Most of the voters who were panicked into supporting the Howard government over Tampa have now forgotten their fears, while those who were horrified by the Pacific solution and the massive suffering it created (including the loss of hundreds of lives on SIEV-X) still remember. So we’ve seen a gradual easing of some of the most oppressive practices, such as the detention of children.
But the government is still up for gratuitous evil whenever they think they can get away with it, as is indicated by the reaction to the High Court’s decision that the indefinite detention of stateless asylum-seekers is legal. These people have no way of getting out of prison – no other country will take them – and they present no threat to us. But the government is still going to lock them up.
There’s a place in the coldest circles of hell (Ptolemea, to be precise) reserved for Amanda Vanstone, right next to Philip Ruddock.
Other comments Ken Parish has an analysis of the decision He makes a pretty good case that the High Court majority got it wrong, and concludes
I’m not even slightly delighted . In fact it’s a day of mourning not just for Messrs Al-Kateb and Al Khafaji, but for everyone who values liberty, the rule of law and the constraints on unlimited executive power which are so central to liberal democratic principles. What a bunch of miserable bastards.
Miserable bastards as McHugh, Hayne, Callinan and Heydon may be, they are only giving Vanstone and the rest of the government the opportunity to commit their crimes against humanity. They can still choose to set these people free if they want to. There’s more at Barista and Counterspin. I’ll add more links if anyone advises me. Of course, you can imagine what sort of link you’ll get if you support this decision.
John Quiggin 
John
I blogged on this decision at some considerable length earlier this afternoon here. Some of your readers might be interested.
Some see the recent changes in Federal Government policy as a victory for those many refugee advocacy groups and individuals who have argued for change. While such groups have played an important role in filling some of the gaps in the public debate, it would be a serious mistake to allow this to breed complacency. The Governments basic approach to asylum-seekers has not been seriously challenged, as it probably judges (correctly?) that concern for refugees and asylum-seekers, tend to concentrate in the ‘bleeding heart’ types (such as myself).
The ameliorations in policy are partialy explained by a lack of the raw material (boat arrivals) to wage another ‘attack-of-the-killer-boat-people’ campaign and a realisation of the value of a pool of workers prepared to do low-paid work in country areas.
Todays ruling shows that the Governemt has not abondoned its’ committment to some core principles, such as detention as punishment and deterrence, and the supremecy of executive power.
Any policy that treats a person as a means to an ends (deterrence), as this does, is bad news, especially for liberal democracies.
For people concerned over the human consequences of such policy, the legal arguments that support the Governments’ right to do so, are rather cold comfort.
Lemme see!
They came from Indonesia via those delightful people smugglers, who are financing JI and AQ amongst their other activities.
Now how did they get into Indonesia?
Yep from Malaysia, who will accept any muslim without the need of a visa. (Nothing racist about them!)
So the solution is simple. Put them on a flight to Malasia and let them work it out from there.
The alternative for John’s information, would be to send them to China, where the border guards would shoot them on sight, as soon as they tried to cross their border.
Better be a lot of space in hell for all those Chinese, who don’t share JQ’s caring sharing nature.
Or, maybe as they say, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”
I think the loony left and bleeding hearts had better stock up on aluminized cloth fire proof suits (which I believe are on special in Bunnings this week) in preparation for their sojourn in hell.
“You know in your heart that nothing’s really wrong with you. However, your heart is just a muscle. You “know” things with your brain.”
I second tipper.
The only people who arrive in boats who can truthfully say they couldn’t have sought refuge in a third country would be persecuted East Timorese and Papua New Guineans.
Everyone else is not out responsibility, the very fact that they got all the way here (Australia is pretty isolated in case any of us hadn’t thought about it) shows they’re economic refugees. And we take an annual quota of genuine refugees who have been assessed by the UN, so nobody can say we’re not pulling our weight in a humanitarian sense.
Labor government locks up families not assessed as genuine refugees, no drama. Howard locks up families not assessed as genuine refugees, a burning moral issue that gives us an insight into the twisted souls of Howard government.
mh: “Any policy that treats a person as a means to an ends (deterrence), as this does, is bad news, especially for liberal democracies.” I don’t understand, so we should abolish prisons? The basis of sending people to prison for crimes is individual and general detterence.
“I don’t understand, so we should abolish prisons? The basis of sending people to prison for crimes is individual and general detterence.”
Adam misses the point that these people haven’t committed a crime, and even if they had they haven’t been charged or taken before a court or convicted, or sentenced to imprisonment. They’ve been consigned to indeterminate “detention” purely by administrative process.
Moreover, if the federal government actually admitted that its actions were motivated by deterrence, it would thereby be admitting it was acting unconstitutionally. Punishment of wrongdoing (and deterrence of other potential wrongdoers) is a central attribute of judicial power, and under our constitutional system only courts (at federal level) can exercise judicial power.
The High Court majority in Al-Kateb and Al Khafaji proceeded on the basis that the detention wasn’t motivated by deterrent/punitive factors, but by the need to secure their availability for future deportation, despite the fact that the possibility of deportation in the foreseeable future was very unlikely. If the government had conceded that its motives were punitive, that line of wilfully blind reasoning wouldn’t have been open.
On the other hand, Justice McHugh made a point that has some force. It might well be possible constitutionally for the Parliament to pass a law creating an offence of strict liability of being in Australia without a visa, irrespective of whether the offender has the capacity to go somewhere else, and make it punishable by mandatory indeterminate imprisonment (althugh there might well be other constitutional arguments that would arise in that situation). A person in that situation would then be dealt with by a court, but it would effectively be just a rubber stamp. McHugh argues that if that situation is constitutionally permissible, then there’s no point in ruling unconstitutional indefinite administrative detention at the behest solely of the executive government (without the involvement of a court as a mere rubber stamp – i.e. the current situation). This would, McHugh argues, be a triumph of form over substance.
The defect in McHugh’s reasoning is that at least such a law would have to be considered and enacted by Parliament, and one suspects it would never get through the Senate. Here the High Court has achieved the same outcome by interpreting existing legislation as authorising permanent, unaccountable administrative detention, when in fact the Parliament probably didn’t turn its mind at all to the question of what should happen to people who simply can’t be sent anywhere else because no other country will take them.
Finally, for the people who are asserting that these blokes could go to Malaysia, I’m pretty sure that isn’t true. The case was conducted on the basis that the federal government conceded that there was no foreseeable or immediate prospect of deportation to any other country. One would expect that they tried all possible options before making that concession, including Malaysia.
Moreover, both litigants were (and remain) willing to return to their homeland or other place where they once lived. That’s the whole point of these cases. We’re not dealing with asylum seekers desperately using every trick in the book to remain in Australia. We’re dealing with people who are perfectly willing to leave Australia, but no-one else will accept them.
I’m not sure whether it’s true that Malaysia accepts any Muslim person for migration purposes (as another commenter claimed). There’s a difference between allowing people to transit as tourists or whatever, and accepting them for permanent residence. There’s also a difference between accepting people for voluntary migration, and accepting people discarded and deported from wealthy western countries. It’s a distinction I suspect Malaysia does draw (as do lots of other countries), and it probably accounts for the fact that the federal government has (by its own declaration) been unable to persuade it or any other country to accept Al-Kateb and Al Khafaji.
This is not a situation where the litigants’ fate is in any sense in their own hands. That’s what distinguishes it from the usual ruck of disappointed asylum seeker cases: the fate of those litigants is in their own hands, in the sense that it remains open to them to return to their homeland and thus end their detention. That option isn’t open to Al-Kateb and Al Khafaji.
Tipper shows that the compulsion to link, however tenuously, the issue of asylum-seekers and terrorism remains strong. Though he does hint at a serious problem – the criminal economy, of which people smugglers are one part. Addressing this issue would be helpful in combating terrorism, but as the developed economies are among the main beneficaries of the criminal economy, this is unlikely.
