Government-Funded Services

In NSW, most of the ethnic-based community facilities are in the Fairfield local government area where many Indochinese live. As there is no suitable emergency accommodation, some of the temples have also acted as refuge for a number of young people without family or for the aged who have problem with their married children. Due to the large number of Indochinese, the NSW Department of Housing under the Local Government and Community Housing Program has so far provided the following grants to the Indochinese communities: $360,000 for an Indochinese women's refuge; $593,000 and land worth $400,000 to build home units for Vietnamese residents; and $667,300 for eight semi-detached cottages for Lao aged (Department of Housing, Annual Report, 1991-92).

In the area of welfare and community services, the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs provided $11 million in 1994-95 for 214.5 grants for ethnic organisations to employ grant-in-aid (GIA) workers in different Australian States, and 93 smaller projects under the Migrant Access Projects Scheme (MAPS) for office equipment or research projects. Of this number, ten GIA grants were made for services in NSW (two for Indochinese in general, one Lao, two ethnic Chinese from Indochina, three Khmer and two Vietnamese). The MAPS funding consisted of one in NSW (for Vietnamese), two in Victoria (one for Vietnamese and one for Hmong), three in South Australia (one for Cambodian, one for Indochinese and one for Vietnamese), one in Tasmania (for Vietnamese), and one in the ACT (for Lao).

Annual welfare grants from the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission to Indochinese organisations

totalled fourteen in 1994 and 1994/95 for a total amount of $260,000 out a $3 million grant budget. Of this number, one was a community development grant to the Indo-China Refugee Association for a family support pilot project, one to the Indochina Chinese Association for an aged project, five to the Lao community (including one capital and two cultural grants), two to the Cambodian community (one capital and one community development), and six to the Vietnamese community - all community development grants for women, youth and general welfare activities (EAC, 1993-94 Annual Report, pp. 102-131).

There are other government funding sources, but the above are the two main funding bodies for Indochinese and other migrants. Most of these grants, however, are for community development projects while individual settlement assistance (casework) and family support have been given low priority. Although these two areas have the biggest number of people in need, especially recent arrivals with little English and familiarity with the service system in Australia, the emphasis has been to give seeding grants to projects which address needs at the group and community level and which have a short life expectation of only one to three years. Specialised direct services are available from mainstream community agencies such as Burnside and Care Force also have services and projects which are aimed at Indochinese in resolving family conflicts or helping the unemployed, the aged, women, sole parents, people suffering from substance abuse, and the disabled.

For these special needs groups, however, services are not always available from their own ethnic organisations which tend to offer more general settlement assistance such as emergency relief, form-filling, information and referrals. To access the more specialised services, Indochinese families need to be fluent in English or have an interpreter. Because of language and cultural barriers, many of these specialised services are not always used. Relatively speaking, Indochinese refugees tend to use their children, relatives and friends to help with family needs, and will only go to seek outside assistance as a last resort, and then mainly with organisations of their own ethnic backgrounds because of language problem. This means that the few funded Indochinese organisations are hard pressed to serve a large number of clients, especially with the sizeable Vietnamese population. Funding is often inadequate and services are insufficient, especially in relation to casework.

Access Difficulties

At the level of their own communities, Indochinese welfare organisations exist to provide services for all settlers from Indochina. In practice, however, they are mainly accessible to members of the majority groups. In other words, a Vietnamese or Cambodian welfare agency is used by ethnic Vietnamese or ethnic Khmer, but not ethnic Chinese or other minorities from Vietnam or Cambodia. This is due to language and cultural barriers between these distinctive groups, particularly with older people who might not have interacted much with the Vietnamese or Cambodian society at large before coming to Australia.

As stated by Phoumindr (1993: 77) in relation to the Lao refugees:

"in terms of access and equity (for minorities within the Indochinese communities), the services provided directly by the Government or funded to the community sector, may not reach them effectively, due to the many complex social layers which exist in the Lao community. There is no easy solution to the problem, and the problem is not unique to the Lao".

