Deconstructing Australia

Mark Richardson writes at Oz Conservative:

It turns out that immigration has been running at an astonishingly high level. And the officials in charge justify this on the grounds that the economy is king. Australia is one big labour market.

Last year there were 171,318 permanent arrivals in Australia. There were also 47,780 New Zealanders who settled permanently and 657,124 migrants with the right to work. This adds up to 876,222 arrivals in a country with a population of about 22,000,000.

What is the purpose of this immigration? The Immigration Minister gave this explanation:

"Senator Evans said immigration should be the nation's labour agency, meaning a continued high intake of migrants ... Decisions about who came to Australia would increasingly be left to employers."

Are we a nation or an economy? Do we want to develop economically and industrially or just grow by selling passports and having more people? Do we really want to sacrifice individual standards of living just to have a higher overall level of GDP?

My apologies to Australian readers who find all this demoralising. I expect that at first it is unavoidably demoralising. But I hope that there will be at least one positive effect, which is to show just how bankrupt Australian liberalism has become. There is nothing worthwhile animating it. The focus of government policy is not even on real economic development anymore; it's just about crude technocratic management of the economy to maintain overall growth of GDP.

Richardson asks: what are we being delivered to?

If the rhetoric of our elites is anything to go by, I would say the post-national "new world order" of the "global economy."

Driven by an open-borders ideology that justifies their economic and financial interests, Australia's elites in business, politics, and academia have embarked on a course that will result in a staggering increase in the size of the our population, a radical change in our country's ethnic makeup, and the erosion of our historic national identity.

Of course, whether or not the Australian people wanted these dramatic changes imposed upon them is a question they were never asked.

Our interests and wishes don't matter.

All that matters is that we are delivered to the "global economy" through open-borders and the deconstruction of our nation-state.

In many ways, Australia's elites are examples of what the late Samuel P. Huntington labelled 'Davos Man', people who "have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the élite's global operations".

As Huntington noted:

"The views of the general public on issues of national identity differ significantly from those of many elites. The public, overall, is concerned with physical security but also with societal security, which involves the sustainability—within acceptable conditions for evolution—of existing patterns of language, culture, association, religion and national identity. For many elites, these concerns are secondary to participating in the global economy, supporting international trade and migration, strengthening international institutions, promoting so-called 'universal values' abroad, and encouraging minority identities and cultures at home. The central distinction between the public and elites is not isolationism versus internationalism, but nationalism versus cosmopolitanism."

A nasty piece of vandalism

In an article at On Line Opinion, Australian-born Chinese Jieh-Yung Lo, a Policy/Project Officer of the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria and Executive Member of Chinese Culture Monthly, demands that Australia dump the monarchy and become a republic in order to reflect "an ever-changing multicultural Australia."

He writes:

I believe a further commitment by our elected parliamentary representatives is needed to change the identity and face of our nation to ensure that our national identity is clear and addressed.

The article itself is of terrible quality. But some of the reader responses are worth re-posting here.

One poster writes:

Changing the “identity and face of our nation” sounds like a nasty piece of vandalism – no more than an attack on the history and achievements of the people who forged our identity and nation. It is an insult by the multi-culties who have lobbed here and, having accepted our hospitality and protection, now want to change Australia to something suiting them. What people like this author, and some fifth column Australians, are suggesting is that we give up our history and culture to foreigners let in by wet, immigration-mad governments.

The idea that we are bound to Britain and the Monarchy now in anything but history and culture is stupid and ignorant. The existing link is important to our history, but we are have been our own boss, our own country, for a long time. We have “absolute independence”.

This author, admitting that there is a mere 15.8% “…of Australians coming from more than 200 countries and ancestries and speaking a language other than English at home” has the cheek to suggest that Australia should change for just for that piddling number of people who should not have come here if they wanted the country to change for them – if, indeed, they do want that.

The Queen is a figure head. She has no say whatsoever in what happens in Australia. She ‘approves’ our Government’s choice of GG ceremoniously because she has absolutely no authority in the appointment, which itself is a little bit of historical ceremony having no affect on our identity or who actually runs the country.

Some people thinks it’s OK for latecomers to hang onto their heritage, but not OK for Australian descendants of the original settlers to hang onto theirs.

Another chimes in:

I agree.

When immigrants move into our country and then demand that Australia's historic national identity be dismantled in order to better suit them, I feel nothing but a deep revulsion and a sense of personal insult - as if we have invited invaders, rather than immigrants, into our midst.

Imagine if an immigrant in some relatively sane country - say Japan or Germany or pre-1970s Australia - who, shortly after his arrival, announces to the host population: "Oh, by the way, you people must - in order to make me feel more comfortable - surrender everything that has constituted the historic identity of your nation. But don't worry! You shouldn't see this as a loss!"

Like most imperialists, Mr. Lo seems intent on erasing the heritage of the nation he and his fellow immigrants seek to dominate. Mr. Lo would have us believe that the entire history of the Australian nation from colonial times up until the mid 20th Century, during which Australia drew its people and its culture almost exclusively from the British Isles, no longer has any bearing whatsoever on our contemporary national identity.