In answer to Adams’ post, Ken makes the obvious point that these 2 men aren’t criminals.
But even if Justice McHugh’s advice were to be taken, there remains another principle that would be violated by the current arrangement. Justice is generally seen to be done when the punishment is commensurate with the crime. It’s difficult to see how the possibility of long-term (even life-long?) detention for a visa violation, would meet this standard.
I presume Vanstone will move to get them out of jail very soon. Otherwise the ALP will push in public for it; from that point on Latham becomes the champion of decency and the Libs are responding to him.
After all, the whole thing is inherently absurd.
What about all those terrorist queue jumpers that Howard has let into the country from Nauru recently?
Why couldnt he stop them!!! Now they will all invade us again. Oh Lord!!!!
Pr Q construction of the Border Protection issue implies that voters do not have minds of their own to make up on this issue:
In fact, about 2/3 of the voters supported strong Border Protection at the time of the Tampa, and this figure has not budged much over the past few years. The ALP has shifted to the Right to accomodate this secular shift in public opinion.
It was the Pee-Cee ideologues, Multi-Culti bureaucrats and Identity Political apparats that panicked the voters through self-indulgent and self-serving ideologies, bureaucratic empires and political rorts which led to rampant abuses of both the immigration and refugee program.
Pr Q then descends into Margo-land conspiracy mongering about the purported relationship between Howards tough line on people smuggling and the sinking of the Tampa:
The Pacific Solution was to reroute assylum seekers to Pacific nations, not to sink them. The sinkings occurred because people smugglers shipped people off from intermediate destinations in unseaworthy boats. Howard did not cause this practice – he stopped it.
If Pr Q has information about crimes against humanity committed by the Minister in the matter of the SIEV-X then he should inform Interpol or the UN.
If not, then Pr Q should keep unsupported lurid visions of Ministerial complicity in mass manslaughter bottled up in his id, rather than giving them full vent ala Web Diary.
The John Hargraves, Liberal Party minister for Multi-culturalism, recently skewered the Lefts delusions about its virtue and sanctity on this issue.
Far from this vitriolic bagging of Howard, Pr Q should have a good long hard look at the damagage the Cultural Elitist Left did to immigration policy during its inglorious reign of error, over the years 1985-95.
The reality is that Howards cross-wired politics and tough policies on these matters, though unfair to the Tampans and several detained persons, have restored public faith in a race-neutral alien intake policy.
Total migration has increased under Howard.
Not only that, but Howard has also increased the NESB ratio of immigrants.
The people smuggling trade, winked at by the Theophnoid Left, has been stopped in its tracks – with the result that we have much less chance of a repeat of the SIEV-X tragedy.
History will remember John Howard as the man who actually advanced true liberal causes, liberating Timor, increasing popular multi-racialism, helping the poor in the Bush, rather than just talking about such stuff.
But the Broad Left is in denial about the yawning gap between its ideological conceptions and the general publics logical perceptions. This is why the liberal-Left loses elections: it is out of touch with Joe Public.
I would question why we should automatically regard all ‘people smugglers’ as bad people. Afterall if you need a guide to get you out of, say, Afghanistan over unfamiliar mountains when you were in fear of your life, wouldn’t you pay some-one to help? Anyway what is the difference conceptually between this and an unregulated taxi service?
Tipper if you think that all refugees should just hunker down in a refugee camp across the border, then frankly you haven’t thought about it much. Some refugees have enemies that mean them serious harm. Borders are often porous and it’s easy for their enemies to find them there and kill them.
They had a similar problem in the jail in Solomon Islands. It was too easy for people to break in and kill their unarmed enemies.
I can’t understand Vanstone. If people can’t be returned because it is unsafe for them to do so, aren’t they ipso facto refugees?
I think that should be “ipse”. It’s along time since I did Latin.
Jacks’ suggestion that JQs’ argument is basically that people “do not have minds of their own to make up on this issue” is not quite an accurate summary.
But Jacks’ implication that the public came to it’s conclusions in a free and open debate on the merits of the case is quite fantastical.
The tight control over information and the failure to correct initial reports, later known to be false,were just some of the notable incidents that made a sham of democratic ideals.
This is just one episode that would be an interesting case study of modern techniques of shaping public opinion.
Some will argue that Govenment has a right to put forward it’s case. Of course, that’s perfectly true. Milton made his case for free speech on this very point, that the potential for Government to restrict and control information was a serious threat – “Truth….we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to mis-doubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter?”
A little naive these days? Maybe, but those who suspect that the truth will not help their cause, will usually strain to avoid a “free and open encounter”.
When basic standards of ethical behaviour are not met, legitimate persuasion becomes propaganda.
Talk of majority public support in these circumstances is not particularly convincing.
not particularly convincing? well we do have election results to go on…
i do think quiggin’s post is a little hysterical, although parish analysis is reasonable…
hell might not be such a bad place if the very worst people quiggers can think of are elected officials who kept a couple of guys in an australian detention centre…not exactly the most heinous of crimes…
having said that, if these two men cannot be deported, and pass security checks, i think the best thing to do would be to allow them to become australian citizens (after emphasising that anyone who is trying to circumvent normal immigration procedures, and can be deported, will be — this should be deterrent enough)
mh trots tries, vainly, to bunk the myth that Howards electoral exploitation of the Tampa shifted Australian public opinion towards the xenophobic Right:
Lets get one thing straight, right from the get-go. The Cultural Left seem to think that debate over the subject of civic identity and border security starts and ends with Howards dirty deeds in the Tampa.
They are kidding themselves if they think that the Tampa is the main issue. Tampa was an unfortunate aspect of a much bigger and more enduring problem: the direction of development for this nations cultural identity and the appropriate means to decide and effect this.
The Cultural Left is talking up the issue fo the Tampa because it prefers to conflate symbolic with substantive issues. The Tampa incident was
Bad from the point of view of democratic symbolism
but
Good from the point of view of democratic substance.
The hoo-ha over the Tampa boiled to the surface because of the long simmering frustrations that mainstream Australia has had with Cultural Leftist immigration shennanigans.
The majority Australian public opinion never accepted the multi-culti pee-cee line trotted out by Identity Politicians from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. But the public, and critical commentators, were cowed into silence by moralistic ideologues and aggrandistic apparatchiks for more than a decade.
The Hanson reaction was an unfortunate, but predictable, consequence to the defacto censorship of discussion of causes and consequences of unregulated immigration.
The Tampa, and mandatory detention of failed refugees, are a consequence of the Lefts generation-long attempt to suborn intake policy to its preferred model of Pee-Cee Multi-Culuturalism. They have lost the Culture Wars because their ideas on culture are dumb and unpopular.
The anti-Cultural-Left believe in a race-neutral, selective regulation of immigration that is in accordance with majority sentiment and executed according to Law.
The Cultural Left wanted immigration as its political fief, given the failure to properly sell, or care for, Economic Left issues (too hard to figure out and anyway who cares about Rednecks in the Bush and Bogons in the suburbs).
Howard’s hard-balled political reform of intake policy has smashed both the
reaction of the nativist Right
revolution of the culturalist Left
So now the Cultural Left wants to go on with the demonisation of Howard. Not a promising line of attack. Howard did not, by commission or ommission, allow any physical harm to come to any assylum-seekers. In fact, Howard has assisted in the liberation and democratisation of the two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan, which were a huge source of refugees.
If the public response to the Tampa was an aberrant (im)moral panic attack then lets see the broad Left try to run this upcoming election on a relaxed and comfortable attitude to illegal immigration.
They would get thrashed.
Jack wrote :
Howard did not, by commission or ommission, allow any physical harm to come to any assylum-seekers. In fact, Howard has assisted in the liberation and democratisation of the two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan………..
