Orderly immigration or Organised invasion?
Would someone please fill us in about this claim that Australians have agreed to what seems to many to be an organised invasion of legal immigrants for the profit of the housing, finance and infrastructure moguls?
Sheridan writes,
"Paul Kelly argues in his The March of Patriots that there is a bargain between the Australian people and their governments. The Australian people accept a big, diverse and in many respects generous immigration program, so long as it is orderly and well controlled by the government." (Population growth lobbyist, Greg Sheridan, The Australian about his 'esteemed colleague' and fellow population-growth barracker, Paul Kelly of the Australian.)
I don't know anyone who was actually asked and the subject wasn't on the menu during the elections (which were mostly conducted by the mainstream press as usual).
This article "Boatpeople paint PM into corner" by Greg Sheridan is a rich source for a researcher into population growth lobby tactics and media propaganda.
Boat people and racio-ethnicity line a distraction from oversized legal immigration
Firstly we should note that boat people are again hitting the headlines, just at the time when MP Kelvin Thomson and others are coming out criticising high legal (but undemocratic) immigration and its unmanageable and disorderly consequences.
We've been here before.
This is probably no coincidence. It is useful to take our minds off the real issues.
Sheridan's article manages to talk about immigration at length as if the only real problems associated with it might be those related to asylum seekers arriving by boat. Never does it mention the terrible human overpopulation and infrastructure expansion stretching Australia's natural systems to breaking point. The comments allowed under the article favour the racial-ethnic criticism line, which sophisticated readers might be able to work out is a way for the growth lobby to stigmatise most discussion about high immigration as motivated by racial intolerance. That is, if you only publish comments objecting to the racial or ethnic composition of Australia's immigration stream, then you can give the impression that only racist Australians object to high immigration.
In other mediums like candobetter.org, there is, however, plenty of evidence of political and environmental pressure in response to high legal immigration rising like a bubbling stream of magma seeking the surface. The Australian, however, gives very little exposure to comments and protests about these impacts of legal population growth, thus giving a false impression to readers.
How to tell the difference between Rudd's and Howard's policies
Apart from the fact that Kevin Rudd and John Howard look different from each other - a child could probably tell them apart physically - the average adult might already have some trouble telling their asylum-seeker policies apart. In his article, Sheridan sets about trying to establish some difference, but the words are clumsy and unconvincing:
"Rudd is absolutely right to take a tough line against illegal immigration. Those who criticise him for doing so and saying so, such as the normally sound Labor MP Michael Danby, or those who cannot bring themselves to embrace the Prime Minister's language, such as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith in a remarkably evasive and feeble performance on Lateline, merely show how much better, shrewder and braver than the Labor Party Rudd is.
There is a reason this government is so dominated by its PM."
It doesn't matter if the job is hard and the materials poor. If you repeat that Rudd is 'right to take a tough line against illegal immigration' often enough, people will begin to think that this is somehow the crucial point of Australia's population policy.
There is a gem here, though, which you might miss if you began to nod off before you got to the end of the article (and who could blame you)?
Right at the end, Sheridan writes this amazing assertion, that Rudd is
"much better, shrewder and braver than the Labor Party"
What does this tell the alert observer? Well, it sounds to me like a message to the old Liberal-National voters who worry that the ALP has got in and that dear old Howard got the boot. It's telling them, "You don't need to worry. Rudd isn't really the Labor Party. It isn't really a Labor Government as long as Rudd 'dominates' it.
Clearly the Murdoch Press is pleased with Kevin Rudd's performance to date and they don't regret the departure of Howard, although they know that some of their readers still do.
On the other hand, what should Labor sympathisers think about this?
In my opinion, they should be worried! If they weren't already. But not because of Rudd's attitude to asylum seekers. They should be worried that Rudd is overpopulating this country legally to the satisfaction of the growth lobby. As if that were not bad enough, he shows contempt for refugees by allowing a gigantic stream of legal immigrants in but almost no refugees. If that doesn't tell you that the main interest the growth lobby has in immigrants is their money, then you are not reading the signs correctly.
At the same time we can see that Mr Sheridan has become an apologist for geographically distant refugee determination detention facilities because Mr Rudd is running into problems accommodating asylum-seekers.
"There are hard truths in this debate. Let me confess my own sins. When the Howard government introduced the Pacific solution, I was virulently opposed to it. I thought it was inhumane and wouldn't work. In fact, it did work. It also became clear to me the vast majority of people intercepted were not refugees but illegal immigrants."
Mr Rudd is also running into problems accommodating Australians, so perhaps we will soon hear that a few gulags will be built to house the more unruly homeless and unemployed, not to mention those who demand democratic government, under those Howard government terrorism laws that the Rudd government also embraces.
Comments
James Sinnamon
Sat, 2009-10-24 14:41
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Why Murdoch still prefers the Liberal Party
Great article, Sheila.
