Sneeky...... the 'Pacific' Solution is indeed a silly response to the problem of adventurous assylum seekers.

The far better one is the Christmas Island reception and processing centre.

I have more respect for a 'hard line' decision about border protection when it does not look like just a 'knee jerk' response to keep Nauru on side.
I don't believe there is any 'racism' in the Pacific solution, its just cheap political reactionism.

SHAYNE....

if 'we' give you the sheep jokes.. go one better "Oh look.. an Aussie car bouncing along the track, it has 'skippy' printed on its back." :)

Don't worry.. first generation of Kiwis will get a bit of stirring from us.. each time I hear a Kiwi Accent from a call centre I say "Yikes..anOTHER one" then usually have a bit of warm hearted banter about the coming invasion :)

Shayne,

You are quiet right about some Australians not wanting to let newcomers fit in. We do have too many Kath and Kym types who are plain bloody ignorant.

I don't know why they aren't used to Kiwis by now, though. There are more of you here than there are in New Zealand :). The only time I've been to NZ, I was told by a woman that she was surprised to find that I was "quite nice", for an Australian! Others wanted to argue about rugby with me. Fortunately, I live in SA where we don't even know what the game is.

Did you see John Clarke walking through a flock of sheep, saying:"These are not members of my direct family, but I know them all pretty well"?

Australia's immigration program is based on benefits to a minority of affluent Australians in a system that approaches ancient FEUDALISM:

*Polititions benefit through captive-votes, ethnic-enclave-gerrymanders(the Lakemba factor), and that most iniquitous Coalition-GST-bonus growth from expanding immigration.

*Property developers, gambling-magnates and bulk market businesses who rely on increasingly wealthy but grid-locked&violent populations to buy,buy,buy and make businesses wealthier and monopolistic (media&telcos&developers&casinos are out-of-control)

Australian citizens "have never-been-better-off" cries John Howard. But he conveniently forgets the other reality "But Australian citizens have never been more grid-locked, stressed and violent towards one another". Anti-immigration sentiments are real &have NOTHING to do with Racism. Perceived Government-immigration-corruption is a much-deeper-problem. This is why Howard is finished.

The final insult? Immigrants are chosen on wealth under Howard and they are increasingly heard voicing the opinion that "Aussies(skips) are lazy and deserve to lose their country and their rights". "We have most of the elected officials now in local and state government and soon in Canberra". Stand round any second barbecue in Backyard-Sydney and you'll hear this. Its TREASON not racism.

Now there are some 2billion immigrants around-the-globe. That migrants coming here believe they are "better" is ridiculous. That migrants believe they ARE "better" than existing Australians is simply pompous. However, as PEAKOIL approaches, we shouldn't blame them. Our leaders and business elites stupidly&corruptly support that attitude in-return-for handfuls of GST-silver and votes.

*We need to cripple anti-Australian institutions like the BANk that made $4.5billion and raised rates.

*We need European-style-leaders. Italians&Greeks have failed. Get French&Germans who use immigrant labour, keep the good ones and then send the rest back a bit wiser and wealthier. That's how you get RESPECT in a nation. Multiculturalism itself, isn't enough.

Just imagine how weak and dysfunctional-Japan would be today if it rebuked prior-rights and fostered a corrupt, ungrateful Australian multiculturalism. I can hear Japanese now "ah-so she'all be a righta maite" as they get kicked out. A better Japan? Bulla-de-Sh$t!

The current namby-pamby immigration-program is full of ingratitude&ineffiiency&corruption and is already showing signs of blowing up in our faces the same way it already has in Howard's.

Nauseating.

Ah, the magical potion, multiculturalism, which will create a wonderful society with no problems!
Let's all hold hands and sing together.
It's a *fairytale*!

Unfortunately, we won't live happily ever after.
Thousands will die in the streets.

If Australians weren't so easygoing, it would have already happened by now (Cronulla is a taste of things to come).
If we were a more passionate people, there'd already be heads on spikes.

I'm not saying that's a *good* thing, just an inevitable consequence of human nature.

The fact that Savvas Tzionis clings so tenaciously to his ethnic identity should alert him and others that Australians have every intent of doing the same.

We will not allow *our* identity to be bulldozed out of the way, so a "newer, better, 50% more" identity can replace it.

Cultures and identities aren't just products on a supermarket shelf.

"Try new Australia. Now with extra Exotica! Mmmm, yummy!"

