I agree with Tony Kevin's last post. David is bad enough when he just sprouts the Bible as an argument, but his rants about Bob Brown in particular, and homosexuality in general, are just totally beyond the pale.
I am a Green heterosexual. Most Greens that I know are hetoresexual but really their sexuality is of no relevance. I can guarantee that all political parties include homosexuals as do other institutions such as churches and the defence forces. So what?

David, go and have a cold shower and clear your horrible mind.

Thanks a lot Tony Kevin for your bold-inspiring, awesome honesty emancipation in depicting wrongs with the hijacked regime on the Capital Hill. With the far reaching repercussions on the global arena and collateral ravage fallout on the besieged moral folks downunder. Evidently as an increasingly conniving culture of pathological deceit attached itself to what passes for political ideologies expediency. To use term "ideology" is gilding the lily, for it appears that the devious standard, is to be loose with the truth. Set to mislead, to misrepresent and generally try to delude any naive and docile fools.

Courtesy of lingered colonialist relics within the bloody diabolical sphere, under global echelon's hegemony. Noted for the Zionist get-square-mentality, the actions of which are in a stark contrast with the civil society moral-tenets. Where the way to handle a Jew dissident who laid a glove on the Zionist establishment, was to get such a dissenter back with even a harder right. Leaving thus a bloody trail of the Zionist henchmen hit innocent Jew victims.

Culminating in the heinous foul-play consequences for the next-of-kin quite often. So one wonders, as your mother (with all the respect) must have died tragically in 1971, followed by your grandmother. Three years after your father's untimely death in 1968, aged 59. Who without any doubt was born Jewish of the middle class Irish Catholic stock. I feel your pain Tony, within your recollections ..."I floated uneasily between my father's and my mother's very different worlds".

"I envied the easy Australian-ness and simple happiness of life in Sydney's burgeoning red-brick suburbs. I wanted desperately to be like my Australian (father's side) cousins in Lane Cove, and the well-mannered Australian families in Canberra"... So typical youngster's anxiety in the circumstances, not realising that his father camouflaged himself as much as others on the Capital Hill.

"I was brought up Catholic, embarrassed by my rich European-Jewish heritage and tried to play it down"..."I was determined to learn no German, though I heard it at home all the time"... So typical for youngster, who having friends around, while parents spoke German/Yiddish ... http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4513#55539

• Tony Kevin ..."I grew up in a small flat in Sydney's Elizabeth Bay. It was then a safe haven for European refugees and World War II displaced persons - some, but not all, Jewish. It was a place of culture and civility, but also of sadness and prudent silences. The people washed up here from Europe had much they wanted to forget, of great evils done to them or by them"... Tantamount to Zion-Nazi Kapos taken-up residence alongside the genuine Jew refugees. Escaping Zionist instigated calamity as the means to uproot Jew-lesser brethren of Europe to Palestine.

• Marilyn Shepherd ..."The people who were Nazis (people proved to have put Jews into gas chambers), were imported to Australia as migrants from 1945 onward, while the Jews who were refugees from the Nazis were ordered back to Germany by the whole 'civilized world' in 1938"..."Add to that the fact that we invited over 700 known Nazis to live here after the war"..."In 2002 Australia continued on it's shameful treatment of Jewish refugees when the department decided that even though a family of Russian Jews were refugees they should have gone to Israel. The High court ruled 7-0 that the idea was utterly ludicrous and they rightly got to stay. Kirby pointed out that the convention was written because of what the world allowed to happen to the Jews"... http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4782#52291

• Tony Kevin ..."I had finally shed or suppressed my background"..."I was determined to live as a normal Australian, and I did. Over the next two decades, my patriotism remained complacent and uncritical"... In reflection on a fleeting escapism from the immense burden, but Tony's life never meant to be easy ..."The death of my beloved second wife Jennifer in 1989, from an unforeseen brain tumour, fractured a till-then unruffled-life. There followed a long grieving, shading into my postings as ambassador to Poland (1991-94) and Cambodia (1994-97). In those years I began to face issues suppressed for most of my life, about myself and my country"..."I realise now that, though born here, I was in spirit one of ... immigrant kids".

