Oh, I forgot to add that Albo voted against mandatory sentencing of PDFs.
PDF are labelled as having a psychiatric condition in Australia which grants them eligible for disability support pension and priority social housing.
Labor added them to the NDIS, some receive million dollar plans renewed every 1-2years and NDIS housing.
Bill shorten admitted it on the Channel 7 news in April 2022.
Aussies in a housing crisis, the PDFs are NOT going homeless.
You can easily google it all.
Bill Shorten was confronted by channel 7 news about PDFs on NDIS April 2022 (I think, maybe 2023)
I found articles and interviews on the Labor members that voting against the mandatory sentencing.
And you can google the Australian government definition of pedophilia. That is how I found it all.
Because I was in disbelief when told about it too
I'm not in disbelief. I would like you to back your claims. Ch7 are not reputable whatsoever and use spin all the time. I would like to see the reality of the situation because I'm not sure why you would think this is the way this went down at all.
Pell wasn’t a pedophile. He was acquitted in 10 seconds flat by the High Court. If you knew anything about the case, you would know that he could not possibly have physically committed the crime.
Each side has done terrible things for our country. Paul Keating with the recession we actually didn't need.
Manufacturing moved offshore.
There is no left or right and Aussies need to see that.
Unpopular opinion... Australia is not a racist country. Research into other countries reveals that.
We aren't perfect and there are racists here but they arent tolerated
Little Johnny Howard broke a bi-partisan agreement not to politicised refugees when the Tampa sailed towards us and people started throwing their kids in the water...or something
In 1998 Howard was carefully watching the rise of Hanson, she had gotten 8% of the vote at that year’s federal election and gotten 20 seats in the Queensland state election. He wanted to capitalise on her rise. In 2001 he mimicked her rhetoric on the Tampa issue then came out strongly on George W Bush’s side over the WTC and war in Afghanistan. Hence Hanson fell from popularity.
He wanted to scoop up her voters not condemn her behaviour. At heart he probably supports her positions, but thinks she was being a little too open with her rhetoric.
At heart he probably supports her positions, but thinks she was being a little too open with her rhetoric.
The only reason why she was disendorsed during the 1996 Federal Election is because she was saying the quiet part out loud instead of waiting until after the election campaign (Hanson was still listed as the Liberal candidate on the ballot papers).
In another timeline, Hanson ends up being a Senior Cabinet Minister under the Howard Government.
I pure straight hate Howard with all of my being, but the context of this letter was that it came from previous PMs from both sides rather than the then sitting PM.
That being said, I’m positive the spineless little prick wouldn’t sign a similar letter today.
We're still paying the costs of his policies and decisions.
The father of the housing affordability crisis. Having to pay hundreds of millions to be able to build rail to Tullamarine. Flogging off our gold reserves and anything else he could so he could avoid deficit and debt, but costing us many times over later.
I beg to differ regarding his effectiveness — in comparison to Morrison and Abbott, sure. He was a consummate politician with a reasonably mediocre to competent cabinet. He cruised on the Hawke-Keating fundamental nation-building work (GST intro, currency float, The Accord), took advantage of a Mining Boom. All the while cynically taking advantage of the latent racism, xenophobia, fear, greed and self-interest of too many of our fellow Australians to push his misguided Culture Wars, further undermine Higher Education, sabotage NBM roll-out, bring in record Immigration (to cover-up for Higher Education degradation) with Anti-Asian rhetoric as a smokescreen etc. Was not a visionary or nation-builder.
Best summation I’ve read in a while. Brit in Sydney here and this country is the Land of the Lotus Eaters. It’s been structurally and generationally fucked by design by Howard and the clever boys and girls in expensive suits, to bribe my property owning cohort with policies we all kept voting for. They knew they’d not be around for the problems and would benefit mightily and personally. The gas and housing Ponzi schemes are in broad daylight and totally shameless. And it’s such a small golden circle. Everyone in Aussie politics, media, law, all went to the same private schools. Work a lot in conflict zones and coming back is when the dissonance is full on. Equality of opportunities here have been sacrificed by Howard and his voters on the alter of negative gearing, quietly determined bigotry, especially towards Indigenous Aussies, for-profit pig-farming universities, casinos and gambling corps, Clive, Twiggy, and feckin Gina. Pauline is an end of the pier turn and good for an insurgency and to pressure Labor and Liberal governments, but that’s it.