Click the link
Jack’s right that the Tampa is not he be all and all. But, I didn’t realise that I implied it was. I do agree that it is a symptom of other problems, but different ones. It’s also an example of the difficulties in drawing conclusions on the meaning of the majority public view, when the basic elements of “free and open debate” are missing. Since we were talking asylum-seekers, it seemed a good example.
I don’t find it especially helpful to try to see the issue form partisan positions (what is this Cultural Left that Jack is so keen on?). My practical experience is that people from across the political spectrum have been moved to get involved. This is particularly relevant when you look at the main parties – Labour is a little better than the Coalition, but only a little. I hope and expect, that if there is a change of Government, that refugee advocacy groups will continue to be just as active in changing policy for the better.
Jack srteets home part of the blame for popular support for these tougher policies to the previous Labour Government and its’ “moralistic ideologues” of the 80’s. Fair enough (to a degree), but does one bad turn really deserve another?
This issue of public opinion is a fascinating one. Jack implies that the majority view is a vindication of policy. Liberal democracies are meant to be a mixture of popular government and protection of fundamental rights and freedoms. That it’s popular to deny basic freedoms to a small group is not justification enough to do so. The counter-argument, in relation to our 2 asylum-seekers, might be that such reasoning doesn’t apply to non-citizens, though I think it reasonable that if an individual is subject to the states’ authority, they should also enjoy its’ freedoms.
Promoting policy that plays on fears can be a winning formula and is one based on ‘populism’, if you take that to mean seeking to arouse, rather than appealing to reason.
Beatrice Webbs’ warning that democracy is not the multiplication of ignorant opinions is one to keep in mind. This can lead to cries of ‘elitism’, but his does reflect the earlier democratic ideal that citizens had a duty, not just to have an opinion, but a considered one, encompassing the public good as well as self-interest.
Jacks’ approval of the “democratic substance” of Tampa seems little more than another way to say the ends justifies the means.
That it’s all the “cultural lefts” fault (whatever they are), is a bit hard to see. Fear of outsiders has been a recurrent theme in Australian history, and one that various groups have found useful to exploit at different times.
It’s always the hope that in a democracy, appeal is made to peoples better nature rather than their worst.
As for Iraq, Afghanistan and liberation, it’s just as instructive to see how those fleeing these regimes were treated when they arrived. Most of the Tampa asylum-seekers where Iraqi’s and Afghans. Some of them have only recently escaped ‘liberation’ Australian-style, in Naura.
The appropriate counter-argument to the “liberal democratic” case for illegal immigration is that if citizens do not have the right to democratically determine the social composition of their own nation, then they have no rights at all. For far too long the political class has indeed utilised its “right” to exclude democracy from immigration policy. The result, as Jack points out, was that people became virently anti-immigration.
What Howard did vis-a-vis the Tampa may not have been very nice. But it was bloody effective. People smugglers now operate with the clear understanding that they are not going to get their cargo to Australia. Those who might seek to come to Australia via Indonesia know that coughing up thousands of dollars for a boat ride is unlikely to get you to Australia.
This adds up to a success, and will hopefully continue. On domestic matters, it may not be very nice to lock people up as their claims are being processed. Yet, in order to allow people into the community would necessitate a universal ID card on the Hawke model. Unless this is proposed, it is clear the refugee lobby is not really serious about the rule of law in Australia, and are quite happy with asylum seekers having the last resort of absconding, should their claims not work out.
Whatever the case, debates like this are important as they weed out those who believe in the primary rights of immigrants from those who believe in the primary rights of properly consituted polities.
My spelling stinks. “Virulently” should replace “virently”.
Not as much as my typing (and checking) does Steve!
Steve’s point on immigration policy seems reasonable enough at first glance, but it doesn’t take long to think of examples where putting such ideas into action have to lead to consequences repulsive to most people.
Closer to home, the ‘White Australia Policy’ was based on similar thinking, wasn’t it?
There are lots of rights and freedoms that I would consider are worth fighting for. The right to “determine….social composition”, just isn’t one of them.
Thoughtful input into what our immigration program is for, and its impacts, both negative and positive, would be extremely useful. The “virulent” reactions to it, have a strange tendency to focus on certain aspects of it and ignore the overall situation.
Broader community involvement in a whole range of areas might help to address very similar problems that Jack and Steve have identified in immigration policy. The real issue is how to do this meaningfully.
Jack implies that the majority view is a vindication of policy. Liberal democracies are meant to be a mixture of popular government and protection of fundamental rights and freedoms. That it’s popular to deny basic freedoms to a small group is not justification enough to do so.
Oh please mh. Lefties are quite satisfied with the tyranny of the majority when it applies to Australian citizens who’d like to retain the freedom to smoke, to hire and fire employees or even to not give 48% of their income to the government so they can spend it commissioning artworks and paying people $3000 to have babies, but as soon as the majority is in favour of denying rights to one of their pet causes, it becomes a major problem.
Non-citizens to not have a “fundamental right and freedom” to enter Australia without permission. There is a system in place for people to apply to immigrate to Australia, and illegal asylum seekers could easily have begun that process whilst they were in Indonesia or Malaysia. THAT is what the majority support is for. Australians are not anti-immigration in any sense. We are a nation of immigrants, and a good percentage of my friends and colleagues are recent immigrants (i.e. so recent they aren’t yet eligible for citizenship.)
None of them tried to circumvent the system by arriving illegally or by tearing up their passports and claiming asylum on the plane trip over.
Nobody begrudges the wish of people to come and live here, it’s a wonderful country, why wouldn’t they want to come? The point is that these illegal immigrants for some reason believe that they are above the rest. They don’t have to go through the proper channels, apparently. They’re special.
They believe they have more right to be in Australia than my friends Adil from Pakistan, Nick from Essex or Andrew from Zimbabwe for the simple reason that they can afford to pay for a smuggler to sail them to ashmore reef. Fuck them.
MH suggests that the Australian people have no rights:
“Steve’s point on immigration policy seems reasonable enough at first glance, but it doesn’t take long to think of examples where putting such ideas into action have to lead to consequences repulsive to most people.
Closer to home, the ‘White Australia Policy’ was based on similar thinking, wasn’t it?
There are lots of rights and freedoms that I would consider are worth fighting for. The right to “determine….social composition”, just isn’t one of them.”
Whenever debates like these are entered into, the inevitable subset of Godwin’s Law shall be invoked as the “White Australia Policy”. If you do not believe that the Australian people could legitimately choose the White Australia Policy (if that was their desire), then you must necessarily conclude that the Japanese have no right to their existing Yellow Japan Policy.
Yet if they have consciously taken such a path, through their legitimately composed polity, surely it would become their “right”, would it not? Speaking of Japan, I think this statement is highly instructive:
“There are lots of rights and freedoms that I would consider are worth fighting for. The right to “determine….social composition”, just isn’t one of them”
That’s interesting, because the logical conclusion of that statement is that Australia has no right to defend itself from an invader. There is no other possible endgame. Had the Japanese been serious about annexing northern Australia, and overrunning it demographically, on your own logic we simply could not see self-defence as a “cause worth fighting for”.
Assuming Australia has the right to defend itself militarily and to consolidate its control of the continent politically (which surely all responsible commentators will agree), it necessarily follows that Australia has every right to self-determination demographically. Any other conclusion bespeaks a mindset that simply does not intend to be taken seriously.
May the howard government ministers,the recalcitrant judges and the right wing smart arses rot in hell.
They have no humanity.
Thanks for your valuable contribution.
