Debate exposes the bigger issues

One of the most interesting aspects to Haddad-O’Connor debate was the raising of the issue of unconscious bias, says Greg Barns

CASSY O’Connor MP, the Greens leader, and Sue Hickey, the genuine liberal who is the Speaker of the Tasmanian parliament, dominated the political commentary space last week. Ms O’Connor claimed she was shut down by Ms Hickey after the former launched into a verbal assault against Labor MP Ella Haddad on August 20 over the issue of bias against China on Ms O’Connor’s part.

It is worth soberly unpacking the issues that led, in the end, to Ms Hickey, with a sense of dignity and humility it must be said, last week telling Ms O’Connor she is sorry if she thought their was any bias in the Speaker’s actions.

On any examination of the Hansard transcript of what happened on August 19 and 20 it could not be said that Ms Haddad called Ms O’Connor a racist, nor could it be said that Ms O’Connor was censored by the Speaker because she was launching one of her regular broadsides against Beijing. Ms Haddad was rightly drawing attention to the consequences that can flow from attacks on individuals who are Chinese and Ms Hickey was alarmed by the aggressive response of Ms O’Connor, not the issue of criticism of China.

There is no suggestion Ms O’Connor is a racist, in fact the opposite is true. She holds strong views on the activities of the Chinese government and is a fan of academic Clive Hamilton who has a 1950s mentality of “reds under the bed” and that China is trying to take over Australia.

One of the most interesting issues in the Haddad and O’Connor debate was the raising of the issue of unconscious bias.

Is Ms Haddad right when she refers to the possibility of unconscious bias in relation to the matter that is the origin of the parliamentary spat? In July David Killick reported in this newspaper that Ms O’Connor had been forced to apologise after she wrongly identified Master Xin-De Wang from the Tasmanian Chinese Buddhist Academy of Australia as the developer of land in respect of which some local were opposed. The developer was Mr Hui Wang in Melbourne. Ms O’Connor apologised for her mistake, an apology that was rightly accepted by Ms Haddad in her speech to Parliament. And again there is no suggestion that Ms O’Connor’s fulsome mea culpa apology was anything other than sincere.

But what Ms Haddad did say was that perhaps unconscious bias was an issue in Ms O’Connor’s misfired attack on Master Wang. That is, she saw the name Wang, and put two and two together to make three. It is clear, if one reads the speech, delivered on June 24, in which Ms

O’Connor linked Master Wang to the property development that she cast him in an unflattering light. “There is a single developer who owns both lots of land with different companies and that is a person who everyone in this room will know who is very influential with local members of parliament and local government, and that is Master Xin-De Wang,” Ms O’Connor said.

Unconscious bias is something that bedevils all of us. Dr Pragya Agarwal, writing in Forbes in 2018, explained what it means this way. “We gather millions of bits of information and our brain processes that information in a certain way – unconsciously categorizing and formatting it into familiar patterns. Though most of us have difficulty accepting or acknowledging it, we all do it. Gender, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, body size, profession etc, all influence the assessments that we make of people and form the basis of our relationship with others, and the world at large.”

One of the ways unconscious bias works is in relation to names. If you are Anglo-Saxon then surnames and first names are familiar. We recognise them easily and are less likely to make the sort of mistake Ms O’Connor, and for that matter a councillor in Clarence did last week when she mixed up two Greek names. Unconscious bias is a possible explanation for Ms O’Connor’s mistake and for the mistake made by the councillor who was, unfairly, subjected to a barrage of abuse by Liberal Party apparatchiks.

Moving away from the O’Connor/Haddad/Hickey fracas, on the issue of China there is no doubt that some of the media and political commentary in Australia amounts to nothing more than thinly disguised racism and seeks to tap into the xenophobic underbelly of this

MS HADDAD WAS RIGHTLY DRAWING ATTENTION TO CONSEQUENCES THAT CAN FLOW FROM ATTACKS ON THOSE WHO ARE CHINESE AND MS HICKEY WAS ALARMED BY THE AGGRESSIVE RESPONSE, NOT THE ISSUE OF CRITICISM OF CHINA. THERE IS NO SUGGESTION MS O’CONNOR IS A RACIST

island nation. It is entirely legitimate for people to criticise Chinese human rights abuses and to raise concerns about Chinese influence in Australia. One might add here it is equally legitimate to question the vice-like grip that the Israel lobby has on the Australian media and its political class, or the awful insidious practices of the US that ensures this nation is simply an outpost of that fading empire. But with the attacks and criticism must come recognition that the more shrill the critique of China the harder life becomes for Chinese citizens living in Australia, or Chinese

Australians. Something we must all remember.