The Hmong from Laos, for instance, lived in the highlands isolated from the lowland majority: only the younger generation had any Lao education and could speak Lao. Hmong elderly refugees in Australia cannot go to a Lao welfare worker for assistance as they do not speak Lao and will need an interpreter, just as they would do with a mainstream agency. Because of this and the fear of being ridiculed by untrained workers in a small community, some minority members prefer not to seek formal assistance from a majority agency (Yamine, op. cit.: 25-26 and 30-31). In the United States, attempts to remedy the situation by appointing multi-lingual workers from Indochinese minorities have not been successful, because the language and ethnic barriers are compounded by social class differences and prejudice. Members of the majority ethnic Lao or Vietnamese would not lose face by seeking assistance from a Hmong or Chinese from their own country because they regard such a worker as belonging to an inferior minority, and some have not hesitated to make their views known to the funding authorities.

On a broader level, the Lao and Cambodians, being so much smaller in numbers than the Vietnamese, also experience major problems with regard to accessing services and sharing resources being dispensed by government departments which often provide demand-driven rather than need-based services. This means determining service provisions on the basis of numbers rather than individual needs. Thus, services that target Indochinese refugees in one broad brush often end up reaching mainly Vietnamese. For example, Indochinese youth work often concentrate on Vietnamese youth, although Lao and Cambodian young people experience the same needs and are involved in similar offences in Cabramatta. There are more than Indochinese 15 youth workers in Sydney, but only two of them work with Khmer and Lao youth. The Lao are characterised by "humbleness, non-aggressiveness and silence in the face of injustice" and these values "serve to bring adverse results to the community when they have to compete in the society at large" (Phoumindr, op. cit.: 77). The same can be said about the Cambodians, but there is more general awareness of their plight in Australia because of the mass media publicity on the genocide under Pol Pot and the recent "boat people" from Cambodia.

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What is of concern is that as pointed out previously, government funded projects tend to be of a policy and community development nature. Ethnic groups are funded to lobby for more and better services from government and mainstream community agencies, while the latter are funded to support ethnic community workers to be more skilled in their lobbying and policy activities rather being skilled in their own direct service provision. Examples of funding for such mutual development are Care Force, Indo-China Refugee Association, Burnside and the Cabramatta Community Centre working with Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese community workers. The Indochinese refugees who really need direct services and on whose behalf these funded organisations all claim to work are lost and forgotten in the merry-go-round of endless meetings between workers inside the confines of their offices. While the needs of many refugees have been met through such projects, the settlement problems of others have not always been solved by the myriad of funded workers but by their relatives and the passing of time.

Housing

In the area of emergency or crisis accommodation for Asian women in Sydney, two refuges were established in 1992, one for Indochinese women set up by the Vietnamese Women's Association, and another for young Asian women under the Cabramatta Community Centre. Funding was also recently approved for a third Asian women's refuge, again being auspiced by the Vietnamese Women's Association in Liverpool. The Association is said to deal with at least three domestic violence referrals a week involving Vietnamese women. Emergency or crisis accommodation often takes up to 3 months to obtain, but this is mostly available to women who experience domestic violence and have been living temporarily in women's refuges.

Many Asian women living in mainstream women's refuges sometimes find the racist treatment they receive from other residents more distressing than the situation they left behind in their own home. They are, thus, reluctant to use this type of crisis accommodation. Despite the high need for emergency housing, 1991-92 figures from the NSW Department of Housing revealed that, although 29% of applicants for crisis accommodation were of non-English speaking background, 75% of them were culled out at the first stage compared to 61% of English-speaking background applicants.

In terms of general access to public housing, Federal and State cost-sharing arrangements in housing should mean that government housing is readily available. However, there is still a long waiting list, which can vary from one State to another. In New South Wales, the waiting period is at least six years for government in a preferred area and 4 years in any other areas, compared with six months to a year in Victoria and other States. Refugees are not given no preference as such over other applicants. The numbers of Indochinese in public housing are not known. In general, newly arrived refugees apply for housing assistance as soon as they can but are not given any special treatment. If they meet all the eligibility criteria, they are placed on the waiting list for the area they nominate. Among the Lao, for example, Coughlan (in press, p. 14) reports that, based on the 1991 census, 44.2% were in rental accommodation, of whom 54% are in government-owned dwellings - giving an overall high 23.2% in government housing.

