OK SOG you should know I agree, my posts shout I am from the right with in the party but unhappy with party direction.

But my view strong honest, frightening, is greens can never be the alternative.
But they can/may I fear will, keep labor out of power for decades.
I do not seek a workers world, no government not intent on being for most should ever rule.
That would put Liberals back in the box.
Do you know,SOG I already feel left out, forgotten because I feel too many ride in bosses chairs in my union, that consolidation and the right person can cut waste costs and deliver the people that matter better services.
That MATES do not make better officials, that solidarity with failures in that job forgets those who matter most, members.
only the best should serve, and ego is not always an asset.
Yabby, bloke, Tod puddle,you never heard of it? I can not spell it but unions started after workers tried to form a union , got to be sent in chains here as convicts.
overtime on holidays is fair, just as the boss charging a service fee on such days.
you seem to want price control for workers and not your self,,free market is the answer.
I will start a thread one day on wage control.

SOG:

Firstly let me correct an impression that you have about me. I was born in Australia. My parents fled from the second Soviet occupation of their country. They came along with most post-war refugees as indentured labour, that is, every migrant over the age of 18 had to enter into a two year contract with the Australian government which obliged the migrant to work wherever directed. The contracts were strickly enforced, even if it meant that families were split up. People were unable to work in their professions as their qualifications were not recognised. Unlike the "guest-workers" in Europe, the migrants arriving in Australia after the Second World War were expected by the Australian Government to settle permanently and to completely assimilate. This explicit policy was highlighted by the creation, in 1947, of the Assimilation Branch of the Australian Department of Immigration. You write about what Australia has given
the migrants but you don't mention what they contributed to Australian society. The initial two-year work contracts were the migrants' first major contribution to Australia. They helped to solve an acute labour shortage in Australia, especially in outlying areas. The relieved the shortage of domestic staff in hospitals, increased the output of building material, helped to build Australian homes, saved fruit and sugar crops, maintained railways, worked in sawmills, brick factories, salt and brown coal mining, clearing land, quarring, et cetera. At Wooroloo T.B. Sanatorium in Western Australia, the migrants solved a real crisis when the sanatorium staff had shrunk from 80 to 13. The sanatorium was on the point of turning away patients when 40 Baltic women were allotted to it and normal services were restored. At Gipplsand Hospital, Victoria, 28 Balts made possible the opening of a new T.B. ward. In New South Wales, 60 Balts enabled hospitals to keep several wards open, and the list goes on.
Did I mention the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme?

cont'd ...

As Phillip Adams wrote in an article in The Age:

"It's important to remember Australia BEFORE the wave of immigration. It was dull, self-satisfied and joylessly conformist. Not simply null and boring, but nullarboring. Not merely mindless, but lobotomised.
Of course, the option of multi-culturalism involves taking some considerable risks - but almost every human advance is based on experiment, innovation and adventure..."

And for your further information the multicultural nature of Australian society today means that there is no single national identity but a gathering of many cultures, and this is one of the most, unique and rewarding aspects of living in Australia. The nature of being Australian is to be part of this diversity. The wide and varied gathering of "identities" is ain keeping with the sense of potential and openness so many peole enjoyed on coming here. I personally feel privileged to have been able to make a home here but also to have found my own sense of belonging. You can think whatever you like of me - I can do the same about you. I think that's only fair.

Lexi you put that well.
No need ever existed to convince me.
I grew up in that world and worked shoulder to shoulder with those migrants.
Current xenophobia, I must admit to a strong case myself, is based on not what country but what religion some have.
No religion has the right to impose on me its fables
No not a popular thing to say, but still true.
A day will come, I am sure of it, that sees us review the good this wave of migration brings to us.
Worth under lining, boat people aside BOTH party's support increased migration and from the same country's as the very boat people who bring the concerns.
If only we had only one God world wide we could leave this debate forever.
I feel those who try to make me feel guilty for being part of the majority, people opposed to minority's demanding WE CHANGE,,should understand forever they too are a minority.

Belly if I may regarding the "Tolpuddle Martyrs" for Yabby's benefit.

In the early 19th Century a handful of farm hands from Dorset formed an "agricultural friendly society". They wanted better wages in a marketplace that had a glut of labour due to industrialization. The land owners were now paying the peasant less due to supply and demand.
Before any mass migration to the friendly society (quasi union) they arrested the half dozen instigators and charged them with "swearing an oath to a secret society" and briskly transported them to Australia. That was in the social studies curriculum in primary school in my time.

Belly, Yabby comes from a universe far far away but he is still one of us, a worker who contributes to the whole, but he is from another universe.

Lexi I agree with everything you mentioned regarding the nothing but positive outcomes that post WWII European migration has delivered.

My issue is your attitude. To paraphrase you: we manned the hospitals, we built the houses, we saved the crops, we maintained railways, and we worked in sawmills brick factories, we mined salt and brown coal, we cleared land, and we quarried.

Do you get my drift, it sounds like you did the people who were living here a favour. All the infrastructure was already in place, you maintained it and added to it just like the ones who maintained it and added to it before you got here, It did not all start when you arrived.

Unlike the fascist and communist regimes you escaped from you could choose to work and make a life for yourself just as the immigrants that preceded you by 200 years did, or you could bludge around and reap the meager fruits that brings. You worked you got paid, what did you do that was so special compared to the previous immigrants in a land of immigrants. Nothing Special, anything you did was for you and yours and their futures, just like the Aussie who came before you.
Given that you mentioned Balts, there was another reason that “some” Balts and Ukrainians came to the bottom of the earth and kept their bums up and heads down while kept a low profile, but I won’t go into that now, but Australia was a sanctuary as well as lifeline to thousands
TBC