“If you do not believe that the Australian people could legitimately choose the White Australia Policy (if that was their desire), then you must necessarily conclude that the Japanese have no right to their existing Yellow Japan Policy. ”
The peculiarly ironic thing about self-appointed ‘defenders’ of Western civilisation like Steve Edwards and his intellectual hero, Pat Buchanan, is how little faith they actually have in the power and appeal of Western civilisation. This is evidenced in their constant appeal to how other countries like Japan run their affairs. This is not the first time. In a previous post on Road to Surfdom, Steve Edwards proclaimed the great society of Singapore as a beacon of social order and how things should be done in contrast to the increasingly decadent West. Steve also constantly bemoans the state of Western society and the license it promotes while praising the moral toughness of Islam. People can draw rheir own conclusions but I for one think this speaks volumes for how alienated the likes of Edwards and Buchanan are from the values of mainstream secular enlightened Western societies. And one can also draw the conclusion that decent liberals like Quiggin who hold our society to higher standards have a greater understanding of the virtues of Western civilisation than those who worry that it might be undermined by immigrants because clearly our values aren’t appealing enough – well perhaps not to the likes of Steve Edwards. Steve if you prefer to live in Singapore or Japan then by all means apply. I for one chose the Anglosphere and have coinfidence in its strengths and hold it to higher standards precisely because it has so much more potential and because I believe it is so much clearly superior to the ant-societies you so admire that I want it to live up to its promise.
Jason writes:
“The peculiarly ironic thing about self-appointed ‘defenders’ of Western civilisation like Steve Edwards and his intellectual hero, Pat Buchanan, is how little faith they actually have in the power and appeal of Western civilisation. This is evidenced in their constant appeal to how other countries like Japan run their affairs.”
I did not appeal to how “countries like Japan run their affairs”. I invoked the Yellow Japan Policy, not to support or defend it, but to defend their right to democratically impose such a policy. There is an enormous difference. If you do not believe that Japan could have the right to impose such a policy, then you must necessarily believe that they have no right to national defense against an invader.
On the matter of Pat Buchanan, he is not my intellectual hero. For example, I strongly disagree with his welfarist/protectionist economic policies.
“In a previous post on Road to Surfdom, Steve Edwards proclaimed the great society of Singapore as a beacon of social order and how things should be done in contrast to the increasingly decadent West. Steve also constantly bemoans the state of Western society and the license it promotes while praising the moral toughness of Islam. People can draw rheir own conclusions but I for one think this speaks volumes for how alienated the likes of Edwards and Buchanan are from the values of mainstream secular enlightened Western societies.”
Well, in Singapore they lock up criminals and defend law-abiding citizens. Some violent criminals are beaten. In terms of crime minimalisation, it’s been quite a successful approach. I find it strange that some people actually believe that a key tenet of the “enlightened, secular West” could be to uphold the rights of criminals over the rights of law-abiding citizens. I notice that Britain’s disastrous approach to law-and-order has meant that they are now overtaking America (as is much of Western Europe) in lawlessness. If that’s civilisation, I can’t wait to see barbarism.
“And one can also draw the conclusion that decent liberals like Quiggin who hold our society to higher standards have a greater understanding of the virtues of Western civilisation than those who worry that it might be undermined by immigrants because clearly our values aren’t appealing enough – well perhaps not to the likes of Steve Edwards.”
That’s interesting, because the same “liberals” and “secularists” are the ones who introduced multiculturalism. If declaring that all cultures are equal is the same as upholding the “virtues of Western civilisation”, then I’d like to know what logical leaps and bounds can drive one to such a conclusion. You cannot logically support multiculturalism while simultaneously claiming to support “western civilisation”.
Indeed, the secular humanists have performed a neat trick – on one hand they undermined Western culture by introducing multiculturalism, weakening law and order, undermining the family unit, and discriminating against Christians (I’d go so far to say that they are trying to abolish Christianity). On the other hand, when their perfidies are exposed by cultural conservatives, the liberals try to insist they were the ones defending their culture in the first place. Yeah right. We’ll just ignore what they’ve been doing for the past 30 years.
All very depressing. At least Muslims are not affected by the systematic cognitive dissonance and moral bankruptcy of the multiculturalist secular humanists.
The debate on this thread has gone quite a while and I have yet to see any of the government’s supporters respond to the main topic of the post. So I’ll pose it as a question, and request a Yes-No answer
“Do you support the indefinite detention of stateless asylum seekers?”
To clear up potential misunderstandings, there is no option of deportation here. Those involved have already indicated they would accept deportation, but no foreign country will take them.
I’m not interested in the supporting arguments and historical background at this stage.Also, I’m not interested in hypothetical alternatives involving wideranging changes in the law. My question is simple.
Should we lock them up or let them remain free?
“Hoo-ee, we got a live one here!”
Steve Edwards, which Western culture are you from? The one that subjected Galileo to the inquisition, or the one that banned slavery?
The heritage of “Western” culture includes freedom of the individual, democracy and the rule of law – features which are often absent in hotbeds of conformism like Singapore and Japan.
Cant over the “decline of family/Christian/Western values” is usually code for the closed-minded authoritarian orthodoxy that Western civilisation has spent centuries overturning. I suggest you try living in Singapore or Japan (or, dare I say it, Saudi Arabia) before you laud their Laura Norder. They’re very safe places, but also very stifling and very boring – give me the diversity and freedom of the Anglosphere any day.
You’ve obviously never been to Japan if you think it’s “stifling and boring”. I’m not even sure why it is being compared to Singapore in this case. Japan is the world’s second biggest exporter of culture after the US.
Singapore is a dictatorship (albeit one that embraces capitalism). Japan is a democracy that just happens to have a restrictive immigration policy.
JQ,
That’s a loaded question, the “hot” words being “indefinite”, “stateless” and “asylum”.
How about:
“Do you support the mandatory detention of illegal immigrants?”.
My response to that question would be “yes”, provided the detention process is fair, humane and expeditious.
yobbo,
I’ve been to Japan, and it’s a very unsettling experience for anybody who likes to think for themselves and say what they think.
Japan is a country notorious for having a very high conviction rate on violent crime. Why? Because the police have a reputation for extracting (in relatively brutal fashion) confessions from suspects. This is also a country with the death penalty, that refuses to publicly acknowledge WWII war crimes (against our own soldiers, no less) and that routinely discriminates against ethnic minorities such as the Koreans, the Ainu and hamlet people (burakumin).
Try seeing the real Japan next time you’re there. There’s a lot more to Japan than manga and anime.
Fyodor, there’s nothing loaded about the terms I used. These people are stateless, they did seek asylum and the proposed detention is indefinite . However, I’m happy to eliminate all the terms to which you object and ask
“Do you support the detention of Ahmed Kateb and Abbas Khafaju?”
Is that specific enough for you to give a Yes-No answer?
JQ,
Thanks for bringing it back to the original topic – I thought you were speaking more generally. The specific case you mention seems pretty clear-cut, as it’s presented. If these two guys are forbidden [why I don’t know] from returning to their respective countries they should have a fair shot at claiming refugee status, and should be freed. I don’t think anyone should be detained indefinitely unless they’ve committed a violent crime or similar.
That said, I do believe the government should detain illegal immigrants until their status is determined.
Fyodor, the problem is that they’ve been refused refugee status, and have agreed to deportation, but still have nowhere to go.
JQ,
That says it all, doesn’t it? They want to go, but have nowhere to go. In my book, that’s a refugee.
At its extreme, the Howard government policy on illegal immigration is neither logical nor pragmatic, just vindictive.
Thanks for this Fyodor.
I don’t have an absolutist position on detention. It’s just, as you say, that at some point it becomes obvious that the Howard* government’s attitude is purely vindictive. I reached that point a few years ago – this latest incident might do it for others as well as you.
* As with so many other things, detention began under Labor, and I suspect it wouldn’t be to hard to find a vindictive element there too. But, again as with many other things, Howard has taken the worst Labor can do and doubled it.
Fyodor raises some salient matters:
“Steve Edwards, which Western culture are you from? The one that subjected Galileo to the inquisition, or the one that banned slavery?
The heritage of “Western” culture includes freedom of the individual, democracy and the rule of law – features which are often absent in hotbeds of conformism like Singapore and Japan.
