DIVERSITY: Are Australians Really Racist?

The late Padraic Pearse (PP) McGuinness was one of Australia’s most eccentric commentators and cultural warriors. At one time a columnist for The Australian - back in the days when its editorial line wasn’t beholden to the SAS (and by that, I mean the Santamaria Appreciation Society) – he went onto take control of what became the rabidly right wing Quadrant.

McGuinness wrote on just about every topic under the sun, whether he knew much about it or not. He seemed determined to be a contrarian, even when his views represented the orthodoxy.

During a spring clean, I found a book of his columns entitled McGuinness Collected Thoughts* and was particularly interested on his views on social issues. Much of the commentary concerned topics of his era which would have interested me back then had I not been chasing other forms of anti-communist activism.

One column, dated June 20 1989 and entitled “THE MYTH OF AUSTRALIAN RACISM” is a reflection on Australian attitudes to East Asians in the days following the Tienanmen Square massacre. McGuinness claims

[t]he events in China, and the Australian response to them, have served to discredit another myth ... the myth that Australians are racist.

McGuiness claims the “myth” has been

... assiduously disseminated by various tendencies in the media … to paint a picture of Australians in general as prone to racist intolerance and hostility to immigration, especially from Asia.

So what does McGuinness see as the real truth?

The truth is that this is not an accurate description of Australian popular opinion, today, and has not been for many years, if it ever was.

McGuinness then moves onto our history of post-Federation immigration. He paints a rosy picture of a nation that has

... treated the immigrants with a tolerance and willingness to live and let live, and to absorb … The Australian experience of immigration and integration is one of which any country in the world could be proud.

Has it all been good? McGuinness acknowledges that

[t]here are difficulties, there are stupidities, there are plenty of cases of bad policy.

But that doesn’t detract from the overall picture that

... of all mixed communities Australia is one of the most tolerant and decent.

McGuinness then moves onto indigenous people. It would be a huge understatement to suggest that his views represent a mere contrarian refusal to accept conventional wisdom.

The accusation against Australians with respect to the treatment of Aboriginal Australians have been wild and damning.

I doubt Tony Abbott would agree with McGuiness’ assessment.

But how many people coming from other countries, whether English-speaking or not, can claim that the history of communal intolerance, of violence of wars, invasions, and conquests, have been better than ours? 

Gee, that should make us all feel so much better.

There is much to be ashamed of in the past for everybody – but to accuse Australians of being any worse than any other country in this respect is simply absurd. Often enough we have been better.

I’m not sure if that means we have anything to be proud of. It just means we are probably at least as bad or perhaps a little better than an awful bunch. Now, try not to fall off your chair at the following:

The mistakes toward Aborigines fifty or eighty years ago may not look so bad in the future … The point is that there is simply no evidence of any general or systematic prejudice against Aboriginals among white Australians.

Shall I continue? Yeah, why not.

Nor is there any general and systematic racial prejudice among Australians toward Asians, or toward other foreigners. There is indeed a certain amount of fear and hostility toward strangers. That is universal. There is a certain amount of red-kneckery” among those wo are not politically sophisticated or well-informed … But it is pure nonsense to say that there is any deep-seated racism and unforgiving intolerance in the Australian community.

McGuinness excuses those he sees as being wrongly accused of being racists. He says their behaviour is often natural given that an influx of people means more competition for limited housing, jobs etc. It isn’t easy for locals

... when established habits of life are disturbed, when new and not easily understood ways of behaviour are encountered. 

Does he have a point here? So by now you would have some idea of where PP McGuinness was coming from. Are his opinions correct today? Where they correct back in 1989? Was he partly right and partly wrong? Are Australians really racist?

*(1990) Schwartz & Wilkinson

OPINION: Aussies doing their best to upset key neighbour

Abbott's emphasis on the 'Anglosphere' as the focus of Oz's foreign policy confirmed suspicions that Australia saw itself as a Western colonial outpost in the Asia-Pacific. 

Indonesia has withdrawn its ambassador from Canberra following revelations that Australian intelligence operatives bugged the phones of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), his wife and a number of senior ministers in August 2009. Details have only been released recently by the Guardian newspaper and Australia's public broadcaster ABC. It was part of the intelligence information revealed by Edward Snowden, former contractor to America's NSA.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is publicly downplaying the issue. But surely he knows just what a huge diplomatic disaster this is. Indonesia is Australia's closest neighbour, and two-way trade between the two countries last year amounted to A$15 billion ($16.9 billion). In Parliament, Abbott some days back described Indonesia as an "emerging democratic superpower in Asia" (perhaps distinguishing Indonesia from the not-so-democratic China). Abbott also described SBY as "one of the best friends that we have anywhere in the world".

Abbott's stated respect for Indonesia has not, however, been reflected in Australia's recent dealings involving asylum seekers which have largely been driven by partisan domestic political considerations. The Abbott asylum policy, reflected in the simplistic formula of "stop the boats", could only ever work with the co-operation of Indonesia.

The policy is being treated as a military operation, as if 50 dishevelled asylum seekers on a boat somehow represent a security threat requiring a 3-star general. The secretive implementation of this policy, with the Immigration Minister and the general providing vague weekly briefings to journalists, reached such heights of stupidity that Australian journalists found more information about the policy from their Indonesian colleagues at the Jakarta Post than from their own Government.

Time and again, Indonesian officials expressed frustration with Australia's unilateral approach to the issue of asylum seekers which affected both countries. Abbott's policy included the Australian Navy turning back tiny fishing boats carrying asylum seekers "when it is safe to do so". The fishing boats would then return to Indonesia. Abbott insisted that Indonesia would co-operate, ignoring Indonesian concerns about both the human rights implications and of the immense social pressures this would have on the more crowded and poorer nation.

It was as if Indonesia was at Australia's beck and call. Tony Abbott's emphasis on the "Anglosphere" as the focus of Australia's foreign policy confirmed commonly held Asian suspicions that Australia saw itself as a Western colonial outpost in the Asia-Pacific region, as the deputy sheriff of the United States.

