Racism

The Australia Day event at The Lobby in Canberra has become all about Tony Hodges, Kim Sattler, Barbara Shaw, Michael Anderson, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, the police and a bunch of idiots who saw fit to hijack the day. It wasn’t supposed to be about them.

Our political leaders had gathered at the restaurant to bestow the new National Emergency Medal on 26 Australians who, paid or unpaid, did extraordinary work during the Victorian Bushfires and Queensland floods.

In her speech before the event was hijacked by an appalling set of bad decisions the Prime Minister said: “Today we award these Medals to a group of Australians who inspired us with their courage and service during two of the most devastating summers of natural disaster Australia has ever witnessed: the Victorian bushfires of 2009 and the Queensland floods and cyclone of December 2010 and January 2011.”

Continue reading "This is who Thursday’s event was supposed to be about" »

So we now know who is responsible for putting Julia Gillard into the most peril she’s been in since she became Prime Minister - her own office.

A senior member of the Prime Minister’s team has tonight resigned after it emerged he was the one who tipped off an Aboriginal Tent Embassy contact that Tony Abbott was in the Lobby restaurant yesterday - information that led to the Prime Minister being dragged to her car in undignified scenes that are now world news.

Tony Hodges, who was the one trawling the Press Gallery yesterday afternoon trying to sheet home blame for the ugly scenes to the Opposition Leader, is tonight no longer working for the PM. If it wasn’t so disgusting it would be funny. This came a day after a member of senior Cabinet Minister Anthony Albanese’s staff saw fit to send his boss off to the Press Club armed with a raft of fantastic quotes from a Hollywood movie.

Continue reading "When is this sorry mess going to end?" »

Julia Gillard should be congratulated for maintaining even a shred of dignity after being dragged minus a shoe through a crowd at a speed she couldn’t keep up with. Most Australians were horrified by the images from the steps of the Lobby restaurant, and in turn would have been relieved when a composed PM, with two fresh shoes on, reassured everyone from outside The Lodge that she was fine.

She should never have been placed in that terrible position in the first place, and there are many questions unanswered about how and why she was.

1. The location for yesterday’s inaugural emergency services medal presentation was poorly chosen.

Continue reading "How was yesterday’s drama ever allowed to happen?" »

The Aboriginal Tent Embassy has never engendered any public respect. It has never done anything to bring black and white Australia together. It is sadly fitting then that the 40th anniversary of this illegal assortment of galvo humpies was celebrated with an unprecedented outburst of violence which saw our Prime Minister being dragged along the ground and our Opposition Leader behind a riot shield.

The scenes in Canberra represented a new low in the four-decade history of this politically useless eyesore. If it was the intention of its inhabitants to draw attention to the plight of black Australians, they instead invited nothing but scorn.

The irrational nature of their conduct was captured in a single quote from Tent Embassy founder Michael Anderson yesterday: “To hell with the government and the courts.”

Continue reading "Time to fold up the tent" »

In the past few days, we have had a few prominent and highly regarded individuals coming out to voice their concerns about racism in Australia. They say it is very much alive and kicking.

Dr Charles Teo, a very respected neuro-surgeon who has saved many lives, said that racism is still “very much alive in Australia”. Then came Fayia Lahai, a refugee from Sierra Leone in West Africa, who also agreed with Dr Teo’s assessment that Australia has a racism problem.

Mr Fayia Lahai was recently appointed to a new body called People of Australia Ambassadors – a body that will give advice to the Government and to the Australian Multicultural Council. Mr Lahai arrived in Tasmania in 2006.

Continue reading "Change the topic, Australia Day is not about racism" »

In one of his inspired monologues some years ago the great Sam Kekovich set his mind to the question of Australian racism. “I’m no racist,” Slammin’ Sam thundered. “In fact some of my best friends should be sent back to where they came from.”

Sam’s hilarious analysis was born out last week when the extraordinarily gifted Australian neurosurgeon Dr Charlie Teo made the fairly unremarkable observation that some Australians were prone to displays of prejudice.

