In regards to the poll on channel 9 to which the article refers, the figures aren't as worrying as they appear due to the fact that the poll was swamped with calls from a right-wing anti-immigration group (whose name escapes me at the moment). Nonetheless, there remains a disturbing amount of agreement with the hypocritical bile of Andrew Fraser and his comtemporaries.

Tim.

Greetings from New Jersey, USA.

Consider, in my view, the ultimate step...

Reverence

All the best.

I guess, according to this article, that when something new is placed into our cultural environment we should work on our acceptance:

So when we are having something hard, sharp, damaging and painfull shoved unceasingly up our collective cultural fundament, we should just learn to accept the torture knowing that somehow we will be enriched by the experience?

("God grant me the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference")

By the way, stuff soccer. I would have prefered the nominal Australian team (who all actually play for European clubs) to have lost both games 10 nil.

And Australia is not a mulicultural country by any realistic measure: We have people from different countries living here, but that doesn't make the place multi-cultural.

And playing with statistics:

The article states: "Contrary to claims by some, this is not just an Anglo-Celtic versus-the-rest problem. Australia is truly a multicultural society. According to the 2001 Census, 23 per cent of Australians were born overseas. An additional 20 per cent had at least one parent born overseas."

Lets put that another way: 23% were born overseas. An Additional 77% had at least one parent born in Australia, and 57% of people had both parents born in Australia. It sounds a bit different doesn't it?

So only 23%% were 'alien', but how many were born in basically Western liberal democratic cultures? Lets assume about half of that (but probably more): so, only 11% or so of people were born overseas from cultures of possibily some significant difference to the Australian culture of Western liberal democracy.

In other words, the so called ethnic component is much smaller than the 43% alluded to in the article.

So, should the rest of us still accept one tenth of the population shoving something hard, painful and dangerous into our collective cultural fundament?

Dear Hamlet
I must say I'm kinda warming to your newfound passion :)

On that '23% born overseas' stat.... if I'm not mistaken, the largest component of those were actually Anglos, which also changes the significance of the stat completely. I had a look at the ABS breakdown of people by place of birth of parents etc.. and it seems to stack up as I stated above.

Ed Rosenberg... c'mon 'cobber'... you can do much better than a couple of lines... give us some reasoning and further explanatio of what you mean.
I question the idea of 'reverence' of any culture (including our own) because they are simply human responses to our environment. This means that different groups will have different responses, some of which may be diametrically opposed and in conflict. At that point, a prevailing or dominant culture must decide which aspects of the new to accept. (if any)

Last night at my gym, I had a long chat with a Bosnian Muslim guy about this very matter. He had lost 17 of his own family during the war there. We discussed 'culture' and assimilation.

At first he said "We should look at new cultures and take the best, and reject the worst" , and he used the example of food, like Kebabs (from the Greek food tradition) and I said..sure.. if we like Kebabs, and he makes them, we can eat them, but we sure don't wan't some Greek ramming Kebabs down our throats.

He agreed. When I made the point that rather than we being expected to just 'accept' the culture of someone migrating here, we should inform them first of 'how we operate' here and they should decide if they are happy to come under those circumstances, he again agreed.

So, people are free within reason to practice their own culture here, but not to tell us we should accept it just because it's theirs or more seriously, 'adopt' it.

BD - has the Christmas break given you a new found acceptance?

To state the bleeding obvious: Of course we stand to gain by accepting the best that other cultures have to offer and reject the worst. In many cases "rejecting the worst" is why many people have immigrated to Australia.

And, equally, no one should be forcing their ways or beliefs down our throats. With this in mind, I am sure you will refrain from carping on about your version of religion in future.

Cheers