Over in the UK, Michael Howard’s Tories are tub thumping about abortion, immigration, asylum seekers and drugs:
Taking on Travellers is the latest headline-grabbing initiative from the Tories, who have promised to toughen abortion and cannabis laws and make it easier for home owners to use violence against burglars.
The Tories would introduce quotas for migrants and asylum seekers because, a Conservative poster says, “it’s not racist to impose limits on immigration”. Their campaign slogan is: “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?”
Sound familiar? It should. The Tories’ strategist is former Liberal apparatchik Lynton Crosby. The globalisation of the political strategy of social division rolls on…
Elsewhere: Tim Dunlop at Road to Surfdom points out that playing the race card is not a new thing in British politics. Enoch Powell is a very prominent case in point.
Though it is ’social division’ that can only work politically if it draws on a strong social consensus.
Strong social consensus can be created through fear-based campaigns and misinformation. It has happened here…
I mention this here.
I think, given the conservatism of the BLP, the tactics of Lynton Crosby won’t prove as effective (although they will certainly draw many of the Nationalists and neo-Nazis back to the Tory Party), which could be the point…
“…quotas for migrants and asylum seekers…”
Introduced here by the Hawke-Keating government. They built on the Whitlam ‘No Fucking Balts’ tradition. Which, in turn, built on the ‘Two Wongs Don’t Make A White’ policy. Which, in turn, built on old Labour’s ‘Mongolian Octopus’ campaign.
Mark, the adjective “Howardian” is terrible. I know you can find another word.
CL, despite its shameful advocacy of White Australia, the Labor Party has never made immigration an election issue in the twentieth century.
Ugly words suit ugly times, I fear, Liam!
There is no getting away from Labor’s woeful history on racism. And it’s not just historical instances: people forget (conveniently I suspect) that it was Hawke/Keating who introduced the Australian concentration camp system* for asylum seekers.
* And before anyone gets upset that I am downgrading the Holocaust, the term concentration camps generally dates from the British introduction of them in the Boer War. And as Mike Carlton points out: “the Macquarie Dictionary: “Concentration camp, n, a guarded enclosure for the detention or imprisonment of political prisoners, racial minority groups, refugees, etc …”
The ALP has a racist history, but unlike many other parties and ideologies recognises its past wrongs and changes its policies (by abolishing the White Australia policy for example).
Ron, it’s not just in the past, there are more than enough current ALP representatives, supporters, and members, who’d be only too happy to see all those queue-jumping dole bludging immigrants who take our jobs deported, preferably on the next 747 back to wherever it was they come from. I’ve talked to enough of them.
Nobody’s excusing historical racism, or current racism. The difference between Labor’s camps and the Coalition’s camps is that Labor’s version was never about scapegoating and brutalising the detainees.
An example of what Liam’s talking about is a lot of the rhetoric that comes from the Victorian AWU about immigration. And there was a bit of dog whistling in some Queensland seats from Labor candidates last year too.
Liam - Ian McAllister’s book on Australian election speeches 1946-1990 suggests that Labor did make immigration something of an issue in 1951, when Chifley claimed that the urgency of the housing problem meant that the Menzies government’s immigration policy should be reviewed to determine a number of arrivals ‘within the capacity of the country to absorb’. He also wanted attention given to ‘the proper selection of the types of persons most needed for national development’. Other election speeches mention immigration - including some statements by Calwell that would not go down well today - but they seem to be statements of general belief, rather than points of difference with the Liberals.
But in any case, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with making immigration an issue, though obviously there are sensitivities that need to be taken account of. Your position seems to be that politicians should be able to fundamentally change the nature of Australian society without other politicians being critical of this. It’s hardly a democratic view of things.
Alex:
Labor did not abolish the White Australia policy, any more than Whitlam brought the troops home from Vietnam.
The watershed changes to immigration law occurred in 1966 under Prime Minister Harold Holt. Especially noteworthy was the review of the old policy in March 1966 during the tenure of then immigration minister, Hubert Opperman. This built on a liberalisation flagged by the revision of the Migration Act in 1958 - when Sir Alexander Downer was in charge of the portfolio. The infamous dictation test was abolished and Downer said that ‘distinguished and highly qualified Asians‚Äô could emigrate here.
Today’s union leaders, by comparison, are still trying to stop ‘distinguished and highly qualified Asians‚Äô from coming. Thank God they’re not running the country.
C.L., I too have bad memories of the Labor’s response to the exodus particularly of Chinese-Vietnamese from Vietnam after the Communist victory. It was along the lines of ‘Don’t let them in, they’re all f****g facsists’. Even as a convetional lefty at the time, I thought that was pretty disgusting, given we (the left) were in part responsible for the conditions from which supporters of the former regime were prepared to risk - and often lose - their lives escaping.
I was also under the impression that it was the Liberals that ended the White Australia Policy and also for the 1967 referemdum on Aboriginal rights.
No-one should think Labor has a moral monopoly here