Yes, people should assimilate, especially religous fundamentalists.. Australia is a secular country, and should stay that way.

warri warru, we agree on a good many things judging by your posts but in 1788 over 1000 British people landed on your shores that didn't want to be here any more than your ancestors wanted them here. I am an ancestor of these people and it is now my home as well. We would, no doubt, argue on the merits of my Indigeneity but, as I see it, this is my home, physically and spiritually. The passage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples since European arrival has been one of which Australia, as a nation, cannot be proud but do not underestimate the support within the community for conscious change.
Brazuka, you support many of warri warru's concerns by illuminating the fact that successive governments applied policies that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had no input into. That is the one glaring omission in your posting: The Aboriginal peoples were never asked and it doesn't matter if it was 200 years or 10, the damage was progressive and relentless. The Aboriginal peoples have never had the chance to "get over it". That there are people living among us today that were taken from their families, without regard, makes it an issue in our lifetime. I suggest that your view of past events becomes a little less selective and your opinion of current issues become a little more broadly informed.
To tell Aboriginal peoples that the destruction of their cultures and the subsequent contemporary issues within and without their communities is an irrelevancy elevates their issues even further. In one posting you have succeeded in validating warri warru's concerns to a greater degree than he ever could.

Hello hello what's all this Judeo Christian herritage all about. The only book I've ever read from the Hebrew lineage is ...The Bible.

Anybody ever heard of Socretes, Plato, Sophocles, Homer, Aristophanes, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Archimedes, Ptolmny etc etc etc.

Greeks to a man. And the nature and character of Western civilisation probably owes them as much as it owes a little known bloke from Bethelem...

This is a country with a rapidly aging population, thus we need skilled migrants. How are we going to attract them without multiculturalism (here defined as a policy of encouraging respect, not just tolerance, for other cultures)? A lot of people associate themselves with their ethnic identity very strongly. Asking them to abandon something that is a part of the personal identity is like asking them to assimilate into the borg.

Craig Blanche, complaining that the Aboriginals were subjected to government policies without their imput doesn't make sense. I mean, what could they have suggested? In order for them to make any meaningful or informed recommendations, they would have to step out of their worldview and into that of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Otherwise anything the government came to them to suggest wouldn't make sense. Imagine Noel Pearson making the reasoned and informed recommendations he's making now without being able to speak English, or without having imbued the Judeo-Christian tradition through the educational establishment as well as his law degree. Imagine him wandering out from the dessert, unannounced (no strict concept of time), almost naked, his only posession a stick, and expecting him to be able to comminicate with the government, understand the options available, make reasoned and informed contributions and so forth. If he wanted to speak of his rights, he would first have to borrow the Judeo-Christian presuppositions that are the foundation for the rights edifice. As to whether he could speak for "his people" is another thing. Would he have been elected? Would "his people" have had a concept of democracy in the first place from which to derive the concept of election and representation? Would the women have been allowed to vote for him? If he wasn't elected, would the patriarchal authority his representation is based on be acceptable to the feminists in the government, etc?

And so on and so forth. In order to be anti-Western, you have to borrow the principles that stem from its Judeo-Christian heritage. You're being schizophrenic.

The recent events that have been portrayed by our media sources have stirred the ugly head of labelling "Freedom of speech" and "patriotism" with "Racist" and the "Multicultural card".

Danny is not the "first dark skinned Australian citizen" that has the same concerns and observations of "white skinned Australian citizens".

I was told once by a dark skinned Australian, that he had observed the protests in our detention centres. He observed those who were on the top of the building holding iron bars. He pointed out the way they held them across their bodies were the same way a soldier in their country hold their rifles.

Immigrants who have settled in Australia for a better, safer life for themselves and families should be very concerned along with Australian patriots, that the word "tolerance" will be thrown back in our faces when the tolerated no longer tolerate us.

The more legislation and laws we change to protect and empower Australia to unite, have only served to gag debate and communications of communities about issues that concern their daily lives.

It has created a fear and a fear of association that can now result in a jail term.

For those who have come to Australia with no intentions of intergrating, our governments and institutes have now provided them with the law of discrimination and vilification.

You would have thought that Australia would learn by overseas examples of instabilities but in our governments thrust to dilute in the name of Globalisation and economical rationalisation, they have forgotten they are dealing with human beings.