Australian politicians of all political stripes are so focused on the West that they forget their own geographical location. Understanding of Asian cultures in Australia is poor. Indonesian language instruction, once a primary feature in Australian secondary schools, has all but disappeared. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade does an excellent job running cultural and other exchange programmes, but these are to build person to person contacts, not replace the bilateral policy process.

Some in Jakarta are quite happy to attack Tony Abbott's domestic standing by undermining his efforts to stop the boats. At the time of writing, a member of the House of Representatives' Commission on defence, foreign affairs and information had told the Jakarta Post:

We are in a better position than Australia. This issue [boat people] could be utilised as a bargaining chip in demanding an apology from Prime Minister Abbott. 

Abbott's response has been to virtually scoff at any suggestion of an apology.

Every government gathers information and every government knows every other government gathers information. 

True, but not everyone gets caught. When it comes to such spying methods, Indonesia is hardly in a position to cast the first stone. As News Limited points out:

When he retired in 2004 Indonesian spymaster General Abdullah Mahmud Hendropriyono revealed his agency had not only tapped Australian civil and military communications and politicians' phone calls during the 1999 East Timor crisis, but had also unsuccessfully attempted to recruit Australian officials as double agents.

The official Australian response at the time was muted.

All this fracas coincides with a visit to Jakarta by Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Indonesians don't exactly have fond memories of Dutch colonisation which began in the 16th century. Following Japanese occupation during World War II, Dutch forces attempted to re-establish colonial rule. Most Western countries supported Dutch claims. Australia's Labor government under Prime Minister Ben Chifley openly supported the nascent Indonesian nationalist movement.

Why did Australian leaders at the time support Indonesia, even going to the extent of criticising their closest ally, the US, for supplying material and moral aid to Dutch forces in the archipelago? Simply because Australia realised that its security and its national interest lay in an independent, strong and proud neighbour. Indonesian independence reinforced Australian independence.

There are still some in Canberra who see Indonesia as a potential threat. Which is all the more reason to keep Indonesia on side. You keep your friends close and your potential enemies closer.

• Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and an award-winning Australian author. This article was first published in the NZ Herald on Friday 22 November 2013.

Stupid Australian tourist.

OPINION: At least God has the Commonwealth on His side

There was a time when the Liberal Party stood for the "forgotten people", the people who didn't have a union or truckloads of cash and capital to back them up. Vulnerable individuals.

 

The 2014 budget hasn't given young and future voters much to cheer about. A swag of youth-related programs have been slashed, especially in regional areas. Often these are places where businesses are shutting doors, where workers are being laid off and where the only jobs available often involve flipping burgers in return for a few dollars.

And if you are unlucky or too depressed to do this kind of work, you may find yourself with no income source for six months. Apart from your parents, that is. Conservatives are all about family values, you know.

You might choose to study. No upfront fees! What a bargain! And enough debt to make getting married, having babies and putting a roof over their head almost impossible.

There was a time when the Liberal Party stood for the "forgotten people", the people who didn't have a union or truckloads of cash and capital to back them up. Vulnerable individuals.

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But that seems like ancient history today. There are plenty of vulnerable individuals today, especially with union membership falling. But instead of providing opportunity, modern Australian liberalism is all about kicking vulnerable individuals in the guts.

So to whom can young vulnerable individuals turn? What should they do? Jostle a few past and present female MPs? Hold placards upside down on national TV?

Hiding in the detail of Joe Hockey's 2014 budget is a clue. Young people could do with a dose of good old-fashioned religion. An injection of taxpayer funds to empower God is what's called for.

John Howard injected $90 million into a pastoral care scheme. Howard knew public school teachers were spending too much time sorting out the great unwashed kids whose parents were too selfish to invest in decent grammar school education. Too much money for beer and cigarettes, and not enough for chapel, Latin classes and rugby.

Money for wealthy public schools also got shared among the poor struggling private schools. The result was that all schools could claim funding under the National School Chaplaincy Programme.

The scheme was a huge success. By July 2011, a 28 per cent of state schools had taken the dosh. Writing in Inside Story on July 21, 2011, Monica Thielking and David Mackenzie noted:

The initiative had its critics, but generally the education sector welcomed the additional resources.

.

Also happy were the chaplaincy providers, most of whom were faith-based. Here was a chance to spread the word.

One spokeswoman from ACCESS Ministries was quoted saying:

[I]n Australia we have a God-given open door to children and young people with the Gospel. Our federal and state governments allow us to take the Christian faith into our schools and share it. We need to go and make disciples.

This missionary zeal was nothing new. Back in the 1980s my school was making us year 10 boys spend one hour each week for an entire term being indoctrinated by Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live?.

This series of videos presented the European Enlightenment as an atheistic tragedy, the French Revolution as a series of guillotines (OK, he got that one right) and modern "secular humanism" as responsible for everything from the Holocaust to the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Schaeffer's solution? Bring God back into public life, into the public square, into government. Spoon-fed theocracy. That's where my parents' school fees went.

Seriously, though, the chaplaincy scheme is a good idea so long as governments recognised that not everyone believes that the Son of God was sent to die for our sins. And that some youth problems are too tough even for prayer.

The very hint of the Commonwealth funding direct preaching in schools (even if this isn't generally the reality) doesn't sit well with voters. Even if Chris Pyne and Tony Abbott scream until the Christ comes home that states and territories are funding less godly counsellors and psychologists.

Which is exactly what is happening. An extra $245 million has been found in the budget for the chaplaincy program. But schools don't have the option of having a not-so-religious social worker to fill the role.

When it comes to our kids' pastoral needs, at least God has the Commonwealth on His side. But not in other areas of school life.

Chris Pyne has already indicated he wants a reviewed curriculum for schools which puts emphasis on Anzac Day and our Western civilisation. God's children mustn't be pacifist and certainly mustn't have a black-armband view of the past, even if His son was a Palestinian Jew.

The culture wars are alive and well in our schools. God help our kids.

