When I first read this article in the Australian on Friday I was confussed as to why the opinion of such a paranoid rascist bigot would be printed.

Maybe its because John Stone's views are extreme and the Australian was presenting polarised opinons on the topic of multicultrilism and immigration.

Sadly after reading the letters to the editor and the comments on this site I am reminded that Australia is a xenophobic society.

The only thing more embarassing for Australia than having politicians like John Stone is haveing politicians that fail to rebuke such rascism and infact fan such sentiment for electoral opportunistic gain

Why do people like Tieran cling so much to their racist comfort blanket? So they can label all opinions averse to theirs as racist?

These Islam Facists are not small in number and it won't take much to push the moderates over the edge.This is not about race ,but a belief system that will destroy everything our democracy stands for.

It is a fragmented and confused belief system that has been hijacked by those who seek power in the name of a god.

Do we want to take our civilisation back 600 yrs?While I think many other cultures have added much to our country our language of English represents the dominant culture and should be spoken well by all.

Those who don't speak English well get marginalised both socially and economically and are thus easy prey for nutter extremists.

While I don't agree with his attack on SBS, much of what he says is just simply facing realities.Just because we reject a particular philosophy;does that make us racist?I fear his critics will have to face more home truths in the near future.

While some of John Stone's suggestions did seem a little simplistic and anti-Muslim an objective reader would not have interpreted the author as racist. Tieran's vitriolic response reveals more about Tieran than about John Stone. Methinks Tieran protests too much. I wonder if she is merely trying to deflect attention from her own racist tendencies. I believe that many Australians who are quick to label a fellow Australian as racist are simply perpetuating a despicable calumny as a shield to hide (from themselves and others) what is within. If Australians are to be embarrassed about anything it is the tendency of many to not respect their fellow Australians and their Australian culture. It is not racist to discuss issues relating to the possible problems of multiculturalism. It is not racist to have an opinion on what might be best for your country.

John Stone's first point was that 'official multiculturalism policies must be abandoned outright' but I wonder if the real issue is the 'how' of multiculturalism. Perhaps the Australian government needs to look at better ways of establishing multiculturalism

New arrivals are probably engulfed in a whirlpool of confusion and misunderstanding in the initial stage. It is incumbent on a government that invites people from other countries to settle here to make it as easy as possible for them.

Of course there are people in our society who are intolerant of other races but I believe many misunderstandings, quickly denounced as racist by the media and the bleeding hearts, are in fact simply misunderstandings.

swag

The great irony here is that of all the ethnic groups to come to Australia over 30 years of multiculturalism it is the Iraqi Muslims who have demonstrated the most encouraging propensity to get out of the cities and into mainstream rural communities. The Iraqi presence in the Murray Valley towns has provided an important source of farm labour to a sector that has been very poorly serviced by the immigration intake in the past.

And good Christians are quietly discovering that a sober, family oriented Muslim who actually wants to work on a farm, makes a far better neighbour than a 3rd generation anglo/aust feral with a substance problem and a predatory green ideology that has minimal room for fact or honesty.

The urban media has made maximum use of the Hansonite phenomena to demonise our rural minority as racist. It is a message that has been readily accepted by urban migrants, many of whom have come from cultures with an appaling record of systematic discrimination against their rural communities. This has not been helped by a migrant selection process that is heavily weighted in favour of urban applicants.

Yet, all over the countryside one can meet families of Italian, Greek and Baltic background who have always felt accepted as part of the local community. Many will tell you that the only time they have ever been called a "wog" was on a visit to the city.

The fact is, the rural community has had very good reasons for distrusting multicultural policies because the benefits of immigration have concentrated in the places where migrants have settled, the cities. There has been minimal economic "trickle down" and the number of new arrivals has substantially eroded the political power of the bush.

And the bush is now confronted by an urban electorate that has imported some very unhealthy attitudes to rural people compounded by a level of ignorance of rural issues that has been easily exacerbated by predatory green propaganda. Terrorism is an urban problem, keep your hands off "our" Muslims.

Yes there is a problem with an ethnocentric Australian public T.V station but it is not SBS. It is the ABC or dear old Auntie as some like to refer to it. It’s seems part of a quest to enshrine this station as an Australian baby BBC. What would a post colonial nation of 20 million people really know about defining their own identity anyway.

The ABC constantly fills it slots with second rate British swill. Plenty of good stuff comes out of the U.K but a lot it is pretty drab. If you watched the channel through the 80’s there was a good chance you may not have been aware there was any female British actors other than Penelope Keith.

SBS is hardly a big drain on the public purse and I don’t think it utterly compromised by advertising.

Programs like insight and dateline do a good job on fractional budgets of ABC equivalents.

SBS seems to have innovative and entrepreneur qualities that ABC lovers so detest. No wonder they want to role it over to make another ABC station. After all the BBC has two main channels gosh Australia better follow.

South Park may not be everyone’s idea of quality TV but not all of us want to sit down to yet another show about a murder in the English countryside. Give me the iron chef any day.

SBS does not enshrine insularity on the country it provides resources for us to be more aware of the rest of the planet, something that may actually be helpful if we want to address our trade deficit.

Hmmmm... I find it upsetting, to see all the hate and fear that has been paraded about as "debate" in the last few weeks. Of course these have been with us forever, but the horrible events in the UK and beyond, seems to be used as an excuse to air such rubbish. As one respondant pointed out; Captain Cook wasn't applying for visas when he and his crew arrived on our Eastern Shores. As a consequence, I have never been able to understand what people are on about when they say "Australian Culture should be protected" by keeping out anyone who can't speak English. Migrants do learn English, suprise suprise. Their kids go to school and learn English.... and so what if people want to hang on to their culture. For crying out loud, being from an Anglo/ Celtic Christain background, my family still have a Turkey at Christmas, for example. HELLO! Is that Australian? Is Christianity Australian? I seem to remember learning about Jesus & the Twelve Apostles, not Jesus and the First XI. (Mind you cricket's and English game anyways) Did anyone make any noise about Timmy McVie's Christianity when he set off a bomb? I don't know what some people are thinking at the moment. Well I'm off to get a Thai Green Curry and maybe a Fallafel later on... Cheers.