Many Indochinese are aware of "the poverty trap" brought about by being tenants in government housing (Wulff and Burke, 1993: 23-27). This is caused by the requirement that employed tenants pay full market rents, but the unemployed only pay about a quarter of the full amount. This may make some tenants reluctant to obtain employment in order not to pay full rent, and may lock the latter into a cycle of poverty.

For this reason, many Indochinese families have tried to buy their own homes, often in cheaper new estates at the outskirts of Sydney, rather than waiting for or remaining in government housing. For instance, among the 1991-92 NSW Homefund borrowers, 271 were from Vietnam, 28 Laos, and smaller numbers from other Asian countries (NSW Department of Housing: NSW HomeFund Loans, 1991-92). According to the 1991 census, the Indochinese home-ownership rate is 13.3% for Vietnamese and 14.7% for the Lao for those who own their homes outright, compared to 41% of the total Australian population. The rate for those who are purchasing or paying off their houses was: 26.2% for the Lao, 37.2% for the Vietnamese, and between 7% to 70% for the Cambodians (BIPR, Immigration Update, June 1994: 42).

These rates appear low when compared to the Australian average of 68.3%, 90.3% for those born in Italy, and 78.1% for those from Eastern Europe (Hellwig et. al., 1992: 78). Most Indochinese refugees have settled here only since the mid-seventies, and have not yet paid off their mortgages or saved enough to buy a house outright. Asian-born residents in Australia commit 18.6% of their incomes to household purchase payment, second only to the Oceania-born (Ibid.: 42 and 60). Many of them are known to have been able to discharge their mortgages within 7 years. This financial outlay has sometimes resulted in households, especially with Vietnamese, undergoing what is called "housing stress" when their wages are in the lowest 40% but they commit more than 30% of their incomes to housing payments (Junankar et al., 1993: 50-51). Nevertheless, this financial sacrifice, even if the family bread-winner may have to work on two jobs, has meant that some of the refugee families have also sold their first house and are now moving up into their second and better one. However, most of the more recent arrivals still depend largely on the rental market.

Figures from the 1991 census also indicate that the median size for all family households in Australia is 2.6 persons, 4.2 for the Cambodians and 3.9 for the Lao and Vietnamese (BIPR, Immigrant Families: A Statistical Profile, 1994 : 10). Given that the average dwelling occupied by Indochinese has 3 bedrooms, accommodation for the Indochinese may be more crowded than the average Australian-born households, with 1.4 person per bedroom for the Cambodian-born, and 1.3 for the Lao and Vietnamese born. However, according to Coughlan (in press: 15), this does not suggest crowding as a major problem by Australian standards. In reality, many Indochinese households live in more crowded condition than the Australian norm. This is because households headed by a person born in Indochina are ten times more likely to have two or more families in them than households with an Australian-born reference person (BIPR, op. cit.: 8). In 6.0% of all Vietnamese households, more than one in nine persons live in households with eight or more residents (Coughlan and Walsh, op. cit.: 13-14).

Family Reunion

Like earlier immigrant groups to Australia, Indochinese refugees have sponsored their relatives under the Family Reunion program to join them in Australia. The Family Reunion program consists of two components: the Preferential Family category and the Concessional Family category.

Preferential Family migration includes a spouse, a fiance, an unmarried dependent child, a parent who meets the "balance of family" test, a child under 18 coming for adoption, an orphaned unmarried relative under 18, a relative capable of helping an Australian resident in special need of assistance, an aged relative dependent on the sponsor, and a last remaining sibling or non-dependent child of the sponsor. Concessional Family migration includes: a non-dependent child, a parent who does not meet the "balance of family" test, a brother or sister, and a nephew or niece.

In 1988, the Australian Government introduced a tightening of the parent category with the "balance of family test ", followed by further restriction on the spouse/fiancee category because of its potential for exploitation and the tendency for certain migrant groups to marry within their own groups, thus not mixing with the larger community. The changes have arisen largely as a result of concerns over these issues and the large number of Family Reunion cases during the 1980's, mostly brothers and sisters in the Concessional category. This leads Birrell (1990: 14-15), for instance, to suggest that unless a more restrictive policy was adopted, Australia would end up with many low or unskilled migrants from Third World countries in Asia and the Middle East. He argued that Family Reunion migration was like "the chains that bind", because of its snow-balling effects and the large number of siblings common to Third World families. Once one of these siblings are in Australia, the pioneer settler would sponsor as many of his or her siblings as possible and the spouses of the latter would then in turn sponsor their parents and siblings. One chain, thus, leads to another, and forever continues.