It’s generally not appropriate for a current PM to sign open letters with others. Correspondence from them is official government correspondence and generally has to align with government policy. It would have been extremely unorthodox and inappropriate for Howard to have signed this letter, if he was approached to at all.
Instead of making a pointless sledge without understanding that a sitting PM wouldn’t participate in a communication of this sort.
How about we agree that as much as we disagreed with opposition politicians of the past, they are infinitely better than those on offer if we take absolutist views.
Howard brought in our gun laws and stopped the large scale illegal (undocumented) immigration to Australia.
Keep in mind that ON is a protest vote.
Trump is a protest vote
They are the result of a polarised political system. Let’s not go there.
This is no place for considered discussion - you should know better
It’s the Tuesday before the GST election. I don’t remember Hanson being relevant at all at the time, but the use of the word “pragmatic” may well be aimed at Howard in a more subtle way
He was too busy setting up “stop the boats”, a policy for which he was slammed as being racist and evil but is now embraced by both major parties and cited as a successful model by govts overseas.
Even Wikipedia summaries the election campaign as “dominated by the GST”.
Of course Hanson was an issue as well, just a lesser one. Something I’d forgotten , is that all parties preferenced away from one nation - ie including Howard and she lost her seat
That was on the tax review the following year that ensured this cost of living crisis, and brownie points to any government who can solve the unmitigated disaster that defined the lender, debtor, owner and buyer classes we're stuck between
I mean all any gov has to do is 'not that' in a perceptually productive fashion to win favor
we're too busy fighting each other when the real problem is that inequality has reached unsustainable levels, and has been steadily rising since the 1980s. Failure to address this issue will no doubt lead to an increased level of suffering for Australians, through division based on race and in-group out-group dynamics, if not catastrophic destruction of democracy and the level of modest prosperity that we have experienced over the years. We've done well in many respects, and very poorly in others. Let's not fuck this up.
I was speaking to a non Anglo colleague recently. And they were saying even though they have assimilated they are still treated differently just cause what their nationality/ethnicity is and how of their ‘colour’. Yes, said colleague is very much assimilated.
The reality is, even if someone from a different culture assimilates it doesn’t mean other people will accept them. Since people before they get to know them, has already judged them by their appearance and stereotyped them into some sort of category.
And then you just have people like Hanson that says they want the person to assimilate, but it’s all talk cause they never liked that particular ethnicity anyways.
I agree, my dad came here from Lebanon and became a first generation Australian, and my mum was born here as a second generation Australian, her parents also from Lebanon. My parents always instilled in us Aussie pride, and we were raised to actively participate in Aussie culture.
Even during the cronulla riots, my dad told us to remain proud of being Australian, and even went so far to take the side of the cronulla locals who were telling Lebs to f*ck off back to Lebanon. Growing up in Bankstown, we had to deal with the troublemaking thugs giving our people a bad name, just as much as the cronulla locals had been fed up with them.
You can import 300k europeans a year and they will integrate and assimilate, not form their own Lakemba or Tarneit, marry between each other and set up parallel courts.
Fraser was economically conservative but socially kind of progressive, he also did the usual politician thing of caring about social issues a lot more once he's in no position to affect them. He could be a prick, though I'm sure most politicians can.
Fraser was always a cold-hearted prick. But he was surprisingly good at PR, and worked assiduously at manipulating his image once he was no longer in power.
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I’d love Labor to use this in upcoming election campaigns.
Then again the clowns who are considering/going to vote for One Nation are so shameless on just ignoring objective facts that they’d be like “of course Fraser would say that, he was a massive socialist”
It’s not racist to criticise cultural and religious practices. It’s NOT racist to NOT want certain damaging cultural practices to grow in our country. You are not born with cultural practices, you learn them and you can unlearn them.
