news…

We do what we did before the race card was re-introduced to mainstream politics: we make sure that people know it’s unacceptable behaviour and we stop rewarding their uninformed opinions by egging them on with stupid initiatives like citizenship tests, or Tampa beatups, or the “pacific solution”.

Exactly what is the test supposed to achieve other than alleviating the fears of the ignorant? There’s a much easier and far less divisive way of doing that - making sure that muslims are portrayed as people first and problems second. We need some politicians of character who will stop pandering to fear in the cause of being re-elected.

We also need commentators like you, Andrew, to wake up to yourselves and realise that the cause of re-electing the Liberal party does not justify the “any means necessary” doctrine. Howard is not the second coming of Jesus - he has failed to deliver Liberal party policy, he has failed to deliver economically liberal policies, he has failed to deliver socially conservative policies. Despite having the astonishing mandate of a senate majority, his second-go-round at running the country has been distinguished only by the things he didn’t touch (thankfully), or by the abject failures of his ministers to competently do their jobs. It is time that the tired government he runs was shipped to Nauru for a few years in the room of mirrors.

I have no idea why this short-sightedness exists in australian society that we must bash every new set of migrants with the same old sticks (being Asian in the seventies and eighties, being Italian or Serbian or whatever before that). It persists, though, and the only cure seems to be waiting out 15 years or so while the kids filter through the public schooling system and emerge with broad accents. In short, we need to ignore that small percentage of the population that is uneasy. Stuff ‘em. The problem exists with them, not the rest of us.

We ignore the calls for industry protection on the basis of stupidity, racism should be the same. Make sure that idiots like Pauline Hanson get maximum exposure so their idiot rantings can be exposed for the baseless paranoia they are.

We need to start working shoulder-to-shoulder with muslims and seeing them in shopping malls doing ordinary things, ignoring the constant calls from radio shock-jocks, hyperbole driven television news and headline driven newspapers. The kids will drag the parents into Australian society, not a token citizenship test. The kids always drop the silly religious garbage of their parents once they get here and Islam will be no different, if we given them the same chance that the greeks, italians, serbians and asians got.

I wonder how the aboriginal population would fare on these tests, given the last 10 years of indifference.

That’s all that needs to be said. Keep tying the knot in the dog whistle string Andrew.