NSW Racial tension.............

[silentC]

You bloody idiot it would not work.

I'm sorry to say, Scott, that the policy did exist in this country until the 1950's - and you are proof that it did not work, for which we are grateful.

[bitingmidge]

Once upon a time you could read a newspaper and get a reasonably balanced view of the world because journalists simply reported the news.

If you hadn't started this post off "Once upon a time" I might have taken the bait, but clearly it's a fairy story, just like the bit about getting a balanced view from a newspaper ever.

Then for some reason they decided it was fun to editorialise in an effort to get the readership to accept one view or another.

Governments started that, it was called censorship, and propoganda. Then the journos made an art form out of fiction.

TThe current problems in Cronulla are being fuelled by the bias of the media and driven by politicians worried about the polls. Whenever the Howard government begins to look bad in the opinion polls something like the Cronulla issue is beaten up to divert our attention from the real issues of the day.

Do you really expect anyone to believe that John H has got a few of his Lebbo mates to go a belt up a few cars to take our minds off the world??? Give me a break!!

rammed through the parliament after the Senate leader Robert Hill put 57 gag motions in force (expl: a gag motion is a method employed by the government in debate to end or bar debate on legislation). Something which has never happened in 105 years of Federation.

Gag motions are a fact of parliamentary debate, after 24 straight hours debating the one subject, I'd be looking for more than a gag motion. Must've had a very lightweight 'ram'.

No-one seems to care that our parliamentary institution and constitution are being trampled on by a government with far too much power.

I may be mistaken here, but the object of a political party is to be elected with an absolute majority, when that happens it forms a government. "Far too much power" is what happens when the government has one more seat in the senate than the opposition... that's the way it's supposed to work.

One of needs to give up reading pinko ratbag propoganda, and buy the Australian.



P

[bitingmidge]

White Austrian policy? You bloody idiot it would not work.

Actually Scott, I sort of disagree with Silent, it may not have worked, but it left a big scar on our society, that remains today... as exampled by the idiot post.

It was an incredibly shameful time in our history, but in the context of the post-war propaganda that prevailed, one that can perhaps be understood. What I have trouble wiht is many people in their 60's who are still wary of the Asian hordes who will sweep down from the north and take us over, forcing us to work in their paddy fields.

The "Two Wongs don't make a White" remark was brought home quite painfully to me in a nearby Asian Country, by a gentleman with your surname who was bitterly cut by it, as he was a visiting student here at the time and suffered some recriminations. It gave him great pleasure 40 years later to make a point of NEVER dealing with Australian consultants. So yes it did have an impact!!

All we can do is leave those who believe it had validity, to fester in the putrid muck that must be their decaying brains.......

If you want to know what I REALLY think, you'll have to PM me!!


P

[Andy Mac]

This whole thing brings shame on Australia, and by association all Australians. Most of the time I'm fairly desensitised to what I see/hear on the news, but this affair brought me very close to tears.
Why can't we just accept that all of us, bar about 2-3% of the population, are all immigrants...its just a matter of how recent. We are all Australians, and together we make up the nation. Leave the racist tripe back in the country you came from. It doesn't reflect well on us throughout the world.

[silentC]

The thing that really concerns me about most people's reactions to this is that the gangs of thugs from Lakemba are being turned into innocent victims of racism.

The way I see it, the problem exists on both sides of the fence. The crowd at Cronulla went over the top but don't believe for a minute that the same thing could or would not have happened if a few carloads of wax heads had headed out to Lakemba on Sunday instead.

They're all as bad as one another. It's nothing to do with racism. If you believe that these Lebanese gangs were just going down to the beach and sitting around having a picnic when they were set upon by a bunch of nasty racist Aussies then you have the wrong picture. Innocent people do not carry knives and they certainly don't smash car windscreens with baseball bats.

For anyone who doesn't know, gangs are a major problem in the south west and have been for several years. I lived on top of it and it's probably a major contributing factor to my wanting to get my family out of Sydney. Anyone who lives there could see something like this coming.

The problem is that it is no longer only the gangs who are involved. Muslim Sydney has taken it as an attack on them and so the fun begins.

[DanP]

I for one am not ashamed. I've done nothing wrong.

