K.C. BOEY
From 1Malaysia to the global village

2009/11/29

IN the mundaneness of the day to day, it doesn't occur to us to stop and think. We get up, go to school or work, maybe play some sport after, come home, flop in front of the TV, go to bed. The next day, we do it all over again.

The odd times, moments jolt us to stop... and reflect.

"It is with regret...," the letter that dropped in the mail begins. That was one moment that stopped me -- in the close to 18 years of Letter From Australia, to that news report of mine on the Turtle Beach diplomatic incident in 1992 that was to be genesis of the column.

Well, all good things must come to an end, I remind myself. I have been blessed. This is another of that moment.

In a moment of nostalgia, I turn back the pages of the archives to that first news item of Monday Feb 24, 1992: "Papers hit out at film on boat people".

The New Straits Times report recounted criticism in Australian papers of the film based on the Blanche d'Alpuget novel of the same name that bent the truth about Malaysian treatment of Vietnamese boat people.

Three months short of 18 years later, reminiscences of the past must move on to purpose for the future, I stir myself from my reverie.

This shall be my parting Letter From Australia (although the moniker has been lost to design considerations for some while).

To what good has 18 years of Letter From Australia come to?

1Malaysia comes to mind.

It's laughable, I chastise myself, that I should associate my professional endeavours and personal journey with lofty national aspirations.

I go over the archives more deliberately -- to disabuse myself of pretensions.

No, associating Letter From Australia with national aspirations and national identity -- Australian and Malaysian -- is not so far-fetched, I conclude, modest as the ambition was at the start.

Over the years, the Letter has grown -- and I with it. I'd gone back to university, unconscious at the time that I might have been moved by the desire to support my work; nor realising that my work would support my studies. What a win-win.

Ben Anderson would be proud. What is 1Malaysia if not emblematic of the possibilities of multi-ethnic communities building nation in spite of Anderson's Imagined Communities.

Imagined Communities (1983) predates 1Malaysia. So too Letter From Australia.

Far be it that it should be here suggested that the feeble endeavours of Letter From Australia should have had any sway over the inspiration for 1Malaysia.

But prospects of a convergence of purpose of the two are clear, coincidence though they may be.

From the diplomatic conflict that triggered Letter From Australia, it has been a privilege reporting, analysing and commenting on the alternating ebb and rising tide of relations between peoples and nations, straddling as I do multiple cultures, settings and circumstances -- personal and professional.

Then NST group editor-in-chief Datuk A. Kadir Jasin might today in retrospect shed light on his intentions in suggesting I write a Letter From Australia.

My thoughts then were that it would be presumptuous of someone living in Melbourne, in Victoria, to present as writing "from Australia".

Kadir insisted, in the event opening an avenue of exchange between an essentially Western Australia, and an emerging Malaysia, each with prospects to pick the best from each other.

Writing the Letters have been personally enriching. I have had the privilege -- and continue to draw value from -- the prospect to objectively (by force of training as a journalist) observe the challenges and opportunity of two peoples at different stages of development.

There are obvious dissimilarities. And compelling parallels.

At the root, people are not so different in anxieties about their security, hope in their aspirations, and motivations that animate their responses and reactions.

As with every nation, Australia and Malaysia are works in progress on identity, with shared legacy of colonial institutions on which to build their relationships.

As nations of people of multiple ethnicities, cultures and nationalities, both similarly face tests of differentiation, variation and divergence, and prospects of unity in diversity on which to construct a model for a global village.

Abstract theories of Anderson's Imagined Communities allow for prospects of communities of peoples coalescing around a central idea of nationhood.

Not every Australian warms to "multiculturalism" as a rhetorical descriptor; few contest the substance of its description, as a consequence of historical immigration.

In the way Malaysia has negotiated its social contract symbolised in today's 1Malaysia, the key to navigate difference is to build confidence from the lowest common denominator: from local to global; from kampung to town, city to nation and region to the world.

In the broader scheme, 1Malaysia doesn't stop on our shores. The concept is a means to the end of a confident nation engaging the world.

That has been the theme of Letter From Australia, its message extending beyond Malaysia.

In Australia, Letter From Australia has contributed to knowledge of Asia. Selected columns have been posted on websites of Asialink, the centre for Asia literacy at the University of Melbourne (tinyurl.com/ygrrrvr), and the Brisbane-based online journal OnLine Opinion (tinyurl.com- /ylyyp38).

It does seem odd, after 18 years, to no longer be able to sign off with "watch this space".

But I have never been alone in this enterprise of global dialogue. The endeavour will go on in the New Sunday Times.

It is worthy of maintenance, preservation, and advancement -- as much for Malaysia in 1Malaysia fashion, Australia in its multicultural approach, the Asia-Pacific in all its community, and the global village of the world.

kc.hanb@bigpond.com