50 YEARS OF VIETNAMESE SETTLEMENT DOWN UNDER: A BETTER AUSTRALIA AND ASPIRATIONAL DEMOCRATIC VIETNAM -TUONG QUANG LUU

On 30 April 1975, the democratic government of South Vietnam collapsed as the North Vietnamese army captured Saigon. Under North Vietnamese control, thousands of South Vietnamese citizens were arrested and put in re-education camps leading to a mass exodus of refugees. With the election of the Liberal/National government of Malcolm Fraser in December 1975,  Australia agreed to resettle its share of Vietnam-born refugees under a refugee resettlement plan. The resettlement of thousands of South Vietnamese has been one of the most successful migration stories in Australia’s history. To commemorate the 50 years of settlement in Australia of these Vietnamese refugees, The Sydney Institute asked Quang Luu, former board director of Austcare and former head of SBS Radio and a Vietnamese refugee himself, and Sydney Nguyen, a second generation Vietnamese Australian and Sydney lawyer, to address The Sydney Institute on Monday 19 May 2025.

50 YEARS OF VIETNAMESE SETTLEMENT DOWN UNDER: A BETTER AUSTRALIA AND ASPIRATIONAL DEMOCRATIC VIETNAM

TUONG QUANG LUU

The Vietnam War did not end on 30 April 1975 – rather, it was replaced by a different kind of war: a war of revenge and persecution, a war of poverty. If peace was indeed restored and reconciliation genuinely promoted why, then, did millions of Vietnamese – who were not, in historical terms, a migrant people – flee or try to flee their country of birth?

Over the many centuries, Vietnamese people have moved from north to south as part of peaceful and sometimes non-peaceful territorial expansion. Earlier Vietnamese settlements in France and other French Territories were exceptions during those colonial times.

In a sense, the Vietnamese attachment to land was not dissimilar to the Australian Indigenous peoples’ value of their environment. Due to lack of prior collective overseas experience, and without proper preparation as political refugees from a communist regime, the first generation of Vietnamese in Australia, generally, had to overcome cultural shock before quickly realising their social position as a visible minority in Australia – which was still in its infancy as a multicultural society.

With those barriers to successful settlement in their new homeland, and the impact of traumatised sea and overland journies, personal tragedy, piracy and heavy loss of lives (estimated to have been between 300,000-500,000, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – the UNHCR), Vietnamese refugees as survivors were determined to become successful Australian settlers. They were poor in monetary terms, but rich and strong in resilience for personal achievement and collective aspiration for a better Australia and a democratised Vietnam.

I should hasten to add that Vietnamese refugees and migrants (i.e. family reunion through the UNHCR-initiated Orderly Departure Program, the ODP, to discourage people from risking their lives by sea) were neither better nor worse than other Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities. Differences, though, existed in two ways: (a) the high intensity of personal trauma, in particular among the ex-servicemen and women of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam, and (b) the compact nature of the community. These factors made their successful settlement more noticeable.

A brief bilateral relationship

Over a century ago, some Vietnamese came to this country literally by accident. A French ship carrying Vietnamese workers on its way to New Caledonia had to divert its destination to a port in North Queensland due to medical reasons. For a long time, there was no official contact between Australia and Vietnam which was then part of the French Indochina, until a unified State of Vietnam gained independence within the French Union in 1949.

It might be useful to briefly record the official relationship between the two countries to provide a context for understanding Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s policy and actions on Vietnam and the Vietnamese refugees in the 1960s and 1970s. Australia officially recognised Vietnam on 8 February 1950 with Saigon as the Capital City, as recorded by an AAP dispatch from London, which was published by The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday 9 February 1950.

In March 1952, Australia opened its diplomatic mission in Saigon with Mr John Rowland as Chargé d’affaires. The head of mission, Mr John Quinn took office in November of the same year with responsibility not only for Vietnam but also for the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Kingdom of Laos. Vietnam was subsequently divided on a temporary basis under the Geneva Accords in 1954, but Australia continued to recognise solely South Vietnam known officially as the Republic of Vietnam. North Vietnam, which declared itself as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, was not recognised by Australia and other nations of the Free World.

In the 1960s, Australia under the Coalition governments supported South Vietnam against the war of aggression waged by the communist North which was heavily supported by Moscow, Beijing and the Warsaw Pact. Mr Gough Whitlam (1916-2014), then as Leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in Opposition, was opposed to the Australian involvement. In December 1972, the ALP won the election and Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister recognised North Vietnam on 26 February 1973 (just a month after the Paris Agreement of 27 January 1973) while retaining Australia’s diplomatic relationship with South Vietnam.

A compact Vietnamese community in early multicultural Australia

On 25 April 1975, the Australian Embassy in Saigon was closed down and under Mr Whitlam’s instruction. No Vietnamese persons, who were deemed to be at risk for working with ANZAC, would be allowed to join the evacuation out of the capital city that was under threat of military occupation.

