Shallow diving into the sleaze pit

Australia is deep into a national election campaign that threatens to change the character of this country – and our place in the world – for generations. It is a sickening slide into racism masquerading as a form of economic nationalism.

The core of the issue is, essentially, Australia’s mining boom with the associated demand for massive new infrastructure such as ports and rail lines. It is inextricable from the reality that Australia is a vast continental land mass with a miniscule population, in global terms, of a mere 22 million.

As a sophisticated, mixed economy that ranks just outside the top ten internationally, our need for skilled workers is very substantial. Despite an equally sophisticated education system we are not producing sufficient numbers of professionals able to satisfy the demand. Perhaps more to the point, our living standards are so comfortable that we are unable to ‘produce’ sufficient numbers of skilled workers willing to accept the rigours of living in remote and frequently harsh regions even for very handsome remuneration.

So, we enabled a system in which skilled migrants can come to Australia to fill these roles and help build the nation. It worked quite well while there was bipartisan political agreement among the major parties that this was in the national interest. But now, a dangerous element has slithered into the mix.

The union movement is leading the charge. Sadly, it is doing so as a last ditch effort to salvage its affiliated Labor Party government that has nose-dived in popularity over the past few years and which seems destined for an electoral rout of historic proportions at the poll in September.

The unions are frantic that their capitalist class enemies will resume office and, again, reform the workplace in favour of employers. With the prospect that their only hope of a favourable government will perhaps be sidelined for a decade, some union leaders have decided this is the time to throw caution to the wind and use any issue that might salvage something from the impending wreckage. Skilled migrants are their stalking horse.

The Vice-President of the Australian Labor Party and national leader of the Transport Workers’ Union, Tony Sheldon, has just accused some employers of these skilled migrants of “human trafficking” and engaging in a “form of slavery”. There could hardly be a more explosive accusation.

With the blindness of the true bigot, Sheldon blithely ignores the fact that the rate of skilled migration has leapt to record levels under his own government. But our national leader, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who routinely roils in the pits of polling popularity is determined to enhance her reputation even further (if only in her own fevered mind). She baldly says Australian workers should go to the front of the queue with foreigners to the rear.

Makes you proud to be Aussie, doesn’t it?

Ignoring the reality that our own people won’t accept these jobs – which is why they are available even with massive pay packages – she accuses employers of exploiting these willing visitors to our country. The same people who in waves over previous generations have proved to be nation-builders and, now, as dinky-di Aussies as any of us.

This same Prime Minister not long back unveiled with tremendous fanfare, a supposed vision of how we would engage with our Asia-Pacific region and be a shining light to all those other nations not fortunate enough to be us. Now she denigrates their willing workers as beneath contempt for stealing local jobs. Does she really believe her own xenophobic messages are not heard by our neighbours?

This is a shameful debate and one which is tarnishing our image and reputation across the region. It is a dangerous debate because it unleashes the basest of motives: envy, greed and fear of difference.

Yet, as a democracy, we must not stifle it. The only way for decent Australians to signal their disgust at this tawdry attempt to retain office is to vote the proponents down so resolutely they realise just how offensive the silent majority feels this to be.

You cannot shallow dive into a lseaze pit and come up clean.

Anthony Mundine is no badass, just a bad mouth

There was a time when the physical exploits of Anthony Mundine stirred excitement among Australia’s sports-oriented fans. His athletic ability was a thing of beauty and whether at football, boxing or running his grace, agility and power were a sight to behold.

Mundine became something of a legend and was hailed as a champion of Australia’s indigenous population. He carried himself as a warrior and was just as comfortable battering opponents with a mouthful of stinging barbs as he was at leaving them in his wake physically.

Somewhere along the line, though, Mundine came to believe the whole legend thing and his ego took over from reality. The once eager optimist became an embittered critic. The champion of causes became the demon of denunciation.

Mundine appropriated racism as the cloak for his ill-disguised sneering condemnation of anyone or anything he disagreed with. And there have been plenty who have felt his verbal wrath.

But as his tireless dirges become ever more nasty, we see Mundine for what he really is: a bully. His latest assault on a fellow aborigine, boxer Danny Geale, makes the point perfectly.