In response to these concerns, the Australian Government introduced a refundable maintenance guarantee bond of $3,500 for each principal applicant and $1,500 for each adult dependent, a non-refundable health care levy of $822 per sponsored person, together with English class fees for Family and Independent Entrant applicants in 1992, further making it difficult to access the program. For a family of four, such financial outlay can amount to over $10,000, which is a large amount of money for sponsors, especially former refugees without large incomes or financial assets. The result is that many refugees will "lose their families twice": once by the separation and need for reunion, and once by the Australian maintenance guarantee bond which many cannot afford to pay (NSW Grant-in-Aid Cooperative, 1992).

Another barrier, introduced on 1 January 1993, was the imposition of the waiting period of 26 weeks before newly arrived migrants can claim Social Security benefits, which means that sponsors who are unable to support their sponsored relatives for 6 months after their arrival will be reluctant to lodge applications for them to come and settle in to Australia, especially during periods of high unemployment. Despite these restrictions, Indochinese and other Asians place special social meaning on the Concessional category of relatives, and will try to sponsor those willing to come and settle in Australia. Most parents in Indochina usually have 5 to 7 children and it is often the case that only one or two of these grown-up children live in Australia. Parents who have less than an equal number or more of their children in Australia are unable then to come to Australia.

These changes in policy appear to have lead to a reduction in the number of family reunion arrivals. According to BIPR (Immigration Update, June 1994: 22), the overall number for migration arrivals from Vietnam has decreased markedly since the introduction of the assurance of support bond and the health care levy, from 9,592 in 1991-92 to 5,651 in 1992-93 and 5,434 for 1993-94. When we look at the top 10 source countries of Australian migrants, Hong Kong (with 12,913 in 1991-92 and 6,520 in 1992-93) has overtaken Vietnam since the adoption of these rules for the Family Migration program. The less developed source countries like Vietnam and Cambodia have been affected by these policy changes which seem to have been based on "anecdotal evidence, poorly interpreted statistics, unjustified expectations of an anti-immigration backlash, and plain fear of being ripped off" (Einspinner, 1994: 4).

Multi-Culturalism and Indochinese Families

At the Federal level, multiculturalism is implemented through the Access and Equity Strategy which seeks "to ensure that equitable access to government programs and services by all members of the Australian community is not impeded by barriers related to language, culture, race or religion" (OMA, 1992: 2). Its aim is to achieve better services and fairer outcomes from government programs for all Australian residents.

The 1992 Access and Equity Evaluation Report notes that the impact of the Access and Equity Strategy ha been variable for both clients and government departments. The Strategy had bought about an awareness "among managers and a climate conducive for" changes to occur (Ibid.: 10). There have been improvements in language, information services and cross-cultural awareness. Many departments have included access and equity as part of their corporate plan and culture in an attempt to implement the Government's social justice policy, of which the Access and Equity Strategy is one element.

A recent study of the Lao community and multiculturalism in Australia concludes that in the short time span since its formal adoption in 1989, multiculturalism has helped further the promotion and the appreciation of cultural diversity as a national asset by assisting ethnic groups to maintain and share their cultural heritage through government funding and participation in the cultural life of the nation. It has served to promote tolerance of ethnic differences. However, it has not been able to reach the grassroots level, particularly with ethnic communities which are ridden with intra-community conflicts as these conflicts have not been prevented through the policy (Phoumindr, op. cit.: 76-77). How much have Indochinese families benefited from multiculturalism in Australia ? It is difficult to make an evaluation of their overall impact on all the major areas of needs within the Indochinese communities discussed above since there has been no systematic examination of this issue.

The following is an attempt to look at three areas of needs to see if the three objectives of multiculturalism have been reached with Indochinese refugees: language maintenance, government language service, and equal employment opportunity.

