Study reveals success for Australia's Vietnamese people

The World Today - Tuesday, September  17, 2002 12:35

JOHN HIGHFIELD: Well, a question for you. Do Australians need an ethnic group to demonise in their lives?

That's the question being asked today, after a landmark study has revealed that contrary to some popular belief, Australia's Vietnamese community are not rife with social problems but proving to be model Australians with much lower rates of mental illness than in the general community.

The research published in the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, shows despite trauma for a small core of Vietnamese boat people most have overcome the problems associated with fleeing their war torn country and coming to Australia, thanks largely to the welcome they received and strong community support when they came as asylum seekers.

And refugee advocates argue that this study highlights the importance of services for other traumatised ethnic minorities, ranging from Sydney's Lebanese Muslim community which is under attack at the moment to the asylum seekers on temporary protection visas.

Jo Mazzocchi reports.

JO MAZZOCCHI: The population study involved about 1,400 Vietnamese people living in Sydney. Using bilingual interviewers, the authors made psychiatric assessments of one member from every household. Researchers found that while a core group continue to suffer some kind of mental illness as a result of their trauma, most have been able to overcome their difficulties.

One of the authors, Zachary Steele, is a clinical psychologist from the school of psychiatry at the University of New South Wales.

ZACHARY STEELE: This is the first time that we really get a chance to look in a systematic way at the long-term effects of trauma. And the study's also unique in that it used exactly the same instruments to measure mental illness as we've used on the broader Australian communities

JO MAZZOCCHI: The study shows just how far the community has come. In this interview recorded by the ABC in 1976, a newly arrived boat person is besieged by reporters.

REPORTER: Some of you hide in the ship's freezer?

VIETNAMESE WOMAN: Yes, all of us hide in the ship. Only a few follow in the boats.

REPORTER: They pretended to be fishermen?

REPORTER: Did any ships come past that might have discovered that you were hidden?

REPORTER: Any coastal patrol boats? Any customs people?

REPORTER: Anybody come along which you think may have caught you?

VIETNAMESE WOMAN: No, because of we're going at night.

JO MAZZOCCHI: Yet more than 20 years on, time and community support it seems has helped these former boat people to become what the researchers call 'model' Australian citizens. Zachary Steele again.

ZACHARY STEELE: As time goes on, they are actually placing less burden upon the community and probably creating a greater resiliency to mental illness in the Australian population.

JO MAZZOCCHI: Would you describe them as model citizens?

ZACHARY STEELE: Well, this is another irony, isn't it? Because the media focus has often been on some of the gang problems and some of the drug related problems in the Cabramatta area and that's just stigmatised the whole community.

JO MAZZOCCHI: But can other communities including those asylum seekers on Temporary Protection visas achieve such success? And what about Sydney's Lebanese Muslim community, still reeling from a series of brutal gang rapes that has left the 21-year-old gang leader in jail for 55 years.

According to Fairfield Sydney councillor, Thang Ngo, a member of Sydney's Vietnamese community, Australian's need an ethnic group to demonise.

THANG NGO: Going back in the old days, back to the second world war with the Italian and Greek communities, then later on you have the Vietnamese community and now it's quite obviously, I guess, the people from Arabic background whether they be asylum seekers or whether they be Australians born, or Australians from Lebanese background.

JO MAZZOCCHI: Do you think that there are parallels between the Vietnamese community and the Lebanese Muslim community?

THANG NGO: It's very obviously the case that whichever community seems to be the lowest ethnic community, seems to be the lowest on the pecking order they get kicked to pieces.

JO MAZZOCCHI: What should communities do? The Lebanese communities, the crimes that have been in the newspapers, the gang rapes. These boys identified, clearly identified themselves as Lebanese Muslims. How does the community respond to that?

THANG NGO: I think what's needed with the Arabic speaking community at the moment is for spokespeople to come out to give a balanced view to the community. Otherwise you're going to have the mainstream, you're going to have the talkback radio host monopolising the image of the Arabic speaking community. And we all know they don't have the best interests of the community at heart.

JOHN HIGHFIELD: Fairfield councillor, Thang Ngo. Jo Mazzocchi with our story.