In a promotional puff-piece to create awareness of a forthcoming boxing bout, Mundine unleashed a torrent of vitriol on Geale. Worse, he savaged Geale’s innocent family, accusing Geale in the nastiest of terms. “He’s got a white woman, he’s got while kids” with Mundine adding that “I thought they wiped all the Aborigines from Tasmania out.”

Nice work, Anthony. You proud of yourself? A real man doesn’t feel the need to attack the family of opponents. The contest is supposed to be one-on-one in a test of whatever skills are agreed.

Badinage has long been a tradition of these boxing promo events but Mundine scrapes the barrel. He accuses Australia of being one of the most racist countries in the world while asserting that he himself “keeps it real”.

Yeah, right, pal. Know what: you don’t like it here, please leave. We don’t need your sort blackening our name, so to speak. I’m embarrassed that you still cling to your Australian heritage (and I’m not referring to your aboriginality) and I suspect many others are, too. So, if we make you feel uncomfortable, feel very free to take off for greener pastures. Your spite and denigration of your own kind are no boon to this nation.

It’s time to reconcile reconciliation

It is a legitimate expectation of governments that they spend taxpayer funds wisely, even if this maxim is so frequently honoured in the breach. Almost a Greek tradition, one might say!

In this spirit, I am grateful to the rowdy ratbags who displayed their true colours on Australia Day at the Lobby Restaurant in Canberra. Such was the heady aphrodisiac of that eventful afternoon that they had a real morning-after outside Parliament the next day with a burning of the national flag.  Just not sure their spittle was intended to extinguish the flames.

Remarkably, the symbolism of these two events appears to have truly registered on the national psyche though in a way quite contrary to what the aboriginal cause may have wanted to achieve. For many, this appears to have been a seminal turning point. And, yes, it is valid to recognise that these were the actions of the few and not the many. As such they should not be used to hold guilty those who neither took part nor endorsed such protests. Yet, as with a genie out of a bottle, getting it back in can be a bugger.

Over the past four decades we have provided untold assistance packages, welfare programs, support services, interventions and just plain handouts to assist the cause of aboriginal betterment. But on every front we are told that things have not improved and may even have become worse. How could this be? It is clear to all that real change has not been achieved.

It is time for a reconciliation of accounts to determine value for money.

It is time to uncover the truth of what four decades of assistance have achieved.

It is time for a Royal Commission into aboriginal welfare.

Let us start with tallying the outlays. So, from the instigation of the aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra let us be told just how much funding has been applied to aboriginal betterment, welfare, reconciliation and allied issues. This is the foundation of any assessment. Debate as to effectiveness may well be inconclusive yet it is surely a debate that must be had. We keep getting told, after all, that the eyes of other nations are upon us as we consider amending our constitution to entrench aboriginal advancement. Frankly they appear to have their own share of problems. Certainly, the down-trodden, oppressed masses in the rest of the world could only pray for the largesse the Australian people have lavished on our own indigenous peoples.

And while on the subject of the so-called aboriginal tent embassy, let us acknowledge the farce that it is. After four decades, any potency of symbolism has waned to the point of irrelevance. Worse is that the occupiers appear entirely unaware of the fraudulent nature of their ‘permission to remain’. If there is a sadder example of white, middle-class patronage than the generally well-off Canberra residents tolerating this smudge on their otherwise orderly landscape, it is difficult to imagine. How smug they must generally feel to know they are playing their part in the advancement of indigenous people by letting them have their little plaything in the heart of town. Such a patroinising pat on the  head. Quite sad, really, but there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

As for the rest of us racist, rapist invaders, let us shrug off the yoke of tyranny we allegedly have imposed on this land’s traditional owners. Let us treat them with the respect they deserve and be mindful of the injustice their forebears suffered. Yet history cannot be rewritten. What has been done cannot be undone and none of us today had any part in the events of yesteryear so we cannot legitimately bear the guilt some try to impose on us. Those who cannot or will not get over their grievances must pay the price of such angst. But if they wish to bite the hand that feeds them then let them at least know how much feed they have had.