We Were All Boat People Once

December 03, 2009

By Susan Merrell

And such children ran amok — ruthless and often vicious. None more so than Tri Minh Tran, the leader of the most prominent of the Cabramatta Vietnamese gangs: the 5Ts. (5Ts stood for Tu, Tur, Toi, Tinh, Tien — variously translated as “Jail, Death, Guilt, Love and Money” or “Young People Lack of Love”).

Tran was born in Vietnam in 1975 and came to Australia as a seven-year-old refugee after spending time in an Indonesian refugee camp. But no one, it seemed, could control, direct or curb his trajectory into violence.

By the age of 11, Tran had been arrested for carrying a sawn-off shotgun. By the time he reached 14, he was a suspect in two murders and was already leader of the 5Ts, who controlled most of the heroin trade in the area. At 16 he was convicted of firearm offences and spent two years in a juvenile detention centre. His reputation for violence preceded him and when the anti-drug campaigner and member for Cabramatta in the New South Wales State Parliament, John Newman, was gunned down outside his home in 1994, suspicion automatically fell on Tran. He was barely 19, and within two years, Tran himself was murdered.

Huynh’s early life was in some ways similar. Just like Tran, Huynh, was just seven years old when he and his family left Vietnam. They too sought asylum in Australia after spending some months in an Indonesian refugee camp. Tran and Huynh were just 3 years apart in age, and both settled in Cabramatta.

But there the comparison ends.

As well as serving his community as a councillor on the Fairfield local authority, Huynh is married with two children and is the General Manager of a city-based travel agency. His is a heart-warming Australian success story.

But although Cabramatta received a lot of attention in the media, it was not Huynh’s story that was of interest. It was Tran’s. Murder and heroin sold newspapers.

Things only started to improve for Cabramatta when, in the late 1990s and in response to escalating crime, a parliamentary inquiry was initiated. The government agreed to fund over $30 million worth of initiatives in an attempt to solve the problem, with the money earmarked to provide infrastructure and for increasing resources including personnel. The focus was to be directed towards community liaison and cultural sensitivity.

The multi-tiered solution has been spectacularly successful.

‘Our crime statistics are one of the lowest in the South-West Region now,’ Sergi boasts. Indeed, Cabramatta’s crime figures are down in almost all categories.

‘That’s history,’ Huynh says of Cabramatta’s murky past. ‘Look at the contribution Asian societies make to Australia — at the amount of businesses run by the Asians in the community. It all helps the Australian economy.’

Cabramatta is prospering.

The thousands of small businesses in Cabramatta’s Central Business District appear to be thriving, and as this correspondent strolled around the area with Sergi, the streets were abuzz with people. Women shopped with their children, the elderly congregated in congenial groups in cafes. Come lunchtime, the precinct was so popular it was difficult to get a table at any of the many restaurants.

‘It’s not even that busy, today,’ said Sergi. ‘At the weekend there’ll be queues lining up there,’ he said pointing out a noodle restaurant.

With prosperity effectively removing the need for competition for otherwise scarce resources, ethnic tensions and crime tend also to fall. Meanwhile, officials believe culturally appropriate administration for the mainly Indo-Chinese population should also not be underestimated in Cabramatta’s renaissance.