Irfan Yusuf is an author and PhD candidate at the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. First published in the Canberra Times on Saturday 24 May 2014.

POLITICS: Australia turns its back on the desperate

The beachside Sydney suburb of Manly is home to many an Aussie boat-owner. Indeed locals (including the abundance of Kiwi settlers) will tell you that the most enjoyable way to get to Manly from the city is by boat. Manly is also the heartland of Tony Abbott, the conservative Opposition Leader who is also desperate to become Prime Minister.

In the 2010 elections Mr Abbott almost made it to the top job with the slogan of "Stop The Boats". Until some days ago, this mantra should have been Mr Abbott's ticket to the PM's house. Mr Abbott has effectively capitalised, indeed monopolised, on the love-hate relationship many Aussie voters have with boats.

In Mr Abbott's electorate, just about every punter owns a boat. Elsewhere, owning one is just about every bogan's dream. But boats are also a nightmare because they're often the vessels that bring dark-skinned unwashed illegal immigrants to our shores. The 5600 boat people that flooded the country in 2010 represented a huge threat to our migration system and our security compared to, say, the 53,900 harmless overstayers largely from Europe and North America.

So who is to blame for this influx of boat people? Is it the bullets and nooses and torture chambers of the God-awful governments, militias, mullahs, juntas and civil wars these people are fleeing? Is it crazy theocrats like the Taliban our brave troops are fighting in Afghanistan and our American allies are cosying up with in peace talks in Qatar?

Since 2001, Australian politicians have had a simple answer. The blame for the influx of asylum seekers lay with the asylum seekers and the people who smuggle them here. Boat people are "queue jumpers". People smugglers, often former asylum seekers themselves, are a bunch of crooks.

Mr Abbott's solution - send in the navy to turn any boats around so they can go back to where they came from. Almost always that means Indonesia. Too bad for Mr Abbott that many Indonesian leaders find this approach inhumane and impractical. And Indonesia knows our Opposition will take their opposition seriously.

Now Mr Abbott faces a new Prime Minister who is just as ruthless. A few days ago, Kevin Rudd signed a deal with Peter O'Neill, leader of Australia's impoverished northern neighbour and former colony Papua New Guinea. Mr O'Neill has agreed to house unlimited numbers of boat people on the remote northern island of Manus or in other facilities.

Mr Rudd has instructed the Immigration Department to place advertisements in local newspapers declaring "If you come here by boat without a visa YOU WON'T BE SETTLED IN AUSTRALIA". A version of this message in video form is also in Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Sinhalese, Tamil and Vietnamese.

Mr Rudd has effectively closed the door to asylum seekers arriving by boat and has thrown away the key in the direction of Port Moresby. A recent issue of the Economist rates Port Moresby as the 139th most liveable city in the world, below Karachi and Harare. Manus Island would unlikely make any list of liveability. It's true that PNG has at least acceded to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, but they have sought exemptions on providing basic services to refugees such as employment, education and housing.

But that's not all. Catherine Wilson writes in Crikey:

Female asylum seekers will find themselves in a society grappling with very high levels of gender and sexual violence, with inadequate law enforcement. Last year the World Bank reported that violence victimisation rates in PNG were among the highest in the world and violent crimes were on the increase. 

Bleeding heart do-gooders like myself are frothing at the mouth and penning editorials on how Mr Rudd's new policy is tougher and less humane than anything Mr Abbott ever came up with. And that's exactly the message Mr Rudd wants to get out there. On asylum seeker and border protection, Kevin Rudd sounds more like Tony Abbott than Tony Abbott. At least that's how it will look until Mr Rudd wins the election and then reviews the policy in 12 months time.

Retired Brigadier Gary Hogan, a former Australian Defence Attache to Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, recently wrote for the Lowy Institute:

A cargo cult mentality is alive and well in PNG and this afforded the necessary levers for the Australian Prime Minister to pull so deftly in his game-changing policy statement, which will almost certainly stem boat arrivals in the near term, until people smugglers and Australian activists are able to find paths around the absolutist decree that even legitimate asylum-seekers will now not find sanctuary in Australia. 

Australia, a huge and sparsely populated island continent whose European incarnation was established by criminals arriving in boats, has turned its back on desperate boat people who have in the past made terrific citizens. Still, our loss could be Kevin Rudd's gain. Which I guess is really all that matters.

 Irfan Yusuf is an Australian lawyer and author. First published in the NZ Herald on Thursday 25 July 2013.

UPDATE: An excellent comment from Dr Susan Harris Rimmer of ANU can be found here.

BOOKS: Henry Reynolds on Tasmania

Work has taken yours truly to a small island off the coast of Mexico. It's a gorgeous place known for its delightful landscape ...

... and for the genocide committed by its early settlers.

So where did all this luscious murderous Tasmanian stuff emerge from? I decided to spend a Friday afternoon finding out.

It didn't involve much research or effort on my part. I just joined some of Tasmania's chattering classes at an upmarket bookshop in Launceston There we were greeted and seated before Henry Reynolds and another historian named Eric.

We all packed together to hear Reynolds tell us about a book he's just written on the history of Tasmania. Reynolds' work certainly isn't the first. There have been plenty of books on Tasmanian history. Go to any bookshop in Hobart or other town on the island and you'll find an entire section on Tasmaniana.

Eric suggested that Reynolds' book was like a distant autobiography of his own dealings with Tassie. Reynolds, it so happens, did most of his study in Tasmania. He then went into exile in Queensland before returning.

Reynolds says that when he was at school, most history taught was about England. Ironically, Tasmanians have had a very rich tradition of writing about the history of their colony/state.

Reynolds tells us that perhaps the reason for this is that everywhere you look, you are reminded of the island's English colonial history which has been preserved in its old buildings.

There's lots of Georgian style buildings. Tasmania was a filthy rich colony, especially during its boom times of the 1830's and 1880's.

Reynolds says he was first approached by Cambridge University Press 10 years ago to write this short history. He was given a 100,000 word limit. He starts his work by looking at European settlement in Tasmania through the eyes of its Aboriginal tribes who has lived in the island for around 300 generations. These tribes were virtually cut off from the mainland by the Bass Strait.

