🚀 go-pugleaf

Laurence Knight <l.knight@cowan.edu.au> wrote:

one of the (many) difficulties responding to pauline's one nation line
is that she is (partly) right. i'm 41, born 1955. the community i was
raised in, the culture i was born into, has gone. its focus was the
school, the church, the local tennis club, the street we lived in.
the somewhat trite response of 'what did we have here before the influx
of migrants in the 50's? nothing!' is inadequate and insulting.

> About the only real change to the Australian way of life in the last
> twenty years is that we have a far wider range of food to eat, and we
> have another free-to-air TV station [and no one is forcing you to eat or
> watch anything you don't like].

the 'australian way of life' has changed so dramatically in the last 20
years that this shallow suggestion that we have better food to eat is
laughably absurd. 
australia has changed from a tarrif protected economy to reduced tarrifs
- this alone has created an environment where australian workers are
being told they must compete against a thai willing to work for $5/day
in a factory without any safety precautions. australia has changed from
a predominantly state socialist welfare structure to a user pays
structure. we have changed from a predominantly state owned and
controlled infastructure into a privatised nightmare.
pauline is *right* when she criticises foreigh ownership (australia is
one of the few countries on the globe which allows such wholesale
investment from foreign nationals). pauline is *right* when she talks
about the misappropriation of money and corruption within the
'aboriginal industry' (just ask gary foley)
the conclusions she reaches are where i disagree with her. pauline (like
little johnie) seems to yearn after an australia of the past, an ideal
australia of the pre-60's, as well as looking forward to an impossible
future, contained within the slogan, 'one flag, one nation, one
language, one people'. 
i suspect that pauline is the voice of a voiceless minority, a group who
were bypassed in the rush towards multiculturalism, a group who have
been undermined economically by the vast changes to our own and the
world's economic landscape, a group who were left behind by the educated
elite which determines the nature of public debate and discourse, a
cultural group who are not counted as part of the 'munticultural'
australia. 
i also suspect that we need to develop a far more insightful response to
pauline, and the many like her, than glossed over homilies on food and
TV.

chris s