We’re about half-way between the weekly BludgerTrack and when I’m anticipating the next opinion poll, this being the period of pre-budget calm before the storm, and a new thread is wanted. So I’ve decided to hang this one off the latest ANUpoll survey, an exercise conducted by the Australian National University two or three times a year to gauge the public mood on a specific area of public policy, and track the salience of various issues over time. The subject of the latest instalment, which was conducted by phone from a sample of 1200 in February and March, is tax and equity in Australia. Among various findings on tax that would be familiar from those who follow Essential Research, the report also finds support for increased spending on social services at its highest level since the series began in 1987. The report also finds that, in spite of everything, 56% consider the existing system “moderately fair”, on top of another 4% for “very fair”, while 22% rate it “not too fair” and 18% “not at all fair”.
The survey also features regular questions in which respondents are asked to name the first and second most important political problems, out of a list that presently includes 27 options. To make this easier to interpret, I’ve condensed results into various categories, which are hopefully generally self-explanatory (particularly economy/budget, environment and better government – security/external covers wars, terrorism, defence and immigration, while services covers health and education and such). The progress of these results since 2008 is shown in the chart below.
From which a number of points are clearly worth noting. Concern about service provision mounted to giddy heights after the 2014 budget, but promptly returned to normal after Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister. The combined result for the various economic issues is at a low point in the latest survey, having peaked in the years immediately following the global financial crisis. Security/external and crime/society, which are largely conservative concerns, are on an upward trend. “Better government”, I’m guessing, was a popular response among Coalition supporters while Labor was in power, but is not a correspondingly popular choice for Labor voters now it’s the Coalition’s turn.
SirGitOfSmeg @ #297 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:01 pm
It is true that they are but a part of the problem. The other causative factor is 457 and 417 Visa holders. So we need a holistic approach which evaluates the causes and effects and makes policy that addresses it.
feeney @ #278 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 7:57 pm
To be entirely fair, this isn’t necessarily true – arguably the topic that we’ve argued on for the longest amount of time (more, even, than Rudd vs Gillard!!11!!1) is senate voting reform. And that won’t be a live election issue in the slightest.
Speaking of numbers. Every year in Australia by virtue of regular births, many people enter this country who are also a huge drain on resources. Blind, deaf, impaired in various ways. Social cohesion seems to work just fine even though our crippled and mentally incompetent represent larger fractions as a ratio per head of population. Heck we even have a large enough number of people who vote Liberal but should be automatically disallowed on that basis due to mental incompetence – but we still have social cohesion..
C@tmomma @ #296 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:00 pm
A stupid statement in an ethnically and culturally diverse nation of immigrants and their descendants.
I hope that a humane to solution Asylum Seekers can be found as for me I don’t know the answer but lets hope it’s found soon
My Great great grandfather migrated here with his nine brothers in 1839 for the gold rush.
No doubt he was called a wog and a dago, I know his son My Great Grandfather (born in Australia in 1878 ) was and during WW2 he owned his own business but went bankrupted do to people saying “why should we pay you we’re fighting you in Europe.
Rod Hagen
Maybe. Define what you mean by “parity”.
SirGitOfSmeg @ #300 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:09 pm
An easy and trite retort. You know what I mean.
I was referring to the underlying angst that an overwhelming majority, ~70% as measured in poll after poll, of the Australian population has about an unregulated multicultural mass migration.
The great Australian Multicultural experiment hasn’t failed but it is showing signs of strain and, if it is to continue to be supported then it needs to be manageable. Or else those with more extreme views than my son’s, who is simply a kid from an average area in Australia, with average values, will take hold of the agenda and bend it to their will.
C@t,
What we have is a complete failure to understand the causes of unemployment, full stop. Once upon a time, unemployment sat at around 1-2%. Now a lot of economists (sadly) regard “residual” unemployment as 5%. The sad fact is that the nature of work has changed and we no longer value the sorts of skills that just about anyone was capable of learning. There was a lot more manual labour previously. As our society changed and the bulk of us got wealthier and went on to buy big TVs, what happened to all the people who for various reasons were unable to “fit in”? Yeah, we have an underclass. A lot of people who just aren’t valuable and can be forgotten. A lot of them end up on DSP, or being cared for by extended family. But we need to face up to the fact that that is what has happened. There is a lot more insecurity. And a lot of people who don’t understand the causes of unemployment and prefer to blame anyone “unlike” themselves.
