🚀 go-pugleaf

chris@xchange.apana.org.au wrote:
> 
> 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

Well why should an Australian resent someone working in Thailand for $5
a day. Remember that it is the Western countries, and their big
companies that come to these countries, and integrate them into a world
economy. Remember everyone was criticising Asians countries for being
closed, and conservative. In the old times, live is better for a Thai as
well. After the international capital inflow, some entrepreneurs got
rich, yet many suffered. For example in South America, a lot of land
were bought to produce coffee, and a lot of people become landless, who
have to try every way to make a living. Western countries just have too
much money.

An example, a cow fetches around $200-300, and a Thai family used to
live with a couple of them, and perhaps an acre of land, but an
industrial worker makes that much in a couple of weeks in an advance
economy. A corporation with millions to invest can easily buy many
villages. 

It is the global industrialisation that is affecting Australia, and many
other western countries. In fact, in the last 5 years, there have been a
dramatic increase in overseas made goods, regardless of the Brands.
Things like Coca Cola, Nike, MacDonalds are part of Australian culture,
and who knows where they are made, a Nike shoe may be made in Vietnam, a
Hamberger may contain Mexican ingredients etc.




> 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


A lot of these changes are brought by politicians, and business people,
especially big corporations, and multinationals, to simply say that
asians brought all these changes is not right. I believe Australia
should be a commonwealth, but a lot people seem to support economic
rationalism. Well a lot of people suffered, many corporations are making
big profits, and a lot of dividends are paid to UK and US, and many
European countries, as well as asian countries.


> 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