church’ (Sunday 2005).
Judeo-Christian heritage that can be Vanstone’s use of Howard’s metaphor
masked through an appeal to a Western attempts to reaffirm governmental sov-
notion of secularism. ereignty as able to accommodate cul-
tural variations and difference. That the
deportation of two Australian citizens
10RANDALL-MOON: COMMON VALUES
does not rupture this ‘broad church’ the intersections between religion and
demonstrates how it is structured (and politics under the Howard government.
which ‘extra pews’ need to be inserted)
according to politically and historically Acknowledgments
contingent circumstances. This ‘broad
church’ is tied to an Anglocentric na-
I am grateful to Anthony Lambert and
tional identity where whiteness may not
Elaine Kelly for their help with numerous
always be located on the body, but can
drafts of this paper and the anonymous
be an imagined investment in a system
reader for their suggestions relating to
of values that associates Australianness
structure and theoretical content.
with whiteness through Christianity.
Conclusion References
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