Australia

How to Revamp Malaysian Studies in Australia

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Image selected by Asian Currents.

Today the Asian Studies Association of Australia’s bulletin Asian Currents published a piece I wrote on how to do Malaysian Studies better in Australia. We can only watch Prime Minister Najib and his opponents’ moves and counter-moves for so long before we articulate a broader relevance for our work for communities of interest who care about Malaysia, Malaysians in Australia and Malaysia-Australia relationships.

Australia needs to look beyond Malaysia’s current political impasse and engage more widely with an important neighbour

For some time now, Malaysia watchers in Australia have focused much of their attention on the potential for the 1MDB crisis, and the 2013 election result before it, to unseat UMNO president and Barisan Nasional prime minister Najib Razak.

The imaginative pull these intertwined issues exerts is understandable—the sense of slowly building crisis, the moves and countermoves by government and opposition parties, and the clever deployment of hidden political resources are fascinating, especially when events appear to gather pace. Equally alluring is the temptation to be the person who called the critical moment just before it happened.

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Australian Libraries and Asian Studies

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Image: National Library of Australia.

The recent conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia featured a roundtable by librarians and library users on Asian Studies collections. I spoke at this roundtable and made the point that Malaysia’s 2013 election generated a vast amount of printed and digital ephemera that could be lost if Australian libraries do not make a point of collecting it. Perhaps if moves are made to develop a national collections strategy for Asian Studies materials, then this situation could be rectified.

I spoke at this roundtable and made the point that Malaysia’s 2013 election generated a vast amount of printed and digital ephemera that could be lost if Australian libraries do not make a point of collecting it. Perhaps if moves are made to develop a national collections strategy for Asian Studies materials, then this situation could be rectified in line with an agreed set of priorities for libraries interested in Asia.

A full report of this discussion is available from the Australian Library and Information Association.

The Australian on Malaysia’s Media Crackdown

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Image: The Australian.

The Australian’s Amanda Hodge has published a story quoting my most recent New Mandala piece on Malaysia’s arrest and detention of Four Corners journalist Linton Besser and camera operator Louie Eroglu, along with broader issues of media freedom and public criticism.

Hodge has been doing some excellent work on Malaysia lately.

My quotes are:

Amrita Malhi, a researcher and writer on Southeast Asian politics and history, said Ms Bishop’s decision to frame the Four Corners team’s detention “as an issue of freedom of speech in democracies” secured their release, though the Malaysian government has denied that.

Malaysia still wants to be seen as a democratic nation, notwithstanding recent rollbacks, just as its close ally Australia needs to ­believe that it is.

“In the context of these interconnected interests, Bishop’s statement that democracies should uphold their commitment to freedom of speech has carried sufficient weight to produce a change of heart from the Malaysian government,” Dr Malhi wrote in ANU’s New Mandala.

Malaysia’s Direction Matters to Australia

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Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is currently in the United States for an ASEAN Summit. Stock image selected by New Mandala.

Yesterday, I published a piece on New Mandala that looked at how Australia is managing its relationship with Malaysia in light of the scandals surrounding its Prime Minister Najib Razak, and the lack of a viable alternative government for international governments to deal with. It also mapped out some of the moves UMNO has made since the 2013 election to restructure politics in its favour as the nation approaches the next election in 2018. The full text is below.

Najib and Malaysia’s Road to Redemption?

BY AMRITA MALHI, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR – 19 FEBRUARY 2016

As leading party UMNO and its embattled PM desperately cling to power, there could be even darker times ahead for Malaysia’s democracy. 

The actions of Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak have been met with widespread disbelief from domestic and international observers.

For many, there seems to be no end to the series of scandals directly or indirectly linked to Najib and his associates, beginning with a financial investigation abruptly brought to an end by a newly-appointed Attorney-General, Mohamed Apandi Ali.

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Asian Studies Association of Australia – New Website

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A screengrab of the new ASAA website, designed by Adelaide design firm Studio Spark and integrated with cloud-based accounting processes by Adelaide accounting firm, Accodex.

I’m Secretary of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, and as part of my role I’ve commissioned a new website for the association to better support its work in advocating for the study of Asia in Australia.

The central feature of this website is the fantastic bulletin Asian Currents edited by Allan Sharp, which carries the latest developments in Asian Studies in compact and readable pieces.