Hugo @ 8.49
It’s important to remember that once we accept people as refugees their subsequent experience and treatment is fundamentally different from what people who inhabit camp and centres in Malaysia, Indonesia, Jordan, Turkey and a host of other non-first world countries is.
One of the very worst things about the asylum seeker debate is the simplistic identifications and grossly inappropriate comparisons that take place. For what it is worth, asylum seekers are no different in character from any other large group of people. There are genuine people and there are frauds; lazy people and hard workers; people who are kind and people who would do to other ten times as brutally as was done to them. But opponents label them all as economic refugees (ignoring that persecution for a convention reason can be economic) and frauds who want to take advantage of us, on the one hand, and innocent victims and martyrs who would never undertake the long voyage to Australia unless their lives were in immediate danger, on the other.
Then there are claims that use irrelevant comparisons – like comparing total arrivals, including citizens and a huge number of genuine tourists, that take place on a documented and orderly basis, with a numerically small number of non-citizens, all of whom want to settle here permanently on an unapproved and undocumented basis.
Finally, there are claims that defy logic – for example that there is a reasonable number of people whom we can bring to Australia on an orderly basis, and if we bring that number of people here every one else who wants to come will wait patiently for the opportunity, which may never come. We already bring in a number of people under our humanitarian program. It’s nominally 13,500, but with a special additional intake of refugees from the Syrian and Iraq conflicts. Personally, I think the base number is too low and we can do more – just like we can do more in foreign aid. But there is no magical number of refugees we can bring to Australia that will address the demand to come here, just like there is no magical foreign aid contribution we can make that will solve the world’s problems.
We do what we can and what we should relative to our national wealth. We don’t do enough now but we cannot go anywhere near to solving either refugees or world poverty on an open basis.
And on what data do you base this ‘fact’? More specifically, what do you mean by the word ‘impact’?
bemused,
A stupid statement in an ethnically and culturally diverse nation of immigrants and their descendants.
You need to get out more.
Plus, I would recommend that, instead of your reflexively antagonistic retorts, if it suits you, that seek to belittle, you take the time to understand the subtext of a person’s remarks.
However, if you wish to remain blinkered to an example of real world thinking of average young people today, then I’m afraid I can’t help you. Young people, as a group, I might add, which is comprised of the gamut of modern day multicultural Australia, as ethnically-diverse, but 2nd, 3rd or more generations resident, a bunch of kids as you point out Australia is now home to. I was simply saying that they all are feeling a bit threatened by the increased pace of change of our multicultural Australia right now.
Now you may wish them to have the more sophisticated perspective that you do but don’t hold your breath or you’ll die waiting. I’m just reporting what comes out of the mouths of babes.
TPOF (various)
By and large I agree with you, but nevertheless I am not ethically comfortable with locking people up in terrible conditions in dirt poor Pacific nations, just so that we – one if the wealthiest people in the history of the world – can feel like we keeping our borders “secure”. But the realist in me is yet to see another approach that would work any better – which is one reason why it was disappointing that the Malaysia swap was not given a try. At least it was trying a new approach.
Warren,
There’s really only two things worth considering regarding asylum seekers.
First, we’ve adopted the approach of destroying some people’s lives in order to avoid deaths at sea. Except that then we get to pretend that there aren’t deaths somewhere else.
Second, our politicians won’t countenance a “process closer to the source” policy that would avoid deaths at sea, because they’re too scared of having a public debate on the actual consequences of a more open policy. Will it actually result in hundreds of thousands per year? Or is the reality that there are many real world factors that would prevent that outcome occurring on a regular basis? How many people can we take in whilst having regard to social cohesion? that’s a legitimate concern, but strangely there is not even a remotely well informed debate about this number.
Its only when we can know the effect of a more open policy that we can either dismiss it as doomed, or then ask how we can have processing closer to the source, along with resettlement in other countries and keep to a pre-determined resettlement level.
