It is inevitable than the remarks of the 'cat meat' Mufti will reignite Australian migration debates - Michael Baume has made a start in today's AFR (subscription only). The issue of changes in Australian migration laws are already being recognised in the Middle East and are implicit in the remarks of Pru Goward that the Mufti should be deported - as a matter of law he probably cannot be.
The difficulty is that the Mufti and his supporters hold basic values that diverge from those of most Australians. Leftwing skeptics and the multiculturalists will make foolish remarks about the absence of real Australian values beyond booze and a bet. I have never agreed with these foolish caricatures of our national identity - at least Australia has a highly prosperous society remarkably free of political violence and civil strife.
More intelligent commentators will focus on the difficulties of characterising some of the less tangible Australian social values and I agree it isn't easy. But one thing is certain - most Australians completely reject the contemptible views of relations between men and women (as well as the intolerant social values) espoused by the Mufti. We don't support intolerant religious views and support for Jihadism and terrorism.
John Stone stated recently in an issue of Quadrant, in an article on immigration policy, that once policy-makers find that they have dug themselves into a hole they should at least stop digging. Its time to think seriously about the types of migrants we accept. The unrestrained pursuit of diversity via multiculturalism policies is failing.
This is not my kneejerk reaction to recent events concerning the Mufti although his statements do make me focus on the migrant selection issue. For more than a decade I have argued that Australia has an absolute right to determine what sorts of people are accepted here as migrants. Our lands are not an international common property resource that is at the disposal of social romantics and multiculturalists. Our society is not a social experiment.
People who clearly support international terrorism, who show open contempt for democracy and for core Australian values of tolerance and respect for women, should not be welcome in this country. Let us end self-destructive immigration policies that threaten our long-term social cohesion and which populate our country with people whose values most of us reject. Let us think seriously about being more selective at the immigration gate.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
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6 comments:
Any debate on Australia's immigration policy that questions or threatens the underlying tenant that this policy should not discriminate in terms of ethnicity, religion and culture, is simply not acceptable. There is no turning the clock back to the disgraceful White Australia policy. There is no turning back the clock to Australia's Bela-Apartheid. Not even a bit.
A debate on immigration that does not question the non-discriminatory principles is of course legitimate.
The principles of non-discrimination that underly Australia's immigration policies are simply not up for debate.
Any such debate would mean that the racists at the Cronulla race riots have won. It is clear to me that the main aim of those riots were to initiate a debate on the non-dicriminatory tenants of immigration policy.
The same people who showed understanding during the Cronulla riots and used those riots to propose such a debate on immigration, will now use Hilali's sermon.
It is essential that Australia address the causes of the Cronulla riots, and this is a priority that is much more urgent that addressing immigration policy.
Rabee, The selective immigration policy practiced in Australia was common to the other two major countries of immigration - the US and Canada up to the 1970s.
It is certainly true that you should not judge an individual person in respect of any desired attribute on the basis of skin colour. Skin colour is an inessential attribute. Martin Luther King said judge people by the 'quality of their hearts' and I agree.
But it is the quality of hearts that I am concerned with not skin colour and, in this respect, culture I think is a relevant characteristics to judge admissability.
If there are blocks of people who have the cultural views of the Mufti why should Australia accept them?
Why should we want people who exhort the value of religiously-inspired violence (Jihad) and terrorism?
What advantage is there to us in accepting people whose culture suggests women are pieces of meat who need to be locked away to protect them from rape while men are like feral animals who will devour them unless they are covered? Will having such people in Australia make us a stronger community? Is this a community view you would want your kids growing up to experience?
Are the claims of residents that thugs at Cronulla made life difficult for Anglo women (read 'pieces of meat in bikinis' awaiting attack) on that beach believable when many of those men had a religious base at the Mufti's mosque at Lakemba? Isn't it that true that many of the men who participated in the riots were were based there?
I am unsure but the connection worries me. Do these men really think in this way about Australian women? Why do they seem reluctant to give the Mufti the flick? Did they deep down share his views? Or do they openly support them?
Harry - doesn't Australia already have a very selective immigration policy? If it weren't for the ALP playing silly-buggers and trying to vote-rig Hillaly would have been deported in the 1980s.
The principles of non-discrimination that underly Australia's immigration policies are simply not up for debate.
Rubbish Rabee. Should we allow unreconstructed Nazis into Australia?
Cannibals?
Discrimination on the basis of race is wrong because nobody can choose (or change) their race.
You can choose to give up your religion or culture if it is odious.
If you choose to cling to barbaric beliefs and practises then that is nobody's fault but your own, and it is not discrimination to tell you to get fucked as a result.
In my opinion, as a white Australian, what under pins us not selecting what types of people we let into our courty is the guilt we have ( deep down ) for invading the original Australians and even the way we still treat them. Otherwise, why should we feel it's bad to select people on any basis we choose. We all choose our friends on any basis we like, why not our country as well. Why should we feel bad about being careful and as selective as we like. So the question that rages in Australian circles is why or why not let people into our country to radically change the way we live, because all Australians know very well what happened when Engalnd first came here. Until that war ends, white Australia is vunerable to guilt and conquest by a stronger force under the same princiles.
whitey, I think the Australian left fosterrs guilt about just about everything we do. It is this general guilt that gives the game away and weakens us.
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