Here comes Australia Day

[seeingred]

Had a little moment of hope and pride, reading this morning about practical responses to the Sydney race riot of 2005: Anglo women volunteered as English teachers, Muslim women volunteered as surf lifesavers.

Then Tony Abbot went and &*%*&%ed it up for me by characterising migrants as criminals. Thanks for that, mate. ("Migrants" here is code for

Comments

[hnpcc]

I think there has also been damage from the unregulated and rip-off nature of some of the "Educational institutions" - particularly with the recent closing down of at least two, possibly three. While that hasn't received the same screaming headlines that the attacks have - for good reason - I'd be surprised if the target market were unaware of it. I also think that the government's complete lack of regulation of that industry and obvious regard of overseas students (not just the Indian students) as a cash cow hasn't helped matters to that end. Overall I think the overseas perception of Australia's education "industry" has been damaged by some of these rubbish institutions that have been allowed to keep on going.

From an overall society point of view, I don't think our tertiary education system should be reliant on overseas student incomes (or an "industry" come to that). That of course is a whole different kettle of fish (or worms, heh). I also don't think we should be tolerating attacks on anyone from a social point of view, no matter whether they're a cash cow or not. Stopping racially based attacks is even more important because of the nature of our society - the last thing I think we need or want is an increase in ethnically based violence when we have such a large mix of people. But of course if we're only going to put a cash value on people, well, obviously stopping attacks on Indian students is far more important for our future earning potential than stopping attacks on non-Indian students.

I guess the way you phrased it irritated me - the attacks are unlikely to be being perpetrated by people who give a shit about Australia's tertiary education system's woes, and who would welcome fewer Indian (and other) overseas students coming here. The people who deplore the attacks are more likely to be doing so from a social point of view rather than a "OMG we need their money!" point of view (John Howard clones possibly excepted - although they'll probably make up the shortfall with local full fee paying students) and therefore unlikely to change their views on racism anyway.

Out of interest, while I'm commenting (and probably still not that coherently) - where do Greeks, Italians and Turks sit in the Australian "white/non-white" spectrum these days? How about ex-Yugoslavs? Russians? Christian Lebanese? Does it vary with who's talking? Just curious.