NONE of the posters here has a sensible answer to those question. This is just a microcosm. So many people out there in our society themselves think momentarily about these questions and fear takes hold and they assume “OMG.. Millions!.. “. That’s absurd. The truth is somewhere in the middle. And the failure of our politicians is in failing to rise above that and actually have a conversation with people and educate people and move the debate forward. Rudd, had he survived, or Gillard for that matter, would have stumbled through, found some regional solutions and gradually the heat would have come out of the situation and eventually we could move to sane and humane policy. Abbott on the other hand, and I fear the Liberal Party in more general will be locked into this course of action for years if not decades. Unless and until some crisis happens (like a regional conflict) that forces people to rethink.
I do not like the fact that Labor didn’t take more leadership and deal with public sentiment when they could, but overall their policy was at least trying to find some way out. The Liberals and especially Abbott and his friends were just plain sick. But I save the biggest condemnation for the lizard brains in our society that supported Abbott, made it an issue and yelled loudly enough to convince people like TPOF that a few tens of thousands of ASs per year would be unacceptable in terms of social cohesion.
If anything we should export the lizard brains and import AS. Then we’d have in general more intelligent, more hard working people.
C@t,
Sorry no I don’t know what you mean, as far as I can tell you and your son were playing a racist game of classifying people as ‘Aussie’ based on what they looked like, so how did you classify people that looked Aboriginal? Or of mixed race?
cud chewer @ #308 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:20 pm
And you appear to be consigning them to the scrap heap of life, whereas, in days gone by they could be employed gainfully in low-skill jobs. I don’t believe they should be supplanted by an unregulated labour market, like you-know-who would like and what, to these kids, it looks like the last few years has ramped up.
Don’t shoot me. I’m only the messenger.
TPOF,
There is no orderly queue out there. We could make it a bit more orderly by processing closer to the source, but it will never be perfect. Its another simplistic lie that suits certain protagonists.
Having spent the first 25 years of my working life in the construction industry and the second 25 years in the health industry I have worked with people from just about every county on Earth do you Know what I found they are just like you and me.
C@t
I agree, we’ve created an underclass and we should be moving towards a job guarantee of some sort. The point I’m making is that sadly, when ordinary (read, not particularly well informed) people are under stress they react in perverse ways. Blaming refugees, voting for thugs like Abbott etc. The weird thing is they never seem to rise up and blame the privileged (well, this election will be a good test eh..)
C@tmomma @ #311 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:30 pm
I live in an area with a relatively high population of recent migrants and my neighbours on both sides and across the street are of Chinese origin. We get on fine.
I also notice when I ‘get out’ to places like the local shopping centre that people of different ethnic backgrounds seem to get on just fine, ranging from school kids to the elderly.
We also had a pretty multi-ethnic lot of people at the opening of out campaign office this morning and we were united.
You must live in bogan central.
SirGitOfSmeg @ #314 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:31 pm
As I tried to explain, that, to a young man who doesn’t regularly come to the city, when he got off the train and stepped into one of the ethnic enclaves that have sprung up in the city suburbs he made a comment pertaining to how few Anglo Australians there were there, growing up, as he has, in a not very ethnically diverse region of Australia.
It was not a game we played, it was an observation he made.
Fyi, his best friends are a Lebanese Australian and a Maltese Australian. He is tolerant of all ethnicities but suffers from the sort of feelings that a young man trying to get a job in Australia these days feels when he sees that a lot of the jobs that he would have traditionally been able to get are being taken by people who haven’t been in this country as long as his family has. It’s not racist, it’s simply angst.
C@tmomma @ #311 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:30 pm
Two things, C@t:
The first is that you could have said “spot the white person” as opposed to “spot the Aussie”. I think this is a much less abrasive way of putting it.
Secondly, I don’t agree with your sentiments about Australia’s youth – from what I have experienced, they are less likely to be concerned than ever before – many of them understand that asylum seekers are not the devils’ work and accepting them will not cause widespread problems – and this is because of the fact that younger generations are consistently more ethnically intertwined than the ones that came before them.
Additionally, I’m not impressed with the synopsis that there is an “increased pace of change” referential to multicultural Australia – if you mean what I think you mean (ie increased demographic change which means that there are proportionally less Anglo people around), then why is this period any “worse” than, say, the end of White Australia, or during Menzies’ time in which many southern and eastern Europeans made their homes in Australia (which was an entirely new wave of culture in itself, despite the similarities we may see today), or during Fraser’s tenure, when he accepted nearly 100,000 Vietnamese refugees (and with only half the population compared to the Australia of today)?