part1.
Well, well, well, here I was expecting some relevant article about Australia and all I get is an epic missive from Tony Kevin which should have been titled… “Self delusion - My life so far…” Seems to me you’ve had problems all your life Tony and still do.
Looks to me you spend too much time these days in some rarefied atmosphere, navel gazing and looking at a half empty glass.
“I grew up in a small flat in Sydney’s Elizabeth Bay. It was then a safe haven for European refugees” “It was a place of culture and civility,”
It was a place created by Australians who hadn’t even heard of Multiculturalism.
“I floated uneasily between my father’s and my mother’s very different worlds.”
Little wonder then that people not born in your situation also have problems with the multicultural situation. Perhaps you should grant them a “fair go” for a change.
“I envied the easy Australian-ness and simple happiness of life in Sydney’s burgeoning redbrick suburbs. I wanted desperately to be like my Australian (father’s side) cousins in Lane Cove, and the well-mannered Australian families in Canberra to whose homes my father took me on visits during my holiday times with him.”
Which is what those opposed to multiculturalism, those you disparage these days, wish to preserve.

part 2.
“I was well-educated, cultured even, but would have resisted any description of myself as an intellectual or as multicultural. I was determined to live as a normal Australian, and I did.”
Really? Good for you. So why do you suppose dissenters to “M” are less cultured or intelligent than you? Why do you suppose they want to also live as “normal” Australians?
“I was only marginally aware of how rapidly we were becoming a multicultural society: my Australia was still the Australia of the Qantas ads, Anglo-Celtic, fresh-faced, squeaky clean, and by choice I was shutting much out. It was a time still of general public optimism and widening of cultural horizons, of a sense that anything was possible for Australia. To me, we were still, without question, the best country in the world.”
We still are and still can be. Multiculturalism was silently, foisted upon us, uncalled for and unwarranted. But we need to end the rot before it is too late.
“We were entering the world of “whatever it takes”, and the old simplicities and decencies of Anglo-Celtic Australia were starting to fray at the edges.” Really? Yet today you disparage the Anglo-Celtic Australia.
“It was a very different place, especially after the 1996 Coalition victory, from the Australia I had grown up in and believed I was representing all those years.”
Is this your real problem? Just what was your voting pattern Tony? Been voting labor all your life? Why is this election the truning point? Hmmm.
“Our socio-economic elites were no longer standard-setters - they were no better or wiser, simply richer and more cynical.”
Got news for you elitist Tony… they never have been

I wasn't going to comment further here, but a couple of recent posts I must respond to for completeness. Leo Braun, thanks for your empathy. One mistaken assumption: my father was of 100% Irish Catholic background - the Kevin family comes from County Armagh and has been in Australia since the 1850s. If my life is interesting, part of its interest is that I am divided equally between a Celtic-based “native Australian” and a Central European Jewish “immigrant” background. So –like many Australians - I can look through the multiculturalism window from both sides.

T800, your attempts to score debating points off my text were fairly pathetic. Truth is complex. Mostly I’ll let my piece stand. A few general things: I don’t think Australian Anglo-Celtic society in the 1950s and 1960s was corrupt. It was maybe a bit narrow-minded, but basically a decent place - and welcoming to immigrants and refugees once it got to know them. The political corruption that came in from the 1980s under Hawke, subsequently perfected under Howard, was not the fault of immigrants. It grew up for various reasons that would need a book to explore: the growth of greedy materialism, the corrosive impact of the Vietnam war, loss of faith and family values … We can’t go back to the old Australia of “Blue Hills” though some of us look back on it with deserved affection. We certainly won’t go back there by being abusive to people of immigrant background, e,g. asking them offensively if they plan to bring up their children as “Chinese” Australians or as “Australians” of Chinese ancestry ( whatever those quotation marks are supposed to mean to the writer). (part 1 of 2