Posted by: Andrew Jakubowicz
in Human Rights Blogs on Aug 23, 2010
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Some interesting things happened in this
election, a key one being I guess that the $1.6 million that Maxine McKew had
jimmied out of Gillard for Bennelong to pay for a multicultural food festival
community hall makeover, won’t reappear. It’s also not clear that Richmond (Melbourne)
will get its Vietnamese community arch, promised by Anthony Albanese for
$500,000. Is this a sign of the times, the only two multicultural promises and
the ALP loses both seats?
Politics, Policies and Cultural Diversity
This Federal election has been a round-about of personalities, melodrama and policy parries. There is a real social world out here, where a majority of people live an every-day multiculturalism. For the forty percent or more of Australians who come from non-Anglo backgrounds and the rest who experience its benefits, it’s worth reflecting on what the future might be like if there was a policy debate in which cultural diversity was valued and productive diversity advanced.
Sustainable population – not a debate about who we want here
The debate about a sustainable population for Australia only makes sense if it involves all Australians – as citizens, as producers, and as consumers. So the debate has to make sure everyone feels they have a stake and their input is respected; not only the middle aged, middle class, male and generally White people who dominated Dick Smith’s “population puzzle” video on the ABC last Thursday night, and were barely leavened in the Q and A studio audience by Suvendrini Perera, (Curtin U academic and Fairfax OpEd writer) on the panel, and Tanveer Ahmed and his dad on the floor.
Posted by: Andrew Jakubowicz
in Arts Blogs on Jul 27, 2010
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Adam Liaw, a Malaysian Chinese Australian, taught by his granny in Adelaide how to cook up a storm, denizen of Tokyo and dreamer of intercultural culinary pyrotechnics, has won Masterchef to the acclaim of the whole country. Here is the expression of multiculturalism writ large - his final winning coup de plat was a multi-function pork belly straight out of the heartland of Asia, topped off with a ice-cream guava and custard-apple meringue egg that combined French, Asian and Australian extravagances.
Posted by: Andrew Jakubowicz
in Human Rights Blogs on Jul 25, 2010
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Are Australians very worried about the size of the immigration intake, or are they fed up with decades of under-investment in infrastructure, failure to bite on the climate change issues, and the systematic under-funding of education and skills development?
Posted by: Andrew Jakubowicz
in Research Blogs on Jul 23, 2010
Migrants bring all sorts of good things - ideas, skills, energy, creativity, ambition, and recipes. With all the rhetoric about the need to reduce immigration in the name of sustainability and carrying capacity, it's worth thinking about which immigrants won't be coming anymore, and how sustainable we'll be without them, and who'll do the heavy lifting? (full data for this blog is here).
Posted by: Andrew Jakubowicz
in Human Rights Blogs on Jun 24, 2010
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Now that Kevin Rudd has been replaced by Julia Gillard, he has predicted that “this party and government will … be lurching to the right on the question of asylum-seekers as some have counselled us to do.” What might be involved in such a lurch? Given the freezing of Asylum claims for Afghans and Tamils, the opening of new on-shore incarceration centres, and the desperate negotiations with the Indonesians to ensure that transit seekers are kept in that country, the only place left on the Right is the re-enactment of the Pacific solution.
Whether Andrew Johns was doing himself a disservice in offering the self-description of "White trash" (racist enough even if pointed at the speaker), he went way overboard, as he admitted, in sledging a Queensland player as a "Black c...". Johns has fallen on his sword, leaving the Blue's camp in disgrace and personal emotional pain. The issue came to light when Timana Tahu, an Eels player of Pacific Islander and Aboriginal parentage, walked out of the Origin's camp after John's tirade against his friend Aboriginal Player Gary Inglis, at a team "bonding session".
Read Daily Telegraph Inglis racial slur is unacceptable
Read Sydney Morning Herald Joey exits after Tahu takes stand over slur
Over the past few months we've seen cultural diversity and racism issues explode across Australia's front pages, and of course, rip deep into the political classes. Whether it's Indians being mugged (and then fleeing Australian higher education institutions in their tens of millions of dollars) or asylum seekers abandoned if they're of the wrong ethnicity, or Indigenous people left high and dry as their rights are systematically removed, the question of whether Australia is a racist society (and if it is, should we worry about it?) has moved from simmer to slow boil.
Posted by: Andrew Jakubowicz
in Human Rights Blogs on Mar 15, 2010
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Transition Films has released a short YouTube documentary on racism in Australia, based on the 4Rs conference at UTS in October 2008. Key figures interviewed include researcher Kevin Dunn and writer Hanifa Deen.