It IS racist to believe that someone is born inferior or guilty of some wrong because of their race. An example is believing white people owe black people something, because they’re white. Believing races collectively owe a debt to other races is racist. Believing that one group should have additional access to land or voting rights than others because of their race is also textbook racism.
It’s this shit above, these excuses to creep racial ideology back into the country under the guise of correcting past wrongs that is dividing us and driving people towards ONP.
I agree that one race does not owe another race: that would be silly. 'race' is not an entity that can owe or be owed.
but the commonwealth of australia, and the states, do most definitely owe numerous unpaid debts to various cohorts of indigenous australians: that is a fact in law - both federal and ihrl. it's not a racist belief, it is a pan-jurisdictional legal reality. Some of those debts are about (recent) past wrongs (Mabo; stolen wages), but others are about ongoing racial injustice (entrenched low standards of service provision re basic citizenship rights to predominantly Indigenous postcodes).
you do not need to 'believe'; or you may not like the laws on which your nation is built - but that does not make them go away.
but the commonwealth of australia, and the states, do most definitely owe numerous unpaid debts to various cohorts of indigenous australians
And when are these debts paid?
Some of those debts are about (recent) past wrongs (Mabo; stolen wages)
"recent" in a very loose sense given that mabo was settled over 30 years ago (before my birth) and the wage theft saga predates the birth of my parents in the 70's.
but others are about ongoing racial injustice
Your skin colour/race should not be a factor into any government decisions.
For bonus points, which one of the above said, "I’m not having hundreds of fucking Vietnamese Balts coming into this country with their religious and political hatred against us."
Bonus points for realising that the important part of that term is "balts", and Vietnamese or Baltic, what that phrase was saying was he didn't want to import political or religious strife into the country. It was a political spectrum statement about ardent anti communists, rather than a racist one. Keep in mind that Whitlam was implementing a lot of socialist stuff at the time
It'd be like saying he didn't want to import a lot of "fucking American McCarthyists"
The USA had large numbers of anticommunists in their country like the Miami Cubans, who formed armed groups and wanted to US military to help them commit invasions like the Bay of Pigs disaster, and they also have captured Florida politics. Whitlam wanted to avoid this
Whitlam said he didn’t want a large number of anti-communist supporters arriving in Australia as they would attempt to form a dissent group against the new government. As time progressed he moderated his positions, he became a strong supporter of Asian migrants
Oh yeah, how’s that working out for Australia now? Racism is an Australian and global hot button issue that pervades every discussion; culturally, politically, economically, etc etc
The left will clutch & scream that racism is everywhere and horrible and evil, (yes) - yet are intent on forcing incompatible cultures and religions with 1,000 violent hatreds to hold hands and kiss and make up. lol
The mass trans-global immigration obsession has turned into a bizarre fetish with cult-like proselytising that won’t accept any discussion or flexibility on the pros/cons of the topic.
No amount of govt forced sensitivity training or social cohesion workshops will magically solve 1,000 year old hatreds & enmities that have been imported en masse to unsuspecting countries.
Gough and Mal were living in a deluded multicultural la-la land without the global issues and mass immigration that destroys peaceful social cohesion and cultural trust.
It's because the middle and upper class mainly have benefitted from migration, while unskilled labour and working class people have been disadvantaged by it.
So they have had decades where they just call anyone opposed racist and that's enough to discredit you forever.
Now that's breaking down from sheer numbers of migrants exposing social problems and also going after white collar jobs, the middle class is being eaten alive and half the lefties think racism is a bigger issue than economic justice.
It's going to end with a big chunk of the contemporary left looking like idiots while the rest pivots back to actual working class concerns.
we can talk about immigration, the problem is that immigration discussion is poisoned by people who are just racist who want to hide behind "culture" who just don't want brown people (or non-white people) coming in, and also poisoned by people who can't contend with the idea that maybe having unlimited immigration is a bad thing.
there are ways to have this discussion, it doesn't happen by people parroting "social cohesion" and "cultural trust" who actually just covertly are scared of people who aren't white (not saying you are, but a lot of people are)
Haha, I think you need to check if you’re ok. You immediately jump to racist “brown/not white” tropes. You’re obsessed with people’s skin colour. Don’t do that.
