...Vietnamese, the antithesis of morality, plunderers of Australian Democracy, harbingers of crime gangs and the highest criminal ethnic group and drug runners of that period in Australia. Little wonder “Ned” Kelly, a morphing cultural caricature, is portrayed as the central character in a crime novel!

Diver Dan, that comment is one of the most offensive I've come across lately on this site!

<<Vietnamese, the antithesis of morality, plunderers of Australian Democracy, harbingers of crime gangs and the highest criminal ethnic group and drug runners of that period in Australia.>>

I've worked with, taught, and befriended so possibly hundreds of wonderful migrants from Vietnam and their descendants. They were none of the things you mention -- "the antithesis" in fact! Any ethnic group -- Anglo-Celtic included -- will contain some anti-social individuals. To smear the peaceful, honest citizens with your poison is morally indefensible.

I agree Crabbsy. It is a racist comment and close to villification. I'm leaving it stand, but I expect it will be shown to be the rubbish it is.

The fact that some Vietnamese were or are involved in crime gangs doesn't criminalise the whole community, anymore than the fact that some Italians have been, or some Irish, or some English etc.

Diver Dan would not be able to point to a community where there is no crime, which tends to prove that crime is not a product of race.

I have no idea either what this comment is doing on the bottom of a review of this book apart from using the ethnicity of the protagonist as a jumping-off point for the commenter's prejudice.

Graham Young Moderator

...The novel critiqued was set in a period of the 1990’s. The central character is an ethnic mix of “Vietnamese/Irish”. The book is a “Crime Novel” with a story line based in Sydney in the 1990’s.

...Of course, without being facetious, a crime novel is a story relating to crime. In the period between the 1970’s and the 1990’s, the Vietnamese community were streets above the national average for their implication in serious crime; ostensibly illegal drug importation.

...I am not personally engaged actively in any organisation opposed to any particular ethnic group, so my “opinions”, as unwelcome and contrary as they appear to be, are simply personal opinions also, based on personal experience and statistical fact.

...Why would it not be so, the novel was actually intended to relate to those facts?

Diver Dan, your "opinion" as stated is that every person in the Vietnamese ethnic group within Australia is without morals, anti-democratic, and a drug-runner. You leave it to the reader to decide whether the term "Vietnamese" means someone born in Vietnam, or someone descended from a migrant from Vietnam, or something else. At a guess, I'd say you are implicating several hundred thousand people.

Nothing in your second post can substantiate your accusations: indeed, they are plainly false and malicious. A person belonging to the group you target would rightly feel maligned and hurt by your portrayal of them.

Regardless of what experience gave rise to your hatred, yours is an attitude that needs to be exorcised from Australian society.

Yvonne, I agree with the points you make and found your review very interesting. As you suggest, this book shows that an intelligent novel can be politically astute and gripping. For me also, it challenged that stereotype of the "page-turning" quick read. I found I couldn't put it down - I loved the story, the characters, the setting and wanted to understand the truth behind the events - but I didn't read it quickly. Like you, I savoured the language. In fact, I was so taken by the author's skill I kept jotting down brilliant lines, thinking I'd like to emulate her style.

Having just watched Once Upon A Time in Cabramatta, I was particularly interested in Newton's choice of an Irish-Vietnamese protagonist. What struck me in her rendering of this charqcter was how it enabled her to depict complex relations among established "Old School" police, new arrivals and indigenous communities. In this novel, Newton shows how multifaceted such individuals and their communities are, and depicts, with compassion, many of the driving forces that, at that time, made individual's choices at that time so fraught and morally confronting.

It's a master stroke of storytelling and it's great to see it getting such astute attention. Thank you.