Banjo: You won't debate the MC issue any further because, you say, "Both major political have finally woken up to the fact that MC is divisive and they both have dumped it in favour of integration."

Well, we all know that Howard has always been ambivalent about multiculturalism, but the ALP?

Here's Tony Bourke, Shadow Minister for Immigration, Integration & Citizenship, in a Speech to the Fabian Society, December 2006 (http://www.alp.org.au/media/1206/spe220.php)

On integration: “What John Howard’s done in recent months is take a word that was always part of our lexicon and tried to redefine it as a synonym for assimilation. I’ve no intention of conceding that term. I think it is fundamental for us that we do not allow the original vision of the multicultural society to be redrawn as though it was about people living in cocoons. …the Government … have been talking about integration as though integration and multiculturalism are mutually exclusive. This is wrong.”

And Lawrie Ferguson in a speech to the Fabian Society, March 2007 (http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/l_ferguson_victorian_fabian_society1.pdf)

“I have had the opportunity to meet ministers, parliamentary committee members and public servants engaged in these issues in at least fifteen European nations over my time at Parliament. Rather than seeing Australia as a failure they consistently seek to emulate us, to learn from us. Their own inability and historical unwillingness to construct proper settlement assistance and the growth of huge urban reservoirs of deprived, excluded people are evident. Germany awoke a few years ago to find it had sunk in European wide educational test comparisons, exactly because of the substandard educational services provided to its inner city Turkish and Kurdish enclaves.

“It is not as though multiculturalism and its delivery of services is unnecessary. There are crying needs.

“A total pre-occupation with integration rather than seeing it as the outcome of a sustained multicultural society is a recipe for those cocooned from these daily experiences."

Doesn't sound like the funeral is over yet, Banjo.

FrankGol said: "To assert that "Only an authoritarian state could survive such a massive, Balkanizing demographic transformation of that magnitude" is scaremongering."

Few nations have ever held together without a cultural or ethnic majority. The regimes which did succeed were widely despised authoritarian governments, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Yet, most multiculturalists fail to comprehend this, as they are either ignorant of history, or presumptuous enough to believe that it simply doesn't matter.

Banjo said: "MC does threaten mainstream culture. Each time we accomodate another aspect of some foreign culture, we compromise our own culture. Ours is unique in the world, we cannot go to some foreign country and reserect it. Those promoting MC deliberately belittled our culture."

The multiculturalists defend what is happening by using the guilt card: they tell Australians that their European forefathers colonised Australia and displaced the Aboriginal population, so what is wrong with large, ethnocentric migrant groups doing the same to us? In other words, they tell Australians that in order to make up for past guilt, Australians must meekly accept this resurrected colonialism. Those who oppose are racist bigots standing in the way of social progress.

"Well, we all know that Howard has always been ambivalent about multiculturalism, but the ALP?"

The ALP's obstinate support for multiculturalism simply demonstrates that it still hasn't got the message. Why was Paul Keating's "Big Picture" agenda so overwhelming rejected back in 1996? Why did so much of One Nation's support base derive from disgruntled ex-Labor voters? Why has Mr. Howard been able to court the "Aussie battlers" for over a decade? Maybe it's because the ALP's "progressive" agenda is not supported by the majority of Australians.

The ALP should return to its working class origins and take seriously the values and desires of the vast majority of Australians. Leave the liberal "progressive" agenda to political fringe dwellers like the Democrats.

FrankGol,
Would not expect you to believe me. You will be the last to be convinced of the failure of MC. Get an update on what Kevin Rudd has said. Both Howard and Rudd have spoken about droping the name, but that is just to appease the diehards of both parties. Wait and see after the election.

Oligarch offers a ‘history’ lesson for those ‘multiculturalists’ who, he says, are ‘ignorant of history’.

History according to Oligarch: “Few nations have ever held together without a cultural or ethnic majority. The regimes which did succeed were widely despised authoritarian governments, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”

Awkward facts:
1. The Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918) was not a multicultural society but a dual-monarchy, multi-national empire that fell apart not because of a ‘despised authoritarian government’ but because it was shattered by the Allies in World War 1.
2. The Empire could hardly be said to have succeeded because it was constantly wracked by disputes among the eleven principal national groups.
3. The failed Empire can hardly be compared with multicultural Australia – it had two distinct parliaments each with a prime minister plus a monarch who thought he had absolute power but who was caught up in a maze of overlapping, competing and inefficient ruling groups.
4. Unlike Australia with its dominant use of English in parliaments, education, media and other forms of public life, the Empire endorsed all the existing languages as equal and there were constant disputes in public institutions. It was chaotic.

So much for nineteenth-century history.

Now to contemporary Australia. According to Oligarch, multiculturalists “tell Australians that their European forefathers colonised Australia and displaced the Aboriginal population, so what is wrong with large, ethnocentric migrant groups doing the same to us?”

Funny thing, but as someone who has supported multiculturalism for decades, I’ve never heard anyone advocating that. Perhaps I live in another part of the Empire.

Now I wonder - which of my Australian friends of Greek, or Italian, or Vietnamese or Arabic origin will colonise Australia first?

As for the ALP and multiculturalism, who am I to believe? Oligarch, who says that the ALP are obstinate in their support for multiculturalism? Or Banjo, who, finger tapping knowing nose, tells us all will be revealed after the election? Or the ALP spokesmen, whose speeches are on the ALP website?

Excuse me, Spider, considering your “Australian's never wanted this farce upon called, "multiculturalism" and are waking up to making themselves heard against the left wing ideology of his mantra” is wondering at all this for instance Scottish, Wallis, Irish, English, Anglican and Catholic traditions flourishing around. Which AUSTRALIANs -in such context ?

Dronkey, dominant majority of migrants contributes to this country passively with their very presence creating work places for “Work Future” and similar enterprises well existing on the government’s handovers, employing the mates allowed being employed on paid positions in Australia.

This is a pool of out-of-a-shadow–of-even–Howard’s-IR cheap laborers depressing an income of already residing locals and increasing benefits of fat cats eating out government subsidies-money borrowed overseas in different forms already, either on corporate or personal income levels.

Yvonne, you were already explained somewhere on these pages that you are “an appendix to Australians”.

Aqvarivs, the liberals jumped nowhere-they simply transformed traditional for Britons segregation and apartheid in accordance with then political world reality.

“Australia is no longer inhabited by Australians” – guten tog, Oligarch. Australia has never ever been inhabited by Australians because there was never ever such a tribe on a globe but some attempt to colonize post-US-1776 southern hemisphere with white rubbish of England.

Boaz_David, sharing your attitude to pro-islamists must say, that an Aussie you want to deport bad not because he is Arab/Muslim, but because he is a religious bigot - anti-Semite. Starting deportation, how many should be allowed staying in this country then?

FrankGol, correct me, if I was mistaken, but your idea is a cattle might be used to boil water or to brew a beer-no stuff to blame -blame a staff!