I agree that it is not useful to see “racism as some endemic, pre-existing deep causal factor.” I also agree with Andrew that Australians are not racists in general.

There is no coherent argument against immigration to Australia. There are good theoretical arguments to be sure, but none stands up to serious analysis. Even the latest effort “immigration is bad for the environment” is just nonsense.

The only time large scale migration does not put downward pressure on wages is if the newcomers raise the level of capital in society far more than they add to the labour force. Which can even be worse for the pre-existing populations–cases of such positive income effects are British settlement in the Antipodes, European settlement in North America, Jewish settlement in Palestine.

It is not useful analysis to see “racism” as some endemic, pre-existing deep causal factor. Racism developed and it developed for reasons which are analysable. Once it developed, it has developed some life of its own but, with some exceptions, only got underway as a mass phenomena in the Western world in the C19th. It is precisely because it is a fairly specific social phenomena, it has also proved amenable to significant levels of fading away.

I’d be interested to know when the term started being used in Australia; I suspect it is relatively recent ‘inclusiveness’ by conservatives who want to emphasise a religious history without appearing rude to their Jewish friends.

But religious history is not my strong point.

I also agree with the principle that it is possible to not be racists and oppose further immigration - but practical reality is something different. I also have no problem with people advocating less immigration - political parties such as One Nation and the Greens should pursue their own self-interest and agendas, but we should believe them when they tell us that they are noble in doing so.

Indeed, given that under the Howard Government we had a high immigration policy, the least Eurocentric migration policy in our history and falling levels of opposition to migration, accusations of racist motivations become positively metaphysical. (As in Irfan’s comments.)

Your analysis of the migration mix make no mention of the fact that the costs of migration are very unevenly distributed among the resident Australian population. Indeed, it is clearly one of the functions of the “racist’ accusation to avoid considering the same. (The other is to deny the general voters any say in migration policy apart from agreeing with their “betters”.)

It was a staple of working class politics in all the settler countries in the C19th and most of the C20th to control migration policy: particularly to keep the “tropical” stream of labour movement out of “temperate” countries. This was rational of them. Indeed, opposition to migration would display much the same patterns even if racism (in the sense of the belief that there exist inferior or otherwise degraded forms of humans categorised by race) had never developed

But except perhaps for how we define ‘racism’ I am not sure that your analysis and my analysis are very far apart. By ‘racism’ I tend to mean beliefs in the intrinsic desirability/undesirability of certain ethnic groups. This is now I think fairly unusual in the population as a whole, and has not influenced policy for many years.

Far more common are ethnic stereotypes, some of which are potentially harmful prejudices. These are usually cultural rather than racial, but race can sometimes serve as a proxy for working out who has the cultural characteristic in question. Because these are just mental rules of thumb there is no inconsistency between believing one thing about the group and another about a particular individual.

If I did say that immigration policy and reaction to it was inconsistent with the racism hypothesis of the left, then I meant it in the first sense.

Since I was being interviewed about an article that has I think the most comprehensive Australian summary of survey evidence of self-reported prejudice I’m hardly unaware that this exists.

OK, so you’re saying that people of French, Chinese and Iranian heritage cannot be racist?

I agree with you that opposition to immigration is not per se indicative of racism. My point is that just because you implement policies that increase immigration isn’t of itself enough to suggest that you cannot be racist.

Most of those who bore the brunt of racism from Howard government ministers were people who lived in Australia and were born here. Some migrated here during the Howard government.

When Kevin Andrews made imbecilic remarks about African migrants, he was talking about people already here. These were clearly racist remarks whose insensitivity was magnified by the fact that they were made in response to the death of a Sudanese migrant. Sudanese or Africans were not perpetrators - they were victims. And yet Andrews cast all manner of negative attributes to them.

And what did Howard do? How did he respond? How did Costello respond?

The hilarious thing about these remarks is that Andrews claimed that no migrant group had placed as much pressure on our migration program as Africans. Almost exactly 12 months earlier, Howard made virtually the same remark about what he referred to as a singular Muslim wave of migration.

Singular Muslim wave? When? Which Muslims was Howard talking about? Which Africans was Andrews talking about?

To his credit, Tony Abbott refused to jump on the racial and sectarian bandwagon. Then again, Abbott is a REAL conservative and a REAL Liberal, not a neo (or rather, pseudo) conservative and a pseudo-liberal. Abbott knows that the sort of nonsensical prejudice his colleagues engaged in is the sort of rubbish Catholics have had to put up with (until recently) for well over a century.

I suggest you listen to the interview. I’m not sure if it is available still on the ABC website.

The suggestion that governments whose term in office sees a net increase in immigration must necessarily not be racist is absolutely farcical.

The NSW branch of the Liberal Party is currently dominated by a faction in which racism and sectarian bigotry is a prominent feature. I know that because I know the people involved personally and worked with them for at least a decade.

Further, I was told by a prominent person in the Federal Campaign in 2001 that the party deliberately ran a hard-edged policy on refugees because it wanted to look like Pauline Hanson and gain her votes. That advice was given to me by someone who is now a Federal MP.

There are numerous other instances I could mention.

Toward its end, the Howard government engaged in a gross form of sectarianism. In the end, it was bitten on the backside thanks to the Lindsay pamphlet. I wonder what would have happened if one honest Young Lib had not contacted the ALP and tipped them off about the distribution of the pamphlet.

One interesting point you also made in your interview that in the years immediately following WWII, around 60% of Australians were opposed to Jewish migration. And to think that some imbecilic Coalition MP’s claimed that Australia had a ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’ that goes back 2 centuries!

When we regard people not as individuals but as 1-dimensional creatures with only 1 layer of identity, and when we ascribe to that layer negative characteristics because of events that individual had nothing to do with, we are not just being bigotted. We are also being illiberal.