Janet Albrechtsen, a pundit I once admired, recently wrote a column praising the mass immigration policies implemented under the former Howard Government's first immigration minister, Philip Ruddock.
According to Albrechtsen, Ruddock "steered Australia towards greater appreciation for, rather than suspicion of, immigration" by essentially redefining immigration as purely an economic issue, devoid of any larger cultural or racial dimensions.
That immigration should only to be considered from an economic perspective has become the prevailing attitude these days. It is clear that our elites no longer view Australia as a nation, defined by a particular people sharing a common language, culture, history, and ancestry. Instead, Australia has been reduced to a mere economy, with its people viewed as nothing more than a labour force which can be augmented or even replaced through mass immigration if the "market" demands it. According to this view, it wouldn't matter if immigration turned Australia into a non-Western country, just as long as it was good for the economy.
Yet, as those who are familiar with her writings will know, Albrechtsen actually does profess to care about the future of Western civilisation on this continent and elsewhere.
Indeed, she has vehemently criticised the anti-Western ideology of multiculturalism, or what she calls "multicultural madness", on a number of occasions. Muslims, in particular, have been singled out in Albrechtsen's anti-multicultural tirades.
Needless to say, Albrechtson's trenchant criticisms of multiculturalism are indubitably valid. And her willingness to stand up for Western culture, albeit at the most superficial level, should be commended. But her inability to make the obvious connection between massive non-Western immigration and the menace of multiculturalism seriously damages her credibility.
It seems that Albrechtson, along with other Australian neoconservatives like Andrew Bolt, just can't bring themselves to admit that it is immigration that provides the oxygen for multiculturalism. Rather than concede that it is the immigration-induced revolution in Australia's ethnic makeup that is fuelling the multiculturalist movement, they perform mental gymnastics in order to convince themselves that one can support unlimited immigration while at the same time opposing multiculturalism.
My advice to Janet: next time you furiously denounce fractious, misogonystic Muslims or complain about the promotion of non-Western minority cultures at the expense of Australia's dominant Western culture, take a minute to consider how all these culturally alien and hostile non-Western peoples came to be in Australia in the first place.
And if you can't work it out, then perhaps you can ask your good friend, Philip Ruddock. He should know; he brought many of them here.
