ii > AST ALIAC
PIM# E MINISTER PRESS STATEMENT NO. 534
23 July 1975
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES
The Australian Government has decided to initiate
a special longitudinal survey of Vietnamese refugees who had
recently settled in Australia, the Prime Minister, Mr Whitlam
announced tonight. The study will be carried out by Dr Jean Martin of
the Australian National University. Dr Martin and her associates
will interview the refugees at regular intervals over a period
of about five years.
The survey would concentrate on those who had neither
relatives nor friends here. It would record fully their experiences
in making new lives in Australia.
Mr Whitlam said that if there had been Government
follow-up studies of earlier refugee groups who had made their
0 homes in Australia, the task of selecting refugees now would be
easier. Mr Whitlam said the study would encompass such things
as The refugees' reasons for leaving their own country;
Their social characteristics;
* Their aspirations in their new homeland;
* What Australian Government assistance in maintenance and
welfare they requ., Iested, or needed, and received;
The problems they thought they might have to face in settling
in Australia, and how these compared with the problems
actually encountered;
The problems of culture and language difference they had to
face, and what happened to their cultural identity in the
process of re-settlement; and
To what extent if at all they suffered from racism. / 2
Other factors which would emerge from the study
would be employment patterns, the use made of qualifications
and skills possessed by the refugees, their success in becoming
integrated, and the time they took to become indistinguishable
from the rest of the Australian community in their requirements
of the Australian Government.
" This is the first time that Australia without
regard to racial origins has offered resettlement opportunities
to people displaced in Asia who had no identifiable connection
with this country," Mr Whitlam said.
" In living up to her responsibilities in the
international community, Australia accepted those considered
most in need of humanitarian assistance and who were unlikely
to be offered resettlement opportunities elsewhere."
CANBERRA A. C. T.