Pericles.
Your point?
Kaep is, as far as I can gather calling for greater assimilation, which puts him squarely in the Anti Racist camp.
Leftists and "respectable "conservatives agree on assimilation as the end point of multiculturalism, they concur that the state should step in and force people to assimilate, the only difference is in rhetoric.
Why, did the description of Anglo Saxons and Jews as privileged groups rattle you?
I think this whole debate would flow a lot better if people were just honest, I'll be "objective" for a second and suggest that Kaep makes the suburbs sound like warzones and depicts our society as fractured along ethnic lines, which is far from the truth.
I live in Darebin, a very mixed locality both in racial and socio economic terms, it's a highly agreeable environment, even places like Sunshine and Dandenong are still seing steady increases in housing prices, so they can't be too bad if people with jobs and access to finance are willing to buy a home there.
If Kaep wants to talk about dysfunctional communities, crime and racial strife he needs to look at Brixton, Detroit or Oakland, we're nowhere near that scenario, it's not even on the horizon.

Jay,

Darebin was rated 386th of 590 Australian Local Government Areas in the BankWest Quality of Life Index 2008.

A lot of your fellow citizens don't agree with you. That doesn't sound too agreeable to me. This makes you sound more like a property developer than an unbiased citizen.

Further, the Greek dominated council had to be sacked in 1997 because factional brawling over development applications brought rendered the council dysfunctional.

Timeo danaos dona ferentes.

Also the film Death in Brunswick highlights the DUMB modus operandi of suburban warfare along racial lines over property and women in Victoria. Its appalling. I see attempts to sweep it under the carpet to protect vested interests as the dumbest thing about this, if we are honest, not so great nation.

Now I've outlined how to fix the situation and its not just to do with making migrants assimilate. The real key is forcing those who profit from engineered immigration to realise they are the real racists by insisting that their elite suburbs share as many immigrants and boat people as any other suburb in Australia. This can be done and it WILL put an end to the national utter dumbness that the author of this blog speaks of.

A succinct summary of why Australia is a stupid country:

"Why, pharaohs have slaves, in all of Europe noblemen had peasants and in Australia Local Government aldermen have immigrants.
Eventually, ownership consolidates and the devil takes the hindmost to whoops of joy and BIGGER casinos"

But not on MY WATCH.

I don't have the time to read through all the comments but I'd like to have my say on the issue of import labour and why it IS needed.

Mining is one of the few industries that can afford to pay excessive wages for people & skills in regional Australia, which should be good for the economy as a whole, but it is not.

What high wages in areas like Mackay have done is:
- Drive up the price of living for everyone in the town to the point where kids can't afford to move out of home, so instead move to Brisbane (or similar).
- Knock on effect is a "brain-drain" for the rest of the economy, as mining only requires a very small number of skill areas.
- People can't afford to "move up there for work"; they simply can't afford the rent without a garanteed mining job.
- Local industry can't afford skilled labour, so many small businesses go bust, or have negative growth despite demand from the other half of the economy (but its a HR issue!)
- The town is hollowed out by the mining boom, leaving mining and hospitality (if you can find enough 16 & 17 year olds to wait tables, clean dishes, and cook) the only industries in town

Problem with all this? When they shut the mine, they leave a once thriving town a mere shell of its former existence with no industry, no jobs, and no hope.

Now how does cheap imported labour fix this? well for one, you can start to fill a lot more unskilled positions (janitorial, etc) with migrant workers meaning the local workers - skilled or not - are in less demand, lowering the overall wage bill for the area. This should in turn prevent the massive spike in the cost of living.

So it's not simply a case of putting more money in the pockets of the miniers, it is helping prevent more social and economic problems from spiralling out of control in the two-speed economy of regional Australia.

Ahh, wasn't the Snowy Scheme built using imported migrant labour? In Tasmania it was migrants from Europe who were the backbone of the labour force that built dams in isolated areas. Importing workers is nothing new. This is a $9 billion project that needs 6000 workers and there is no way this country can provide all them, particulary skilled and semi-skilled. Seems some are spooked because some ALP dinosaur happened to say they would be Chinese when there was no substantive evidence.

Typical of the ALP government to turn a good news story about a massive project that will earn future governments billions into a story of mismanaged xenophobia.