otb,

You Sir, are only entitled
to speak on your own behalf, not on mine, not on
the behalf of Mr Philip Adams, or any one else.
You can interpret and twist historical facts as
you tend to do, but that does not change what people
actually lived through and experienced first hand.

I'm done arguing with you - and frankly if I wasn't
raised to be polite - I would tell you to blow it out
of your rear end. But of course I won't.

Dear Cody,

I hear what you're telling me - and good for you to
have achieved as much as you have. I also have several
degrees and have travelled the world. We lived and
worked in the United States for a decade.
I am a librarian by profession, my husband is an architect.
I am proud to be an Australian - but am equally proud
of my heritage and will not allow anyone to denigrade
the contribution that migrants have made to this country.
Which I am sure you can appreciate.

See you on another discussion.

Cheers.

otb,

This is a part of the article that was reprinted from
The Age, 12/7/1980, by Phillip Adams - for your
information, These were random thoughts
when asked to speak at a Conberra conference on
"Multi-Culturalism in the Eighties."
He spoke of the times in which he was born and lived in
Australia:

"My birth coincided with that famous multi-cultural evnet.
World War II. Not thay it seemed an urgent threat - for we
lived in perhaps the most remote, ethnocentric, inward-
looking and changless society on Earth. No, not Lhasa in Tibet.
but East Kew in Victoria.

Our family name was Smith and my playmates had names like
John, Peter and David.

So when foreign kids began appearing in the playground at
East Kew State, we stopped chanting "Catholic dogs stink
like frogs," over the fence at the Micks next door and turned
on the enemies among us, yelling "Go back to your own
country, you reffos," in their frightened faces."

And there's more, much more that captures those times -
which you seem hell bent on denying existed.

My parents were consistently told to "Speak English,"
(they spoke 8 languages), I was called "unpronouncable"
and my Mathematics teacher took a great delight in
punching me in the back every time she passed my desk.
Santucary - indeed! And there's much, much, more.
That's not sledging Australians - that's simply stating
the times we lived through and experienced! And I'll be
damned if I'll allow you to deny it ever happened!

Foxy,

As has been pointed out to you on many times before, you don't have to carry that baggage. It is your choice and your monkey on your back to do so.

I must have met thousands of people including families and teachers when going through education from primary school on. I remember some very hard times, coming from farms in remote areas and drought, floods and fires were always present somehow. Almost ever girl and boy I knew attended a State primary and then private boarding school by necessity. There was a high representation of orphans from the common farm, railway (level crossings) accidents and solo war widows from WW2.

There was bullying and tough, uncompromising teachers, the cuts and humiliations. The State schools ere the worst. Some Catholic schools were harsh. At the State primary schools it was not unusual for children to attend with injuries that should have been treated. For example the simple break of an arm, but in those days children were seen as self-healing(!).

I don't know who should apologise for the bad things, but they were shared equally about, although the bullying would have been what was convenient at the time.

For what it is worth I apologise to your and your parents for any insults and insensitivity on ethnic grounds. I witnessed very little of that. I can only assume that it was in what could have been seen as the 'Bogan' suburbs back then.

Frankly, if I was to feel guilty and I do, it is for the many children I knew for whom serious violence at home was usual, but the children, even later, were always at pains to conceal that. What about Wards of the State, where it is only in very recent times that their plight has been recognised. Even though I was a child myself at the time one always wonders about the clues I ought to have picked up on.

There was enough cr@p and harshness in most lives at the time. Maybe you are only seeing what affected you and yours.

otb,

I appreciate your apology.

However, to set the record straight.
I don't carry any baggage as you suggest, nor do I
have a chip on my shoulder - merely responding to
you. As I did in the past. And I'm not seeing this
just from my families point of view. Much has been
written about those times. Catherine Panich from the
University of South Australia wrote the book,
"Sanctuary?Remembering post-war immigration," where
she documented the experiences of migrants. I mentioned
this work to you previously. Also Dr James Jupp,
Australia's authority on immigration did the same in his
book, "From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of
Australian immigration." Neither "sledged Australia or
Australians," and neither did I.