Hugo
Nor am I. It was instituted in sheer panic and desperation by the last Labor government as they were not permitted by the other parties to try anything less inhumane and vile. And, as the PNG court decision demonstrated, it is patently untenable in the long term. Nauru is actually much worse. It is a tiny speck in the ocean; and one of the smallest and poorest nations on earth – largely being kept solvent by our use of it as a detention centre.
I don’t know what Labor does if it gets into government. It could not be as heartless as the regime that Scott Morrison and the half-witted potato head who succeeded him are still maintaining. But whatever we say here on this site, there is widespread discomfort among most Australians about unprotected borders. The mere fact that Labor closed down Nauru in 2007 has been used against it time and again, even though that closure had nothing to do with the growth of numbers afterwards as pretty much everyone on Nauru previously who did not return home finished up in Australia or NZ while the Liberals under Howard was still in power.
And if Labor came out now with an announcement of what it would do differently after the election (other than take regional resettlement more seriously than the current government) not only would the Liberals scream long and loud and effectively about opening the doors again to boats and boats and boats. But what is worse is that all the commentariat who are currently wringing their hands about how Labor and the Liberals have the same inhumane policy would ignore the Liberal policy, despite the fact they are in government, and start dissecting Labor policy for how it doesn’t go far enough to protect the asylum seekers. Which is what they did last time and will continue to do now. Marriage equality is a good example of that.
C@tmomma @ #320 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:43 pm
Fyi, his best friends are a Lebanese Australian and a Maltese Australian. He is tolerant of all ethnicities but suffers from the sort of feelings that a young man trying to get a job in Australia these days feels when he sees that a lot of the jobs that he would have traditionally been able to get are being taken by people who haven’t been in this country as long as his family has. It’s not racist, it’s simply angst.
I don’t think we should be basing job offers off whose family has been in Australia the longest, I doubt that’d be very efficient.
oops coding screwup, my bad
bemused,
You must live in bogan central.
Maybe I do. And maybe you should try and understand these people better, as opposed to being condescendingly-dismissive. They are as Australian as your Chinese neighbours and shopping centre full of the ethnically-diverse.
I am simply saying that I have a unique perspective on the sort of people that the Coalition appeals to and that their rhetoric appeals to. It doesn’t mean that I am a paid-up subscriber to it.
As other remarked the refugee debate is very complex.
What I find difficult to accept is calls from refugee advocates for people who are from countries not in conflict situation to b accepted as refugees. I do not know the story of the unfortunate guy who torched himself recently but he was Iranian. Why is he even in detention? Why not send him back? And as I recal the lady with the baby a few months back was from Bangladesh. Again why would she b a refugee? Yes those countries r not necessarily nice places to live but that doesn’t make u a refugee.
I feel like people from non conflict countries who r not genuinely in danger r taking up the places (both in terms of actual resources and the publication willingness to help) of those who really need refuge.
Also I think nobody has discussed technology and its impact. This is not the era of Vietnamese boat people. This is the era of the smartphone. People share information allowing very large number of people (as seen in the EU) to plan, pay for and make journeys across multiple countries to their desired end locations. This large movement will not b tolerated for long by destination countries as is already evident. While our issues here will remain small I have no doubt that in the end it will b closed borders and live ammunition for those trying to enter the EU illegally (and if u think it’s far fetched I’m pretty sure Israel fairly regularly shoots and kills those trying to cross its borders (mainly African migrants)).
Airlines @ #323 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:47 pm
No it’s not very efficient, but neither is it efficient to make job offers to a person just because they are family, and a similarly or better-qualified person isn’t.
What that is is dispiriting.
WarrenPeace @ #317 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:38 pm
Couldn’t agree more.
I have watched successive waves of migrants just get absorbed into the Australian community while at the same time changing it and enriching it.
Italians, Greeks, Vietnamese… all pretty much mainstream Aussies now, complete with accent and attitude. Chinese and Indians at various stages of that process and now the Africans are the ‘new kids on the block’ but are now finding their place, some with amazing rapidity. Oh, and a multitude of smaller groups.