Cultural Diversity and Language Maintenance

In the area of cultural maintenance, only 5 of the 166 community managed ethnic schools in New South Wales provide Indochinese language classes in languages other than Chinese. Many Chinese from Indochina, however, have their own ethnic schools, especially in Western Sydney run by the Indochina Chinese Association or the Australian Chinese and Descendants Mutual Association. Altogether, Chinese language schools account for 50% of the total number of ethnic schools in NSW, with an enrolment of more than 9,800 students, although only a small percentage of their students are from Indochina. These ethnic schools have been able to carry on mainly through the dedication of its members, supported by small Federal and State government grants.

The NSW School Education Department also conducts Saturday community language classes in selected areas. Of the 12 priority languages other than English (LOTE), for example, five are Asian: Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Thus, two of these five languages, Chinese and Vietnamese, cater for the need of the Indochinese. The NSW goal is that half of the Higher School Certificate students will study an Asian-Pacific language by the year 2000. Currently, however, few government schools make Asian languages part of the mainstream courses, due to lack of teaching resources and qualified teachers compared to traditional languages such as Italian, German and French. This has meant that in NSW, for instance, only 1,306 students enrolled in Chinese in Years 7-10 in 1991. There is no course at this level in Vietnamese, although enrolment for Years 11-12 was 141 for the same year (a 33 per cent increase since 1988).

The introduction of Asian languages, however, reflects Australia's desire to establish closer trade links with the Asian region more than their relevance to the number of speakers living in Australia. Language maintenance as a means to foster pride in one's cultural heritage and to improve communications across the generations within the family has not been promoted or seen as a priority. Many schools, thus, continue to offer only French and German "taster" language courses in junior high schools and then report them to be the most "in demand", although overall there has been a decrease in enrolment of 30% and 32% respectively in these two languages from 1988 to 1991.

At present, parents in suburbs with a large number of Asian residents who wish their children to be given locally relevant language studies such as Chinese or Vietnamese are often advised to move their children to areas where these languages are taught instead of waiting for the schools to introduce the new courses. For this reason, many Asian parents still have to set up and operate their own ethnic schools outside the mainstream school curriculum in order to teach literacy in their own languages to their children, and to maintain their cultural and linguistic heritage. The problem is that very few ethnic school grants are now given to new groups so that newly arrived groups such as those from the Indian Subcontinent cannot form their own ethnic schools. Thus, older established communities have more access to government assistance.

Another concern with ethnic schools is the lack of recognition by and linkage with mainstream language studies in high schools. This results in few ethnic schools with developed curriculum for advanced levels of language studies which could be integrated into courses in public schools; and few students pursuing ethnic school courses beyond their primary school years. A recent review of the program has made recommendations which will address these issues, but progress in the implementation of these recommendations is very slow and uneven because many ethnic schools depend on volunteers who are not necessarily professional language teachers capable of devising curriculum and linking up with mainstream courses. The School Education Department also appear to give this very low priority, and will only move at its own pace.

Social Justice: Access to Language Services

As has been pointed previously, Indochinese and other refugees without proficiency in English face the difficult task of learning English, and having to adapt to a bewildering new socio-linguistic environment. Among the Vietnamese population of 119,859 persons in 1991, 22.2% of those aged less than 25 reported not speaking English well, while another 2.8% could not speak English at all. Of those aged 65 and over (3,835 persons), 90.7% spoke English "not well" or "not at all". For those aged more 25 years, 43.9% reported speaking English "not well" and 12.3% "not at all" (BIPR, 1991 Census Vietnam-born Community Profile, 1994: 32).

To give all residents equity and social justice in government service provisions, both Federal and State governments provide language service to those who need them as a matter of policy. Many government departments endeavour to use interpreters when necessary. Many have also translated information materials on their services into Indochinese and other community languages. At the Federal level, language service is provided mainly through the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS). State government agencies provide most of their interpreting and translation services through the Ethnic Affairs Commission and through the employment of multi-lingual staff. There are also private commercial interpreters and translators which can be engaged on a fee-for-service basis.

