Helens comments are welcomed; I soon expect them to generate a welter of complaint from those who rallied behind Andrews Frasers muted call to arms. Sadly our false memories are often those of our former colonial masters and never really had any currency here.

Her reference ot false memory is salient as Australian History short as it is has given rise to countless false memories many of which are resident deeop in the hearts and the minds of the more nervous in our midst.

Australian is what it is; it is multi cultural and always has been in one way or another. Ballarat, Broome, Brunswick et al have all in times gone by and now given rise to vibrant multi cultural environments - there has always been those who fail to recognise it because they choose not to and the notion scares them witless - but denial will not make the coloured men ar women go away. Ms Pringle is on the money.

It is the opponents of multiculturalism who are really the un Australians amongst us as they fail to recognise the facts; their Australia wouild seem to end at the path to the letter box or the well travelled route to the RSL, Leagues, Golf or Bowling Club or any of the other intellectual ghettos in which they gather and mutter to themselves about the good old days - when ever they were.

Andrew Fraser's psuedo science and the other arguments of convenience lined up behind his covert form of Eugenic propaganda have a place in the debate but not a credible one.

Helen Pringle's article follows the usual formulae of the trendy lefties, the only racists in this world are white people while minorities such as the lovely Chinese are paragons of virtue.

Get real, Helen. If you would like to read what Chinese think of white people, read "The Year the Dragon Came" by a Chinese author who interviewed Chinese immigrants in Australia, and asked their impressions of this country and it's people. The responses were utterly racist and derogatory towards whites.

Furthermore, the Chinese could teach the Nazi's a thing or two about racism. For centuries, male negro slaves sold to China had to be castrated before sale. This has modern parallels when in the 1990's, the Chinese government enacted a law to prevent Chinese girls from dating African men attending a medical school in Peking. They did not want their race polluted by blacks, and there are no minorities on the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee.

Mr Fraser is also correct in stating that Chinese business practices are somewhat different from western ones. Chinese busineses are centred upon provincial "kongsi's" or "tongs" where the vested interests of provincial regions in China are considered uppermost. An appreciation of these practices may be gleaned by the excellent book "Lords of the Rim."

Fraser is correct in stating that orientals may soon be the new ruling class in Australia's bureaucracy. My own high school of Sydney Boy's High had only 2 Asian boys out of 1000 in 1970. Today, the figure would be 70% Chinese, 20% Indian and 10% white.

Finally she sneers at the idea of an Australia largely white and crime free. It was, Helen. But today we look at the bullet swept streets of Sydney which is homew to Muslim race hate rape packs and soon, suicide bombers, and we wonder why we ever allowed people like you to shove this "multiculturalism" nonesence down our throats.

Unlike some people, I do not know enough yet to make any judgement on Andrew Fraser’s stance concerning race. I hoped to find in Helen Pringle’s piece evidence that “Fraser’s wild claims”, as she calls them, are wrong. But she merely makes her own claim of “no evidence”. At least Fraser refers us to what he believes is evidence to support his claims so that we can look at it and make up our own minds.

Pringle refers to 19th century Australians of Chines ethnicity. Many of these people were, and still are, fine Australians who have contributed to Australia in many ways without the clannishness to which Fraser refers. But Fraser wasn’t talking about the Chick Tongs of Australia and previous centuries. He was talking about now and the future, and an entirely different lot of Chinese who definitely do stick together with the help of an enforced multiculturalism policy. No evidence other than what a person of average intelligence can see with his or her own eyes is needed to know that Fraser is right on that one. It occurs not only in Australia, but also throughout Southeast Asia and anywhere large populations of ethnic Chinese occur.

sneekeepete, I find your comment about "our former colonial masters" a bit odd: surely those are our ancestors you are talking about?

I have no problem in saying that the core of Australian culture is British. The thing we call "multiculturalism" was built around a British core in Australia exactly as it was in Canada and in Britain itself, with very different results from the "multiculturalism" built around a Latin core in Brazil, for example. (In fact, I tend to think that "multiculturalism" is a foolish term, because it pretends that our culture has no core, whereas it clearly does.)

I like our culture. I like its Britishness, I like its variety and its tolerance, and I see absolutely no reason for identifying that culture with genetics. Anyone who grows up in Australia or becomes part of this culture is absorbing those essentially British values, because that is the way things work. And as we come into contact with more and more people, our culture also absorbs different cultural influences, because that is also the way things work.

Nope: when I says masters that's what I mean. I might concede that they were ancestoral colonial masters but masters non the less.

I find some comments about "the Chinese" now in Australia mildly amusing. For instance, that we definitely stick together. As a long time activist amongst the Chinese Australians I can say that in general the reverse is the case. To a large extent this is due to the very different social, economic, and political circumstances under which we came to Australia, and at different times since the 1970s. For instance,a business migration group, speaking less than competent english, may have little to do with professional migrants who once studied in australian or English universities. Chinese boat people from Vietnam may have little in common with the Bob Hawke sanctioned PRC migrants after the Tiananmen incident. I can go on quite a bit like this.

Andrew Fraser reminds me of Geoffrey Blainey in 1984. Blainey's arguments against multiculturalism, recorded in his book, All for Austrlaia, would probably not pass as a history essay in Year 10. If i remember correctly he said on radio that the Chinese form ghettos, they will never marry out! Now we marry out most, amongst the migrant groups, according to an ABS survey not long ago. Had he looked at the past, as one would expect a professor of history of 20 years would, he would not have found the evidence for such an odd statement.

My hunch is that both academics were trying to breathe a new lease of life in their declining years, by venturing into areas for which they have passion, perhaps prejudice, but little knowlege or understanding.

Of course the times are ripe for these false prophets.

By the way, in China's long history, the barbarian conquerors usually become acculturated to things chinese. A few Chinese migrants
here are not going to change the managerial class in Australia. If you look carefully at he Chinese Asutralian students at high schools and universities you will find that most are very well acculturated to the norms of this society.

chek Ling