If you’re an Asia scholar, or an Asia-engaged professional, joining the ASAA will put you in touch with a whole field of knowledge that can support you in your work.

Older Migrants Intercultural Forum

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Today I joined in with Welcome to Australia to run a pilot forum aimed at testing whether migrant communities are in fact willing to participate in intercultural problem-solving. Guess what? They are!

Here’s the write-up of the event on Australian Policy Online:

On 27 November 2015, the MnM Centre partnered with Welcome to Australia to hold an Older Migrants Forum.  The forum was chaired by Mohammad Al-Khafaji, Chief Executive Officer: Welcome to Australia, with group discussions facilitated by Dr Amrita Malhi, MnM Centre Research Fellow, and Leah Marrone from Welcome to Australia.

The forum was devised as a pilot project aimed at testing the value of intercultural discussions between established migrant communities (in this case, mainly represented by post-WWII Greek and Italian migrants) and members of new and emerging communities (comprising migrants from Indonesia, Sierra Leone and Egypt).

Is it Worth Engaging with Liberal Debates?

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Guardian Welcome to Australia

Events in Paris are already provoking new debates about whether trust in multiculturalism is justified.’ A 2015 refugee vigil in Sydney, Australia. Photograph: Mal Fairclough/AAP

That’s small-l liberal debates around tolerance, multiculturalism and interculturalism , within the context of Western liberal democracies.

I think it is worthwhile even if they do seem limited in their capacity to change things — after all, the adoption of multiculturalism and the Racial Discrimination Act 40 years ago has underpinned better lives for non-white people in Australia.

And no, I don’t think anyone should be called a pseudo-white person for participating in debates about where multiculturalism is going now.

Here is an op-ed I published on this in the The Guardian.

Showing solidarity with migrants is more than ‘comfort’ for white people

Tolerance isn’t the most ‘radical’ approach to racism. So why do many non-white Australians participate in movements that promote it as a solution?

Tony Abbott’s prime ministership sparked furious debate about Australia’s commitment to multiculturalism, including a push to wind back 18c, slights against Indigenous “lifestyle choices”, and questions about Australian Muslims’ loyalty to the nation.

As this period now fades into ancient history, Australia’s politicians have begun to re-invest in the multicultural narrative, a prescient move given the polarised debate after recent events in Paris. Earlier this month, the three major political parties made sure to send a high-level representative to address a conference organised by the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (Fecca).

The mood at the conference was palpable: after years of defensiveness, it was now time to formulate a new national agenda for multicultural policy, practice and public advocacy.

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It’s Good to be Noticed

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Matt Williams MP, Member for Hindmarsh, speaking in Federal Parliament in Canberra. Picture: Matt Williams MP, via YouTube and Facebook.

Last week, I spoke at a forum organised in Glenelg by the Campaign for Australian Aid, where I talked about the Australian aid program as a form of regional intercultural exchange that helps us maintain a certain level of human security in Australia and the Asia-Pacific, in particular.

As a result, I was mentioned in Parliament by another speaker there, Matt Williams, Member for Hindmarsh. Here’s a video (yes, with some mispronunciation, but that’s OK): Read more

Welcome to InterculturAdelaide @ ICAS9

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Front cover of program brochure for InterculturAdelaide. Picture: Nazia Ejaz.

Today, I hosted a major public event called InterculturAdelaide. The event introduction that I wrote for the brochure is below, along with my welcome to participants.

Introduction

InterculturAdelaide is a major public policy summit and action research project. It aims to bring together scholars, policymakers and other stakeholders to consider the idea of “interculturality”—broadly defined as a set of cultural skills supporting openness and adaptivity. The day’s proceedings will encompass issues related to Australia’s own diverse population, and to Australia’s international relationships across the Asian region.

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Media Release for InterculturAdelaide

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Here’s the media release that the University of South Australia wrote to publicise InterculturAdelaide. The University of Adelaide also publicised the event online.

Creating citizens of the world in intercultural Adelaide

June 22 2015

What makes a society operate in peace, harmony and prosperity – luck, goodwill, strategy and legislation, or a combination of factors?

It’s one of many questions to be explored when UniSA’s International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding joins with the Government of South Australia and the University of Adelaide to consider the significance of diversity in our community at the InterculturAdelaide summit on July 9.

Summit convenor UniSA’s Dr Amrita Malhi says InterculturAdelaide will offer important opportunities to consider how notions of multiculturalism that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s have evolved.

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