File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-10-18.130, message 79


Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 15:36:53 +1000 (EST)
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: I finally got here & Australia once more..


1. Greetings

Hello to everyone.  This is my first post to the new list, and I hope to be
able to play something of a role -time and personal restraints aside.

2. On Oz

I am not sure if anything has been posted on Oz yet but it was good to see a
reference to Aborigines in the details about this list.  I am reading a book
by a  local Aborigine poet and will post on it soon.

Politically things in Oz have gone back to marking time.  the racism issue
has been very prominent.  The independent member of Parliament Pauline
Hanson has been making the news visiting Aboriginal settlements.

The Aborigines as is their wont have been very polite to her.  Much too polite.

However it does look as if she went too far with her attacks on Asians.  She
announced  for instance that Australia was being "swamped with Asians".
They amount to around 2-4% of the population.  Some swamping.

The anti-Asian rhetoric hurts business -tourism and other links with Asia
and so both the Labor Party and the Conservatives have got together to
attack her.  It was sickening to see the Labor Party's silence on this issue. 

They had research which showed that working class people believed that there
were too many migrants from Asia and so they were terrified of alienating
their base.  Terrified that is until word came from the captains of industry
that racism would hurt Australia.  the race debate has been covered
extensively in Asian papers and so something had to be said.

The Aborigines though are another issue.  They are a mere 1-2% of the
population and do not make a big impact in terms of business.  So the
racists are given a free hand here.

What is interesting is  to speculate what impact the New Zealand situation
has had on the race debate within Australia.  The New Zealand First Party
has a racist program aimed specifically against Asian migrants.  But again
this is racism from below and will not be tolerated by the powerful if it
looks like effecting their businesses.

In terms of parliamentary politics there has been a fair bit of criticism
coming from the capitalists of the current conservative govt in Canberra.
the gist of the criticism is that the Prime Minister has been wasting time
and has not got down to the serious business of smashing the unions.  These
attacks will probable take place in the new year.  Could get very hot.

regards

Gary



   

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