I was surprised to hear that as late as the 1960's, there were indigenous peoples in Tasmania who has not met white people. Reynolds he has spoken to some of these people.

... to be continued.


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COMMENT: Jeremy Sammut tries to be a smartie on M&M's

Jeremy Sammut is a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. He has a PhD in Australian social and political history from Monash University. He has written about child protection laws and health policy.

And now he is writing about what he describes as the 'M&M' debate. M&M equals "multiculturalism and Muslims". His article appearing on the CIS website has been reprinted on the opinion page of The Australian.

Sammut writes about the “multicultural industry” which seeks to stifle “a legitimate debate about the success or otherwise of Muslim integration”.

Sammut's evidence is one part of Sydney he describes as "Lakemba and its surrounds" which he argues

... remain ghettofied.


The usual pattern of dispersal by first-generation children of immigrants has not occurred to the same extent and the area is plagued with poor educational achievement, high unemployment and crime.


The community concerns that exist in western Sydney about Muslims and multiculturalism are based on these jarring realities on the disintegration of some parts of Sydney from the mainstream, and the failure to repeat the successful patterns of integration of other ethnic groups.

All this raises a few issues. Well, actually more than a few. I'll list some:

[01] Was Jeremy Sammut around when many used to refer to Cabramatta as 'Vietnamatta'? Was he aware of the large number of media reports and conservative commentators talking about 'Asian crime gangs' and the difficulties 'Asians' faced integrating?

[02] Is Sammut talking about Muslims as a race?

[03] Is Sammut asking us to believe that a certain ethnic group of Muslims in Lakemba is reflective of all Muslims across the country?

[04] Sammut argues that ...

It is because most Australians believe in the immigration and integration of all comers that what is going on in southwest Sydney is of concern.


Perceptive politicians have picked up on this.

Could he name some of these perceptive politicians? Does he agree with their perceptions and statements?

I might ask him these questions direct.

COMMENT: Running riot across Sydney

The American-owned Sydney tabloid Daily Telegraph carried an article today about a report from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics about rioting in Sydney. Here are some excerpts:

THOUSANDS of assaults occur within 20m of a hotel or club across Sydney, a damning report has found, as authorities yesterday called for further restrictions on late-night trading ...


The assaults were clustered around Sydney's nightspots and more likely to happen near licensed premises than anywhere else.


More than 2000 assaults occurred just 20m from a club or pub, accounting for 37 per cent of all attacks in the city, while 56.8 per cent of assaults happened within 50m of a liquor outlet.

Did you notice the first word? THOUSANDS. But as usual, the left-wing ALP lefty nasty elites just refuse to blame the real culprits.

Crime statistic experts and senior police yesterday said extended trading laws and a proliferation of licensed premises across Sydney had to be addressed if the community wanted to reduce violence.

What rubbish. It's clearly the fault of nasty drunken Muslims who refuse to integrate and adopt genuine Australian values such as sobriety.

And if you believe that, you'll believe these dudes are al-Qaeda suicide bombers.

OPINION: Reflect reality, and reject monocultural nonsense

Don’t let politicians and other pundits lecture us on who we are, IRFAN YUSUF writes

Something really tragic took place in the Sydney suburb of Rouse Hill last week. Five Christians of various ages were buried. An entire Christian family - mum, dad, two children and an aunt - died in a tragic boating accident. An Anglican priest presided over the service.

A smaller number of people who died in the same accident were being buried at the Muslim section of Rookwood Cemetery in western Sydney. A huge media contingent was there. Virtually all attention was on the Muslims who died, as if the greater number of Christian dead didn't matter.

Virtually all public discussion about asylum-seekers, immigration and multiculturalism focuses on Muslims. It's as if Muslims were this singular wave of migrants who all recently arrived from the Kingdom of Muslimistan in boats. As if the demographic reality that about half of all our Muslims were born in Australia and aged under 40 are a figment of the collective imagination of employees at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

One need only visit Mareeba in northern Queensland to understand just how entrenched Muslims are in the Australian heartland. You can find Muslims who have lived and worked and farmed in this area since the 1920s. Women from the local mosque have established a dance group consisting of Albanian, Greek, Italian and Irish-Australian backgrounds.

Even when Muslims originate from a country home to many faiths, we assume they're somehow different. I find it hilarious when I hear people say that Lebanese Muslims are different to Lebanese Christians because of their culture. How so? Do Muslims inject chilli in their baklava? Do Christians slip a bit of pork into their felafels? It's a bit like saying that meat pies made by Catholics are different to those made by Protestants.

Some years ago, I was at a function where the majority of the audience were Lebanese Sunni Muslims. Bob Carr had been invited to speak. He had a special message for the crowd.

I'm pleased to announce that the next Governor of NSW will be Professor Marie Bashir.

The roar from the crowd was instantaneous. People whistled and clapped and cheered. Some readers might wonder why Muslims would be excited about the appointment of a Christian. But they miss the point. She was a Lebanese Australian. These people are Lebanese Australians. She is a symbol of their progress.

The same crowd would cheer on a player from their favourite rugby league team regardless of what his faith was, and even if he was roughly tackling Hazem el-Masri. Cricketing fans among them would cheer a non-Muslim Australian bowler if he managed to bowl champion South African batsman
and devout Muslim Hashim Amla out for a duck.

Forget government policies. Australian multiculturalism is a deeply individual affair for those of us with at least one overseas-born parent. We all have layers of identity. At different times, different layers come to the fore. It's our right as individuals to decide how and when we express any of these layers. It isn't for governments to dictate to us how this is to happen.

What governments can and must dictate is that we act within the law. Different interest groups can shape and influence laws and government policies. In this respect, Muslims as a collective have been rather hopeless. They have little impact in the politics of this country and almost no impact on foreign policy. In political parties, their role has been all but marginal, acting largely as branch stackers than factional heavyweights.