Cant over the “decline of family/Christian/Western values” is usually code for the closed-minded authoritarian orthodoxy that Western civilisation has spent centuries overturning.”
The first point is most instructive, because it is grounded in assumptions that cannot be drawn from any of my previous writings.
The second paragraph was refreshing. I agree that personal freedom, democracy and the rule of law are important foundations of modern Western society. Unfortunately, the third is being destroyed by the soft-on-crimers, and the first and second are being undermined by lawyers, judges and statutory commissioners (not to mention unelected international bodies).
The third paragraph may have some truth to it, but unfortunately it exists to argue against people that are not present at this debate. Fast-forward to 2004 and the issues are not related to “closed-minded authoritarian orthodoxy that Western civilisation has spent centuries overturning”. Rather we are mired in a “closed-minded authoritarian orthodoxy” that Western civilisation has recently embraced.
These orthodoxies include (but are not limited to):
-the discriminatory taxation of families as opposed to singles
-legal and political bias against Christians
-the introduction of multiculturalism, which necessarily stands in conflict with Westernism
-the predominance of group rights over individual rights (such as the “rights of indigenous people” and the “rights of Canadian Muslims”)
-the introduction of defacto blasphemy laws (called “religious vilification” laws but they amount to the same thing)
-“Contracting out” civil disputes to arbitrary statutory commissions
-the belief that free people have no obligations
The result, of course, has been disastrous. Australia’s fertility rate is now at around 1.7, down from approximately 5 at the turn of the 19th-20th century. With a soon-to-be declining natural population, we are of course looking to immigrants to stabilise our demographics. Yet we also inform immigrants that they have no obligations to the rest of Australians and that whatever culture, customs and norms they held at home are equally applicable to Australia.
This mindset of multiculturalism informs the introduction of Sharia courts in Canada, the indoctrination of Californian school-children into Islamic culture, the abolition of Christmas celebrations, the “Racial and Religious Tolerance Act” of Victoria, and the school curriculum policies as promoted by the Australian Education Union.
You can either choose Westernism or Multiculturalism, but you cannot logically have both.
John Quiggin poses a sensible question. It can be answered as follows: if somebody applies for asylum in Australia but fails, they should be detained until they can be sent back wherever they came. If they are “stateless” then we should send them back to the last state from which they arrived. Failing that, they should be detained.
Pr Q poses asks if the quality of mercy would be strained by the Minister exercising a little compassion as opposed to vindiction:
The short answer is No.
The longer answer is that it is bloody-minded, spiteful and serves no good purpose to prolong these folks misery simply pour encourage l’autres.
I misread the original post and story, and assumed that the persons in question were simply asylum-seekers who had failed to meet the refugee test and were digging their heels in on voluntary repatriation to their country of origin.
I used that point to inflict my well-honed “bag the Cultural Left speech” on any illegal-alien pampering Theophanopid Lefty who might choose to pop his head over the parapet during my mad minute.
I must say that I owe geniune participants to this comments thread debate an apology my gratuitous and misdirected remarks.
Stateless people, such as these folk and the Tampans, fleeing tyranny and with no place to call a home deserve our sympathy and a safe haven in this country. They do not deserve an open-ended custodial sentence.
(Just so long as the Cultural Left do not take advantage of any legal mercies that this nation might care to dispense in order to advance their smelly little ideological agenda.)
Just to get the comments thread back off-topic again, I would like to put a loaded question to the head of Pr Q:
Does Pr Q think that Cultural Left ideocrats (and associated apparats and bureaucrats), who have been so noisily compassionate about the plight of assylum-seekers, bear any responsibility for the political and economic deformations of immigration and civic policy as indicated by:
local and temporal social pathologies relating to lax regulation of certain migrant streams
nativist political reactions to said social pathologies plus general fed-uppedness with Idiot Leftist ideologies?
From my biased perspective, son of a legal and integrative migrant, I am disgusted with Cultural Leftists who have a field day self-righteopusly bagging Howard for cracking down on the the Lefts follies and rorts (and regrettably “breaking” a few innocent reffo heads in doing so) but who take no responsibility for stuffing up a good (1966-83) bi-partisan civic and intake policy.
And these well-meaning souls have the cheek to look down their noses at “Rednecks” in the Bush and “Bogons” in the Suburbs who have to suffer the inconveniences of their mistaken policies. Whilst opur intellectual and moral worthies draw a good paycheck from the public purse for turning up to some cushy job, the better part of which they are happy to spend on sipping lattes as they while away the hours in chi-chi inner city-cafes.
Steve Edwards,
I think I’m starting to get the picture. You seem to equate “Western” values with family-friendly Christian values. What you don’t seem to appreciate is that Western society has been moving away from Christianity (at least in its traditional forms), and towards greater individualism and freedom for a long time now. This has nothing to do with multiculturalism or the abandonment of Western values – it IS Western values.
You claim that our society has succumbed to “closed-minded authoritarian orthodoxy”, and cite a number of instances. I disagree with each of your assertions, and do not see them as the imposition of authoritarian policy. In particular, your assertion that there is legal and political bias against Christians is absurd – the opposite is true.
What you really appear to disagree with is the reduction of Christianity’s privileged position in our society, and the encouragement to immigrants to retain their cultural heritage and contribute it to Australia.
Your commentary on population growth and immigration is nonsensical and totally misguided. The decline in the fertility rate has nothing to do with multiculturalism and everything to do with social development and demographics, e.g. the social and economic emancipation of women.
And, no, the results have not been “disastrous”. Every day I meet law-abiding immigrant AUSTRALIANS from many different cultures and religions, and they invariably enrich my life. This country is blessed with a wealth of cultures and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I regret that Fyodor has misread (or not read) my post.
I will look at his/her premises first:
“You seem to equate “Western” values with family-friendly Christian values. What you don’t seem to appreciate is that Western society has been moving away from Christianity (at least in its traditional forms), and towards greater individualism and freedom for a long time now. This has nothing to do with multiculturalism or the abandonment of Western values – it IS Western values.”
This may be true, but, again, you are arguing with someone who is clearly not present at this debate. There has certainly been a trend to secularism in western societies over the past 200+ years. This is, as you rightly point out, a different issue to multiculturalism.
“You claim that our society has succumbed to “closed-minded authoritarian orthodoxy”, and cite a number of instances. I disagree with each of your assertions, and do not see them as the imposition of authoritarian policy. In particular, your assertion that there is legal and political bias against Christians is absurd – the opposite is true.”
There certainly is bias against Christians. You are allowed to commit blasphemy against Christianity if you wish. Indeed, you are often considered “progressive” if you so choose. If you commit blasphemy against, say, Islam or Judaism, you are hauled before the Human Rights Commission. The use of the word “racist” in particular, to describe anyone who disagrees with the PC Multicult, was a potent and prevalent phenomenon skilfully deployed by the Keating party.
“What you really appear to disagree with is the reduction of Christianity’s privileged position in our society, and the encouragement to immigrants to retain their cultural heritage and contribute it to Australia.”
Again, you are debating with somebody who is clearly not present. I support the free-market model of religion, which can partially explain why the United States remains the most devout western society today. However, I do support the assimilation of immigrants as the Western European immigration model has been unsurprisingly unsuccessful.
“Your commentary on population growth and immigration is nonsensical and totally misguided. The decline in the fertility rate has nothing to do with multiculturalism and everything to do with social development and demographics, e.g. the social and economic emancipation of women.”
Here is what I actually wrote:
“Australia’s fertility rate is now at around 1.7, down from approximately 5 at the turn of the 19th-20th century. With a soon-to-be declining natural population, we are of course looking to immigrants to stabilise our demographics. Yet we also inform immigrants that they have no obligations to the rest of Australians and that whatever culture, customs and norms they held at home are equally applicable to Australia.”