Teo added the deadly accurate footnote that the peculiar characteristic of Australian racism was that the moment anyone noted its existence, even with the stated qualifier that it only involved a minority, they were howled down. As if to prove his point, Teo was immediately smashed up by readers of websites throughout the land as a knocker, a hand-wringer, a whinger who should probably bugger off back to wherever he came from.

Continue reading "Charlie Teo and the race to shut down important debate" »

It will be a shameful day for Australia if it does not change its Constitution to both prohibit racial discrimination and recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The proposed changes are, individually, both worthy and overdue. But together they become complex enough to threaten the success of any referendum.

The recommendations are to remove the “race power” section, prohibit racial discrimination, but allow positive discrimination “for the purpose of overcoming disadvantage, ameliorating the effects of past discrimination or protecting the cultures, languages or heritage of any group”, to recognise indigenous Australians in the Constitution itself (rather than in a preamble), and to acknowledge indigenous languages.

Continue reading "We need a strong constitution to tackle racism" »

“Opinions are like orgasms: mine matters most, and I don’t care if you have one.”

I’m not sure where I first read this, but it seems to typify public debate in Australia, where opposing parties love to discredit an argument by giving it a label: racist, sexist, chauvinist, insensitive, homophobe, ignorant…

In philosophy classes, this type of argument was called an ad hominem, and it’s only reward was an F, but in public debate it’s a timesaver, a cheap political point. Remember when Bill Heffernan questioned Gillard’s leadership because she was “deliberately barren”? Same deal.

Continue reading "The biggest bigots are the buggers who blame bigotry" »

The interwebs are a cesspit of bigotry, bullying and racism, hate and snuff porn, and all things dark and evil, right?

Right. But, being a human place, they’re also full of wit and wisdom and things of beauty.

It’s hard to tell who’s winning, but there’s a bloody interesting skirmish going on. Twitter user @lizsinnott tweeted a screenshot from a Facebook page on which a bunch of racist nongs had posted racist rubbish about an ad for indigenous education.

Continue reading "Should we name and shame online racists?" »

White supremacists from around the world are set to descend on Brisbane in April for the Hammered Music Festival. A day of racist fun in the sun, with skinheads sweating into their jackboots and discussing how Hitler was just misunderstood.

It’s entirely legal, although presumably there’ll be a bit of hate speech going on. You’d imagine not too many non-Aryans will turn up and get offended.

We really need a collective noun for white supremacists. A nong of neo-Nazies? A disturbance of skinheads? A brace of racists? What’s your favourite collective noun? Share it, and anything else that’s on your mind here.

This video does not make for happy viewing. It depicts a British Mum, who quite possibly is intoxicated, and her racist rant against just about everyone else in her tram carriage.

The video, taken this weekend, has sparked a nationwide debate about racism and immigration and has reportedly resulted in the woman being arrested. After this year’s London riots, it is hardly the video the English needed the world to see.

London’s Olympic organisers probably won’t be too chuffed either. But mostly, we feel sorry for the kid on her lap. What kind of life can he look forward to?

Driving home last night the ute in front of me – Green P plater – had the following bumper sticker emblazoned across the back panel: If you don’t speak English, don’t dribble shit to me.

Delightful, eh?  As he veered right and I drove on, I looked through the window and gave him a look that said ‘you’re a dickhead’ (but not so much so that he might come beat me up).  My look however, was met with something of a surprise: the guy – a young, beefy tradesman-type was Asian. 

Which frankly, left me a little confused.  Leaving aside the apparent inconsistency of lauding ‘proper’ language on the one hand and berating the dribbling of shit on the other, wasn’t the bumper sticker anti-immigration?  Haven’t Asian migrants to Australia historically borne the brunt of anti-immigration sentiment (only to be replaced relatively recently by refugees and boat people)?  So how could an Asian person be anti-immigration?

Continue reading "Australia’s way of life does not need protecting" »

The first rule of calling a black arsehole a black arsehole is that only another black arsehole can call a black arsehole a black arsehole.

The second rule of calling a black arsehole a black arsehole is that if a white arsehole calls a black arsehole a black arsehole, that white arsehole should be kicked very hard in exactly that location.

In short, Steve Williams, the glorified bouncer who carries other people’s sporting equipment for a living, should be bounced from the golf course for good for his comments about his former boss Tiger Woods in Shanghai last week.

