Majorityrights Central > Category: Australian Politics

It was too much even for the journalist from the Melbourne Age:

A Vietnamese choir and African dancers were on hand as Victoria signed a sister-state agreement with Scotland yesterday. Confused?

Confused? Well, yes. Were the Vietnamese choir and African dancers supposed to represent Victoria or Scotland or something else altogether? And what if Tanzania and Vietnam were to sign such an agreement. Would they mark the occasion with a bagpipe rendition of Waltzing Matilda?

There are a lot of young Australian expats - about 10% of Australians aged 18 to 35 live overseas. Why? The reasons are looked at in a new book by 25-year-old Ryan Heath, an extract of which was printed in The Age this morning.

Some of the expats he interviews come across as profoundly narcissistic. For instance, Jo Fox, now living in London complains that,

“In Australia the television industry is ageist. As a 22-year-old woman, it was impossible to get work heading a script department.”

Yes, Jo, it’s tough not being able to start out at the top.

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More information has come to light about the latest beach violence in Sydney. Predictably it began when some local men defended two teenage girls who were being harrassed by three men “of Middle Eastern appearance”. The Lebanese men left but returned armed with knives a few minutes later. What happened next is vividly described here.

Readers might be interested in this comment from a Sydneysider at an Australian site:

Pretty standard behaviour at Bondi as I recall. One or two ‘men of Middle Eastern appearance’ sporting Adidas trackies and a rude haircut, would loudly call a girl a “slut” or a “pig”. If the girl’s boyfriend or husband should so much as look at the perpetrator, they would feign offence “what you looking at?” and all of a sudden ten of his mates would back him up, and it was on as they practiced this week’s kickboxing moves. Additional carloads were always a phone call away, making a cellphone a dangerous weapon.

It was Australia Day today. The Melbourne Age marked the occasion with a special front page item: a message to the nation by cartoonist Michael Leunig.

The message was a contemplation on “our precious diversity”. According to Leunig, tolerance is not enough and “the richer possibility is that Australia can actually embrace and enjoy its glorious detail and diversity”.

“Perhaps,” continues Leunig “more than tolerance we need openness, which is a type of innocence and a type of strength. And beyond xenophobia, fear of strangers, we might contemplate the wisdom and pleasure that could flow from another Greek word, filoxenos – love of stranger.”

“Innocent friendliness is a sentimental concept to some, yet surely it refers to a rare quality of openness that we sometimes dreamed had curiously emerged in this land. Surely the real living treasure of this country could be simple friendliness.”

And on and on it goes. I expect we’ve all heard this type of thing before. I have a word I use to refer to such platitudinous speeches, marked by politically correct pieties divorced from reality: guff. And Leunig is a first rate “guffer”.

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We’ve had another little riot here in Melbourne. A life guard at a suburban swimming pool tried to eject a patron. As a result, the four life guards (one female) were set upon and bashed by a mob of 30 youths, the attack lasting until police arrived. One of the staff members was taken to hospital with a smashed cheek.

The events happened at Oak Park, one of the more multicultural of Melbourne’s suburbs (yet another proud moment for “diversity”).

It’s interesting that the reporting of the event has followed a typical pattern in which more is revealed in the internet version of the story than in the print version.

The internet article has a sentence in which a witness says of the mob that “They all appeared to be Middle-Eastern youths”. The print version is exactly the same as the internet article, except that this information has been removed.

I suppose the reasoning of the sub-editor is that fewer people are likely to read the internet version and that the information is too sensitive to release to a mass audience.

All week I have been asking people I know this question: Why were convoys of Lebanese men allowed to drive into Cronulla and other Sydney suburbs smashing cars and shops and bashing local residents? Surely, these large convoys must have been noticed by the police. Why weren’t they stopped?

My work colleagues gave me some unconvincing answers: that the police couldn’t be everywhere, or that the police could not have stopped the cars.

But now a different answer has surfaced. The Seven Network claims to have a police report instructing officers to stay away from Punchbowl Park where the convoy was gathering in order not to “antagonise” the young Lebanese men. The convoy then moved into Cronulla unimpeded by police.

I can only hope that the media pursues this incident vigorously. Who was responsible for the directive? What was the thinking behind it? It was a decision with serious consequences: it left the residents of Cronulla unprotected from a serious attack.

Police tactics will be different for this Sunday, though. A force of 1500 officers is being organised to patrol Cronulla and surrounds.

Meanwhile, there have been four attacks on churches in Sydney, the worst of which was an attack on a Catholic primary school during a Christmas carols service. Shots were fired into cars and parents abused.

Many readers will have already come across this famous statement by John Jay on the founding of the US:

“It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, widespreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty ... A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together ...

“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people - a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs ...”

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According to John Ray it is a “grave misconception” to believe that Asian cultures are tribal.

Asians, John believes, do not show preference according to ethnicity, but will reciprocate any favours shown to them on an individual basis. As John himself puts it,

“I am not remotely of their tribe. They do not treat me well because of my tribe. They treat me as an individual and treat me unusually well because I treat them well.”

This, no doubt, is a comforting thought for John. It means that he can support mass Asian immigration but not worry that he might be discriminated against by the newer Asian population. He will continue to be treated well according to his individual merits.

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