When I was at Transit I was dealing with the Springvale nips, the Oakleigh wogs the Full Blooded Islanders the Cambodian Clowns and the Broady Lebs. Not many Aussies in those groups I can tell you. They are their own names, by the way (before someone gets offended).

I have heard a great many people commenting on their "Italian Premier" and their "Lebanese Governor" Etc. Surely those people are Australian. Of ethnic heritage maybe but they are Australian.

IMO this is the root of the problem. I am Australian, an ancestor of mine came out on a boat. My best mate, he's Australian, his father emigrated here from Lebanon, His mother from Syria. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met and if you ask what nationality he is, he proudly says Australian.

These people who tell you they are "Lebanese" or "Italian" or otherwise, IMO are bluntly refusing to be integrated.

I couldn't care less what religion they chose to follow. As long as they don't push it on me and respect my decision to follow no religion.

I'm with Silent, Religion has nothing to do with this issue. It's a bunch of d1ck heads having a crack at another bunch of d1ck heads and the first d1ck heads don't get that there are innocent people getting stuck in the middle.

Dan

[Wongo]

I think we all agree that it is nothing to do with anything. It is just bad people.
:mad:

The trouble of calling people names is you are offending 99.9% of the good ones.

[Rocker]

I'm sorry to say, Scott, that the policy did exist in this country until the 1950's - and you are proof that it did not work, for which we are grateful.

SilentC,

You are a bit out in your dates; the White Australia policy was alive and kicking until the early 1970's. But for that policy, I would have been a 10 pound pom in 1970. However, my first wife was Jamaican by birth, although a British Citizen, and it still stuck in the craw of the Australian government to import a black person with a cheap fare. The White Australia policy finally died in 1972, although it was substantially weakened in 1966.

Having said all that, I believe that Australia should extract from immigrants an undertaking to accept and adhere to Australian values, notably democratic principles, freedom of religion, and the primacy of the rule of law. I also believe that immigrants who wilfully fail to adhere to these principles should run the risk of deportation to their countries of origin.

Rocker

[silentC]

I got the dates from the article in Wikipedia, which states that "various of the policy's official aspects were operative from the late 1880s until the 1950s, with certain elements of the policy surviving until the 1970s." It was enacted in legislation as the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 which was repealed in 1958 but apparently the WAP was not officially abolished until 1966.

I guess it was a gradual phasing out but until 1958 you had to sit a dictation test to prove you could speak and understand English amongst other things.

The main problem here is that the idiots causing the problems are not immigrants, they were born here.

[silentC]

An interesting perspective from a retired Detective who worked in South West Sydney: http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/artic...article_id=581

[Rocker]

SilentC,

Maybe the White Australia policy was not officially acknowledged after the 1950's, but it remained more or less in place through administrative decisions until the late 1960's to early 1970's. As I mentioned in my earlier post, if my first wife had been English by birth, she and I would have received a 10-pound fare to come to Australia in 1970 without question. But, presumably because of her Jamaican origin, an administrative decision was made not to grant her a cheap fare, so we both paid the full fare. However, by that time, it would have been too politically embarrassing to have excluded her altogether, so she was not refused entry. Again, the granting of cheap fares to encourage British people to migrate to Australia, was an aspect of the White Australia policy that persisted until the early 70's.

Rocker

[silentC]

No doubt some elements of it persisted beyond the early 70's too. Mark Latham reckons it is alive and well in the ANZUS alliance.

[Groggy]

Rocker, I was talking to my sister about the 10-pound fares last night. It seems that they had to surrender their passports on arrival to meet the requirements. She recently tried to go to school again and found she needed to be an Australian citizen or pay full fees, for which she needs her passport.
Immigration said 'lost ages ago' and now she is an "illegal" in no-man's-land. They have now given her three lifetimes worth of paper to fill out.

Gotta luv the buraucracy.

[glock40sw]

Bloody multiculturalism...... what's wrong with being Australian??

If you want to be Lebanese (or insert other nationality of choice here), that's fine, come and visit your Australian relatives at Christmas.

100% correct.
If they claim to be Australian too, why do the say that they are prepared to die for Lebanon?

If you don't like being Australian, Pissorf and leave.

Hooroo.
Regards, Trevor
Grafton

[outback]

I think we all agree that it is nothing to do with anything. It is just bad people.
:mad:

The trouble of calling people names is you are offending 99.9% of the good ones.

You cat lover you.