Grassby Changed A Nation

by Glenn Milne - Sunday Mail (Brisbane)

Al Grassby, who died yesterday, had his own system – never divulged – for remembering names, something of which I had personal experience.

Grassby entered Federal Parliament representing Riverina, centred on the southern NSW towns of Griffith and Leeton.

I went to boarding school there, at Yanco Agricultural High.

Naturally enough Grassby, as the local member, attended our speech nights and once presented me with a prize.

It was the only time I met him until 25 years later, when we bumped into each other at Sydney airport.

Al bounded up with his trademark enthusiasm, his famously black-dyed hair and moustache impeccably in place, thrust out his hand and declared: "Glenn Milne, how are you?"

It was an astonishing feat of memory that said two things about Grassby. He was a gifted grassroots politician – the kind that makes every constituent feel important; and it's the stories about Grassby's idiosyncrasies that sometimes mask his contribution to Australian politics.

Yes, there were his loud ties. And those powder blue safari suits that were inexplicably popular during the Whitlam era.

But at the time of his death at 78, a more serious appraisal is required. And Grassby warrants it.

He's been called the father of multiculturalism. It's a concept with which we have become so familiar that we tend to underestimate its importance and the context in which Grassby drove the policy during his two years as immigration minister in the Whitlam Government between 1972 and 1974.

It has to be remembered that until the time of Whitlam's predecessor, Arthur Caldwell, ALP policy supported the racist White Australia policy. In fact, it was only when the Holt Liberal government formally abandoned what until then had been a bipartisan dedication to white supremacy that Labor abandoned its position.

So Grassby initiated multiculturalism in the context of a party that still largely saw immigration as a threat to the jobs of its blue-collar base.

Grassby's championing of cultural and racial tolerance was an act of political and personal courage. Until his advent, immigrants were expected to assimilate into Australian society, to "become one of us".

Grassy saw it differently, encouraging migrants for the diversity they brought to what had been an almost homogeneous society.

Grassby valued migrants not because of what they would become, but because of what they were.

That saw him introduce reforms that included:

• The right to remain in Australia for overseas students on the successful completion of their studies.

• The right of parents of Australian-born children to remain in Australia.

• Granting passage assistance to Vietnamese orphans coming to Australia, later extended to orphans from any country.

• Removal of limitations in the amount of non-English language programming on radio and television.

• And the exclusion from Australia of racially selected sporting teams.

A snapshot of Australia today sums up the size of his achievement.

Today's 20 million Australians are made up of more than 200 different ethnicities – we speak more than 200 languages at home, and if you are planning a marriage, you have a choice of more than 100 different religions registered with the authorities to perform the ceremony.

These statistics, rather than anecdotes about colourful ties, should stand as Al Grassby's epitaph.