Yet still this notion persists that they are somehow receiving special benefits. I wish I knew what these special benefits are. A local council closing off a pool for a few hours for women to swim? Surely that must beat easy access to members of cabinet and shadow cabinet that groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby enjoy to pursue agendas most Christians are uncomfortable with.

So many people who tick "Muslim" on census forms see themselves as so much more than religious actors. They're rarely seen at the mosque even for the congregational prayers on Fridays. For many, religion isn't a matter of conviction. Writing about the India he grew up in, American author Suketu Mehta remembers a place where

... being Muslim or Hindu or Catholic was merely a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle.

That was my experience growing up in a subcontinental family in John Howard's electorate. That's how it is everywhere in Australia. Australians should be allowed to decide on their personal eccentricities and hairstyles.

When politicians and pundits start lecturing us on what our culture is, we should give them the one-finger salute. It isn't their job to tell us who we are, what layers of identity we should value more. In this respect, we should add an extra finger when this kind of monocultural nonsense is sprouted by those claiming to be Liberal.

Seriously, what kind of Liberal MP tells his or her constituents that we're a Christian country? I mean, which of Jesus' disciples preached the gospel 40,000 years ago in Arnhem Land?

My advice to pollies and commentators who persist in sowing the seeds of monocultural revolution is: save yourselves the effort and move to a country where such revolutions have been won. Say, North Korea.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of comic memoir Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Thursday 24 February 2010.

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf



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COMMENT: Show us your (average) face!

There's been alot of talk in the Herald Sun lately about that nasty thing called multiculturalism. I guess it's been a slow news period, and many tabloid readers perhaps believe Egypt is still ruled by pharaohs.

Conventional wisdom on planet Murdoch tells us that when wogs come to town, they have to adopt our ways. They need to be just like us.

Meanwhile, back here on planet Earth, The Age reports of a South African photographer who came up with a composite morphed Aussie face after a visit to Sydney University.

Mike notes that Sydney boasts one of the most multicultural populations in the world and this was reflected in the faces he photographed. 35 per cent of Sydney's population were born outside of Australia and this rises to 70 per cent in downtown Sydney, Mike claims.


"The city's population is primarily of European extraction (British, Irish, Italian, Greek and Maltese) with about 15 per cent being of Asian origin (Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Thai and Indian)," he says.


"There are also sizeable communities of Pacific Islanders, New Zealanders, Lebanese, Turks and South Africans."


Mike described his visit to Sydney University as a "veritable United Nations", saying out of about one hundred people he photographed there were 30 nationalities represented.

But heck, you don't have to like multiculturalism as a government policy. You just have to accept it as a social reality. Australia no longer has just a white face. It's a fact only the white trash appear to be worried about.

Now here's some word of wisdom from a bunch of allegedly real Australians.



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OPINION: Asylum-seeker shame rises for some political pundits

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall of the United States embassy in Canberra last November. And to be sitting there watching and listening as that unnamed ''key Liberal Party strategist'' that boat people was a politically ''fantastic'' issue with ''the more boats that come the better''. And if, for no other reason, than to know who that imbecile strategist was!

Oh, to now be a fly on the wall of that strategist's office and see his or her face watching images of the Indonesian fishing vessel with 100 Iranian and Iraqi asylum-seekers on board crashing against the coastal rocks of Christmas Island.

Of course, the political logic of the strategist's comment to US diplomats is really quite straightforward. If the boats stop coming, Tony Abbott would look like a right royalist fool by standing up on Manly beach, budgie smugglers and all, and screaming at the top of his voice: ''Stop the boats!'' If there were no boats hitting Christmas Island, how would voters in nearby marginal Queensland seats feel threatened enough to vote for the Liberal National Party?

And of course, this madness is all the result of our obsession with border security. To secure our borders, we go to faraway places and take part in wars against enemies, many of whom have never heard of us. What we don't seem to realise is that when we take part in wars, we have obligations. We have an obligation that is triggered as soon as hostilities cease and our leaders feel triumphant enough to declare ''mission accomplished''. It's an obligation in international law to restore and maintain basic law and order for the lucky citizens not ripped to pieces by our weapons.

Now let's look at the record in Iraq and Afghanistan. Basically it can be summarised like this: we came, we saw, we conquered, we unconquered and we lost control. Any MP or pundit who thinks Iraq and Afghanistan are bastions of stability should spend Christmas with their family in a "holiday house" in Kandahar or Basra.

Many Iraqis don't celebrate Christmas. One of the most important religious festivals in Iraq is Ashura. It isn't easy celebrating when suicide bombers are out to blow themselves, you and your family to pieces on a holy day.

And if you do happen to celebrate Christmas, things aren't much better. A siege of the Our Lady of Deliverance church on October 31 left 52 worshippers dead. In such an environment, is it any wonder so many Iraqis and Afghans are fleeing?

But Andrew Bolt and other allegedly conservative bloggers keep reminding us of the existence of an orderly queue. Everyone should just take a ticket and patiently stand in the queue and wait for their number to be called.

So where does the queue start for Iraqis? We know that many fled to neighbouring Syria, where living conditions were described in a UNHCR survey conducted in July and August at the Waleed border crossing between Syria and Iraq. One extended family of 13 people was living in a one-bedroom unit.

Syria now holds 290,000 Iraqi refugees, more than 70 per cent of whom have lived there for at least four years. And back in May 2007, The New York Times reported that thousands of Iraqi women have been forced to work in prostitution. The report said:

Aid workers say $50 to $70 is considered a good night's wage for an Iraqi prostitute working in Damascus. And some of the Iraqi dancers in the crowded casinos of Damascus suburbs earn much less ... From Damascus it is only about six hours by car, passing through Jordan, to the Saudi border. Syria, where it is relatively easy to buy alcohol and dance with women, is popular as a low-cost weekend destination for groups of Saudi men.

One Iraqi prostitute told the reporter:

The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they'll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available.

