Is Australian multiculturalism failing?

The events described below are real but isolated. They do not well reflect everyday life in Australia. Let me tell another story: Most days I have my breakfast in a local suburban cafe that has a very good menu. And it is very popular and busy.

But as I sit there day after day I observe a minor miracle. There are usually only one or two other people with my Celtic coloring (freckles!) but everybody behaves in a manner that I see as proper. There are always some Chinese, some Indians and probably some people from Europe. The cafe was formerly run by an Italian and is now run by a Vietnaese. Both were superb managers

And there are no raised voices and no aggression of any sort. Everybody there remains polite at all times. I have not once seen an exception to that. There are even some apparent Middle-Easterners of probably Muslim persuasion who make no waves at all. They usually keep in their own groups but no harm comes of that.

So every day I sit in the middle of a very multicultural population and experience nothing that disturbs my Old Australian soul. I have no doubt that in Australia I live in a brilliantly successful multicultural society


In March 2022, Declan Cutler, a working-class 16-year-old, died after being stabbed over 50 times by a ‘gang of teenagers’ in a random attack in North Melbourne.

Hours after the incident, one of the attackers allegedly went home and searched the question, ‘Is hell guaranteed for a Muslim who commits murder?’

Earlier this year, Jason Langhans, 17, was killed when he tried to stop a fight between gatecrashers and partygoers at a get-together in the small coastal town of Tooradin.

The attacker, a 17-year-old Afghan who has not been named, moved to Australia as a refugee, drove a screwdriver 8cm into Jason’s brain. The judge noted that he had a ‘traumatic upbringing’, leaving Afghanistan for Pakistan, Indonesia, and then Australia by boat.

Earlier this month, hundreds of protesters gathered at the Sydney Opera House and called for the death of an entire race of people … the Jewish people.

Minister for Immigration Andrew Giles says that Australia’s multicultural diversity is ‘a source of national strength’.

But these increasingly common events, along with a changing conversation abroad, might give us pause to reflect.

Suella Braverman, Home Secretary for the United Kingdom, recently stood in front of a crowd last month and announced that ‘multiculturalism in Great Britain had failed’.

Her analysis of Britain’s handling of immigration and diversity was scathing, and perfectly reflected the way the debate around multiculturalism is changing.

‘Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.

‘We are living with the consequence of that failure today. You can see it play out on the streets of cities all over Europe. From Malmo, to Paris, Brussels, to Leicester. It is 13 years since Merkel gave her speech, and I’m not sure that very much has changed since.’

Australia’s official policy of ‘Multiculturalism’ is celebrated in ministerial white papers and corporate boardrooms but its real-life consequences are starkly different.

In the streets of Melbourne’s CBD earlier this year, Sikh separatists attacked Hindu protesters with sticks while chanting ‘death to India’.

In Sydney, Hindu protesters were filmed allegedly menacing Muslim-run businesses in Harris Park, an area with a long history of ethnic-religious violence.

In Brisbane, during the Hong Kong independence protests at the University of Queensland, students were physically assaulted by a number of pro-Chinese students.

Fireworks and celebrations erupted in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba following the attack of Israel by Hamas.

The question has to be asked: How is the average Australian benefiting from this? And if we’re not benefiting, what are we doing to stop it?

Because as one British writer put it, the eruption of ethnic tensions in our cities doesn’t just reflect the complete failure of integration, it also reflects a complete repudiation of our systems, laws and way of life.

‘When you watch people have so little respect for British values and British laws they gleefully saunter around Britain’s streets saluting atrocities committed by ISIS-style terrorists then you know multiculturalism is failing.’

This has happened, he says, ‘Because of mass immigration into Britain, because of the total failure of our politicians to integrate old and new immigrants into British society, and because of their determination to continue to import more culturally and religiously distinctive migrants and tribal grievances from abroad.’

It isn’t just Britain changing their tune on multiculturalism.

Last year, the Sweden Prime Minister announced: ‘Integration has been too poor at the same time as we have had a large immigration. Society has been too weak, resources for the police and social services have been too weak.’

