humanist wrote:Sorry guys as an immigrant living in Australia and fairly well integrated into mainstream Australia, I find that quite alarming, racist and fascist. There are elements of it that I agree with but some it is scary. the notion of this is our country our nation our land, is very scary in that it attempts to separate and segrate people into them and us. I would like to know who falls within the category of "our". The Chinese community have been in Australia since the 1800's with the gold rush, would that make a descendant of the then Chinese part of the "our country"? or is Australia simply reserved for the white Anglo saxon, who speaks ONLY english. Or are the descendants of the first Cypriot Australian to have arrived in the 1850's and the first Cypriot Australian Walter Ionas who arrived in Adelaide in 1883 considered as part of the "our".
Don't be fooled people John Howard is one of the most racist ultra nationalist prime ministers Australia has ever seen, his intrnsigent attitude about migrants has made quite a lot of people such as myself feel excluded from maistream society, despite the fact that I have worked since I was 15 years of age, put my self through university twice, paid for my education and paid my tax, for some so called Australian to be bludging off on unemplyment benefits for years. ABS statistics have repeatedly shown that apart from Indigenous Australians the second group receiving unemployemnt benefits are the so called Australian, probably carrying the name Smith and not Georgiou or Katasoglu.
I honestly think you have the wrong end of the stick here. I doubt very much if people like you and Birk is what was in his mind when making that speech.
I'm also an immigrant in the UK . I would not feel threatened if a UK politician was to make a similar speech here in the UK. On the contrary I would welcome such sentiments and applaud loudly. The culture that the immigrants came from is not the culture of the West. The Western world culture is the property of the people of the West and those joining the West must either accept or reject it, but they can not demand that theirs must be adopted by the West. Parts of our culture might be seen by some immigrants as offensive to them .TOUGH LUCK . They have a perfect option in the democratic West , exercise it and shut up.