Don't you just love the word games:
"Multiculturalism" is interchanged with "cultural diversity".
Like they're synonyms.

*All* societies have cultural diversity.
They have doctors, violinists, football players, architects.
They aren't all doing the *same thing*, are they?
But this *internal* diversity is all related somehow, organically, voluntarily.

Even *contrarian* cultural phenomena like Beatniks or Punks, are an organic *internal* cultural development.
Not something imported from elsewhere.

"Multiculturalism" pretends the diversity *exterior* to our culture is on the same level as the diversity *interior* to our culture.
These are two very different things, but are treated interchangeably.

Multiculturalists also ignore that internal diversity is the result of the free choice of the existing citizenry.
"Multiculturalism" is not.
It's an involuntary, unrelated "diversity", which the local citizenry is not even permitted to question or challenge, without being branded racists and xenophobes.

The alternative to Multiculturalism isn't Monoculture.
It's genuine *internal* cultural diversity (even the contrarian stuff).
Freely chosen by Australian citizens, not forced upon them by the perpetual immigration of millions of people from other cultures.

If Australians *wanted* migrants from Lithuania, that's fine.
But we haven't even been *asked*!
And there's no room left anyway!

Boaz, leading with your chin again.

>>You can always tell when 'The Empire' is speaking...because they feel they know 'us' better than 'we' do.<<

As a Scot you should be more than familiar with these lines from your national poet:

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notion"

I have been here for more than a quarter of a century, which gives me two advantages when it comes to offering an opinion on the absence of a monoculture in Australia.

1. I was raised in an environment where culture is a very observable concept. Whether it manifests itself in the attitude of Britons to royalty, or in their attitude towards their cricket team, or simply in the simultaneous existence of, and slow destruction of, the caste system that led the country for some five hundred years, it is palpable from your first day at school.

2. While assimilating its culture, whether consciously or subconsciously, it was at all times crystal clear that there never has been, and never will be, a static, permanent definition of what is "British Culture". As a nation, it has always been an amalgam of imported ideas and ways of life, back into the earliest days of its recorded history.

As is the case in Australia.

This has nothing to do with "Empire". In fact, the "Empire" attitude of command-and-control is far more prevalent in Australia than anywhere else, even Britain. The bureaucracy here is as full of pompous mandarins as India. Our railways are as impervious to improvement as Colombia's. And our politicians cling to power like a bunch of Musharrafs.

You have yourself tried on a number of occasions on this forum - and failed - to squeeze from your fellow-citizens a definition of Australian-ness that they can all agree upon.

>>Pericles.. your little blurb is outright insulting and grossly offensive to a whole LOT of Aussies<<

I doubt it. A few might knee-jerk a response, but those who think for themselves know the reality.

The author writes: "Cohesion, sometimes a proxy word for assimilation, has been bothering Australian conservatives for some time..."

The diversity worshipers within academia never tire of chanting the mantra that multicultural diversity is somehow a strength for our society. But this mantra has no basis in reality.

History has demonstrated time and again that diversity is a curse for a nation. One of the most significant events of the late 20th Century was the complete disintegration of large multi-ethnic, multi-cultural countries, most notably the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the subsequent emergence of small homogeneous nations. Even Mr. Jakubowicz's ancestral Poland has moved towards greater homogeneity, expelling all those ethnic Germans from Silesia and elsewhere after WWII and encouraging the emigration of Jews during the Communist era.

Mr. Jakubowicz really shouldn't rhapsodize about diversity so much, especially at a time when many Australians are wondering if their nation has swallowed more ethnic and cultural diversity than it can ever hope to digest. Common sense seems to dictate that if diversity continues to expand without limits, then sooner or later the nation in question will become dysfunctional. That's because the basis for any successful nation is a common language, history, culture, ancestry, and values, which creates a community sufficiently cohesive enough to work together for the common good. As soon as diversity expands beyond its natural limits, the nation will experience symptoms such as the development of parallel communities, incompatible worldviews, conflicting value systems, and so forth.

Tragically enough, we are already experiencing the dangerous trend towards balkanisation here in Australia. No wonder conservatives are bothered. They argued that assimilation should be the prerequisite for accepting immigrants and that if immigrants didn't assimilate, they shouldn't come. But the multiculturalists killed assimilation and replaced it with their own utopian vision. In the new 'multicultural' Australia, immigrants are encouraged to try to change their new country to suit their own preferences - their own culture and language - and that anyone who argues against this form of reverse colonisation is considered deserving of character assassination.

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