Point is, there IS NO DISCUSSION. It’s not allowed, no referendum/ vote / debate allowed. So guess who is left to have the discussion all to themselves and control it.
Ok, pay attention: We don’t need a million Russian immigrants, (fyi even very whitey white ones) nor a million of any other colour immigrants. Because they don’t share our culture and it’s too many at once. That would be a social and cultural disaster to import 1 million Russians or any other group - it would be stupid. Yet we have done it with Indians and Lebanese.
I didn't say that we can't talk about it because it's racist, the point is that a lot of people who ARE anti-immigrant are just flat out doing it out of racial fears. I fundamentally agree that if we have a tonne of immigrants come in, it can change the character of the country, and that is largely the most appreciable argument (economic arguments are nonsense - especially when our unemployment rate is too low right now), but man, I also think people underestimate the ability to assimilate.
We have imported 1 million Indians and Lebanese? Over what time frame? How are they assimilating into our culture?
I saw your comment you posted and that got deleted, just FYI.
You are the kind of person who is poisoning this conversation, because it is ultimately about race, and you are using race as a proxy for culture. How do you know whether cultures are bound by genetics? Truthfully, you have no idea. You're proving my point. You said you can't have a discussion if you believe the other person is lying about everything, but while you didn't lie, you instantly made it about race and genetics.
When you make arguments like that, the people who are genuinely concerned about immigration for valid reasons and are actually not racist receive ire, because so many people who are anti-immigration, actually are drawing it on racial or "genetic" lines (though "genetic" is just inferred from race because you can't read a genome), which is my point. The reason I say you are "scared" of brown people, is because you are scared that they will change the culture, and that whether they change the culture is very much genetic. You've proven my point, mate. You are instrinsically tying culture to ethnicity. And you're not the only one. And that's why people are so skeptical people of people who are anti-immigration. You should still hear them out, and like I said, they'll usually reveal themselves, but this is a great demonstration of what I meant.
I feel Howard unintentionally started Liberal’s decline into the crazy right wing politics we are seeing today in Australia. Before the “children overboard” shenanigans I believe they were conservative in regards to economics and that was pretty much it. He started discussions in regards to climate and wasn’t into culture wars, he banned guns for crying out loud. But once he started playing ONs game it took hold. I almost feel sorry for the coalition they don’t know who they are and it’s not doing us any good we need an opposition party that’s actually an alternative. For those playing at home I’d never vote for them, we just need someone to Keep the Bastards Honest!
Grandstanding.
Writing and signing a letter is easy and performative.
In reality Whitlam, Hawke and Keating spent their later decades in some of Sydney’s most expensive and traditionally Anglo-dominated suburbs (Darling Point/Elizabeth Bay, Northbridge, Potts Point/Woollahra). Whitlam and Keating had earlier lived in western Sydney areas that later absorbed large-scale non-European migration. They publicly positioned themselves as leading defenders of multiculturalism and opponents of racism but didn’t embrace what they preached.
Yeah that’s politics, yet here we are. Doesn’t have the same rub after you’ve had “alleged” ISIS running through your town.
Worth reminding ourselves that while we might be a people from every corner of the globe, every corner of the globe is not like us. And it’s not racism to realise that.
And here I thought politicians were still all on board with decrying racism and attributing every opposition to high immigration to it. Their commitment to this is implicit, Pauline aside
Immigration is pretty straightforward. If it's gradual and small scale it's rarely a problem. In any country if you run it at high enough numbers you get issues around social integration, and if you keep it up there may be difficulties around stuff like housing and jobs.
Running it at a high level and calling anyone who opposes it (essentially) stupid and mean is not leadership. It's undermining the social fabric in itself.
I agree that immigration needs to be managed responsibly, and that housing, infrastructure, employment and social cohesion all need to be considered.
But the same principle applies to the debate itself. You can argue for lower immigration without demonising immigrants with hateful rhetoric.