In other words, multiculturalism is a function of the declining fertility rate, not the other way around.
“And, no, the results have not been “disastrous”. Every day I meet law-abiding immigrant AUSTRALIANS from many different cultures and religions, and they invariably enrich my life. This country is blessed with a wealth of cultures and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
As we are clearly in the process of overthrowing the cultural majority of Australia, I’d first like to ask of one example of where this has occurred successfully. Naturally, were we to look at recent examples of a large shift in the cultural balance of power, one could only point to Kosovo, Bosnia and Lebanon. A more gradual process has been under way in Ethiopia, however, I’m told the issue has been resolved by simply locking most people out of the political system.
Then there are the southern states (plus California) of the US.
Multiculturalism does not work well because it carries higher transation costs than maintaining relative homogeneity (or at least an unchallenged dominance by a large majority), involving the rule of law, language barriers and the inevitable tensions and frictions wrought by the clash of expectations between people of fundamentally differing custom.
We could also point to unemployment, an enormous problem among Turks, Lebanese, Vietnamese and Cambodians in particular (and a catastrophe when you actually look at those aged 15-24). The link between unemployment and crime is not particularly controversial. Just as one could uncontroversially claim:
A general pattern that emerges is that immigrant groups with low levels of or no qualification, poor English proficiency, and relatively high level of unemployment also have higher arrest rate than the rest. This is particularly relevant for recent migrant groups.
On the other hand, one could say that “this country is blessed with a wealth of cultures and I wouldn’t have it any other way”. Certainly, the world is “blessed” with a “wealth of cultures”, although one could equally point to the absense of world peace for some millenia. If turning Australia into The World intends to fly in the face of human history, then it can at least be said to be a “courageous” decision to take. But perhaps not wise.
technical note.
Galileo was not subject to the Inquistion. He in fact was found to be speaking outside his area of expertise. A highly unacceptable practice back then.
you wil also be pleased to know that christian Politicians from the great Awakening (started by Whitelield and Welsey) such as wilberforce and Thortnon were resposible for the end of slavery.
Homer Paxton,
Galileo was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 under Pope Urban VIII. He was found guilty, sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 69 and died in 1642, in prison. Praise the Lord.
Steve Edwards,
Please provide some examples of people who have been hauled up before the HRC on charges of blaspheming against Judaism or Islam. I still think it’s ridiculous for you to assert that there is legal and political bias against Christians in this country. Which laws? Whose politics?
You said, “…multiculturalism is a function of the declining fertility rate, not the other way around.” Where’s the connection? Immigration policy in this country is not driven by “populate or perish” thinking, and hasn’t been for a long time.
You obviously seem to be very nervous about Australia losing its “cultural majority”, and cite the supposed precedents of Kosovo, Bosnia, Lebanon and Ethiopia. I suggest you’re skating awfully close to a Godwin’s Law decision on these examples. It takes a rather paranoid individual with precious little faith in his fellow Australians to believe that we will descend into civil war the moment the Christian Anglo-Celts lose their majority.
The clincher is your take on immigrants and unemployment. At least you didn’t argue they’re taking jobs from Australians. No, your argument is that immigrants (or, as you state, “Turks, Lebanese, Vietnamese and Cambodians”) DON’T get jobs and get involved in crime. What…unlike other Australians? I happen to know members of each of those ethnic groups who are gainfully employed and don’t have criminal records. But I suppose they’re the exception, huh?
But in the final analysis, you are absolutely right: the world is a chaotic, scary place. Let’s all stay home and avoid the neighbours, shall we? I would emigrate from your Australia.
Fyodor requires further re-education.
On a matter of supreme irony, one could consider a very prominent case that is causing a furore in Victoria:
Daniel Scot is a Pakistani Christian. In 1987, he came to Australia to flee death threats from Muslims. A university mathematics lecturer, he says there was pressure on him to convert to Islam because it was seen as inappropriate for a Christian to be in authority over Muslim students.
When he refused to convert, he was charged under blasphemy laws, which carry a death sentence. “The next day more than 5000 students with pistols and daggers were searching for me. I was hidden in a church.”
In Australia, he thought, he could tell the truth. He has run scores of seminars on Islam – and says he has received offers of bribes to stop and five more death threats in Brisbane, where he lives. “They want to hide the truth,” he says.
But Scot’s understanding of the truth saw him in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal this week, with conservative Christian group Catch the Fire and its pastor Danny Nalliah, in a test case for the state’s religious vilification law. The Islamic Council of Victoria claims Scot vilified Muslims at a seminar in Melbourne last year.
But it’s alright for Mardi Gras participants (and of course anti-Christian artists) to vilify Christians, of course.
“You said, “…multiculturalism is a function of the declining fertility rate, not the other way around.” Where’s the connection? Immigration policy in this country is not driven by “populate or perish” thinking, and hasn’t been for a long time.”
It is true that Australia is not explicitly driven by a “populate or perish” strategy. However, it is undeniable that Australia’s political and business leadership is committed to a large scale immigration. There is a very good reason for this: the bigger the work-force, the more downward pressure on unit labour costs. That is the crude calculation of the business class, and it is precisely why they support high immigration. And as the immigration intake shifted towards NESB countries, the political class devised a strategy to deal with the phenomenon of mass immigration – multiculturalism. It failed, but I’m sure they meant well.
“You obviously seem to be very nervous about Australia losing its “cultural majority”, and cite the supposed precedents of Kosovo, Bosnia, Lebanon and Ethiopia. I suggest you’re skating awfully close to a Godwin’s Law decision on these examples. It takes a rather paranoid individual with precious little faith in his fellow Australians to believe that we will descend into civil war the moment the Christian Anglo-Celts lose their majority.”
Of course, if we can just hope and have faith then surely everything will turn out alright. It couldn’t happen to us, could it? I will make things a little easier. My significant other of (gosh) 2 and a half years now, was once a citizen of country called “Yugoslavia”. Yugoslavia was a model of inter-ethnic harmony for decades (sort of). True, it was a powder keg, but powder kegs are safe so long as nobody introduces a match. Of course, if the internal population balance were to swing from one group to another, you have found your match. I am often told by my significant other that nobody thought it could ever happen to them. That’s not surprising. Nobody ever does. I’m sure the Lebanese would yearn for the good old days, too.
The population of Lebanon comprises Christians and Muslims. No official census has been taken since 1932, reflecting the political sensitivity in Lebanon over confessional (religious) balance. The U.S. Government estimate is that more than two-thirds of the resident population is Muslim (Shi’a, Sunni), or Druze, and the rest is Christian (predominantly Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, and Armenian). Shi’a Muslims make up the single largest sect. Claims since the early 1970s by Muslims that they are in the majority contributed to tensions preceding the 1975-90 civil war and have been the basis of demands for a more powerful Muslim voice in the government.
But don’t worry – demographics are irrelevant! Aren’t they?
It is quite uncontroversial that a swing in population make-up, often due to a “youth bulge” in one or more minority groups, will significantly increase the probability of internal conflict. Bosnia’s prospects are supposed to be improving somewhat. Why?
Eleven more countries are expected to move from bad or uncertain to good. They include:
Bosnia: Significant decline in youth bulge; GDP per capita, trade openness, and caloric intake also decline slightly; political rights and civil liberties improve somewhat.
Interesting, but not controversial. Youth are an unstable lot. Take the overthrow of the Shah, or the events of 1968. As Samuel Huntington has said:
But the key factor is the demographic factor. Generally speaking, the people who go out and kill other people are males between the ages of 16 and 30.
During the 1960s, 70s and 80s there were high birth rates in the Muslim world, and this has given rise to a huge youth bulge. But the bulge will fade. Muslim birth rates are going down; in fact, they have dropped dramatically in some countries. Islam did spread by the sword originally, but I don’t think there is anything inherently violent in Muslim theology.