This has been a great step forward. However, some major concerns remain, particularly in regard to access and availability. Firstly, some languages are not available. The most readily available languages are those with large number of speakers and users such as Chinese and Vietnamese. For smaller communities like the Cambodian and the Lao, it is difficult to access interpreting service, especially in an emergency, because there are only casual interpreters in these languages and they are not always available for emergency situations. This applies to both Federal and State language services. For Indochinese minorities like the Hmong or the Ngung people, no service is available because of the small demand and the lack of accreditation facility in these languages, thus forcing families to rely on their own members, friends and relatives. While the problem.

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The second area of concern is the impact of government policy on user-pay in relation to State and Commonwealth government language service. TIS raised almost $3 million from this cost-recovery scheme during 1991-92 (DIEA, Fact Sheet, 12 May 1993). This figure was expected to increase to $5.7 million in 1992-93 when TIS would be providing services through 2,000 professional interpreters in more than 100 languages and dialects.

Figures from the Ethnic Affairs Commission of New South Wales reveal that the number of translation assignments at its head office has decreased since the user-pay system came into effect, from 7808 in 1989-90 to 5902 in 1990-91, and 5248 in 1991-92 (EAC, Annual Report, 1989-90 : Appendix 10; and 1991-92: 83). Interpreter assignments, on the other hand, have increased from: 12031 in 1989-90 to 17110 in 1990-91 and 19737 in 1991-92 (Ibid.: 73). The reason for increased interpreter use is most likely due to increase in demand from the large number of new migrants rather than the fact that service agencies now pay the charges instead of the clients having to do it. With translations, the clients have to pay themselves and, thus, only have documents translated if they are really essential, thus reducing the number of translating assignments.

Regardless of these interpreter figures, many government agencies still use clients' children, relatives and friends as interpreters because of time and budget constraints,. This is true in particular in emergency situations with the police or hospitals. The lack of training on how to obtain interpreters also lead some departmental officers such as DSS and DOCS to ask clients what country they came from rather what language they speak. The result is much wastage of money, time and resources when a Vietnamese interpreter, for example, is called for a Cantonese-speaking aged person who hardly speak Vietnamese because the latter happen to come from Vietnam. The interpreter has to be paid for, a new interpreter has to be arranged, and another appointment needs to be made, thus wasting money and the time for both client and staff. This is one of the major concerns.

To compound the problem further, some interpreters are known to give clients lectures or to make racially based comments on clients from another ethnic background with service providers such as nurses and doctors. Some service providers are also reluctant to meet the scheduled cost-recovering fees charged for language services. State government departments such as the Police Service and School Education, for example, receive special language service allocations from State Treasury but may not spend them because of the unpredictable nature of their contacts with clients, the advanced notice required to obtain an interpreters or the amount of paper work involved.

The third problem relates to finding a mechanism to distribute translated information materials so that they reach those who need them most. The smaller Indochinese groups such as the Lao and Cambodians are already suffering from lack of translated government information, as the decision to translate is usually based on demands and the size of the community. However, even for the bigger communities with translated materials available, migrant resource centres or their ethnic welfare agencies have been used as the best distribution points, but this only reaches those who go to these organisations. Even if these materials get to the people, many find them difficult to understand as they contain bureaucratic jargons, or literal translations which are not easy to grasp. This is especially the case for many elderly Asians who may not be literate in their own languages. Thus, written translated materials need to be supplemented by verbal information assistance, but this is not always available.

The final concern in language service provision is the lack of coordination between service providers such as TIS/DIEA, the Ethnic Affairs Commission, and the Health Translation Service. Each of these agencies operate in their own defined areas of jurisdiction. TIS mainly deals with Federal departments, EAC on State matters, and HTS for hospitals and government health matters only. There are services areas, especially in private sector, which are not catered for e.g. doctors. Clients are often left by some government departments to sort out which language service to call upon for what needs. Amid this confusion, those who speak little English sometimes give up their quest for professional interpreting service and will use whoever they can find. It would be of great benefit to them if there was a coordinated approach to information on the subject with the availability of a single pamphlet on all language services, for instance.

Economic Efficiency: Equal Employment Opportunity

A major component of the Australian Government's multicultural agenda is the promotion of economic efficiency through the maximum use of the skills possessed by the residents of Australia, regardless of their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. This will allow for fuller participation by migrants and refugees in the labour force. The question of recognition of overseas qualifications has often been raised in relation to attempts to help new arrivals with foreign training find employment in Australia.