More than Sweden, the other paragon of Scandinavian progressive pragmatism, Denmark, instituted an abrupt turnaround on its previously generous immigration program, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen citing a multi-decade failure of its newcomers to integrate.

And just weeks ago, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview that ‘it was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different cultures, religions, and concepts’.

‘It creates a pressure group inside each country.’

Is it now time to admit that Australia also made a ‘grave mistake’? Do we have pressure groups inside our country, and if so, what are we going to do about it?

‘I think we are starting to realise there’s a difference between being an Australian and living in Australia,’ wrote one person in a viral tweet, following the Opera House incident.

Australian politicians like to claim we’re the ‘most successful multicultural nation on Earth’, but how much longer can they ignore the fraying edges that has become increasingly evident this month?

Opposition leader Peter Dutton is talking tough on the issue, saying that anyone on a visa at the protests who was breaking the law ‘should be deported’. But what of the hundreds of thousands of new arrivals coming in next year? What of the gangs roaming our streets, killing unsuspecting teenagers? There is simply no plan to deal with these multicultural clashes – governments are just throwing a Hail Mary and hoping it doesn’t explode on their watch.

With a record 450,000 migrants arriving in Australia this year alone – many of which not only from nations with which we share little culturally, but who are also adversaries to our allies – it can be assumed Labor isn’t heeding Braverman’s warning about ‘uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism’.

Moreover, with Australia’s legitimacy increasingly attacked by the political left, and with the country referred to as a ‘coloniser state’ that disenfranchised indigenous people, it’s hard to see what the large numbers of people coming here will integrate into.

Our country is heading down a strange path. The roots that once held us together are increasingly weakened, while the rapidly rising number of people coming from other countries have no dominant culture or way of life to integrate into.

Until a stronger discussion is had around multiculturalism and immigration, these cultures will inevitably clash again, with increasingly tragic circumstances.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/is-multiculturalism-failing/

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Crime is the issue that will decide the 2024 Qld election

Politicians trapped inside the George Street bubble often struggle to comprehend the issues facing Queenslanders, but right now there is no doubt.

Integrity, health, housing and financial management have been issues plaguing the Palaszczuk government these past three years.

Yet the single issue cutting through the most and striking fear into Queenslanders – and by default marginal seat Labor MPs – is crime.

It is the issue permeating the community and each person affected is likely to share their harrowing tale with a dozen others.

It leads to, as this poll clearly reveals, people barricading their homes – fuelled by a perception the tools and resources of the honourable Queensland Police Service are not enough to keep them safe.

It is a nightmare for the government.

Grainy CCTV images of knife-wielding intruders are striking fear into residents and building an entrenched perception Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has no answers on the ‘crime crises’.

In Townsville – a crime hotbed – three Labor MPs are at risk of being booted out.

Ms Palaszczuk will visit the regional city on Sunday when, despite hand-picking people to meet with – the community could show up unannounced to offer a piece of their collective mind.

That would be the first real indication of whether the LNP is on track to win the three seats, a must if it is to form government in 2024.

While the opposition has successfully prosecuted problems in the health system, not all Queenslanders will visit a hospital in the next 12 months – and those who do are likely to have an overwhelmingly positive experience thanks to the people that work in them.

Not all Queenslanders will be affected by crime either, but it’s likely they’ll know someone who has.

Politics is perception and the perception is the government has lost control.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/analysis-crime-is-the-issue-that-will-decide-the-2024-qld-election/news-story/d1ee520a94c49140968e0ee402d1a4e5 ?

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We need an audit of Aboriginal spending

Australians are being ripped off, and they know it. The stench of bureaucratic waste has been seeping out of Canberra like the acrid smoke from the Sistine Chapel upon the failed election of a pope. Fitting, because Canberra is a leaderless quagmire of squabbling factions seething against each other, mesmerised by the shine of public money.

While we may not clad our political palaces in gold, as the Saudis do, the obscenity of waste is such that we may as well. At least it would make the halls of power nicer to look at instead of the prison-esque corridors of Parliament House.

Senator Jacinta Price, the leader of the conservative movement in spirit if not name, was right to call for an audit of the Indigenous activist industry that somehow manages to vanish $40 billion a year in state and federal funding.