This is, of course, utterly absurd and highly insulting to many Australians. The truth is that Australia remains a British-based society, even if decades of multiculturalist propaganda has left many younger Australians believing that their nation adds up to nothing more than an amorphous cloud of 'diversity.'

Why do Australians allow recently-arrived ethnic minorities to dictate what our national identity and culture should be?

A community of common values or common ancestry?

Writing for The Brussels Journal, British commentator John Laughland challenges the idea, currently in vogue among Western elites, that our national communities are mere civic constructs, with membership being determined by nothing more than one's adherence to vague, abstract values.

Laughland writes:

A nation, in other words, is not a “community of values” or an impersonal social construct governed by certain laws. A nation – as the word suggests, derived as it is from the verb ‘to be born’ – is a family. A family can be a source of great love, indifference or even fratricidal conflict, just as a nation can experience cohesion, social exclusion or civil war. Nations can certainly welcome into their midst people who are not originally members of it, just as a family can expand to include in-laws. Both can and should show tolerance and friendship towards them. But at the end of the day, nations like families are bodies of people related to each other by blood.

This basic fact remains, whatever choices the individuals themselves may make. It does not absolutely determine human choice but it does influence it. The experience of second and third generation immigrants in Europe, whose parents or grandparents have chosen to come to a new country, and who have themselves chosen to remain in it, often shows the truth of this: in spite of their individual choice, people’s behaviour often remains ethnically based and culturally separate from that of the host nation, especially if they are of a different race.

Full article

Also worth reading is Mark Richardson's recent post on civic nationalism:

Civic nationalism has no future

Kevin Rudd's 'insane' proposal

In an article at On line Opinion, Joel Butler points out that Kevin Rudd's proposal to create an EU-like "Asia-Pacific community" would inevitably lead to open immigration and the end of the Australian nation as we know it.

He writes:

Kevin Rudd’s proposal to implement an European Union-like organisation in the Asia-Pacific region is nothing short of insane. The conditions prevailing in Europe in the 1950s when integration was first proposed, or even now that it has been more fully achieved, and those in the Asia Pacific region are so different that even the suggestion that a similar integrative structure might work is simply ludicrous.

One of the basic structural processes operative in the EU is the free movement of people within the EU’s member countries. In this day and age, free movement of people is a necessary underpinning for “free trade” since - especially for countries like Australia - the trade in services which are delivered by people are more and more important than the trade in goods.

A European Union based model in the Asia Pacific region that allows free trade by allowing the free movement of people between member states would mean the end of Australia as we know it. It would be completely and utterly unworkable because it would see mass-migration of overseas workers into Australia at a level so completely unmanageable as to lead to the breakdown of the economy and the social infrastructure.

If this sounds a little extreme - that I am suggesting an “end of the world as we know it” scenario - it is because the scheme would lead to just that.

Although Butler's article contains no mention of the profound ethnocultural effects open immigration would have on Australia, it is clear that open borders with Asian countries would result in the prompt and complete submergence of our current population by Asian peoples, transforming our historically European-majority nation into an extension of Asia in the blink of an eye. Our nation would cease to exist in any recognisable form. It would not be the end of the world for the rest of the planet's inhabitants, but it would certainly be a shocking and grotesque act of national suicide on Australia's behalf.

See also:

Rudd's plan to cede Australian sovereignty

A colonial hangover?

Abolishing Australia, continued

Abolishing Australia, continued

From the Vdare.com blog:

Australia to Merge with Asia?

Posted By Allan Wall On 11 June 2008 @ 9:32

The great nations of the Anglosphere seem determined to merge themselves out of existence.

Mass immigration is making the U.S. a part of Latin America, while an emerging North American Union would combine Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Across the Pond, Britain surrenders her sovereignty to the European Union. Not to be outdone, Down Under, the Australian Prime Minister appears to want to merge Australia with Asia.

An article in the Herald Sun entitled Unified Currency Chance with Asian Union, Says Expert [Jane Metlikovec, June 05, 2008] reports that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has “announced his plan to create a broad Asia-Pacific Community by 2020.”

A certain Prof. Tim Lindsey of Melbourne University thinks that’s a great idea:

“We are living in the “Asia century,” he said.”Australia is uniquely positioned as the only Western society in Asia and we have never capitalised on that, despite most of our commodities going to Asia.”

So what about Australia’s Western identity and Anglo-Celtic heritage? Apparently, that can be easily disregarded:

(Lindsey) said Australia was still suffering from a “colonial hangover” by setting ourselves apart from Asia. “This perception of ourselves as a European nation has to change,” he said.

PM Rudd has chosen a point man to advance the project:

“Mr Rudd has appointed former foreign affairs secretary and one-time ambassador to Indonesia Richard Woolcott as Australia’s envoy to sell the idea.”

There is some political opposition:

Opposition MPs are divided about Mr Rudd’s plan, which he put forward during a speech to the Asia Society Australasia Centre last night, just days before he heads off on a week-long visit to Japan and Indonesia.