Continue reading "This white arsehole should be blasted out of his bunker" »

You don’t often hear people challenging someone’s claim to be Italian. Or Swedish, or American. Generally you accept what they say even if they don’t have an accent, or a funny surname, or blond hair.

Aboriginality, on the other hand, apparently remains a contested field.

The Federal Court last week decided that high-profile and controversial columnist Andrew Bolt had breached the Racial Discrimination Act in his columns ‘It’s so hip to be black’, and ‘White fellas in the black’, which questioned why nine prominent ‘fair-skinned Aborigines’ identified as Aboriginal.

Continue reading "The politics of race go beyond black and white" »

This is a difficult column to write. It involves a matter of principle which is important to me. It also involves a colleague whose work leaves me cold.

If this were a year 10 debate we would take the gentleman’s option of inserting the obligatory declaration from the French writer Voltaire, the tiredest quote in political philosophy, where we state that we disagree with what Andrew Bolt says but would defend to the death his right to say it, and everyone goes home feeling good about themselves.

I am not inclined to defend Andrew Bolt to the death. Not even close. His columns make me laugh in disbelief or fold up the paper in anger. I am sick of seeing Bolt being held up as if he were a company spokesman. He is no such thing.

Continue reading "Deeply irritating columnist versus seriously flawed law" »

It’s easy to defend free speech when you support a speaker’s views. It’s harder when you oppose them. Now, after the ruling in the Bolt case, free speech champions – even those who dislike and disagree with Andrew Bolt – should be speaking out.

They line up, to the right and to the left, the self-appointed arbiters of political and societal fashion, the media commentariat. From their pulp pulpits they lay down how we ordinary Australians should think. Their words today are the gospels of tomorrow, regurgitated in dozens of accents and emphases throughout workplaces, bars and coffee shops as well and re-broadcast by phone, email and Twitter.

The best known is Alan Jones, motor mouth of the airwaves, syndicated nationally on commercial radio, hard-core conservative. But there are a dozen or two others, in newspapers and on radio and TV, of various political shades. Most of the time, the harsh pronouncements wash us by, grating and irritating in equal measure on either side of public debate. But occasionally they hit the mark, roughly on target: a surge of public opinion forces focused governments to respond to what appears to be the will of the people. 

Continue reading "Bolt case shows need for more free speech, not less" »

Sometimes all you need to turn a bunch of disparate and disgruntled souls into a united angry mob is a slogan.  Well, search no longer, ye of the red-faced rage and the impotently clenched fists.

For someone has indeed provided you with the lightning rod you need – the Tolerance is our Demise website. And it’s not just a website – for like all righteous movements it sells that most passive aggressive of tools, the bumper sticker. Whatever your gripe, your petty bigotry, or indeed your genuine criticism of the current state of politics, tolerance is apparently to blame. And thus, presumably, intolerance the answer.

It’s a broad church, this intolerance one. Everything from taxes to immigration to overseas funding (presumably they mean aid) to political correctness to soft sentencing to the carbon tax and man-made climate change – all of these need a more intolerant approach.

Continue reading "Angry? Confused? Feel like a second-class citizen?" »

This weekend, Qantas was left red-faced when a person responsible for its official Twitter stream, @QantasAirways, tweeted a picture of two black-faced Wallabies supporters at the Bledisloe Cup game in Brisbane.

The picture was said by many to be a racist representation of veteran Wallabies player Radike Samo, who scored a thrilling runaway try in the match. Others said it was a perfectly valid picture of enthusiastic fans.

No matter where you sit on this particular issue, there’s no doubt you can get yourself in hot water on Twitter – whether you do your own Tweets or someone does them for you. Let’s look at a six-pack of Twitter mishaps and see what we can learn.

Continue reading "Six misguided tales of Twitter turning bitter" »

Sometimes you can meet a person and feel blessed. I don’t mean touched by the hand of God. I just mean you feel renewed, restored and pretty sure there’s goodness in the world. And that, in itself, is a blessing.

