FROM acerbic to vaudeville: Mahathir Mohamad’s frequent attacks on Australia have descended to the theatrical, with the Malaysian Prime Minister now giving an impromptu performance of a scene from My Fair Lady — in an Australian accent.

Accusing Australia, along with England and the US, of forcing Chinese communities to learn English, Dr Mahathir repeated “the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains” in Malay, English and then a broad Australian accent.

His performance was greeted with wild applause from the 2000 delegates attending his closing speech of the United Malays National Organisation’s annual congress on Saturday night.

The Australian Government refused to respond to the Malaysian Prime Minister’s provocative comments.

“We don’t propose to be drawn into a debate with Dr Mahathir,” a spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a comment that suggests the Howard Government believes the Malaysian PM’s remarks were for domestic consumption.

Just days earlier, Dr Mahathir himself had urged all Malaysians to learn English, the “language of knowledge”, because “there is no language belonging to a backward and poor race that can progress in this world”.

But points of logic were not relevant in this performance, which did have an underlying domestic political message.

“We are saying that the Chinese in Australia, in England, should be allowed to speak their own minds, but they are oppressed people because they find that that is not very welcomed, they have to learn a foreign language,” he said. “Chinese in Australia, in America, they should be allowed to have their own schools, to use their own language and everything else the Chinese in Malaysia enjoy.”

Dr Mahathir’s comments received no support in Sydney’s Chinatown last night. Sonny Wong, 21, a science student, said: “The Chinese are better off in Australia than in most Asian countries.

“You have government benefits, and there is a lot of help for people learning English. Oppressed is completely the wrong word.”

Erny Wah, 18, a student of international studies, agreed. “Some Chinese in Malaysia are now growing up only learning Malaysian and English, I think that is shocking,” she said.

The Malaysian leader’s remarks, which followed three days of bitter attacks on his “foreign enemies”, were Dr Mahathir’s intervention in a dispute that threatens to split his Government’s coalition partner, the Malaysian Chinese Association.

In a volatile extraordinary general meeting yesterday, the MCA voted to continue with a decision to take over two of Malaysia’s largest-selling Chinese-language newspapers.

Dr Mahathir’s message to an angry Chinese community was clear: it could be worse, you could live your life sounding like anAustralian.

Report — Page 7

And Another Thing — Page 12