Grendel wrote on Nov 14th, 2013 at 6:03pm:Multiculturalism found it's way here from Canada via Al Grassby, Karnal... it is a settlement policy, it replaced Integration...
it should be abandoned as a flawed social policy and an expensive financial burden. |
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Grasby overturned the White Australia policy, BR. Multiculturalism was implemented by Fraser.
The Labor Party sat on their hands with immigration policy. They did this for two reasons:
1. The unions had been against "coloured" immigration since the first debated Act in the Australian Parliament in 1901: The White Australia policy.
2. Whitlam believed refugees - particularly those from communist countries in Eastern Europe and warring Vietnam - would vote Liberal.
Malcolm Fraser was a
liberal Liberal, but his policy of multiculturalism was an economic policy. When Fraser came to government, Australia was in the midst of the first global oil recession. Multiculturalism served two interests: it was a policy response to the abandonment of the White Australia Policy, but it was popular within Liberal business circles as a way to revitalize the manufacturing sector through the migration of cheap, imported labour.
And this was the reason many in the ALP had been against it all along.
Fraser's time was interesting. Many Libs wanted economic reforms across the board, but Fraser (in Howard's words) was an old farmer, a member of the landed gentry. During Fraser's time, Milton Friedman and others were experimenting with neo-liberal economic policies in Chile, a country the US funded to oust the socialist Allende government. Out of this experiment, the Reagan/Thatcher revolution was born.
In Australia, with Fraser stuck with a recalcitrant party (and an uneasy alliance with the protectionist Nationals), this economic revolution was left to Hawke/Keating.
It's a strange quirk of history that the Libs implemented the "soft" social-economic policy of multiculturalism - the liberalization of migrant labour - and Labor implemented the macro and micro economic reforms: floating the dollar, privatization, the removal of tariffs, competition policy.
But make no mistake, multiculturalism was not a softcock leftard fantasy, it was a hard, business-driven policy implemented in hard economic times - times of huge social, economic and technological change.
Fast forward to today, where a similar rupture has occurred between the newly protectionist immigration stance of the Liberal Party - a stance they stumbled upon during Howard's Tampa crisis - and the more libertarian policies of a new player: Clive Palmer.
Palmer wants onshore processing and more refugees. He also wants less taxes and a pro-business agenda. Clive Palmer could be described as an economic dry and a social wet, but the tables have turned somewhat in conservative circles since the 1970s/80s.
This is due to Howard, an economic dry but a social conservative. Howard loosened his economic stance to capture aspirational former Labor voters, the "Howard battlers". His social conservative line on immigration also appealed to an electorate reeling from the effects of the Hawke/Keating economic reforms. Howard was a high taxing, big spending conservative, in contrast to his economic dry/socially progressive treasurer, Peter Costello.
Today, Abbott has taken Howard one step further. His aim is to outspend Labor and expand Howard's socially conservative "Culture Wars". The Liberal Party is now truly a Conservative party, with few residues of its former liberalism left. This is largely because the program of economic liberalism was largely achieved by Hawke/Keating.
Palmer's stance is interesting because he brings liberalism back into federal politics, but we still have no idea where he's going to take it, and where his true allegiances lie.
Abbott is interesting too, because we have no idea where his big-spending instincts will take his party. Nor do we know how far he'll take his social conservatism, which, I think, is the electorate's real fear about Abbott.
Influential conservatives like Rupert Murdoch are already muscling in, championing "big Australia" policies and far more Asian immigration and integration into Asia. In business circles, an
expansion of multiculturalism is being advocated, but as we can see, this is the way it's always been.
Just as for Menzies, immigration had to happen on the sly to get past the electorate, Abbott will need to find new ways to raise immigration (and the Australian relationship with Asia) while pretending not to.
The boats issue fits this perfectly. For some reason, Australians worry endlessly about the few thousand refugees who come by boat each and every year, but ignore the ones who come by plane. For some reason, skilled migration and family reunion is completely ignored at the expense of the two to seven thousand boat people who come each year, who are charged with everything from increasing hospital waiting times to filling up the traffic to using up services for homeless people.
It's a completely surreal stance, but it's the way things are done. Go quiet on the truth and let the airwaves chirp away. Agree with the knuckleheads and throw them a few bones.
Rudd tried to reverse this, but failed spectacularly - until he finally turned around and implemented the PNG solution.
Abbott's sitting pretty.
Labor, Liberal, or whoever is in power: very little has changed since 1901.