This is the orderly queue we hear about. Imagine what evil people would use people smugglers to jump from such a safe and secure environment. Surely the average Aussie, let alone Bolt and Scott Morrison, would happily bring up their families in such circumstances than spend six months in a leaky boat.

If you had to choose between selling one's daughter into prostitution and borrowing thousands to hit the high seas, the choice would be obvious. If Australian voters were more aware of the realities refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran must face, they would punish politicians who used imbecilic terms like "queue-jumper".

If anything good comes out of the Christmas Island tragedy, it will be that Australian politicians will have received a reality check. Demonising the most vulnerable should now become political suicide. Voters don't have the stomach for images of children smashed against rocks and drowning, even if it means a more humane and sensible asylum- seeker policy.

Finally, here's a Christmas gift idea. Australian-Vietnamese entertainer Ahn Do has just published his memoir The Happiest Refugee: The extraordinary true story of a boy's journey from starvation at sea to becoming one of Australia's best loved comedians.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of Once Were Radicals. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Monday 20 December 2010.

UPDATE I: The following letter to the editor was published in the Canberra Times on 22 December 2010:

Rescue from evil

Good on you Irfan Yusuf for reminding our politicians what drives the Iraqis, Afghans and others to turn their back on their own country and seek refuge in a foreign land ("Asylum-seeker shame rises for some political pundits," Dec 20, p9). These people, who had hoped that the West would rescue them from the clutches of their wicked rulers, now realise that their safety and security was hardly the concern of the armies that dropped in to liberate them. The least we can do for these desperate people is to rescue them from the new evil which our poorly planned mission helped create.

Sam Nona
Burradoo, NSW

MEDIA: WikiLeaks hysteria ...

This post will be a running tally of updates on WikiLeaks developments. I can't guarantee it will be updated regularly. If only I had the resources of Fairfax or News Limited!

UPDATE 1: Jeffrey T Kuhner, a writer for the Washington Times, a far-Right newspaper published by a Korean preacher, has called for WikiLeaks dude Julian Assange to be assassinated. He writes:

... we should treat Mr. Assange the same way as other high-value terrorist targets.

Yep, send him off to be tortured at Guantanamo. Clearly he is worse than the worst of the worst.

(Thanks to NB)

UPDATE 2: A bunch of (largely left-of-centre) academics, lawyers, journos and entertainers have signed an open letter to Julia Gillard regarding Julian Assange. Read it here.

UPDATE 3: Here's a discussion on the unusual offence Assange has been charged with under Swedish law. They call it "sex by surprise".

UPDATE 4: Here's another op-ed, this time from a newspaper that at times tries to emulate the other Washington newspaper owned by a Korean preacher I mentioned earlier. The headline reflects just how much George W Bush's imbecilic logic still pervades certain sectors of the American Right. Read this and try not to laugh:

Assange has threatened America with the cyber equivalent of thermonuclear war.

UPDATE 5: I am accustomed to hacking into Alexander Downer's record as foreign minister. Hence I always imagined he would be more stupidly pro-American than the ALP when it came to China. But The Age reports that Downer and Howard showed far more good sense on this issue.

... 2004 remarks by the then Howard government foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer, that a conflict between America and China over Taiwan would not necessarily trigger Australia's obligations under the ANZUS treaty with the US. The ANZUS treaty, which came into force in 1952, commits Australia and the US to respond if the armed forces of the other party in the Pacific come under attack.

Mr Downer's comments - which he insisted were taken out of context - caused concern in Washington and prompted the then US ambassador Tom Schieffer to declare that America expected Australia's support in the event of conflict over Taiwan.

The then prime minister John Howard refused to comment publicly on what Australia would do if hostility broke out between the US and China, saying it was a hypothetical situation.

But what of Kim Beazley?

AUSTRALIA'S ambassador to the US and former opposition leader, Kim Beazley, assured American officials that Australia would always side with the US in the event of a war with China, a confidential diplomatic cable reveals.

Mr Beazley's remarks, made in a 2006 meeting with the then US ambassador Robert McCallum just months before Kevin Rudd replaced him as Labor leader, are significant because no Australian federal political leader has publicly disclosed what position they believe the nation should take if the US and China came to blows over Taiwan - an event that would present Australia's greatest foreign policy dilemma.

The cable, classified as confidential and not to be disclosed outside the US government, gave the following summary of Mr Beazley's comments: "In the event of a war between the United States and China, Australia would have absolutely no alternative but to line up militarily beside the US. Otherwise the alliance would be effectively dead and buried, something that Australia could never afford to see happen."

If the contents of this cable are correct, they show a troubling degree of political and foreign policy naivety. It also shows that our political establishment places the interests of a foreign power above those of our own nation.

UPDATE 6: While millions in his country were suffering after a massive cyclone and storm surge, the head of Burma's military junta wanted to spend $1 billion buying English football team Manchester United. We know about this because of WikiLeaks.

UPDATE 7: A report from AlJazeera English on WikiLeaks on Latin American leaders.



UPDATE 8: Julian Assange cites Rupert Murdoch in Rupert's own Australian flagship newspaper.

UPDATE 9: A Labor Right powerbroker revealed as one of numerous US Embassy contacts within the Labor Party.

UPDATE 10: Hopefully my credit card won't be affected by this revenge hacking.

UPDATE 11: Hilarious video.



Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

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COMMENT: Tim Soutphommasane on multiculturalism in Australia

Tim Soutphommasane is one of the few regular opinion writers for The Australian who is not certifiably mad. He has penned an interesting comparison between Australian and German multiculturalism in response (it seems) to angela Merkel's statement at one of her Party's gatherings that multiculturalism has "utterly failed".

(From my limited knowledge of German history, the last time multiculturalism failed there was when Germany's political leadership decided that people from certain undesirable backgrounds should be rounded up and shot or gassed or have nasty medical experiments performed upon them. Yep, nothing like a good dose of Western European Enlightenment philosophy.)

Merkel's conclusions about German multiculturalism are ... well ... perhaps a little premature. There's no point saying your failed at something before you've even tried it.

