Dear Banjo,

You keep on. The big lie of 'Unity in Diversity'. What big lie? It's unity in some aspects and diversity in other aspects. If you were concerned about big lies how about admitting that your statement, "When MC was forced upon us, the immigrants were told they could carry on just like in the old country and it was up to us to adapt to their ways." is simply false?

Multiculturalism is a government policy that many Australians support. There has been no pressure on other Australians to adapt to the ways of immigrants. No immigrant group has been told they can carry on just like in the old country. There are three lies in your statement. The lies support your appeal to fear and hate. Stop lying.

In Australia we have a much bigger range of foods due to immigrants of non-English backgrounds. I appreciate going to Chinese, Turkish, German, Japanese, Italian, French and the other restaurants generally opened by people with those backgrounds. We buy foods of various ethnic origins. Occasionally we go to concerts put on by BEMAC (Brisbane ethnic music, art and culture). Being hard of hearing I prefer movies with subtitles. Those movies are generally non-English speaking. I appreciate those manifestations of multiculturalism. I also welcome the many contacts I have made with people from cultures different from mine. I write an occasional book review for the Journal of Asian Studies. Nobody there seems concerned that I am not Asian.

csteele,
What you and david f see is only the children in colourful costumes, beer festivals and dragon parades. You ignor the baggage that comes with some cultures. In fact you attempt to suppress and hide it.

I will continue to expose alien cultural practices whenever it comes to light. The reality is that the policy of MC has been detrimental to our community.

MC is a philosophy which fosters seperate developement. A philosophy that rates original culture ahead of national loyality. It divides us into tribes.

The only way to deal with alien cultural practice is to recognise them and insist they have no place here. All immigrants are informed about our society before coming here, so ignorance is no excuse.

To ignor alien cultural practices is to compromise our own culture.

Policy of integration will promote cohesiveness in the community.

I hope you will continue to argue because i want it exposed and talked about. I notice that Paul has yet to come up with any list of cultural practices he would not allow.

This confected outrage, Banjo, might be more easily dealt with it you could indicate which 'alien cultural practices' you decry that are not yet proscribed by Australian law?

Then there would be something tangible to lobby for.

Dear Banjo,

You don’t have a clue as to what I see.

You wrote: “I will continue to expose alien cultural practices whenever it comes to light.”

How noble of you. Let’s close all the restaurants that serve anything but witchety grubs and other staples of the diet before European settlement. In fact let's close all restaurants since they are foreign imports. Let’s get rid of such foreign imports as Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the English language.

Culture is a living thing. It changes as it absorbs alien cultural practices. English speaking people no longer paint themselves blue and worship trees as their ancestors did. Had Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Normans, Romans and many other aliens not come to England they might still be doing so.

Australians and other people are continually changing their culture. The English language contains approximately 400,000 words. French and most European languages contain about 80,000 words. English contains so many words because it has absorbed words from other languages in a way that most other languages have not. The French have tried to keep their language ‘pure’ by keeping out words of non-French origin. English is much more a world language because it has been more open to words of alien origin.

You wrote: “To ignor alien cultural practices is to compromise our own culture.”

How ridiculous! Our culture is an amalgam of alien cultural practices.

Thank you for hoping I will continue to argue. I will as I feel multiculturalism is a much more reasonable policy than trying to avoid change by forcing immigrants to be like what’s already here. Immigrants inevitably change a society. One can try to erase the culture they bring with them. All that will do is to create fear and hate for them when they retain aspects of their culture and deprive the existing culture of the benefits that may come from their culture. I prefer multiculturalism.

Dear david f,

"Our culture is an amalgam of alien cultural practices."

Thanks for that enlightening remark. But isn't that a bit contradictory or disconnected?

You definitely won't land a job as a lecturer in anthropology at Oxford if you keep posting statements like that around.

David you say "Multiculturalism is a government policy that many Australians support".

The death penalty is a government policy in many countries, & probably more Australians support that than support multiculturalism, does that make it right?

We are all aware that multicultural policy was a ploy used by Labor to buy some votes, in the early days of vote buying policies. You know, back when they actually had some policies that were not dictated by their need to buy votes.

The fact that it succeeded in buying them some votes they would otherwise would never have received proves just how unbalanced the policy is. It had to be to win those votes.

It along with their boat people policy, really just an extension of vote buying, in reverse, [fear of upsetting some votes they have paid for], it is probably the most damaging to Oz well being of all their stuff ups.