Her request was particularly dangerous. Price struck at the heart of the powerful Indigenous land councils who have been using race to acquire public land for personal profit. What they do with the rest is anyone’s guess. The Senator wanted to assess their ‘effectiveness, efficiency, and credibility’, which sounds pedestrian but the sacred ground upon which she walks is well-defended.

Anthony Albanese’s indulgent referendum was based upon a valid point, albeit not the one he intended. Government and its bureaucratic arms have failed to ‘close the gap’ in remote communities. If anything, the gap has widened to a chasm under their watch. The public are cross about the Prime Minister’s wasted $400 million on the referendum, but what they really want to know is where those tens of billions go each year.

It’s a financial crisis. Working-class and middle-class families are suffering. Why should they continue handing over nearly half their salary into the black hole of Canberra? No one is getting roads, or dams, or cheap energy… Every year Australia gets poorer while politicians fudge the numbers on Budget sheets by importing 500,000 mouths to feed against the wishes of citizens. Australians are being squished into a collapsing nation and bled-out by greedy politicians.

To call Price’s interest in an audit a political stunt and ‘personal vendetta’ against land councils is, at best, unreasonable. Labor Federal Member Lingiari Marion Scrymgour said that Price has a ‘responsibility as the Shadow Spokesperson for Indigenous Australians to talk to everyone’ and to ‘try and look at a pathway forward’ rather than a ‘political stunt that she’s done three times into the Senate to get a review into land councils’.

Since when was transparency and accountability considered a ‘political stunt’?

Labor, by the actions of their Prime Minister, has admitted that the existing structure has failed Indigenous people. It certainly hasn’t come up short because of lacklustre funding. As Price replied, ‘What do they [the land councils] have to hide?’

One might guess a few billion dollars, perhaps?

The squirrelling that has gone on since Price’s call resembles a leech recoiling from a light dusting of salt.

How much does it cost to look after a handful of remote communities that require basic services, none of which are particularly expensive to create? Surely the 2022-23 budget of $4.5 billion to the National Indigenous Australians Agency should have gone a long way to achieving this task? A hundred years ago, church groups and private charities did a better job with blackboards and bits of scrap metal.

You could build entire towns from scratch with the billions on offer – if you spent it wisely.

‘We’re going to do what we haven’t done yet. We’re going to find out where the billions of dollars are being spent. We are going to say, “Right, who else is accountable for this?” We know that governments have, you know, made mistakes in the past, absolutely. On both sides… We’ve got to do things better,’ said Price.

She is going to have a fight on her hands. The bureaucracy might seem sluggish in its mission to ‘close the gap’, but it will be nimble and ruthless in its efforts to protect the public money tree that feeds its idle hands.

Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine saved Australia from the Voice to Parliament – but they are going to need the full attention of the Coalition, federal and state, to unpick the waste from the activist community. No more, what did former Prime Minister John Howard call it? Pussy-footing around…

This is an election-winning cause. The numbers don’t lie.

Nothing irritates voters more than activists dripping in diamonds crying poor with their begging bowls out. It was sickening to watch the ‘Yes’ campaign haul Indigenous children in front of the camera and pretend they didn’t ‘have a future’ unless a new bureaucracy was installed. The shame belongs to the activist class and their decades of failure, self-interest, and waste – not to the hardworking citizens minding their own business and paying their taxes without complaint.

Jacinta Price as Minister for Indigenous Affairs would scare the hell out of land councils, but as Prime Minister she would gut the Labor Party from the inner-city seats to the Outback electorates. A voice with a unifying message rather than a carefully curated package of superficial identities.

She is not alone in her demands for transparency. As this publication’s Editor-in-Chief Rowan Dean said on his Sunday show, Outsiders, ‘Where has the money gone that has funded billions and billions of dollars in Indigenous welfare…? Where has the money gone? We need a full audit – down to every cent into every pocket. They are now saying that ‘the ‘No’ vote didn’t mean people had said no to treaties etc’… Sorry. The ‘No’ vote meant exactly that. It meant no to treaties. It meant no to welcome to country. It meant no to acknowledgements. It meant no to bits of burning bark around football stadiums. It was a ‘No’. A comprehensive, one-word ‘No’. And anyone who kids themselves into thinking that Australians ‘still want the treaty – they just didn’t want the Voice’ – rack off!’

