Giving multiculturalism a bad name
So, the Gillard Government, starting with the PM herself, is already distancing itself from a taxpayer-funded study which claimed that celebrating the centenary of ANZAC could be divisive. This shows that the Gillard Government is not suicidally stupid.
The game with "multiculturalism" rather too often seems to be to take care of everyone's sensibilities except those of ordinary Anglo-Celtic Australians, who seem to be perennially framed as "the problem people". (As one wit noted, multiculturalism is the process whereby the residents are required to adapt to the newcomers.) Much of the difficulty being that "multiculturalism" is often used as a stick whereby Club Virtue parades its moral superiority over the bogan masses. Migrants get dragged in as moral mascots in what is really an internal Anglo-Celtic fight.
Yes, I get that one of the things which Club Virtue likes to do is sneer at Anzac, it is a way of parading how one is not one of "the vulgar masses". Using multiculturalism to attack Anzac is not, however, a way to "sell" multiculturalism. But I guess that's not the point. After all, if the bogan masses start agreeing, Club Virtue has to find a new banner to parade its moral and intellectual superiority.
As someone who sees cosmopolitan Australia in all its glory in schools across Melbourne and beyond, we actually do very well at absorbing and integrating newcomers. Much, much better than, for example, the Europeans. But if it is admitted how well we do at it, those ordinary Anglo-Celts might start looking good, and we can't have that, can we?
(And if leaking an old report was just a ruse to get the Queensland disaster off the front page, this is not the cleverest way to do so; since the Government spent rather a lot of taxpayer money for a report it is now distancing itself from--a report that pushes buttons which are not electorally helpful.)
The game with "multiculturalism" rather too often seems to be to take care of everyone's sensibilities except those of ordinary Anglo-Celtic Australians, who seem to be perennially framed as "the problem people". (As one wit noted, multiculturalism is the process whereby the residents are required to adapt to the newcomers.) Much of the difficulty being that "multiculturalism" is often used as a stick whereby Club Virtue parades its moral superiority over the bogan masses. Migrants get dragged in as moral mascots in what is really an internal Anglo-Celtic fight.
Yes, I get that one of the things which Club Virtue likes to do is sneer at Anzac, it is a way of parading how one is not one of "the vulgar masses". Using multiculturalism to attack Anzac is not, however, a way to "sell" multiculturalism. But I guess that's not the point. After all, if the bogan masses start agreeing, Club Virtue has to find a new banner to parade its moral and intellectual superiority.
As someone who sees cosmopolitan Australia in all its glory in schools across Melbourne and beyond, we actually do very well at absorbing and integrating newcomers. Much, much better than, for example, the Europeans. But if it is admitted how well we do at it, those ordinary Anglo-Celts might start looking good, and we can't have that, can we?
(And if leaking an old report was just a ruse to get the Queensland disaster off the front page, this is not the cleverest way to do so; since the Government spent rather a lot of taxpayer money for a report it is now distancing itself from--a report that pushes buttons which are not electorally helpful.)