TPOF,
It seems to me that one of the reasons Labor has been so bold this time in announcing its policies is to get the boat people issue into the background. I’ve no doubt Labor believes that it can negotiate better than the Libs (anyone could) and convince some countries to resettle more people. I guess the hope is that the destruction of lives in Nauru will be a one off thing. Well, maybe. I’d honestly like to believe that under a long term Labour government eventually the heat will go out of the situation and we can move further down the path of closer-to-the -source processing and substantially increasing refugee intake. The sad thing is that whatever Labor says, it’ll be used, misused and abused by the Murdoch media, so there’s no path other than to get other issues out there and hope its neutralised.
Of course the Libs will be attacking on “carbon tax” and “boats boats boats” regardless. The real question is whether the voters have moved on. And again, this is why I’m not betting on this election. The media is fucking horrible.
Re: Asylum seekers & immigration generally.
Both the left and right need a hard dose of facts on the immediate and eventual consequences of various Australian policy decisions regarding immigration.
The facts are that too high immigration damages the interests of residents and causes environmental and social problems. Any economic benefit brought is dissipated in both the short and long term (their may be some medium term benefit, most oft referred to in studies that exclude a number of negative externalities from their calculations).
The reason such issues don’t get much play in our political debate? Almost all the bad consequences fall on lower classes who are unable to segregate themselves from ill-effects via wealth (e.g. just one example – sending children to private schools and not dealing with ethnic violence in the stretched public high school system).
This is a good video on the subject: https://youtu.be/VTROCGb5qj8
With the total desirable immigration budget then incredibly tight, I think one can still argue successfully that there is a moral case for taking the world’s most persecuted people within our borders in reasonable numbers. The process must be controlled though (no free ticket for people coming via boat for example).
An Australian policy of allowing 50,000 family and 50,000 refugees and 20,000 business/worker visas per year would be a hellovalot better for Australia and the world than the current policies which allow over 250,000 new entrants per year and which rob important developing countries of their best and brightest citizens who are needed at home (the skilled visa workers).
Slower population growth in Australia means less strain on the environment, public health, education and welfare spending AND public infrastructure. It also forces Australia to make the necessary structural adjustments to our economy (to make it sustainable) that the ponzi population growth scheme helps us put off.
Slower population growth means more resources (i.e. wealth) for each Australian, bigger back yards and cleaner air. It also means a safer and more cohesive society.
It also takes the air out of racial/ethnic/cultural debates (far less need for ultra nationalism and Reclaim Australia) and allows for Australian born people to have a greater say in the running of their country (have you ever looked at how many of our politicians, business leaders and raw numbers of votes are not culturally, ethnically or by birth, Australian? Hows that been working out for us by the way? Getting policies that are good for the country? – yeah I am really a nut for thinking that there is a link).
The video will point you to the scientific papers that back up my drift.
In my case, I saw it close up in the Immigration Department for many years. You get a good sense of what will push community tolerance there. There is no doubt that Abbott played it for all it was worth, but if xenophobia was not hardwired into all human beings in the first place Abbott would not have had any impact whatsoever.
Multiculturalism built Australia. But convincing those who were already here to accept waves of immigrants from all over the world was incredibly hard work and required massive bipartisanship from Labor, which started the post-war immigration boom, and the Liberals who continued it. Our natural propensity is to fear outsiders and to fear invasion. When you look over the recorded history of mankind it is not hard to see why that fear remains front and centre for humans. So simply putting pubic concerns about uncontrolled immigration down to rabble rousing by a few nasty Liberals is simplistic in the extreme.
Changing, let alone simply challenging, the rhetoric is just not going to work. Any government that wants to maintain a strong immigration program for the benefit of the nation has to first ensure that the voters trust it to manage that program.
With asylum seekers, me be blunt. At the next Federal election, likely to be 9 weeks from now, unless you vote informal (and yes, 1 greens/ independent and no other preferences is informal) then you have to choose either the LNP or Labor in the majority of seats.
If you preference the LNP over Labor, then you cannot claim to care about AS who try to come by boat to Australia. The LNP will NEVER try and put in place the only possible solution – a regional solution a la that earlier Malcolm, (Malcolm Fraser). On the other hand, Labor have said many times that this is what they will do, and Shorten has re-iterated this strongly today.
bemused @ #328 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:51 pm
This is a sentiment that I can agree to. The Greeks, the Italians, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, nobody complains about their apparent lack of integration – although the same arguments were used against them when they first arrived (“Asians form ghettoes and do not assimilate”). Why do we think that Arabs and Africans are likely to be any worse, when similar fear tactics against other groups failed?
