We also have, in NSW, signs in left hand lanes on our highways that tell motorists to CHANGE LANES and are hung on the same pole as the LEFT LANE ENDS sign.
These signs are about as useful as laws against racial abuse.

Is Mise "I do miss the racial vilification that had been hurled at us in the past. It was character and thick skin building"

Yes, part of our psychological/social development is learning that (a) not everybody loves you and (b) how to deal with that.

How thick are today's kids' skins going to be, growing up in a world where they're never supposed to be exposed to conflict or exclusion of any kind.

Generation Wuss.

Foxy,

One of my Army mates was an Aboriginal Australian and he was a well respected soldier, both by his peers and by his officers.

His nickname was 'Boong' but that got changed to 'Boongra' as his surname ended in 'ra'.

Did Andrew Bolt call any aborigines in his famous article "coons", "boongs" or "niiggers"? No he did not. What he did was express his OPINION that too many people who had only the merest trace of aboriginal blood were accessing generous government funds, that were intended to aid aboriginal people.

Ms Singh's article was not meant to address racial vilification. It is an article meant attack freedom of speech by equating it with racial discrimination. What section 18c of the racial Discrimination Act does, is to effectively prevent anyone from expressing any opinion pertaining to certain minorities favoured by the publically funded Human Rights Organisations in Australia. As such, the law is an affront to freedom of speech. No socially identifiable group of people should be beyond valid criticism.

Every person has multiple group identities with a national identity being one of the most important. This is not always so. Many people, even those born in a country, may consider their ethnic or religious identities as being much more important than any sense of national identity. To them, the word "Australian" is nothing more than a geographic address, a word on a passport, and a right to access the fruits of Centrelink. To others like myself, the word "Australian denotes a particular culture that is an extension of the culture of the North European Protestant/agnostic people who turned this country from a howling wilderness into one of the best countries in the world to live in.

Ms Singh is apparently unaware that freedom of speech, which entailed the right to give opinions on any social matter, is one of the reasons why this country prospered while so many others floundered. If she can not appreciate that fact, then I can not consider her an Australian, because she is opposed to a fundamental concept within western European Australian culture which to my mind defines her as an Australian.

LEGO.

Whilst I generally agree with your post above, I must point out one little error.

"Australian denotes a particular culture that is an extension of the culture of the North European Protestant/agnostic people who turned this country from a howling wilderness into one of the best countries in the world to live in."

You forgot the Catholics and particularly the Catholic Irish.

They gave us, among other things, the idea that acceptance of rent was a landlord's acknowledgment of the tenant's right to occupy a property and not an acknowledgment of the landlord's rights over the tenant.

There is a big difference!

Hi Mise.

The reason why the protestant nations of the world rocketed ahead of every other culture was because we were the first people to look for natural laws of nature to explain everyday reality instead of relying entirely on religious ones. For over 100 years, between 1800 and 1900, almost every important technological advance and scientific discovery was made by white protestant men.

The Southern half of Europe was essentially catholic, and it took a hundred years before they even started catching up. They began to catch up because they began to stop thinking like Catholics and instead started thinking like protestants.

The Irish in Australia did contribute to Australia's development and they were easy people to integrate in to the protestant way of thinking. But is was not Catholic culture which defined Australia's progress. As a matter of fact, the catholic church was instrumental in holding back important reforms like equality for women, equal pay for women, divorce, abortion, and birth control.

Today, even Italy has abortion, divorce and birth control. The catholic church's opposition to clerical marriage should be applauded by the whole human race. They have been genetically eradicating religious fanaticism within their own church for over 2000 years and that might have something to do with recent catholic enlightenment.