The are thousands of examples of bureaucratic waste and failure, but last week the Albanese government – the government that is apparently prepared to offer up a blank cheque to the Voice – killed off plans to build two boarding schools in remote areas. They were intended to give Indigenous children a chance to live safely while receiving an education. It’s the kind of investment that makes a tangible difference to the lives of kids and the success of the next generation.

These boarding houses were a $74.9 million project fully-costed by the Coalition – already a generous and extraordinary amount of money for three boarding houses and an upgrade to a fourth. Labor has decided that two of these are not worth building. One, ironically, was situated near Albanese’s highly-publicised attendance at the Garma festival.

Apparently, Albanese had $400 million to burn on a referendum, but is now unable to justify the loose change needed to build a couple of schools for Indigenous kids.

And Labor wonders why Jacinta Price is calling for an audit.

The Labor government and its activist class are hypocrites, prepared to spend anything to enshrine power for themselves while refusing to tighten their belts for the kids. Disadvantaged Indigenous children have lost their value for Labor. They don’t need their pleading eyes for campaign posters or sadistic ad campaigns.

Giving kids the opportunity to go to school means closing the gap. When the gap is closed, we won’t need to spend $40 billion a year. The activist bureaucracy is hardly going to put itself out of business for the sake of Australia’s children and they certainly aren’t going to allow the taxpayer a peek at the books.

And hey, if Albo really is strapped for cash, maybe he can raid the $25 billion set aside for ‘green energy’?

It’s not like we’re gold-plating the pockets of foreign, multi-billion-dollar companies instead of building schools in the Outback.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/the-age-of-audits

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Farmers' president fires parting shot at Labor policies

The outgoing president of the National Farmers' Federation has taken a swipe at key federal government policies impacting agriculture during her final week in the job.

"History will not judge this government kindly if it continues to prosecute an agenda focused more on satisfying factions than facts," Fiona Simson told the National Press Club in Canberra.

While Ms Simson focused largely on the achievements of the federation during her seven-year tenure, she also highlighted the government's proposed ban on live sheep exports and the Murray Darling water buybacks as two key problem policies for farmers.

She said the proposed ban would be "a disaster for animal welfare, our ties in the Middle East and farmers across Australia".

Ms Simson, the first woman to lead the federation, said there were a wide range of policies across multiple portfolios that had the potential to impact agriculture.

"There are decisions being made on issues and on policies that could change the face of farming as we know it."

Areas where the government was failing farmers in Australia seemed to be part of "a broader epidemic that is raging worldwide".

She said policies such as restrictions on fertiliser use in the Netherlands, Sweden and Canada, and methane taxes in New Zealand, would push costs higher for consumers.

Ms Simson used her address to highlight agriculture's contribution to sustainability, including the sector's ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"We're entering the climate transition with our eyes wide open," she said.

"We're alive to the threats such as the impact of a changing climate, or poor planning of renewables, transmission infrastructure and carbon offsets on agricultural land."

Ms Simson said while producers were in favour of renewable energy it shouldn't be at the expense of farmers' rights.

The outgoing president said communities must be more involved in the early stages of planning for renewable projects.

"We must have respect for land holders, we need to have respect for the people who manage those lands," she said.

"The community is asking for better, the community wants more."

Ms Simson said one of the great disappointments of her tenure had been the Albanese government abandoning an agriculture visa, saying the sector was still struggling to attract workers.

She used the speech to reiterate the federation's position on the free trade agreement being negotiated with the European Union, which it has described as a "dud deal".

Ms Simson, who will hand over the reins on Wednesday, urged the government to keep negotiating.

"Make sure that we can get a better outcome for agriculture and a better outcome for both the EU customers and the Australian producers," she said.

"There is no sector in agriculture that is really getting any sort of a good deal in terms of the EU trade deal."

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/farmers-president-fires-parting-shot-at-labor-policies/ar-AA1iJApT?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=dabfaaf1f6e44f2db5fff5c4a0e155b3&ei=31

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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