The man in question is the Reverend Dr Thomas Lane Butts Jr, aged 81, retired pastor of the Uniting Methodist Church in Monroe County, Alabama. His older brother was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The Rev Butts was not.

He battled the Klan for years, but particularly in the 1950s, when Alabama and neighbouring Mississippi were the Klan heartlands. They had always been a presence, but had in recent years been sleeping lightly. Their cause was fully awoken as the Civil Rights movement began its fight in the south.

Continue reading "The KKK kicked Butts, then Butts kicked back" »

I don’t think anyone is that shocked to discover former Carlton president John Elliott is a bigot and no doubt Can of Worms let his comment air because of the publicity, but sadly it seems the sentiment behind his recent racial slur is echoed by a cross-section of Australians.

Some comments on the story included:

“Aussie is OK as an abbreviation, but Abo isn’t? I never knew that Abo was offensive?”, and “Why can’t we use the word ‘abo’ it is just an abbreviation.”

Continue reading "‘Abo’  is not just an abbreviation of ‘Aboriginal’" »

Hot on the heels of its successful documentary about asylum seekers, Go Back to Where You Came From, SBS will soon be broadcasting the sequel.

Entitled Go Back to Suburbia You Stinking Racist Bogan, this innovative program will shatter the myths surrounding low-income Australians in marginal seats and their attitudes towards asylum seekers.

In a ground-breaking journalistic exercise five university-educated reporters who live in the inner city will be given a packed lunch and a GPS and deployed to suburbs such as Penrith, Frankston, Logan, Rockingham and Salisbury, where they will meet “real people” and get “the real stories” behind the brick veneers.

Continue reading "Next up: Go back to suburbia you stinking racist bogan" »

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit. One of the most stupid things I’ve ever done was to tell my boss exactly what I thought – after a bottle or three of shiraz. Was I obnoxious, insulting, and unprofessional? Undoubtedly. Did I mean what I said? Well, yeah, I did.

That twee-moustachioed, pint-sized fashion designer, John Galliano, has blamed drugs and booze for a 45 minute tirade in which he maintains a barely controlled wobble while declaring his love for Hitler, saying to a couple of chicks he thought were Jewish:

People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f****ng gassed.

Continue reading "ICB: Truth serum - is the veritas in the vino?" »

Memo to the AFL: ban these racist pigs for life. There you go, problem solved. Surely it can’t be that difficult.

This is a serious issue that is very close to my heart. As a victim of racial abuse over many years, I can’t hold my tongue any longer. I have also been in the unfortunate position of being abused while at the footy. My crime? Barracking for my team.

Just when we thought our governing body was getting a grip on these ugly and unintelligent slurs, a couple of ignorant imbeciles, one at an AFL game, the other at the VFL (not for the first time this year mind you) decided it might be a good idea to voice their racist views and sour what was otherwise a couple of great games.

Continue reading "Banish all racists from the AFL. For life." »

So, apparently we Aussies are one of the most tolerant nations in the world when it comes to migrants and ethnic minorities. That’s according to the OECD’s latest Society At A Glance.

Pardon me, but it’s been hard to tell lately.

The barrage of bigotry that has passed for public discourse on multiculturalism, asylum seekers, Islam and pretty much any issue touching on brown-skinned newcomers has been exhausting and depressing.

Continue reading "Today’s ‘threat’ is tomorrow’s model citizen" »

ANZAC Day is a day for commemoration and celebration of Australian identity, so long as we remember the gays and the Muslims were never a part of this.

Anzac Day has become much more than a day of commemorating a military campaign; it has become a national focal point through which we locate what it means to be “Australian.” While the notion of “Australian values” raises disparate and often romantic ideas of mateship, courage and loyalty, it is sometimes insidiously mobilised to express prejudices.

Jim Wallace, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, made this point painfully clear when he lamented over Twitter  “that as we remember servicemen and women we remember [the] Australia they fought for - wasn’t gay marriage & Islamic!”

Continue reading "Christian lobby chief violates the true Anzac spirit" »

Are you feeling offended? Put out? Insulted? You’re not alone.

He Who Almost Always Offends, Andrew Bolt, offended some people a while back. Then their lawyer offended him. Then one of the offended turned around and offended a third party, who offended her right back. Youch.

