A month ago I was getting on the bus to Wodonga, a town near the border of the states of Victoria and New South Wales. It was to be a 3 hours journey from Melbourne. I sat on the window-seat, and soon after a man in his late-40s came to sit beside. He was clad in bright orange shirt, blue shorts, blue cap, and sunglasses slided up his forehead – a typical appearance of an Aussie tradie. âHi buddy, how are you?â I asked. That was the start of a memorable conversation.
We had small talks at first. I soon learned that he runs a cement business in the city, but spends at least 5 out of 7 days in a week on a 200-hectare cattle ranch he calls home. Mind you, that is another hour drive inwards from the rural town of Wodonga. He was in the city to renew his passport as he will be heading to Samoa for a fishing trip with his guy friends – his first time out of the country.
He then told me about his family, his business and his life on the pastures. Both his 7-year old and 11-year old children are home-schooled, because the nearest school is 1 hour-drive from his home. âThe elder one is not so smart on books, but he is very good with his hands. He watches me fix the tractors, gears and bikes. Lefty-loosey, righty-tighty I tell him. My boy understands and get things working.â I then asked him whether he has brought his son to the cement plant to pick up some skills there. âYes I have, the grandpa doesnât like that too much. He wants the boy to be good at school. Education is very important for my old man.â He also spoke fondly of his wife, particularly of how she takes good care of the children and raises them with family values; and how much he appreciates her.
He then talked business. âLess bulls**t and get to work,” he asserted his philosophy. He shared his experience of working alongside local councils; of how government departments were smaller and less bureaucratic then. âNow, there are more people getting paid but the amount of work done is still the same. All those subcontracting but we are the ones getting s**t done at the end of the day,â he claimed. He then recalled of a time when one of his staffs asked him for a pay-rise, âI was willing to give it to him, but he was a smokie (tobacco addict). I told him that I will only give him a pay-rise if he stops the bad habit, because those extra monies wonât mean anything if he spends all on them on the ciggys (cigarettes).â And true enough; he successfully encouraged a young lad to stop smoking and gave him a higher pay-rise.
âI live to work, I donât work to live. I want to provide the best for my wife and children so they can have good lives.â Listening to those words, I knew he is a hardworking man who genuinely cares for his family and workers.
And then, came the more interesting bit.
âAre you Chinese?â he asked.
âOh no, I am Malaysian.â After that I briefed him about how Malaysia is a multi-cultural, Muslim-majority nation.
âOh, Muslims?â he proclaimed. âI donât like them.â
Somehow, I saw that coming.
I disagreed with his notion of hating people of a particular religion. If I followed social media norm, I would have counter-bashed and called him out as a racist. I did not. I listened on to what he has got to say.
âI have no problem for people to come into Australia from around the world, as long as they respect the laws and customs here. The Muslims come here, bring their values with them and not blend in with our values.â
I told him (at least based on my limited knowledge of the Quran) that the Sharia Law is indeed the law of the land, and it had not and should not affect Australian law. I was raised in a multicultural context where I learned to understand, tolerate and celebrate a diversity of cultures. Despite having stark differences of the way we approached the matter, I listened on.
âThose days, we dealt with problems face-to-face. Now if these crazy people donât like you they just go on the streets and bomb people. I donât want my children to grow up being afraid to walk freely in their own country, you see.â He went on to make blatant jokes on how stoning is still practised in some parts of the world and would never want that in Australia.
I emphasized to him that most Muslims I know are peace-loving and only a radicalised handful appear on papers for the wrong reasons, to which he acknowledged that he too had come across friendly Muslims. Yet, to a certain extent, he is not wrong. The fear for his childrenâs safety whom he loves may be justified with recent events in Australia (conveniently) linked to religion. The politics of fear-mongering are supported by unfortunate events that occurred in recent years – those which are not normal to him when he was growing up. Nevertheless, I did not agree on how he generalised that to everyone who practises a religion.
He then showed me a halal sign on his energy drink bottle. He knew that halal certification has something to do with meat being made with a certain level of care, but he perceived it as âun-Australianâ and âbowing down to Islamisationâ. He took it as a doctrine to âIslamiseâ people. I did not have much to say at this stage, except to point out the fact that it could be for market-driven commercial reasons. âThere are billions of Muslims worldwide after all,â I remarked and he seemed surprise of the number. Similarly, I shared with him the fact that most Hindus do not eat beef because cows are seen as âgivers of lifeâ according to the Veda. He didnât know that either, but he too was willing to listen.
We moved on to other topics, many of which we shared common views; the mismanaged immigration policies, the ridiculous housing market and misallocated foreign aid (he condemned Papua New Guinea for using Australia’s foreign aid to buy Maseratis for APEC Summit). He even pointed at his bottle label and mentioned about âthe amount of s**t they put in food and drinks todayâ, referring to artificial preservatives and colourings that cause never-seen-before health problems. Simply stereotyping the ignorance of an outback person is plain wrong; this guy knows his stuffs, even the science-y bit. And of course, we talked politics and swiftly agreed that Australian politics today lacks principles.
The conversation lasted until we reached our destination; and only then we introduced our names. Mike went to his mud-stained UTE truck, stretching his arms to hug his wife and children. As he drove off, he gestured me farewell with a quick honk. I waved back.
I have no solution to this never-ending debate. Call it what you want – ‘left v right’, ‘liberal v conservative’, ‘globalisation v protectionism’. Not everything exists in black and white – it doesnât have to be. At the end of the day, we all work to put food on the table, to ensure our children have good education and to strive for a better future. People are intrinsically different, but within the many differences there are sameness; and thatâs the beauty of it if we are willing to listen and empathise. In that 3-hour bus trip, I especially learned the old-school values of family and hardwork. I hoped Mike learned a thing or two about differentiating the truths from the myths of beliefs.
Making sense of the tempurung 