Although refugees are not accepted for resettlement with their occupational skills as a prime consideration, the Australian Government's refugee selection criteria are sufficiently strict to ensure that Indochinese family heads are educated enough in their own countries in order to be able to cope with life in Australia. For this reason, there are many professionals among the Indochinese refugees, and many Vietnamese have high school and university education. In Australia, 4.4.% of the Vietnamese described themselves as managers and administrators for the 1991 census, with another 10.9% being professionals and para-professionals. However, only three are known to occupy prominent managerial positions in the Federal and State public sector.

For Indochinese who are in white-collar jobs, the issues of concern centre around promotion opportunities and work experience. The effects of EEO legislation has been patchy for many immigrant groups. Niland and Champion (1990: 28), in their review of EEO programs in New South Wales, had expected to find model programs in the NSW public sector given that equal opportunity plans for staff of non-English speaking background had been mandatory for the last 10 years, but they found few examples. In the private sector, there were even fewer firms with formal EEO policies and programs for immigrant workers. The 1990 EEO survey of the NSW public sector by the Office of the Director of Public Employment shows much improvement since 1985, although 12% of female NESB staff and 18.2% of NESB male staff experienced racially based harassment at work (ODEOPE, 1992: 137). Language accents continue to be cited as a major barrier to promotion for NESB staff (Niland & Champion, op. cit.:108; and Public Service Commission, 1990: 15).

Thus, the skills of many migrants and refugees in Australia remain untapped, due to these personal and structural barriers. Chapman and Iredale (1992: 379) find that "immigrants with no formal Australian training are treated very similarly to each other in the Australian labour market", regardless of whether a migrant has got a Ph.D. or dropped out of high school in the old country. In other words, immigrants are only given some recognition through better jobs and wages after they have obtained additional formal Australian skills. Stromback et al. (1992: 15) found that Vietnamese males with good English language skills had "a distinctly lower unemployment rate than groups with lower levels of proficiency" but unemployment rate among Vietnamese women bears no correlation with knowledge of English. This finding, however, is not reflected in the level of Vietnamese unemployment and English proficiency, as revealed in the 1991 census. Vietnamese females aged 44 years and over were less proficient in English than males: 47.5% did not speak English at all compared with 20.9% of the men (BIPR, 1991 Census Vietnam-born Community Profile, 1994: 32).

The unemployment rate for all Vietnamese females was 44.9% compared with 36.1% for males, with unmarried females being the highest at 50.7% (Ibid.: 20). There is, thus, an obvious correlation between English proficiency and unemployment.

The question of language skills aside, Coughlan (1992: 94-101) suggests that Indochinese and other humanitarian entrants have not been as successful in the labour market as other migrant groups, because they suffered disruption to their education and professional careers, and wasted long periods in refugee camps without acquiring useful job skills. A 1994 study by the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University suggests that recent refugees and migrants have not been able to find employment because of lack of appropriate support and programs which would meet their low skills and need to become proficient in English (Riley, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/9/94, p. 3). According to the Monash University study, the Australian Government's 1994 White Paper on employment, by focusing on high worker mobility and ongoing retraining, assumes that unemployed people are able to access such retraining programs.

This has also been found to be incorrect in a recent report on retrenched workers' rights by the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1993: 21-36). Due to language barriers, many Indochinese do not have the ability to retrain, and many are also not aware of retraining schemes available to them. They are thus likely to become part of the marginalised jobless and ethnically based under classes in Australia. One solution is to put less stress on retraining and to create more jobs in industries which can be taken up by low-skilled people from non-English speaking background. Unemployed people find little point in being on one training scheme after another when there are no jobs available.

