Looks like I'm right re Putnam, these days he's hunkering down with Jeb Bush who is prisoner to the "Spanish" community, pretty soon the US will have states where the native language is Spanish.

Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study how diversity affects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions," writes Putnam. In the presence of such ethnic diversity, Putnam maintains that we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.

Quote:

Grendel wrote on Nov 14^th, 2013 at 6:03pm:


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.

Karnal wrote on Nov 15^th, 2013 at 9:26am:

Oh and in case you are too lazy...

Popular Support Not Required
Michael Warby
Adelaide Review
Friday, December 01, 2000


Some questions to test your understanding of recent Australian history: which was the first major Australian political party to adopt multiculturalism as official policy? Who was the first Federal politician to refer to multiculturalism in Parliament? Who was the second? Which Federal Government was the first to make multiculturalism public policy? When did multiculturalism achieve the support of a majority of Australians?

The answers are the Liberal Party, Malcom Fraser when Liberal Immigration spokesman, Michael Mackellar his successor as Liberal Immigration spokesman, the Fraser Government and not before the mid 1990s.

These are some of the fascinating facts in Mark Lopez's masterful study of how multiculturalism came to be adopted as a basic principle of public policy in Australia. The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945-1975 (Melbourne University Press) is a wonderful case study of the public policy process in Australia---the real one, not the banally formal or the stupidly conspiratorial versions sometimes presented. To me, as an ex-public servant, former political activist and someone involved in advocacy work, Mark Lopez's presentation of the ins and outs of the process of the rise of multiculturalism all ring true.

Apart from careful diligence in the use of evidence, the prime source of Mark Lopez's achievement seems to be his use of interviews with all the key participants supported by careful examination of the documentary evidence. While Lopez never actually suggests anything of the sort, one does get the sense that many of the key participants were only too willing to talk about how clever they were.

What Lopez tells is a fascinating story, the story of how a small number of activists---of a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including Anglo-Celtic---sought to change public policy. They did so not by convincing the general public and using the pressures of mass electoral politics---as late as 1994, an opinion poll recorded 61% disapproval for multicultural ideas (what one wit has called the demand that residents adapt to newcomers). What the activists did instead is follow classic techniques of elite and pressure-point politics. They wrote papers (many were academics), they formed committees and organisations, they got into advisory structures, they tried to determine the wording of official reports and speeches, they lobbied key politicians.

Ironically, much of this activity, particularly after the election of the Whitlam Government in December 1972, was directed towards the ALP. Most of the multiculturalists came from New Left or other progressivist backgrounds and were much more comfortable with the ALP as the vehicle of political change than the Liberal Party---many were ALP members. They were so focussed on the ALP---with some exceptions such as Professor Jerry Zubrzycki---that they (and the media) completely missed the significance of Fraser's acceptance of multiculturalism when Liberal Immigration spokesman and incorporation of it into Liberal policy.

Conversely, multiculturalism was never the official policy of the Whitlam Government. It had begun to seep into government documents and reports, and Al Grassby did give a speech entitled A Multi-Cultural Society for the Future in August 1973, but Grassby himself did not become a multiculturalist until after he ceased to be Immigration Minister. Nor did the Whitlam Government take the final step and adopt multiculturalism as policy, though events were moving in that direction.

Even though the final adoption of multiculturalism as official policy by the Fraser Government was in some ways serendipity for the multiculturalists, their efforts in creating a pervasive multiculturalist presence in advisory and advocacy structures, and in developing the ideas of multiculturalism, meant that there was an entire structure of ideas and personnel able to support and extend the policy direction of the Fraser Government once it had adopted multiculturalism as policy.

There are a range of lessons from this wonderful case study. One is how narrowly based bipartisanship can be. Bipartisanship does not require that a majority in the ALP and Coalition support a policy direction: all it requires is that both spokespersons do and that they have at least the passive support of their party leadership. It is almost certain that multiculturalism would not have survived a serious debate in either the Labor Caucus or the Coalition Party room. That Fraser (and then Mackellar) were explicitly in favour, and Grassby and other Whitlam Ministers implicitly so, was enough to stop it being destroyed by political controversy. In that sense, Australian public policy processes can be much more closed than, for example, American ones where primary elections and the looseness of party affiliation provides for a much more disparate---and disputed---public policy market which forces politicians to play much closer heed to public opinion and makes politics much more a process of continual public persuasion.