You wrote:
My own view is that the Murdoch press would have preferred that Howard win the 2007 election. Of course, they make much of their editiorials immediately prior to the election (Thursday in the Courier Mail as I recollect), after much ostensible weighing up of the relative merits of the two supposedly 'worthy candidates', calling for a vote for Mr. Rudd
Clearly, to maintain their value as propaganda organs, the Australian the Courier-Mail and other Murdoch papers have to, on occasions, tell the truth and appear to take the side of the people.
They did the latter prior to the 2007 elections.
If they had not, and had overtly supported, yet again, the lying, incompetent, and malevolent Howard Government, their ability to subsequenlty fool public opinion and to corral the Rudd Government into accepting its agenda would have been far more limited.
It seems more than likely than not that they judged that they could not save Howard's miserable hide, yet again, in 2007. In fact, to me, it seems more likely that overt support for Howard by the Murdoch Press in the 2007 elections may actually have worked against him.
So, instead they hedged their bets.
In fact, given the mountain of scandals against the Howard Government, the Murdoch press was indeed heavily biased in favour of Howard Government. As one of many examples I could give: remember the AWB scandal, in which the Howard Governmnt allowed AU$296 of bribe money to be paid to the same regime of Saddam Hussein that, in 2003, it insisted was such a mortal threat to world peace, that we were left with no choice but to immediately invade Iraq then and there? Like most Australians, I believe that Howard and Downer knew precisely what was going on all along and, therefore, belong behind bars. However the Australian, feigning astonishing gullibility, insisted that it was all the fault of the AWB bosses and that Howard and Downer had truly been kept in the dark.
Even if the Australian could possibly have accepted such a tall story, at the very least it owed to its readers to remind them, and repeatedly remind them, until election day that it was unfit to hold office. Given its role in bringing about the early election that resulted in the removal of the Whitlam Government in 1975 for alleged incompetence of a far smaller magnitude, why didn't it demand new elections then and there?
The fact that the Howard Government ever stood a chance of being re-elected after the essential truth of the AWB scandal became known is an indication of the media's, and in particular, the Murdoch media's, blatant bias in favour of John Howard that continued right up to election day in 2007. (Some may be interested in a post I wrote arguing essentially the same on an Online Opinion disscussion forum in response to the article "Judging Howard" by Chris Lewis of 7 Sep 09.)
The fact that the Australian's strategy of hedging its bets now seems to have paid off shouldn't therefore be taken as proof that they prefer Labor over the Coalition. However rotten Federal Labor in Government may be, it still appears to be subject to more constraints from their grass roots membership and trade union base, from behaving like the tyrannical feudal despots that the Coalition in Government has shown itself to be.
So, even though a Federal Labor Government may not be ideal for Murdoch, it's a damn good consolation prize.
Given a few more months of Federal Labor incompetence and trampling on its own support base, having them thrown out and replaced by the more trusty Coalition Federal Government should not pose an inordinately difficult challenge to the Murdoch Press, that is unless, we remain vigilant against it.
It's important that we do what we can to prevent the Murdoch Press orchestrating political events to suit its own agenda as it has many times in the past. However much we rightly feel revulsion at the Rudd Government we should not allow ourselves to automatically fall into line behind any future demands by the Mrudoch press for its removal.
Of course, what has to be done is to build a viable political alternative to both the Coalition and Labor. The Greens still appear, in spite of havinn almost countless opportunities handed to them on platters in recent decades, incapable of becoming that alternative. So it seems that that alternative will have to come from elsewhere.
Sheila Newman
Sat, 2009-10-24 16:45
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Murdoch, Privatisation and the Wheat Board scandal
Anonymous (not verified)
Sun, 2009-10-25 09:12
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Boat voyage $3000 cheaper than Immigration agents
James Sinnamon
Sun, 2009-10-25 10:00
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Robert Burns: How Scotland's elites betrayed their people
The following is from an article, "'A Parcel of Rogues' Musical Interlude" on the blog Mild Colonial Boy, which includes an excerpt from this article.
The Corries — Such a Parcel Of Rogues in the Nation
The Corries sing a poem of Robert Burns written in 1791 to protest the Acts of Union 1707. Some Scots, such as Robert Burns, saw it as an act of betrayal by a traitorous Political Elite handing over Scotland to alien masters.
Some Readers may see parallels to the Australia of today with it’s Political Elites’ handing Australia over to the whims of foreigners through the bipartisan policies of high Immigration and Multiculturalism at the expense of traditional Australia.
Such a Parcel Of Rogues in the Nation
by Robert Burns
Fareweel to a’ our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory!
Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name.
Sae famed in martial story!
Now Sark rins over Salway sands,
An’ Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England’s province stands --
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
What force or guile could not subdue
Thro’ many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor’s wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour’s station;
But English gold has been our bane --
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
O, would, or I had seen the day
That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay
Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour
I’ll mak this declaration :-
‘We’re bought and sold for English gold’--
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
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