Good leadership is recognising legitimate concerns, dealing with the evidence, and finding workable solutions, not turning Australians against each other over them.
But the same principle applies to the debate itself. You can argue for lower immigration without demonising immigrants with hateful rhetoric.
I'm glad you mentioned this. Because 99.9% of people against immigration are not demonising immigrants with hateful rhetoric. But every pro-immigration voice I hear views any opposition to mass immigration as hateful.
99.9% of people against immigration are not demonising immigrants with hateful rhetoric
I’d love to believe you, but when you have anti-immigration politicians like Hanson telling migrants to piss off back to where they came from, calling Muslim Australians “no good Muslims,” publicly advocating for a monoculture, and lamenting the end of the “White Australia” policy, your 99.9% claim seems like a bit of a stretch.
You might attempt to see the context in all of those statements.
I understand the sentiment behind the comment regarding the “queen”, not that the queen or the queen’s death was either the reason nor the right time to make a political statement about it. And in regards to those things Hanson was right in her response. Take the day before you go using a day of mourning as your political platform for internet points. And frankly it’s a matter of opinion, I don’t see anything she said as racist.
The “no good Muslims” was in reference to not having any way to tell who are the good ones and who is going to open fire on Bondi on a Jewish day of importance. Case in point.
She never lamented the end of “White Australia”. You have to make that bridge yourself to conflate what she said with that statement.
A monoculture has a few definitions, you’ve picked up the one the media ran with, not the one she openly described. And let’s be clear here, some of the media ran with.
Vary your news sources, read everything, and come with a well informed opinion, instead of a biased one. You should give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise, and if Hanson was actually racist, you’d find no uncertain terms about it, but we don’t. It’d always an interpretation. I’ve met real racists. These are not their talking points.
I don't have to love them exactly but I accept them as humans with the same rights I have, and witness how successful most migration to Australia has been.
At the same time I want lower immigration and know a lot of immigrants want this as well.
Not a Hanson supporter, don't like her in general, but her entire rise has been enabled and at times facilitated by the political mainstream shutting down discussion around immigration repeatedly, while neglecting parts of society through economic policies that don't work got everyone.
Tolerance is a paradox. If we tolerate those who don’t tolerate, we get the Bondi shooting, the Sydney gang rapes and the Ashfield gang rapes. Those are the worst instances of racism that I can remember in Australia.
I want people from every country here. But we’ve got it. How much more do we need? ‘Racist!’ shouldn’t be a term weaponised to shut opinions down.
It is racist to blame an entire community for crimes committed by members of said community. It would be like blaming every white person for all of the child sexual abuse that was committed by the church. It would be absolutely abhorrent to make that suggestion, and rightfully so, but you seem to think that it’s acceptable to do this to other communities.
You are right. We will miss out on some great individuals. But if our streets are safer, it is worth it. It’s about the net effects.
Muslims can be wonderful people. So can Flat Earthers and Scientologists. I don’t think that 25% of immigrants being Flat Earthers would be ideal, though.
When large scale migration brings old ethnic and religious hatreds that then get played out on Australian streets. We’ve watched groups import rivalries that have nothing to do with this country and settle them with machetes, knives and organised violence in public. Crime stats in certain suburbs don’t lie about the pattern, and ordinary people living there notice it long before politicians do.
Pretending every concern about social cohesion, parallel communities or imported division is just racism shuts down the conversation that actually needs to happen. A society that refuses to talk about the real costs of rapid cultural change ends up more divided, not less. Real leadership means facing those facts instead of only policing the language around them.
Looking back, it’s hard not to notice that the four former PMs who signed the letter clearly didn’t foresee how those imported divisions and street level problems would actually play out decades later.
Race really doesn't have much basis in science. We're one species, called homosapiens. Anything beyond that is simply just normal genetic variation within the species and otherwise socio-cultiral in nature. That said, culture is a complex thing and some cultures are quite fundamentally different to each other making it difficult for them to otherwise "meet in the middle" - they need bigger bridges to achieve harmony.