In summary, the Federal Government's Access and Equity Strategy initiated in 1985 and extended in 1989 as part of the social justice objective still has much ground to cover before Indochinese and other refugees in Australia can have equitable access to government services and the opportunity to participate fully in Australian society. The 1992 evaluation of the Strategy shows that many barriers still remain, including the unavailability of interpreters, the inappropriate use of interpreters, and the inappropriate use of media for information dissemination. What is of most concern is that "very few Commonwealth departments collect comprehensive ethnicity data on either their clients or their employees" ( Milne and Zelinka, 1991: iii). Without such data, appropriate services cannot be planned and delivered to ethnic clients. In some areas like social security, immigration and settlement services, much confusion prevails due to ever-changing government regulations, making it difficult to keep up-to-date. OMA (1994) has now published a new guide called "Achieving Access and Equity" to assist government departments implement the Strategy with better outcomes. Among the new initiative is the promotion of client participation in the policy formulation, design and delivery of government services.

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Conclusion

The Indochinese are not only refugees who arrived here in traumatic circumstances, but more importantly they are also Asians with their own ethnic division into ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, Lao, Khmer, and smaller distinctive minorities. Viviani (1984: 173-74) notes that these two factors have a crucial bearing on the outcomes of their settlement in Australia. Despite these concerns, there is no doubt that the majority of Indochinese families have been able to re-establish their lives in Australia, even though they had to wade through many deep waters and strong currents. Many who came here originally with only themselves and few belongings have bought their own houses, and nearly all possess at least a car, and some families now even have two cars. In the space of fifteen years, some have moved from working in factories to running small business for themselves. In the public arena, the Indochinese may not have made much inroad into Australian society, but the Vietnamese have been the first to have entered local government politics in greater numbers than other longer-established Asian groups: there are currently four Vietnamese local councillors across Australia.

Although the Indochinese and other Asians living in Australia are the focus of much negative media attention, this public image will become more positive as their contributions to their new country increase over time. The first generation, despite higher than average unemployment rates, are at least finding the peace and freedom they had sought in their escape from totalitarian regimes in Indochina. They are now establishing a new base, albeit at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, but from this foundation the second generation will be able to enjoy many more job opportunities and a better life style. In doing this, their families have changed from being predominantly extended to one family households, from a hierarchical autocratic family system to one where there is now more democratic decision-making between husband and wife, parents and children - for many, not without much social and emotional pain.

There is no doubt that living in Australia has considerably reduced the relevance of the traditional family beliefs and functions of the Indochinese. Mutual cooperation by family members can no longer be expected when they stay together less and spend more time away from each other due to each having different tasks to perform and different work commitments. Religious beliefs based on Buddhism and Confucianism become less influential, from lack of interest as parents are more absorbed with trying to provide materially for their families than to instil moral values in their children. Parents are more eager to re-establish themselves in their new country so that their children will have a better life, but this has been at the cost of losing much of their cultural heritage and traditional values. In addition, the law in Australia gives more equality, freedom and protection to women and children, with the result that traditional Indochinese role expectations of women and children have been adversely affected. Women no longer have to submit to their father, husband, or brother, as prescribed under Confucianism.

Nevertheless, the Indochinese and their families have been able to re-establish themselves here and are now accepted as part of the mosaic of cultures which comprise Australia today. This is largely due to the impact of multiculturalism. It is true that at this stage of the process, multiculturalism still face many challenges. Many government and mainstream services still lack cultural relevance to ethnic people, and some are not easily accessible to people of non-English speaking background. This has lead to under-utilisation by groups like Indochinese who in turn set up their own service organisations. While this will enrich the country with a diversified and culturally sensitive system of service provisions, it may also lead to the marginalisation of ethnic services. In order to avoid this in the long-term, there needs to be more involvement by local neighbourhood centres and gender-based service providers (Morrissey et al. (1991: xiii and xiv) so that ethnic organisations are not left to shoulder the responsibilities of look after their own communities by themselves.

Despite this, there are many positive indications that, as a government policy, multiculturalism will assist in the process of integration by Indochinese families into the Australian society, if the policy is nurtured carefully to steer the nation in a creative and rewarding direction. As Wallace-Crabbe (1992: 6) states, multiculturalism should serve as a vision to blend the diverse cultures of the people together so that they live in harmony as a nation. Although this is a major challenge it also attests to the tolerance of all Australians for the reality of cultural diversity in this country. The experience of the Indochinese refugees has largely shown that this vision is being pursued and, to a great extent, achieved despite some shortcomings and resistance from certain quarters of the mainstream community.

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