Those were the times that existed then, and the government
policies. It was a time that as Phillip Adams also pointed
out saw homogeneity as not only desirable but mandatory.
And judging from quite a few of the comments on this and
other discussions on this forum some people would have
us return to those times.

I was born in this country and although I am proud of my
ancestry I am also equally proud to be Australian.
My family encompasses British relatives, German, Russian,
Lithuanian, Scottish Swedish, and recently - Chinese.
And I am not alone in seeing -
Australia's cultural diversity as a strength which
makes for a dynamic society. And believing that within a
framework of laws, all Australians have the right to
express their culture and beliefs. They have a right to
be different, to protect their traditions, to remember their
languages.

Undoubtedly there were harshness in most lives at that time.
But it certainly did not help newcomers some of whom had suffered
unbearable circumstances that they were fleeing to build a
new life in a new country to be made to feel so unwelcome.
This is something that we need to also remember and take into
account in the way we deal with asylum-seekers today.

Foxy

I have no intention of apologising to you. I think you are incredibly rude, intolerant and obnoxious to an extreme to automatically assume that because I work in the mining industry I am 'uneducated', 'ignorant', and have only travelled to Bali. That makes about as much sense as me simply assuming you have never had sex because you are a librarian. I think you should take your blinkers off and start looking at people by determining their qaulity, not their qualifications. Some of the smartest people I have ever met have been truck drivers, and some of the stupidest people I have ever met have PhDs. Just because you are erudite and articulate does not mean you are right; it means you are erudite and articulate. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Was Adolph Hitler right?

I, and obviously a great many others, see mass immigration and 'multiculturalism' as huge ponzi scheme with no end in sight. The associated commercial idea that we have to become asianised to be an asset to the growing asian economies has absolutely no logical foundation whatsoever. China would buy our iron ore whether or not we all spoke mandarin. India and Pakistan would be on the brink of nuclear conflict with or without Australian immigration policies. It chills me to the bone to see this country waste money on people such as Dr Tim Soutphommasane who is Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner, according to you. What, exactly, does he do all day? Go to meetings about absolutely nothing, power point presentations, conferences and endless junkets?

Australian unemplyment is rising and immigration rates are increasing? That makes no sense to me. If you owed money would it make sense to you to start spending more? Idiocy.

Hi Cody,

I'm not seeking any apologies from you.
I can only judge you from
your posts as I don't really know you
and your posts are all I've got to go on. I don't judge
people by their qualifications - on the contrary.
Pigs will be pigs - with or without degrees.
Only educated pigs should know better. But it's
a question of their up-bringing I guess.

In any case the art of reasoned, intelligent argument
as I've stated in the past is a skill not easily acquired.
Sound reasoning will conquer unreasonable generalisations
every time. No one likes or supports an abusive, illogical or
weak debater.

Of course we'll all react when the right buttons are pushed
and we might say to ourselves afterward, "Gee, I shouldn't
have said, or maybe I should have said it differently."
Of course it is important to be conscious and compassionate
and act with great civility - but we should not forsake
our own wisdom because we fear that we will lose something.
What's more important? Losing your face, or losing
your integrity?

Many Australian attitudes to immigration and multiculturalism
are strongly engrained and are similar to those in other
receiving countries. Many are suspicious of
immigration and immigrants, according to opinion polling.

It is a responsibility of governments to explain the
realities. For attitudes to change in the future there needs a
greater degree of consensus and bipartisanship.

This
doesn't mean repressing debate - it means simply reasserting
that Australia cannot return to the white British imperial
past nor to the outback Dreamtime of rural romantics.
To maintain its population and productive workforce requires
a level of immigration at least as high as at present. This
will necessarily increase the non-British and non-European
proportion of the population. Governments which, as in the
past, bear the responsibility for immigration also bear the
responsibility for explaining and justifying the social
and economic changes which this brings.

What we need in this country instead of political point
scoring is a more constructive and bupartisan approach to be
developed by our leaders.