On Sun, 25 Sep 2011, Mike Mitchell wrote:
On 25/09/2011 12:01 PM, Jason White wrote:
According to ALP polling, a certain proportion (10%)? of voters are overtly xenophobic. A much larger proportion has xenophobic tendencies that can be exploited by the Coalition - these include people who voted for the ALP in the last election but who could switch their votes partly or entirely in response to this issue.
I'm not so sure that the Coalition attracts a more xenophobic follower than the ALP. Traditionally, including the Howard government, the Coalition, and its conservative predecessor, have adopted a more liberal approach to immigration.
It's interesting, isn't it? The Liberal party in Australia are rarely more small l-liberal. But Malcolm fraser was a whole lot more fair than any of the current mob (apart from the whole bringing down Whitlam thing). You'd expect Labor, the party of the unions, to be more into protectionalism. But they started the deregulation several decades ago. But also more into xenophobia, because they tend to get supported by the very poor, who partly because of their lack of education, always feel under threat by "outsiders". But being on the left of the Liberals (another bizaaro. Liberal once meant small-l-liberal, but not in Australia anymore), you'd expect them to have left leaning policies. I guess they wanted to not make the same mistake they did the last time they got seriously wedged in, IIRC, the 2004 election (or was it 2001?). I'm rambling. Politics in Australia is weird. I honestly don't understand why the Greens dont get more votes. Perhaps because the leader, Bob Brown, is so uncharismatic (but then again, did John Howard, Julia Gillard or Tony Rabbit have any charisma?) and playing the victim all the time.
Although the driving force has not always been altruistic. A _terrific_ example of almost ALP xenophobia going on at the moment is the Qantas engineers industrial action. They have not said a word about the Qantas aircraft being maintained by Americans and British maintenance staff at other destinations but those "strange" Asian types!? I think they'd like to kill 'em. NOTE: I've worked for, Australian Air Express, a Qantas subsidiary and they really don't like anything to do with Singapore or its Airline.
To be fair, I think the driver (at least my driver when I signed a petition) of the current Qantas despute about maintanance, is that to have trust in your aircraft (or other infrastructure), it has to be maintained by people in your team. People that you can theoretically know. People that you can talk problems through with. Certainly not people who have been outsourced, and might potentially be lowest bidder. When I was working for a company that had headquarters 500km away, we had an inherent distrust of any of the equipment being designed and built by headquarters. It would always need a lot of fixup when it was finally shipped up, and that work required to make it actually work was never recognised by management. But the shift staff always were themselves operational staff when not on shift, so the interaction amongst everyone in operations and shiftwork built trust that we at least knew how to keep things working.
Then there is another small proportion (10%?) who favour more humane treatment of refugees
I really believe that almost all Australians support the humane treatment of refugees _BUT_ how on earth do we know that the people who arrive here under their own steam _ARE_ refugees?!
It should be fairly simple. It *should* be common knowledge that more than 90% of "boat people" eventually are found to be refugees. Unfortunately, that's not common knowledge, partly because 70% of our media is controlled by the one organisation who pander to the lowest common denominator of poorly educated xenophobic people.
Also, refuge is a privilege not a right.
What? I'm pretty sure it's in the Geneva conventions or similar.
To be totally clear on this point, I am strongly in favour of the rights of refugees and asylum seekers and opposed to any policy that would diminish those rights or exacerbate the suffering of people who are already vulnerable and who have lived with the experience, or at least the well-founded fear of persecution. I do not support either off-shore processing of claims or mandatory detention; and I don't vote for the Labor Party either.
Ditto on the humane treatment of refugees, but Australia should be selecting who is and who is not a refuge. Until they are deemed to be refugees they are here without visas.
No, that's not how the refugee convention works.
The whole problem of undocumented arrivals is very complex and will take some time to resolve. However, it is the governments job to do as the nation wishes.
I was kinda hoping that we elected leaders to lead. One some difficult issues, they should lead public opinion instead of follow it. Put out education campaigns. It would be nice if they could rely on the media to do the right thing instead of doing the profitable thing. At least we're not quite as bad as the Italian Berlusconi scenario. -- Tim Connors