Ah Lexi, you've answered your own string post query with that list.

Pleased to read such a list, it's only taken a couple of hundred years though.

A test over the next few years will be the acceptance of Afghans and Sudanese as they clamber out of the dead end jobs and rise through the immigrant 'ladder of opportunity' (remember them?).

Did you see the Chinese story on ABC some weeks/months back (was it SBS?) of the Aussie son whose mother was sent back to China all the time, saved only by the war, she was forced to remain here for the 'duration' and finally 'something' changed. Was it the end of the WAP maybe?

True, that was before the murder you kicked off with.

I suppose glacial change is better than none, and for a somnambulunt population better than too rapid.

Our Baptist PM might say that 'we had the balance right' in her effort to offend no one.

Others might be inclined to think... 'this is Oz, what do you expect?'.

Having spent some time in the UK recently, our claims to be 'multi-cultural' here seem to be grandstanding compared to there, but never mind, we are at the back end of the world, or worse, as Keating suggested.

The recent reappearance of Pauline Hanson reminds me that only a decade or so ago, Asians were being targetted in the same way as Muslims are today.

"They won't assimilate, they create racial enclaves, they have no loyalty to Australia, they don't share our values, they are rorting our Social Security systems, they bring in disease, they have a separate sub-culture, they run racially-based crime gangs" and so on.

Like the Europeans and Mediterraneans before them and the Irish and Chinese before that - it's all happened here before but only recently with implied Governmental silent assent.

They were used as a political tool used to attract and placate a noisy xenophobic minority, to scapegoat and to create public dissent.

The only thing that's changed is the target of our distrust.

I have consistently not trusted our politicians wobbles, whatever their background.

Dear Pelly,

Newcomers have always found it difficult, especially if they came from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. I do hope you're right, that in 100 years (maybe sooner) people will be saying what was all the fuss about? It would help though if -
the media would stop focusing on ethnic crime, gangs, and joblessness. I would love to have some Asian posters contribute to this thread with their personal experiences and stories. That would be greatly appreciated. We could all learn something from that.

Dear TBC,

I didn't see the Chinese story on the ABC that you mentioned. As for what changed? Perhaps part of it may have been the end of that racist policy that saw non-white immigation edge up. Don't forget though that
a fierce national debate was sparked in 1984 when the renowed University of Melbourne historian and academic Geoffrey Blainey decried what he believed was a dispoportionately high level of Asian settlers. And also, in 1988, then Opposition Leader (later Prime Minister) John Howard sparked a further debate when he called for the rate of Asian immigration to be slowed for the sake of "social cohesion."

Dear Wobbles,

The only thing that's changed is the target of our distrust? Well it doesn't help when the media and some politicians use fear-mongering as a weapon. And that's nothing new today. Australia's first Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell, supposedly said in 1947, "We have 25 years at most to populate this country before the yellow races are down on us." But then again decades later - the Labor Party, saw immigration as a way to make Australia as dynamic as places like Singapore and Hong Kong. It was "the only tool readily at hand to challenge our complacency, smugness and parochialism," as one Immigration Minister argued.

The only constant is change. And we can only hope that they will keep on changing for the better. But as Pelly said in her post - it's up to all of us working side-by-side to make that happen.

If you think attitudes have changed, then get out of your city comfort zone and come out to the country. There you might wind the clock back 30 years, not 10.

Probably the biggest gripe though is with accents. It is one thing that people in country areas tend to be used to. Most will get past skin colour, but they rarely hear accents, and thus struggle with them, and therefore "write-off" the person/group. I am similar in that respect, particularly when dealing with someone on the phone from a call centre. I've been called "racist" by some of these people I have spoken for asking to speak to someone with an Australian accent (I struggle with strong Euro accents too, so its not a racial thing), however it comes down the the fact that I have limited time, and I need to talk to someone with whom I can get my message across and receive one clearly.

Has Asias's attitude to White immigrants changed?

Oh, that's right. It's only White people that have to be tolerant and inclusive of every ethnicity under the sun.
Let's never bother insisting that these other ethnic peoples be tolerant and inclusive themselves.

Lexi, in 100 years (if we even have a functional society), people will be saying "What the hell were we thinking?!"

"the media would stop focusing on ethnic crime, gangs, and joblessness"
Why should anyone ignore these issues?
Here's another one: at the recent NSW election, informal votes in some districts were *double* the state average. Guess which districts?
But who needs immigrants who can understand English?

At the federal election, there was an Asian electoral *official* who didn't seem to even understand what I was asking her. An OFFICIAL!!

Diversity in the world at large only exists due to *exclusivity*.
No people or culture has been or can be everything.