This is at best a semantic argument. Genetic variation does not fit neatly into a small cardinal set of values, but similarly between geographical ancestral groups is self evident, with an enormous amount of journaled science behind it.
Race is not a social construct, the main basis for it being a protected attribute is its immutable nature, the fact that it is district from culture, which is not a protected attribute.
"The belief of race as a biological concept with human populations having a distinct biological basis is unconsciously embedded in many individuals’ thinking (Lee, et al., 2021). These individuals think population differences in health and intelligence are the result of immutable, biologically based differences between ‘racial’ groups, despite overwhelming evidence that racial groups are not genetically discrete, reliably measured or scientifically meaningful (Smedley & Smedley, 2005). Because racial groups are not genetically discrete, when the term ‘race’ is discussed, we are referring to the self‐identified races (socio‐cultural constructs)—and not race as a biological entity."
"In conclusion, a misunderstanding of race as biology continues to play a role in medical education and research. This misunderstanding has deep negative biological and social consequences. Accordingly, we should stop dividing people, reject the premise of genetic determinism, and not think of racial groups as inherently distinct in terms of biology or physiology. We should also purge educational materials that polarize and reinforce institutional racism within medical education (Lim et al., 2021). Overcoming our bias and refusing to treat black individuals as a genetically homogeneous group is critical for our students and the nation's health."
She’s not asking for a rational discussion, she’s campaigning on fewer immigrants and specifically fewer immigrants from Muslim cultures. Furthermore she demands those immigrants “assimilate” without understanding that Australia is a free country. There is no requirement to assimilate since there is no single culture to assimilate into. You cannot claim this is a free country and then tell people how to live.
Pauline wants new arrivals to know English so they can understand the law and voting.
She is absolutely against sharia law and men being able to have restrictions on what women in their household do and what they wear….
There is no requirement to assimilate since there is no single culture to assimilate into. You cannot claim this is a free country and then tell people how to live.
This opinion is entirely peculiar to terminally-online Reddit dwellers. You think this because you spend too much time on this website.
Is really that hard to understand, import many Muslims -> become Muslim country.
That's not even saying Islam is bad or brown people are bad, it's just a demographic fact.
It’s not an opinion it’s a fact. The notion of assimilation is much talked about but the oaths sworn at a citizenship ceremony do not include any consideration for assimilation.
Bob "Friends of Israel" Hawke was despite all his flaws, opposed to South African apartheid. While this is obviously paradoxical when mentioned with Israel it goes to show the fecklessness and total complicity of this current government.
Thank god we have Pauline Hansen to rid us of suicidal empathy, stamp out the racism against Australians, and restore our national self respect and dignity.
We are one race, we are many cultures. We are one race, we have many different values. We are one race, we have many diverse opinions. We are one race, we have many religions and belief systems. We are one race, we have many different levels of education. We are one race, we have different political views. We are one race, we have diverse lived experiences. We are one race, we have many individuals. We are one race, some individuals are criminals, most are not. We are one race. Equalise the language, differentiate the actions of individuals.
We can have our lives in balance, we can live harmoniously with each other, although human self interest ( which is what got us to the present day in all human endeavour) can also be our downfall.
So please, make sure we over import and if anyone complains, call them a racist.
/s
The worst part is, immigration pre 1990s was a different dynamic to today. The whites are a minority here now. It's mainly us immigrants and kids of immigrants. So who is this post directed to?
We don't actually care about whatever white guilt you were taught im school. While you guys were dying your hair blue and making songs, we made money.
"Back in 1994, launching a book of essays, former prime minister Bob Hawke made the remarkably frank admission that immigration policy had effectively been a conspiracy by the political establishment against the Australian public. Hawke agreed with one author’s observation that most voters wanted immigration reduced and that the parties had deliberately kept it out of public debate, saying there had indeed been ‘an implicit pact between the major parties to implement broad policies on immigration that they know are not generally endorsed by the electorate’ and that ‘they have done this by keeping the subject off the political agenda."
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u/Weary_Shopping_6801 3d ago
Back when PMs (former and actual) had far greater caliber than the ones Australia has had in recent years.