BTW Ethnically probably isn’t the right word in the last sentence.
Think about how white American (or Irish) business leaders that head Australian companies tend to treat our national and workers interest – that is what I am getting at (not 3rd generation Australian born Chinese descent business leaders, who are very much Australian).
cud
No there isn’t. It’s why I use the example of the numbers of people who want to get in and see a Grand Final. There is a limited number of places in the Australian migration program, and no matter what number we set for humanitarian places it will never be enough to go near to satisfying demand in the current environment. Which is these people are not queue jumpers, but fence jumpers. They may have the best reasons in the world for wanting to be at the game, but if they jump the fence and plonk themselves in the seat of someone who has a ticket and refuses to move, it’s the ticket holder who misses out.
TPOF,
I agree that xenophobia is hard wired. But I disagree that some tens of thousands of refugees per year in a country this large should cause social issues. In a country this large that is like walking down George Street and spotting the one recent arrival in the crowd.
Hundreds of thousands per year, continually. Yes, that would be a hit on the budget even if people welcomed it. Again, everyone just assumes that a more humane policy means its tens, then hundreds, then millions. The overwhelming majority of displaced people in the world are trying to get on with life and would much prefer to go home. And we aren’t Europe. It does take a lot of work to get from Syria to here.
One final thought. If we (Australians) were both xenophobic and rational what we really should be afraid of is millions of climate refugees. Thank you Abbott..
C@tmomma @ #327 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:51 pm
And nobody is suggesting that family-oriented businesses are necessarily a good idea, however they are spread through cultures, religions and ethnicities and are likely never going to be properly weeded out.
TPOF – You’re also more likely to find a genuine refugee in a UNHCR refugee camp than on a boat crossing the Timor Sea, which you can only get on if you pay a lot of money. I stand to be corrected.
Airlines,
The first is that you could have said “spot the white person” as opposed to “spot the Aussie”. I think this is a much less abrasive way of putting it.
I would have ( or would I have? No, I wouldn’t. I’m more tolerant and capable of nuanced understanding and wouldn’t have said anything). However I was just relaying the exact words of the person who did say it in an effort to convey the way they look at it. 🙂
I have 2 children. The other one is University-educated and more like the kids you have described. Maybe that’s the difference? Level of education?
Those periods in Australian history that you refer to also reached pinch points that necessitated government, as I remember, to say that we could no longer accept as many as we had been, and then those that were here became assimilated.
I think the point is that our society just wants to keep some control over the numbers who come here, basically. That way lies a more harmonious assimilation into Australian society.
CUD – Are you saying there are no economic migrants crossing the Timor sea?
Airlines @ 9.47
I think C@t’s point, and a fair one, is not that we should be doing this, but that when someone misses out on a job they don’t start to think ‘That’s fair. The person who got the job must have been more qualified.’ They start looking for explanations, often simplistic, that make them feel better about themselves. Sadly, but unavoidably, many people see someone with slanted eyes or olive skin or even white skin getting that job (or just on the street) and take personal refuge in the idea that you have been crowded out of a job you are entitled to.
It’s absolute rubbish. But you have no idea how often people who are under personal stress, for example because they are unemployed, are satisfied with such unfair and immoral explanations.
That is what we have to manage. As Warren Peace (I think) said earlier, there is no difference when you work up close with them or they are your neighbours, but we tend to go there and governments have a duty to dampen down, not wind up, those feelings, aka dog whistling. Labor has done nothing to wind up those feelings, but does not get credit for avoiding doing the slimy stuff that the Liberals do. Instead the greens and the commentariat just lump the two together.
virtualkat @ #326 Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 9:50 pm
You can be a refugee and not be from a country of conflict simply because you can be oppressed and persecuted even in countries in which there is no conflict. You could be persecuted for speaking out against the government or against prevailing social conditions, for not wanting to be forced to fight in war, for being of the wrong ethnicity, religion, sexuality, or the like.
Eritrea, despite not being a conflict zone, is regularly the source of many refugees (particularly in Europe) due to many breaches of the above. I have known of applications for asylum in Iran due to forced gender reassignment surgery if you are LGB – this is similarly someone being persecuted for who they are, and that’s why they are able to apply.
cud chewer @ 329,
Amen to that!