Opposition’s foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb says the plan is presumptuous.”His (Kevin Rudd) first job is not to be making pronouncements about grand architecture for the region, telling China, Indonesia and Japan and India how they will be organised as a region by Australia in the next 20 years,” Mr Robb told ABC Radio.

Nevertheless, Robb’s opposition seems more a question of practicality than a concern for Australia’s cultural identity:

“Once (Rudd) has demonstrated a capacity to build and maintain and grow strong bilateral relationships with all these countries (and) repair the damage he has already done with some of these countries, then we can… maybe influence the broader architecture that shapes the region.”

How about the argument that Australia’s cultural identity is non-Asian? Is that a legitimate argument nowadays?

More on Rudd's proposal to abolish Australia:

A colonial hangover?

Rudd's plan to cede Australian sovereignty

A colonial hangover?

Lawrence Auster has commented on Kevin Rudd's plan to create an "Asia-Pacific community." He pastes an article from the Herald Sun which contains these comments from a Professor Tim Lindsey:

Professor Tim Lindsey from Melbourne University said an Asian Union was a fantastic idea.

"We are living in the "Asia century," he said.

"Australia is uniquely positioned as the only Western society in Asia and we have never capitalised on that, despite most of our commodities going to Asia."

He said Australia was still suffering from a "colonial hangover" by setting ourselves apart from Asia.

"This perception of ourselves as a European nation has to change," he said.

Professor Lindsey's assertion that "Australia is uniquely positioned as the only Western society in Asia" is geographically erroneous. Australia is not a part of Asia - it is a unique continent in its own right. Moreover, if Professor Lindsey were to stroll over to Melbourne University's Geography Department and examine a map of the globe, he'd find that most European capitals are, in fact, closer to the major Asian power centers than the Australian capital Canberra.

Geographical fallacies aside, Professor Lindsey's comments are a reminder that most of Australia's political, economic and academic elites are at best indifferent, at worst openly hostile, to the preservation of Australia's historic European culture and majority population. In fact, according to the good professor, the loss of our identity as a predominantly European nation would be desirable! Lindsey presumably believes that the disappearance of traditional British/European Australia is required to rid this country of its "colonial hangover," so that a new, emancipated Australia can fully realise its Asian destiny.

While demanding that Australia's historic identity be extinguished in order to "capitalise" on the "Asia century," Lindsey doesn't actually explain in any specific terms how Australia would benefit from becoming less European and more Asian. More trade? As the professor himself notes, most of our commodities are already going to Asian countries. And we certainly don't have much else to export to Asia, especially not since our own manufacturing sector was decimated by the rise of the Asian manufacturing mammoths. In reality, trade with Asian countries does not depend on Australia redefining itself as a part of Asia. No more than the remarkable post-war increase in trade between Japan and Western countries was contingent on Japan abandoning its traditional identity.

What does Australia stand to gain then? More "cultural enrichment"? While de-Europeanisation may be the goal of those elites who loathe traditional Australia, and believe that Asian peoples and cultures offer something inherently superior, not many Australians would consider the loss of their identity and culture "enriching." The wholesale destruction of a nation's historic identity and culture never is.

Rudd's plan to cede Australian sovereignty

From The Age:

Rudd pushes for Asia Pacific Community

June 4, 2008 - 11:27PM

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has flagged an ambitious plan to lead debate on the creation of a broad Asia Pacific Community by 2020.

And he has appointed former foreign affairs secretary and one-time ambassador to Indonesia Richard Woolcott as Australia's envoy to sell the idea.

Mr Rudd put forward the concept during a speech to the Asia Society AustralAsia Centre on Wednesday night, just days before he heads off a week-long visit to Japan and Indonesia.

"I believe it is time that we started to think about where we want to be with our regional architecture in 2020," he said.

"We believe that we need to anticipate the historic changes in our region and seek to shape them, rather than simply reacting to them."

Mr Rudd wants any new regional creation to span the entire Asia Pacific, including the United States, Japan, China, India and Indonesia.

And he believes it must engage in broad dialogue, cooperation and action on economic and political matters, as well as future challenges related to security.

"The purpose is to encourage the development of a genuine and comprehensive sense of community whose habitual operating principle is cooperation," Mr Rudd said.

"The danger in not acting is that we run the risk of succumbing to the perception that future conflict within our region may somehow be inevitable."

Excuse me, Mr. Rudd, but I do not recall this plan being put to the electorate in November 2007, and enunciated as a significant foreign policy initiative. I'm sure I would've remembered any proposal to thrust Australia into some kind of EU-style 'Asia-Pacific' union, thereby eroding our national sovereignty and dissolving our borders.

The truth, Mr. Rudd, is that you do not have a mandate to surrender Australia’s national sovereignty, especially not to a supranational body dominated by countries with which Australia has little in common. Australia is neither geographically nor culturally a part of Asia, and it would be a grave and irreversible mistake to erase the sovereignty and identity of our nation in some futile attempt to "fit in" to the region.

As incomprehensible as it may seem to you, the majority of Australians remain wedded to the idea of a sovereign Australian nation-state with control over its political, economic, cultural and demographic destiny. Unlike yourself, they're not prepared to relegate the Australian nation-state to a tired piece of history.