That is a key point. A shift in relative populations, due to a rapid increase in birth rates in the years before, was the match for the Balkans powder keg. If you have a highly diverse society with a stable distribution of resources, a shift in relative population will ensure
-the challenger group lays greater claim to resources
-the incumbent group stubbornly defends the status quo
Quite uncontroversial. Indeed, this is a standard civil conflict model. To allow mass immigration without assimilation is to invite great trouble should challenger groups demand that their cultural and economic interests are given greater prominence.
Fyodor writes:
“The clincher is your take on immigrants and unemployment. At least you didn’t argue they’re taking jobs from Australians. No, your argument is that immigrants (or, as you state, “Turks, Lebanese, Vietnamese and Cambodians”) DON’T get jobs and get involved in crime. What…unlike other Australians? I happen to know members of each of those ethnic groups who are gainfully employed and don’t have criminal records. But I suppose they’re the exception, huh?”
I have often found that, shown the statistics of the human disaster they wrought, the left-liberal luvvies will obfuscate. This may be disappointing, but it is human nature and therefore perfectly understandable. We know, for example, that in America immigrants do indeed take jobs from existing Americans. Nobody should be surprised. A standard labour market model shows that an increase in the labour supply will depress real wages (assuming labour demand is unchanged or does not increase at the rate of labour supply). If wages are not allowed to fall, then a labour surplus (called unemployment) is created.
To ignore the impact of immigration on labour supply, and therefore, employment is to engage in wishful thinking. With regards to Australia, I’m glad your anecdotal evidence shows that immigration is cost-free. I wonder what the Australian Institute of Criminology says?
Well, we can take the category “Poor English Proficiency” by country of origin (aged over 15 years) and find:
Cambodia 47.62%
China 45.22%
Greece 31.74%
Lebanon 23.46%
Turkey 33.52%
Vietnam 44.44%
Interesting… Now, unemployment is another matter. Going by country of origin, with labour market participation rates mentioned first and unemployment rates second, we find
CofOrigin L/M U/E
Cambodia 55.90 28.91
Lebanon 46.88 23.54
Turkey 51.85 23.81
Vietnam 57.50 25.20
If you look at criminal representation ratios…Again, the usual suspects pop up at rates roughly double those born here. Sure, many immigrants (and immigrant groups) are law-abiding. And quite a few aren’t.
Fyodor concludes:
“But in the final analysis, you are absolutely right: the world is a chaotic, scary place. Let’s all stay home and avoid the neighbours, shall we? I would emigrate from your Australia.”
I don’t actually advocate that. My limited traveling experience has seen me in Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka in the last two years and most of Europe in the years before. I don’t have a problem with visiting others. I do have a problem with the abolition of Australia. If you support mass immigration, but do not encourage immigrants to change their identities, you will necessarily Balkanise Australia.
Ironically, if the likes of you had your way with this country, you would have to emigrate…and for precisely the same reasons that my partner emigrated from the Balkans.
Steve Edwards,
I thought for a while about whether I should respond to your latest comments. I suspect that others aren’t as interested in our little discussion as we are, and we are chewing up more and more space on the issue.
I am responding because I think someone has to challenge your views, which tap into a very nasty vein of ethnic and religious bigotry in Australia. I’m not accusing you of bigotry, but I hear these same arguments from people with racist agendas. Moreover, racism and bigotry does not, and should not, have a place in our immigration policy.
That said, here goes:
1) Daniel Scot has been accused of vilifying muslims on the basis of their religion under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001. That legislation is not specific to any particular religion, and is intended to prevent the incitement of hatred, severe contempt and severe ridicule against any person on the basis of their race or religion. It provides christians with the same “protection” that muslims, jews etc. enjoy. It may be stupid legislation, but it’s not prejudiced in favour of muslims, nor against christians. If as a christian you feel severely ridiculed by Mardi Gras etc. then take yourself to court and bother the legal system with your outrage.
2) Immigration – the BCA article you linked to advocates a more active approach to encouraging immigration precisely because the government DOES NOT do so currently. People come here because they want to, not because we induce them to. In fact, we make it very hard for people to immigrate. There’s no conspiracy at work ensuring the continued dilution of the existing cultural majority.
3) Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Bosnia etc are RIDICULOUS analogies to the situation we face in Australia. Yugoslavia was a communist creation in a region with a legacy of centuries of ethnic and religious hatred. Sound like Australia? No, didn’t think so. What about Lebanon? Before it gained independence from France, it had not had its own government, let alone a democratic one, for centuries. Bosnia? Ditto. You’re off the planet thinking Australia will end up like these countries.
4) Unemployment – I had to give it to you, didn’t I? Apparently immigrants are taking the jobs of other Australians…but they’re not, because they’re unemployed criminals…which is it? Australia has experienced MASSIVE immigration over 200 years and – the odd macroeconomic stuff-up notwithstanding – still has low unemployment. There’s plenty of room for more people. Incidentally, because of the skill-based immigration requirements Australia employs, many of the immigrants we take are skilled workers, not potential criminals who drive down the wages of other workers.
5) Crime – your data is interesting, but of somewhat dubious progeny. Assuming it is correct, and that immigrants from Lebanon, Vietnam and Turkey have higher rates of crimes than other immigrants, how do we address the issue? I’m guesssing you’re going to suggest we don’t take immigrants from those countries, but that discriminates against the worthy and skilled people from those countries that would make good immigrants. I see the criminal element of the equation as acceptable.
6) the “abolition of Australia” – you’re really getting a little hysterical in this quote:
“I do have a problem with the abolition of Australia. If you support mass immigration, but do not encourage immigrants to change their identities, you will necessarily Balkanise Australia.”
I don’t know what you mean by “mass immigration”, but I don’t think we have that now. I think we have a very moderate level of immigration and don’t see much need to change the numbers. As to “changing their identities”, this probably reads a little more dramatically than you meant, but immigrants have been adapting to Australia for two centuries now, even those people from non-Anglo/celtic backgrounds. There is absolutely no reason to fear a “balkanisation” of Australia precisely because people come here and do assimilate, naturally. Maybe not as quickly as some people would like, but sure enough they do and they add to this country, not detract from it.
sorry but that is a fallacy which was exposed by Kirsten Birkett in the very first volume of Kategoria which is no longer going unfortunately.
you have succunbed to a myth my friend.
Homer Paxton,
Please check your source. Kirsten Birkett does not dispute any of the known and documented facts I stated. She provides more detail on the historical and political context, but does not deny that Galileo was tried and found guilty of heresy by the inquisition. Check it out at:
Click to access 0katGalileo.pdf
I have read it F. I have the Kategoria collection.
It wasn’t heresy.
He was speaking on a topic outside his ‘expertise’.
Part of the agreement was he refrained from speaking on the topic on which he knew more than any other person but did not have expertise in.
“I am responding because I think someone has to challenge your views, which tap into a very nasty vein of ethnic and religious bigotry in Australia.”
Really? All I’m doing is stating the facts. Let’s see what passes for a “challenge” these days.
Here is what Amir Butler said about Victoria’s Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.
As someone who once supported their introduction and is a member of one of the minority groups they purport to protect, I can say with some confidence that these laws have served only to undermine the very religious freedoms they intended to protect.
That’s not surprising. The Act was never designed to protect Christians. It is instructive that if you read the Act itself, it contains a neat little exception if people acting in “good faith” in “the performance, exhibition, or distribution of an artistic work”.
This is not surprising. The artistic community has always had a strong anti-Christian element to it, thus it is instructive that the government would single out “Art” as the first listed exception to “religious intolerance”.
Fyodor writes:
“Immigration – the BCA article you linked to advocates a more active approach to encouraging immigration precisely because the government DOES NOT do so currently. People come here because they want to, not because we induce them to. In fact, we make it very hard for people to immigrate. There’s no conspiracy at work ensuring the continued dilution of the existing cultural majority.”