... in the German case, pronouncing any death of multiculturalism is somewhat misleading. If Merkel had meant multiculturalism in policy terms - public recognition of cultural differences in settlement and citizenship policies - it made little sense to say that it failed. Germany hasn't practised an official multiculturalism.

Indeed, much of the German difficulty in integrating its Turkish Muslim population can be explained by its lingering ethno-cultural, blood-and-soil (blut und boden) view of national identity.

When West Germany took in Turkish nationals beginning in the 1960s to fill labour shortages, it treated them as guest workers who were to go home once their work was done. The Turks weren't regarded as immigrants who would become future citizens.

It wasn't until 2000, for example, that German nationality law adopted the principle of jus soli, allowing those born in the country to parents without native ancestry to claim citizenship.

What makes all this even more interesting is that a few million Turks and Kurds are described collectively as "Muslims". I mean, what the ...? Has Germany suddenly discovered it is officially Christian? Is German and/or European identity defined by religious affiliation? Does Europe need a few more non-Christian migrants to shake it out of its pre-Enlightenment intellectual stupor and into the 21st century?

And the Australian branch of the Tea Party shouldn't keep pointing to Europe on these issues.

We shouldn't draw the wrong lessons from Europe. There is multiculturalism and there is multiculturalism.

Then again, perhaps all that is required is a name change.

A cultural diversity in which communities end up living in isolation from one another isn't an ideal that should appeal to anyone. But such failure often comes about because of not enough attention to integration, as in the case of the Germans, or because of rigid attempts to assimilate all difference, as in the case of the French. When it is the fault of official policy, it is because government fails to place diversity within limits.

Yet another multiculturalism in practice is possible. A liberal multiculturalism that aims to ensure a national identity can speak for all citizens regardless of their background - that is still worth defending. We just may have to call it something else now.

COMMENT: On national security, Bolt can't see beyond his own prejudices ...

Three Australian citizens have had their names appeared on forged passports used by Israeli security agents to carry out an assassination of a HAMAS official in Dubai. Some years back, an Israeli diplomat was expelled for trying to secure forged Australian passports. One former Mossad operative claims that Mossad has a veritable factory producing forged Australian travel documents. Who knows how many Australians could be implicated in assassinations and other forms of terrorism?

But Andrew Bolt simply cannot see beyond his own prejudices. And he refuses to say even one nasty thing about Israel, a country he visits so often on all-expenses-paid trips. For Andrew, it is always the dreaded Mozzlems who are the worry.

COMMENT: Keneally on Australia Day and indigenous suffering ...

Prominent historian Thomas Keneally is no longer reluctant to celebrate Australia Day.

On Australia Day, I believe, most reasonable Australians now admit that the descent of European people upon Australia brought bewilderment and pain for the Eora people of the Sydney basin, an overturning of an indigenous cosmos. That bewilderment and pain would spread ultimately throughout the prodigious hinterland and remain there to this day. That is one of the reasons there have always been a number of suggested alternatives to this day, and the idea is put forth that the date is a two-edged sword. I confess I have myself argued so.

Yet maybe because it has come to stand for a duality of experiences, genesis and loss, it has remained the national day.

Indeed. But does that mean that indigenous people in the Northern Territory must remain the only Australians to be subject to a legal regime whose implementation requires suspension of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act?

If I was an indigenous Australian, especially a Territorian, I'd see little reason to celebrate.

COMMENT: Tony Abbott on immigration ...

Apparently Tony Abbott is playing the race card. Or is he?

AN IMMIGRATION speech by the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, has been criticised as divisive, hurtful and deliberately crafted to push buttons and play the race card before Australia Day ...

"I don't think you can run away from problems that some people have with the immigration program," he said. "I was reminding people of the national interest reasons for the immigration program but reminding migrants that their migration has to be in the national interest, too … It has to be possible to have an intelligent discussion about this."

Mr Abbott repeated his claim that some groups of migrants had failed to respect democratic values and cited followers of the former mufti of Australia Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly.

So followers of Sheik Hilaly fail to respect democratic values. Does that mean all followers, past, present and future? And exactly how does one become a follower of Hilaly? Does attendance at the Imam Ali ben Abi Taleb mosque in Lakemba for a Friday prayer service make one a follower? Does recognition of Hilaly's scholarly credentials make one a follower? Does being Arab and/or Muslim make one a follower?

Please explain, Mr Abbott.

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Why question defence force loyalty because of religion?

A spokesman for the Defence forces last Friday reiterated this truism:

Eligible people may join the ADF irrespective of their ethnicity, race or religion.

Alan Howe, executive editor of the Herald & Weekly Times, described this remark almost dismissively as

... the strictly politically correct line.

Howe’s column, also published in the Brisbane Courier Mail, began with these words:

There are 2006 Muslims in the Australian Defence Force.

He describes suggestions that none have been investigated after the Fort Hood massacre as

... a bold call.

He claims allied Christian soldiers had no hesitation in killing German (presumably Christian) soldiers and civilians during the Second World War, despite the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers being the battle cry. He ends with this:

If the god in any soldier’s life looms larger than his or her responsibility to Australia, we have a problem.

Meanwhile, one of Howe’s more hysterical colleagues, a certain Andrew Bolt, starts his column by what he sees as the first fact a “real journalist” would tell you to explain why the Fort Hood killer did what he did:

The Fort Hood killer, army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, was a Muslim. He shouted ‘God is great’ in Arabic as he opened fire.

So why question the loyalties of Australian servicemen and women who happen to tick a particular box for religion on their census forms? Is Howe trying to do a Nile?

Perhaps the answer to my question can be found in a fatwa issued by Sheik Rupert bin Murdoch in 2006:

You have to be careful about Muslims, who have a very strong, in many ways a fine, but very strong, religion, which supersedes any sense of nationalism wherever they go.

But how will we tell exactly who is a Muslim? By the colour of their skin? Will a white Bosnian with a Muslim mum and Orthodox dad count as Muslims? Or a white man married to a Muslim woman? Will we know Muslims by what language they speak at home? Most Arabic speakers in Australia are Christian. Again, a fatwa from Ayatollah Murdoch provides guidance: Muslims are the ones with genetic defects from marrying their cousins.

