15 - Love and Rancour from Down Under

Italian immigrants in Australia have mixed feelings in vote for emigrants abroad

Two things strike the traveller after landing at Melbourne: the smell of the sea, as intense as it can be at sunrise along the coast between Otranto and Leuca, and the cars driving on the left side of the road. A sort of Mediterranean Britain. But such parallels between Australia and what is still today the 'motherland' must be drawn with great care: one's interlocutor may be of republican feelings, and still smarting from the marginal monarchist win in the 1999 referendum, so such an observation could elicit some rather harsh replies. In short, a person can very easily be told where to go if some bare nerves are even grazed.
The referendum split the Australians. Republic or monarchy? Monarchy won 55-45 percent. This means that, like in Canada, Her British Majesty, wrapped in London fog, far away, keeps being Australia's Head of State.
"What does she understand of us?" wondered, without reverential fear, a reader of the prestigious newspaper The Australian. With typically Italian subtlety, Il Globo, Melbourne's Italian newspaper, in the months preceding the referendum, printed an item about "Britain to disappear under the sea." This, according to the paper, was the diagnosis of an international team of scientists that is studying the melting of the polar caps.
The first split came in 1966, when Australia adopted the decimal system and changed the name of its currency, not pound anymore, but dollar. Traditionalists were scandalized. "This means destroying our world," "If Britain does not change, why should we?" This was the tone of the letters flooding the newspapers in the months before the change. In order to avoid widening the rift, then Prime Minister Menzies even proposed the name of "Royal" instead of dollar. Nothing came of it, but the initiative actually increased the tension. Finally, complaints, controversies and flaming letters suddenly ceased on February 14, 1966, the day when the new system entered into force.
Australians haven't succeeded yet in scoring the second goal: right-side driving and republican government. It is only a matter of time, though. "When Prime Minister John Howard leaves his post," a talkative cab driver tells me, "we'll win the referendum and become a republic." He added that Howard is one of the few monarchists left in his own party, the Tories, and that Labour, the smaller parties and even Howard's own right-hand man, Peter Costello, are all republicans.
Australia welcomes visitors with the deep breath of the ocean. The still-open wounds caused by the referendum and the 2000 Olympic Games brought a spotlight upon a country still somewhat unknown. There are more Italians here than one would expect. From the Fifties to the Eighties over 350,000 came, but the number increases to over 800,000 with their children and grandchildren born here. There are even more if everybody speaking Italian is considered, since speaking Italian is trendy, like everywhere else. Here (like in London, Toronto, New York, Caracas) Italian fashion, cuisine, music, cinema, and design are an integral part of the mainstream. The same goes for Italian companies (e.g. Parmalat) that brought Italian entrepreneurial spirit and fantasy to the Fifth Continent.
Nowadays Italian-Australians are the second largest ethnic group after the British. Naturally they have influenced the political, but also cultural and economic choices made by this country. It wasn't easy; on the contrary, it was more difficult than elsewhere, and precisely for this reason their achievements have a high significance.
Maybe Italy does not know how much of it is down under. Quite likely, it also ignores how much rancour burns inside love for Italy when its politics turn incomprehensible. "Vote abroad, Italian-style tomfoolery", read the front page of La Fiamma, the Italian-language newspaper published in Sydney, on August 3, 1995, when the bill on voting abroad went astray once again. "This unending story," wrote the paper, "proves that Italian parties care for their interests more than for those of Italians abroad."
After 50 years of bumpy coexistence with the British establishment, Italian-Australians do not mince words.
Now that, after many postponements, the bill has finally passed, Italian-Australians do not rejoice either. Ubaldo Larobina, publisher of Melbourne's Il Globo and Sydney's La Fiamma and owner of Rete Italia, a powerful radio station broadcasting in Italian 24 hours a day, assumes a pragmatic attitude: "People think that emigrants have been granted voting rights. That's wrong: those rights have been granted to any Italian citizen who, for whatever reason, find themselves abroad on an election day. Italy had to do so, because voting is a constitutional right. Even Italians who permanently reside abroad, emigrants if you prefer, who kept their Italian citizenship will be able to vote. Let me add, if they feel like it, because they could choose not to; that right had to be recognized anyway. That's the point."
The recognition was preceded by an objection, still surviving today, that Italians who live abroad do not know the Italian political reality, so they cannot vote with awareness. Many of our fellow nationals admitted this. Do you agree with them? "No, I don't," replied Larobina. "This objection, at least in Australia, has no legs, because newspapers, radio and TV stations allow those who have an interest to obtain any information."
Between real and virtual numbers the gap is, as usual, an abyss. The real figures of Italian presence are shown in the consular registries; that's the starting point for determining voters, but enrolling in those lists was never a priority for Italians, here like elsewhere.
Real numbers count 122,843 Italian-Australians, plus 1,890 residents of New Zealand, for a total in Oceania of 124,733. Italian-Australians are split like this: 2,558 in Canberra, 49,054 in Melbourne, 33,037 in Sydney, 14,834 in Adelaide, 10,638 in Brisbane, and 12,722 in Perth.
These people now enjoy full active and passive voting rights, i.e. they can elect but also be elected to the Parliament in Rome. Twelve deputies and six senators will represent the Foreign Electoral Riding, collecting the votes of people living outside of Italy on a temporary or permanent basis (emigrants).
The Riding is split in four large areas: Europe and Africa, North and Central America, South America, Oceania. "This Foreign Riding," remarked Larobina, "can complicate the enactment of the law: the formation of a parliamentary representation for Italians living abroad is complicated and debatable. There is also another risk."
Which risk? Larobina: "The risk that the future MPs will feel the representatives of the interests of Italian seniors. I really hope to be wrong, because if we'll manage to send Rome the dynamism and stubbornness that made the success of our emigrants in their new countries, this will be good for everybody: those who left, and those who remained in Italy."

Publication Date: 2002-11-03
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=1961