From what I see In my area Wallsend in Newcastle people don’t want bigger back yards developers are knocking down houses in big yard and building four to six town houses on them with no yard. Every day I get letters from real estate people wanting to buy my place, they will have to wait until after I fall off the perch.
A couple of years ago I went to the Newcastle show With my sister her son and his kids what impressed me was nearly every group of young people were ethnically diverse
RE: Immigration, Asylum Seekers and assimilation
Guys the equation here is simple…
Let in relatively smaller numbers and assimilation, migrant experience and benefits to society will be greater (ill effects less).
Let in relatively higher numbers and reverse the above.
High numbers of immigration produce segmented societies and exacerbate social divide and inequality.
RE: Inequality, consider this:
Economic effect on Australian born, lower class white Australian without property:
– greater demand for housing (rent and house prices go up).
– greater supply of low skilled work (wages driven down).
Economic effect on Australian born, upper class, business owning white Australian with multiple investment properties:
– rising house prices (increased wealth)
– more customers (increased wealth)
– greater labor supply (decreased costs)
Not hard to see why the powers that be and educated and wealthy classes love immigration and Reclaim Australia types (e.g. Australian born lower class Australians) dislike it.
Re: Assimilation
Send 5 ethnic kids into a class of 25 people of same ethnicity/culture – assimilation.
Put 5 groups of 5 ethnic people together and watch the assimilation… oh, wait… they just hang out with themselves.
The difference in historic Australian immigration vs contemporary are that the total AND per capita numbers are greater and the immigrants more culturally different (e.g. Greeks, Italians and a large number of the Vietnamese even, were Christian). If you doubt that about the waves of Vietnamese immigrants I would suggest you don’t now many…
So in context, historical immigration was done in such a way as to favour assimilation and integration (relatively smaller numbers, less cultural difference) than modern immigration.
virtualkat @ 9.50
That’s because the Convention definition of a refugee turns on whether the person is persecuted, not whether they are fleeing from a war zone. Indeed, someone could be fleeing a war zone but not come within the definition of a refugee, because they are not being persecuted for a convention reason. They are just caught up in a dangerous situation.
That makes sense when you realise that Jews in Germany were persecuted by the Nazis long before there was a war, and the refugee convention was designed to deal with a whole lot of displaced people after World War 2 was over but who were still subject to persecution or would be if they returned to their nation of citizenship.
TPOF
That’s a good point. I was generally of the view that there was no real concern in allowing AS to stay here. It’s a huge country with practically nobody living here so what’s the harm? Then after hearing things from the perspective of recently arrived Australians, I began to understand the unfairness in queue jumping. In order to come here they have to jump through many hoops, wait lengthy time periods and pay tens of thousands of dollars just to bring themselves over. To get their parents over is even more difficult. As you can imagine, they didn’t quite see things as I did. Rightly so too.
This article is worth a read to see how the TPP may founder just like the TTIP between Europe & the US. This part in particular caught my eye:
“The first blow came from UN human rights expert Alfred de Zayas, who in a hearing with the Council of Europe’s legal affairs and human rights committee on April 19 warned that the “private or semi-private settlement of disputes between investors and states,” at the core of these trade agreements, “is incompatible with democracy, the rule of law and human rights.”
De Zayas’ pronouncement comes hot on the heels of a hammer-blow ruling last February by Germany’s Association of Judges that not only is there no legal basis for an international investment court, but it would have no jurisdiction in any European country. As we reported at the time, the growing opposition to the idea of an Investment Court System (ICS) leaves the Commission’s trade representatives stuck in no man’s land.”
I grew up on the Central Coast (C@t land) and then moved to Sydney to study and work. That was 20 years ago and the ethnic diversity of Sydney was striking back then.
It is challenging to come from a mono-ethnic culture and move into a diverse one. A challenge I am very grateful for having been exposed to. I will always remember with fondness the multicultural hotpot that is Sydney.
The crazies in Sydney arent the Lebbos or the Mace’os or towelheads or the Chinks…. its those from country NSW and Adelaide who scared me.
woops – link is
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/04/don-quijones-a-blow-to-transatlantic-corpocracy-support-for-ttip-begins-to-unravel.html