mozzaok
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OzPolitic
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Melbourne
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I know ye jest, but you strike upon a root cause of ill will towards migrants, and that is that they bring standards of living with them that we dislike. I was renovating a single fronted terrace house in richmond, back in the early eighties, and vietnamese moved in next door, so I got to observe their living habits over the next couple of months.
They had sixteen adult people living in the one tiny house, they had four people sleeping in two, side by side, lean to structures just 4 feet wide, by 8 foot long, built against the rear fence.
I saw different people leaving these lean to's in the morning, and others go in who must have worked the night shift, to go to sleep.
The poorestaussies had to compete for the lowest paid jobs, with these people, now they could not get rent for $5, because they did not share beds, or squash inordinate numbers into smal spaces, and so resentment grew between the least successful in our society, and the newcomers, because their standards were lowered because of what the newcomers were prepared to put up with.
Since seeing this, I have always felt that this lowering of standards, and competition for accommodation and work, at the lower end of the social scale has been at the root of racial tensions in this country.
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