Mr Whitlam refused to accept Vietnamese refugees because of pressure from Hanoi and his own assessment of the changed power balance in the former Indochina. Domestically, he anticipated an electoral disadvantage for the ALP, as he called Vietnamese refugees “Asian Balts” i.e. potential voters for the conservative side in Australia. As it transpired, Mr Whitlam was totally wrong. Vietnamese Australians concentrate mainly in safe Labor Seats and become Labor voters.

Australia’s refugee policy changed drastically after the “Whitlam Dismissal” in November 1975. For domestic consideration and foreign affairs interest with the Asean member countries, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (1930-2015) mapped out a new strategy to deal with what was known as “the Boat People crisis”.

The Vietnamese community, as permanent residents, did not exist in Australia before 1975. Since the late 1950s, under the Colombo Plan – of which South Vietnam was a member – Australia received the best and brightest young Vietnamese students for training at tertiary level as technocrats for the future development of Vietnam. At Census 1976, there were 2,427 Vietnamese living in Australia. Five years later under the Fraser government, the figure was 49,616 persons according to Census 1981, an increase of 16 times.

In 1983, Mr Bob Hawke (1929-2019), as the ALP Prime Minister, largely followed the Coalition’s policy whereas, in opposition, he had shared Mr Whitlam’s stand, which is well documented (See for example Hal G P Colebatch and others). In the end with bi-partisan approach, and within two decades, the Vietnamese community grew to 150,941 persons (including 46,756 second generation Australian-born)) an increase of 62 times at Census 1996.

Vietnamese Australians, in the history of immigration to this country, appear to have become successful settlers within a short period, fully participating in Australian life socially, culturally, economically and in political integration. Such a success may have changed Australia and strengthened the Australian multicultural society, according to a number of social commentators and main stream media.

Professor Geoffrey Blainey and his anti-Asian immigration stance

In 1984, during the height of Fraser-Hawke policy of acceptance of Indochinese refugees and bi-partisan support for cultural diversity, a distinguished Australian historian, Professor Geoffrey Blainey (born in 1930) set up a debate on Asian migration with his “Warnambool speech”. In the same year, he also published a book entitled All for Australia in which he raised the risk for Australia of high Asian migration.

Australia’s racist past has been well documented. At the federation in 1901, the Australian Parliament passed legislation limiting Asian migration, in particular migration from China. This “White Australia policy” was gradually changed in the 1960s and finally abolished in early 1970s.

Fortunately, the Blainey debate did not adversely affect the Indochinese refugee program, thanks to, in my view, the leadership of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Australian civil society and last, but not least, Vietnamese Australians as a newly established and successful community. Otherwise, multicultural Australia may not have had a chance to reach maturity.

Professor Blainey did not agree with this charactisation, arguing that “to describe Australia’s ethnic composition as multicultural, is not very helpful… is out of place.” To him, by and large, Australia’s main institutions and its way of life were monocultural. His only concession was in the field of food and cuisine. “Admittedly, the restaurant is truly multicultural, but that is only one facet of Australian life,” he told the audience at a conference organised by Monash ANZ Centre for International Briefing in February 1993. At the same gathering, entitled “Australia and Britain: The Evolving Relationship”, I asserted that “in my view, the British heritage, as part of the Australian tradition, remains a golden thread in the fabric of our multicultural society”.

I believe Professor Blainey erred because his warning on Asian immigration and cultural diversity, was based on a racist consideration. Today, history seems to repeat itself. His warning may have been in line with current anti-immigration in the global North against the uncontrolled movement of people from the global South. Whether race-based or economic or both, this policy is still be flawed from a humanitarian perspective.

After 50 years, the over 300,000-strong Vietnamese Australian community has also changed. It now includes some 25,000 international students annually from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) with different backgrounds and aspirations. What has not changed are our tangible and intangible contributions to Australia.

Early in 1987, a perceptive politician, Mr Stephen Dubois MP for St George, told me “Australia has now a bread queue on Sunday”. That was well before the time of Banh Mi – the Saigonese baguette – becoming the Vietnamese street food sensation in Australia and the world. I did not personally see the “rice queue” in the SRV, but I did witness the “bread queue” in communist Poland in the mid-1980s. The difference between the two “bread queues” represents in a small way how Vietnamese Australians have changed affluent Australia.

There remains at least one of my concerns in terms of our aspirational democratised Vietnam. After 50 years, the CPV Secretary General, Mr To Lam still calls for reconciliation (hoa giai hoa hop). Is he serious? What did they do in the last half a century? And why does the SRV still pursue its attempt to control and divide the overseas Vietnamese communities through the Politburo Decision No. 36 and the SRV Government Decision No.1334?

And last, but not least, please allow me, as a Vietnamese Australian, to pay tribute to the 60,000 Diggers who served with distinction in South Vietnam and to express our debt of gratitude to the 524 Australians who valiantly sacrificed their lives for our freedom.