Actually, immigration has increased under Howard. Your second sentence is again debating a straw man. It goes without saying that people immigrate to Australia voluntarily. The real issue is how many do we allow in? The BCA supports very high immigration, as Ross Gittens pointed out. However their reasons for doing so are not in dispute – the greater the labour supply the lower the unit-labour costs (ceteris parabis). No economist will dispute what I have argued. The political class, with its strong links to the business leadership, supports high immigration. Multiculturalism is clearly a means by which the political class has tried to facilitate the arrival of large numbers of NESB immigrants, although the consensus has been fractured in recent years.
“Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Bosnia etc are RIDICULOUS analogies to the situation we face in Australia. Yugoslavia was a communist creation in a region with a legacy of centuries of ethnic and religious hatred. Sound like Australia? No, didn’t think so. What about Lebanon? Before it gained independence from France, it had not had its own government, let alone a democratic one, for centuries. Bosnia? Ditto. You’re off the planet thinking Australia will end up like these countries.”
Negative, wrong, and off the mark. Yugoslavia was not a communist creation. You probably shouldn’t have tried to argue this with someone like myself, but being the polite sort, I’ll put you right.
As wikipedia notes, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was in fact created in 1929 as the successor to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which itself was carved out of the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia did not come about until 1945.
Bosnia was carved out of Yugoslavia, of course, and is a NATO Protectorate. It is not controversial as to how Yugoslavia went the way it did, as I have shown in previous postings. A highly diverse nation will always have great trouble holding together, should the demographic balance change, for which I have shown overwhelming proof.
Example after example after example after example after example of literature on the subject of the Demographic Bulge shows precisely how a rapid change in population in a particular group can generate great instability. When you have diverse groups living side by side under a polity, a change in the balance of power will likely result in conflict. None of this is in dispute in serious scholarship.
That’s why this:
“Yugoslavia was a communist creation in a region with a legacy of centuries of ethnic and religious hatred. Sound like Australia? No, didn’t think so. What about Lebanon? Before it gained independence from France, it had not had its own government, let alone a democratic one, for centuries. Bosnia? Ditto. You’re off the planet thinking Australia will end up like these countries.”
is a non sequitur. Again, I have provided overwhelming evidence of the inherent instability of diverse polities.
“Unemployment – I had to give it to you, didn’t I? Apparently immigrants are taking the jobs of other Australians…but they’re not, because they’re unemployed criminals…which is it? Australia has experienced MASSIVE immigration over 200 years and – the odd macroeconomic stuff-up notwithstanding – still has low unemployment. There’s plenty of room for more people. Incidentally, because of the skill-based immigration requirements Australia employs, many of the immigrants we take are skilled workers, not potential criminals who drive down the wages of other workers.”
A statement like this is not useful for the information it provides (indeed, it carries no information whatsoever) – it has far more utility in what it seeks to avoid. A standard labour market model holds that an increase in the labour supply will depress real wages as the interaction of labour supply with demand will occur at lower and lower levels on the demand schedule. If labour demand is inelastic, as John Quiggin has argued, then a small increase in supply will result in a greater than proportionate fall in real wages (ceteris parabis).
If wages are not allowed to fall to a market clearing level, then unemployment will result. And, of course, if labour demand is increasing at the same time, then the effects I have outlined above will be mitigated. While Australia’s unemployment rate is 5.5%, our underemployment rate is thought to be closer to 12%. Simply adding unskilled workers with poor English proficiency to the labour supply will (ceteris parabis) reduce real wages or lead to higher unemployment.
Many of the immigrants we take are skilled workers, as you correctly point out. Family reunion migration, however, still makes up a significant proportion of our immigration programme. As immigration should be subject to the same cost-benefit criteria as other forms of public policy – I call for the abolition of family reunion migration.
“Crime – your data is interesting, but of somewhat dubious progeny. Assuming it is correct, and that immigrants from Lebanon, Vietnam and Turkey have higher rates of crimes than other immigrants, how do we address the issue? I’m guesssing you’re going to suggest we don’t take immigrants from those countries, but that discriminates against the worthy and skilled people from those countries that would make good immigrants. I see the criminal element of the equation as acceptable.”
The interesting point about your above statement is that it assumes that prospective immigrants have rights over and above existing Australians. Nowhere does it suggest that the Australian people have rights. For example, you say that if we “don’t take immigrants” from these countries it would “discriminates against the worthy and skilled people from those countries”. Nowhere is it suggested that taking large numbers of people while refusing to assimilate them will discriminate against existing Australians, yet what other conclusion can we possibly reach?
You conclude:
“I see the criminal element of the equation as acceptable.”
Well, out of the horse’s mouth! I don’t really need to argue much more on this point, as you have conceded defeat on the grounds of legality. One of us has admitted they do not support the rule of law and therefore does not intend to be taken seriously. As Mark Latham wrote:
In recent times, however, our Party has lost this dialogue with its working class constituency. The pervasiveness of the rights agenda has smothered the importance of social responsibility. Too many ALP activists are now willing to excuse or rationalise away bad behaviour, such as juvenile crime, welfare fraud and illegal migration.
I now know what he is referring to.
If Australia’s immigration programme was to be in our national interest (in terms of security and economics) it would contain the following features:
-demanding a minimum and substantial English proficiency as a pre-requisite for a visa
-banning family reunion migration
-taking only those with skills or financial capital
-placing all immigrants on probation for a minimum period of a few years (i.e. they don’t get a visa in that time) and denying them a visa if they commit crime; deporting them as soon as their sentence is complete
Nobody can seriously deny that these criteria will increase the welfare of Australians and significantly improve the quality of immigration. There is a very good reason for this – immigration should only occur if it can be shown to benefit those already here. If that standard is met, it necessarily follows that an immigration programme must be discriminatory and specifically geared to maximise the utility of Australians to the greatest extent.
Finally:
“I don’t know what you mean by “mass immigration”, but I don’t think we have that now. I think we have a very moderate level of immigration and don’t see much need to change the numbers. As to “changing their identities”, this probably reads a little more dramatically than you meant, but immigrants have been adapting to Australia for two centuries now, even those people from non-Anglo/celtic backgrounds. There is absolutely no reason to fear a “balkanisation” of Australia precisely because people come here and do assimilate, naturally. Maybe not as quickly as some people would like, but sure enough they do and they add to this country, not detract from it.”
That’s strange, I thought that “Australia has experienced MASSIVE immigration over 200 years”. Apparently we now have only “moderate immigration”, even though our immigration programme is expanding rapidly and is now the highest it has been for some 12 years. It is also instructive that you support assimilation:
“There is absolutely no reason to fear a “balkanisation” of Australia precisely because people come here and do assimilate, naturally”. So why do we support multiculturalism, then? You can have assimilation, or multiculturalism, but you cannot conceivably have both. If you seriously think assimilation is an asset, then you will refuse to support any government policies that mitigate assimilation, such as having the Department of Multicultural Affairs, funding ethnic community councils and accepting large numbers of immigrants from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Based on your own stated commitment to assimilation, a failure to support the above can only show up the seriousness of said commitment.
On reflection, there is a solution to this problem:
“I am responding because I think someone has to challenge your views, which tap into a very nasty vein of ethnic and religious bigotry in Australia. I’m not accusing you of bigotry, but I hear these same arguments from people with racist agendas. Moreover, racism and bigotry does not, and should not, have a place in our immigration policy.”
It is for non-racist people like myself to go out and find the racists and convert them to cultural conservatism (armed with hard data, it couldn’t be too hard). Their concerns are often genuine, but their analysis is misguided. With a large non-racist cultural conservative majority, the luvvies’ dream Australia will fast turn into a nightmare.
That is an outcome that can only be made more likely with the accession to Liberal leadership of Tony Abbott.