PT1

Karnal wrote on Nov 15^th, 2013 at 9:26am:


Correct ... and was introduced without a referendum to allow the people to decide.

After his retirement Fraser admitted he knew that if it had been put to a referendum it would have been soundly defeated ~ and so he imperiously forced it upon an unwilling public.

But the original, behind-the-scenes Godfather of 'The Multicultural Experiment' with its immigration of Muslims and others who were totally alien to the Australian mainstream race and culture was none other than Professor Donald Horne of 'The Lucky Country' fame.

He was the weasel and the snake-in-the-grass who wrote the script.

Quote:


He was an Anglophobic hater of white, Christian, British-derived Australia to a degree that in historic times he would have been shot as a 5th columnist traitor.

He was a very disturbed individual who spent a great deal of his professional life arguing for the destruction of the homeland that Australian soldiers had fought and died for in two world wars.

Karnal wrote on Nov 15^th, 2013 at 9:26am:


" ...  migration of cheap, imported labour ... "

Are you talking about the Kanaks in the Q'ld cane-fields? The blackbirding? Or backpackers doing some fruit-picking?

Where were these immigrant 'cheap labour' employed? In 1962 the immigrants all around me had their wages secured by agreement with the unions. I never saw 'cheap labour' anywhere.

Karnal wrote on Nov 15^th, 2013 at 9:26am:


Bizarre nonsense.

Wherever they were working the immigrants were getting the same pay as the generational Australians.

And Fraser was as far Left as anyone can go, but his Landed Gentry credentials had him signed up with the Libs for appearances sake.

He's famous as the PM who did almost nothing during his term in office, and ever since he left, he's been the Pin-Up boy for every Left Wing cause that comes along.

And then famously, this tragic Leftwing clown allowed the Lebanese Muslims in Lebanon to act as Migration Agents for Australia ~ with the consequence that they channeled their own lot here while barring the Christian Lebanese.

The quality of prime ministers in both the UK and here has been appallingly low grade. It's an embarrassment that future historians will wonder at.

***

I sure hope you're not in any teaching position, Mr K. I would hate to think you have the attention of naive-and-ignorant young ingenues sitting wide-eyed as they uncritically soak up your inventive version of history.

Grendel wrote on Nov 15^th, 2013 at 10:19am:


Whitlam and Grassby made a couple of stirring speeches that superficially ushered in the new era of multiculti, but karnal is right - the actual policy - an economic policy of substance was introduced by Fraser.

Karnal wrote on Nov 15^th, 2013 at 9:26am:


I think thats a little simplistic. Whitlam was a genuine labor man whose ideology was very much rooted in the politics of structural socio-economic reform. He rightly saw the politics of multiculturalism a distraction to the very real plight of the working class, and the reforms needed to address that. Whitlam's immigration policy was merely a component of an ambitious welfare program: migrants were provided with assistance packages and welfare only in so far as they were part of the downtrodden lower labour classes. Thus Whitlam promoted an immigration and multicultural policy that was in line with his wider class-equality program. And it is vastly different to today's multiculturalist policies.

Karnal wrote on Nov 15^th, 2013 at 9:26am:


I would disagree somewhat. Fraser was clearly a promoter of the Reagan/Thatcher economic reforms - not least of all in his multiculturalist policies. While Whitlam's multiculturalist policies were contained within a wide program of welfare and class-equality, Fraser's multiculturalist policies were contained within a program of completely dismantling this program. From Fraser we got a new socio-economic buzzword - "self help". Virtually all of Whitlam's welfare and assistance packages set up for migrants were systematically dismantled, and made out to be a great positive in the name of "diversity" and "self help". It was a good thing that government's are no longer dictating how migrants are supported - instead it was now up to migrant communities to manage their own welfare and employment. This was the way savage cuts to migrant assistance packages were positively spun by the libs. The result of course was complete disaster - especially for the quasi-refugee immigrants from Lebanon, who landed here from a warzone with literally nothing, and were expected to completely fend for themselves. The results of this we are still seeing today with the chronically high unemployment and crime rates in that community.

Karnal wrote on Nov 15^th, 2013 at 11:36am:


Sorry, but this is again a figment of your imagination.

Both the Liberals and the Labor Party are signatories to agreements with the UN.

It has nothing to do with either of them making independent choices about the matter.