And the best refutation for this bigotry and stupidity comes from Feroze Khan, the father of fallen US soldier Kareem R Khan, who told a journalist:

My son’s Muslim faith did not make him not want to go. It never stopped him … He
looked at it that he’s American and he has a job to do.

Our troops have a job to do. We should allow them to do it and not waste their or our own time with moronic speculations based on isolated incidents.

First published in Crikey on 12 November 2009.



Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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MEDIA: Congrats to Toni ...

It's great to learn that Australian actor Toni Collette has won an Emmy Award for Best Actress for her brilliant portrayal of a woman suffering from a debilitating mental illness in United States of Tara.



Collette plays all four personalities of her character Tara with such ease. This show is at times hilarious and at times tragic when one considers the enormous impact Tara's antics must have on her family let alone herself.

And it's wonderful to see Toni hasn't changed her accent.



Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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OPINION: Mad monk no more: Abbott's battle cry for Liberal supremacy

It's amazing how much spare time federal Opposition MPs have.

In Tony Abbott's case, the time was put to good use by his penning a sort-of-memoir and sort-of-manifesto entitled Battlelines. In it, Abbott sets out his vision for conservative politics which is at times useful in its coherence and at other times sycophantic to the point of nostalgia in its blanket praise of John Howard and his government.

Abbott's book starts with a useful reminder of why all wasn't lost for conservatives when John Howard lost his seat to Maxine McKew.

On election night 2007, few could have predicted the imminent fall of the WA Labor government or the electoral problems now besetting other state and territory governments. The Liberal Party is far from unelectable.

Indeed dysfunctional Labor governments in NSW and the Northern Territory could become a huge electoral burden for Kevin Rudd and lose federal Labor key seats in the next federal election.

Abbott writes in his introduction:

It won't be easy, but the Liberal Party can certainly win the next federal election. What's necessary is confidence that the federal Liberal Party has learned from recent mistakes and missed opportunities.

During a speech to the National Press Club on July 30, Abbott remarked:

I hope that Battlelines will turn out to be a significant contribution to the Liberal Party's policy development and political success. It won't be uncontentious even within the party. There's a difference, though, between fostering debate and rocking the boat.

But what if the boat is already sailing through choppy waters? Surely any contentious movement will make other passengers feel the boat is rocking unnecessarily.

And regardless of how much he denies it, one has to wonder how much Abbott's book is about making a tilt at the leadership. As conservative columnist Miranda Devine noted in the Sydney Morning Herald on July 30, the Sydney launch of Abbott's book was significant as it

... came on the very day that Malcolm Turnbull recorded his worst Newspoll rating as preferred prime minister 16 per cent to Kevin Rudd's 66 per cent.

Devine, frequently the recipient- of-choice for some of the choicest factional leaks from the conservative wing of the NSW Liberal Party, perhaps reflected the wishes of her informants when she described the book as

... Abbott's first crack at remaking himself as a real contender for the Liberal leadership. Abbott has never shown any sign of disliking the inference.

Some will wonder whether the Australian electorate would be ready for "Captain Catholic" to rule over a country where Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are the fastest growing faiths. Then again, many wondered during the mid-1990s whether John Howard, the man who suggested that Asian migrants may not make a neat cultural fit, could one day become Prime Minister of a country located closer to Kuala Lumpur than London.

Abbott is certainly conscious of this, and devotes some time in his book to explaining his interest in the priesthood and what Catholicism means to him. Abbott's clear preference seems to be enjoying the company of men of faith whilst not being as faithful as he would like. Hence he gave up on the priesthood and realised that the "living Jesus" was "only a second-hand presence" in his life.

There was a time when Abbott's alleged Catholic fundamentalism led to the accusation of his wishing to impose his rosaries on the ovaries of Australian women. Yet in Battlelines, Abbott takes a decidedly unorthodox view on the subject, placing himself in the same category as former US President Bill Clinton who declared that abortion should be safe, legal but rare.

Abbott's views on marriage are hardly a reflection of Canon Law:

It's not realistic to expect most young adults in this hyper-sexualised age to live chastely for many years outside marriage. People have not so much abandoned traditional mores as found that the old standards don't so readily fit the circumstances of their lives.

Abbott's book isn't just about de-frocking his "mad monk" image. He shows useful leadership in key policy areas and often in a manner that could put him at odds with key Liberal stakeholders. Abbott supports paid maternity leave and believes that employers (including small business) should carry the burden. Abbott acknowledges that this isn't a traditional conservative position.

Conservatives have been ambivalent towards maternity-leave schemes lest they encourage women to forsake their traditional roles.

Yet again, Abbott shows his conservatism to be "a pragmatic, eclectic creed", and his views on the issue were changed after discussions with former colleague Jackie Kelly and other female MP's

... who often felt torn between the demands of parliamentary life and the duties of motherhood.

Seriously lacking from Battlelines is a refusal to acknowledge serious policy (as opposed to mere strategic) mistakes of the previous government. This is especially the case in key areas of foreign policy such as the disastrous Iraq war. Abbott reminds us that during his first trip to the United States as an MP, he was described as

... a 'strong Liberal' and 'very anti-republican'. Most of my hosts thought I was a virtual communist!

Yet the manner in which Abbott defends the Iraq war would make any American host regard him as naive, if not imbecilic.

Tellingly, Abbott doesn't mention words like "torture" and "water boarding" in his discussion on foreign policy and the war against terrorism, despite his repeated references to conservative values such as support for the Rule of Law. Which I guess means that, should Abbott ever become Prime Minister, our nation's foreign policy battlelines will continue to be drawn by Washington.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and former federal Liberal Party parliamentary candidate. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Tuesday 8 September 2009.

UPDATE I: For more stuff on Abbott's terrific book, you can read my review in New Matilda here.

UPDATE II: My goodness! even Bob Ellis has nice things to say about Abbott's book.