Uhhm, sorry, any empirical evidence for the central claim here?

Actually, more to the point, is empirical evidence required in the social sciences or do people in that field just get by making broad brush statements with little or no hard evidence to back it up?

e.g. "Why does it appear to be un-Australian to call Australian society racist?" Any empirical data to back up this claim? Or just a vibe? What's the benchmark?

Sorry, you haven't convinced me this is anything more than the idle scribblings of a publicity seeking academic.

How refreshing to have, as one of us, an hypenated former English subject who can advise Antipodeans on subjects such whingeing, gender and race relations,economics, our Monarchy and life in general.
These topics form key aspects of the A division of whingeing in which Australians, so often, fail to be competitive.
We really do need all the help we can get.

Just a bit of background.

We are selling assets, borrowing and allowing massive environmental damage to occur with mining.......all because Australia is panicking for income to support our growing population's appetite for infrastructure and jobs.

Our manufacturing is collapsing, our World rankings of our universities and school leavers academic standards, are falling.

As Paul Keating said, " population growth will lead to unemployment, if you don't grow the economy ". The opposite is also true, that you can have full employment if you don't grow the economy........if you stabilise population growth.

Denmark with a basically stable population of 5 million , export all over the world. How ? Because they invest in education, technology and efficient, high end capital intensive manufacturing.

Australia can't, because we invest in more people.........which is an investment in more pollution.

The billions spent on growth infrastructure and services, must be spent alternatively on education, health and emerging technology.

Forget "bank" and Business Council economists pushing for more population growth.........this is the last thing we need.

In the meantime we have 2.5 million Australians either unemployed or underemployed, trying to cope with rising housing costs, electricity
charges, traffic jams and a general feeling that we have lost control of our country to big business and dodgy developers.
Cheers,

Ralp

[Deleted for abuse.]

"access to senior roles"

It's not the whole picture but as I've pointed out before when that particular claim pop's up.

In relation to where I live

Local councillor - female
Local mayor - female
My local member - male
State premier - female
State govenor - female
Federal member - male
Prime Minister - female
Govenor General - female
Reigning monarch - Female

On my local council
CEO - male
4 GM's - 2 male, 2 female

In the public space there certainly does not seem to be a lack of access to senior roles.

R0bert

I would like you to tell all those elderly parents of the disabled adult child they had forty or fifty years ago to go make their own luck. I would like to know how they have the potential to join in the rewards of the lucky country when they are required to care around the clock and into their dotage. Great coming from a Brit whose fellow disabled citizens have legislated entitlement to service! Here we have just been rated the twenty-seventh out of twenty-seven OECD countries in our opportunities for the disabled. The one thing that could return a bit of equity to our lives, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, has been sidelined as "only in a strong surplus" economy by Tony and "possibly in seven years time" by Julia, which will be long after she's around. Our governments don't see the support of their disabled as a core function of government. So I suggest that you, as a sociologist, get out and see what it's like at the other end of the Bell Curve before telling us how well off we are.