LOUDmouth,

And they can take you with them. So start packing. And don't forget to send us a postcard.

I have always been in favour of Australia being an independent nonaligned country. There is no way that I support, not just foreign ownership of strategic assets, but I also oppose private ownership of such assets as well. Why any port facilities would be in the hands of foreign or private ownership is beyond me.

There are many Whitlam haters on here, but one thing they should agree with that Gough proposed back in the seventies was to "buy back the farm". I agreed then, and I still agree now.

Paul1405,

Why do you think they got rid of Whitlam? Was he being anti-colonial in a post-colonial world?

Don't you think it was a set-up by international powers with vested colonial-based economic interests in Australia rather than some personal attack by a gin-soaked Governor General supporting conservative politicians.

Is Andrew Forrest doing anything differently in kicking Greg Hunt off the podium and putting his Chinese Communist Party mate up in his place to tell us how angry Xi is about our government not toeing the line?

PS Can be use CCP for Chinese Communist Party because I think we will have to write this out a lot from now on? Does the pro-China camp viz LOUDmouth etc have any objections?

Whitlam? It's 45 years since he wrecked Australia. A lot has changed since then!

Misopinionated,

I used to be a Maoist, but dropped all that idiocy during the eighties, and certainly after the Tien An Men Massacres. I'm now pro-Chinese people :)

If anything, I'm pro-Taiwan: historically, Taiwan was more or less outside of the Chinese orbit, except for the invasions and attempted invasions by the Mongols in the Yuan dynasty, and by the Manchus in the Ching dynasty - i.e. by non-Han Chinese (i.e. over about half of the last millenium). In fact, I could be wrong but I think the Manchus didn't even occupy the whole island until the mid-nineteenth century, (the French also tried to invade it in the late nineteenth century), sixty years before the 1911 Revolution which overthrew their foreign rule. Taiwan had been conquered by the Japanese a few years before (1895), and would not be occupied by the Chinese until 1945.

So Taiwan was only ever under effective rule from the mainland (i.e. the Manchus, Mongol-related groups from Manchuria) for barely fifty years, and by Han Chinese from the mainland for only about four years.

No ? Think of it this way: imagine, given the British rule over India for 250 years, that after Independence, India had taken on the mantle of British imperialism and declared that all countries in the region which had been ruled by Britain were now to be ruled by its inheritor, India.

So, no, I don't support the forcible amalgamation of Taiwan into China. I don't support the oppression of Uighurs and Tibetans and other groups (Kazakhs, etc.) by the totalitarians. I don't support any of the aspects of the Belt and Road strategy which go beyond WTO rules. I wholeheartedly support the people of Hong Kong to control their own affairs.

And most certainly, I support the right of Chinese people to migrate to Australia like anybody else. There aren't any 'lesser people', Misop, except the odd bird-brained individual such as yourself, and perhaps Ttbn. Hmmm, I wonder if such people can be shipped back to wherever their unfortunate ancestors came from ?

Joe

LOUDmouth (PS you don't mind me calling you LOUDmouth do you?)

What doesn't seem to have dawned on you (and you are not alone) is the CCP is sending migrants to Australia as colonists not as future Australian citizens.

I saw some stats on TV some months ago that showed that Chinese migrants are much less likely to apply for citizenship than other migrants viz Indian, Filipino. Not that many Chinese with permanent residency actually apply; apparently only a small proportion of them do.

This makes me believe that they prize Chinese (PRC) citizenship above Australian citizenship and that they view being Chinese as being more important to them than being Australian.

So all we have been doing is filling up the country with Chinese who will be more inclined towards the CCP than to Australia and when the call comes to unite under a common Chinese banner they will fall in line behind Xi and his successors.

You and people like you have all be led down the garden path. Didn't your mate Andrew Forrest make that clear a few weeks ago.