Surely it’s time to start building some bridges – of the reconciliatory, conciliatory, and the ‘get over it’ kind.

Continue reading "Does this offend you, yeah? Probably." »

“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”

“Ragheads’‘, “dune coons’‘, “sand niggaz’’ and “smelly locals’‘. Last night we were exposed to ADF soldiers with experience in Afghanistan acting in prejudicial, discriminatory, racist ways. That is what we call it in the civilian world.

A group of soldiers, some who have served overseas in contemporary conflicts, and apparently some who are serving, have allegedly posted their discontent on the social networking site Facebook. They have expressed their disdain, their hatred of the Afghanis, their racist and pejorative perspective of those they are charged to ‘liberate’ and their insubordination to their boss, Lieutenant General Gillespie.

Continue reading "Soldiers’ comments racist, disgusting, embarrassing" »

It’s hardly surprising that Johnny Lee Clary’s Australian tour has caused a stir. It’s not every day you get a former KKK Imperial Wizard dropping in and warning us that we’ve got problems with racism.

Here’s the story - where he says racism in Australia is reaching the fever pitch he saw in the Deep South- in case you missed it.

The story was light on details, so I called Reverend Elder Clary to see what he’s on about.

Continue reading "Australians are not racist, but…" »

I have just returned from spending five weeks in India. The purpose of the trip was to deliver a number of papers and lectures, attending various conferences including the Indian Association for the Study of Australia – a three-day conference looking at the cultural interactions between the two nations.

Leading up to the World Cup, there were obviously discussions about cricket, but the history is a lot more complicated than that, as our nations are intertwined in ways that most of us are ignorant of.

For example, Professor Deb Narayan Bandyopadhyay is researching the way our two countries collaborated during the World Fair in the nineteenth century. Researcher Amit Ranjan presented a personal account of his research into the grave of Australian Alice Garden who died of cholera in Calcutta in 1882: Why was she there? What kind of interactions did she represent?

Another issue that is often raised is the experience of Indian students in Australia - not only the attacks of last year, but the more general encounters between Australians and Indians. In the context of a history that includes the mistreatment of indigenous Australians and the infamous ‘White Australia Policy’, I am asked: ‘Is Australia a racist country?’

Continue reading "We’re only as racist as our pollies make us out to be" »

This is not an anti-Eddie piece. Nice guy, by all accounts. It’s not an anti-Melbourne piece either. Nice city, by all accounts too. Very liveable and all that.

This isn’t even a piece written in outrage against Eddie McGuire’s cheap, nasty “land of the felafel” slur against people of Arabic origin in Western Sydney, the sharpest rebuke of which was by young freelance blogger Antoun Issa.

Despite that slur, and the national backlash, and Eddie’s embarrassing half-arsed apology, the fact is most people outside of Melbourne couldn’t give a toss about what Eddie says or thinks about anything. That’s what this piece is about.

Continue reading "He’s Eddie Everywhere but he’s not Eddie Everyone" »

Andrew McLeod, addressing the United Nations last week, argued that the AFL must address racism in football, citing their laws that prevent insults and threats on the basis of a person’s race.

His address, on Australia Day, coincided with hundreds of speeches around the country assuring those taking up Australian citizenship that the nation’s racial vilification laws prevented discrimination against them on the basis of their race.

Race is also emerging as a hot topic in the controversy about a referendum on indigenous recognition in the constitution. Options for change are already citing “people of any race,” “racial groups” and “all racial backgrounds” and the race power contained in section 51 (xxvi) (1).

Continue reading "Science shows we should get rid of ‘race’" »

Around this time last year, a bouncer at a Brisbane nightclub was furious - he’d lost his favourite shirt.

As I dug through my wallet to find my driver’s licence and mentally rehearsed my usual lie (“How many have you had?” – “Just a couple”), he told me he had sifted through every drawer and looked under every seat in his Commodore.

“Oh yeah it’s always the last place you look or something,” I mumbled as I pulled out a Target gift card.

Then he dropped this little pearl: “Yeah it’s pissing me off ‘cause it’s almost Aussie Day and I won’t be able to tell ‘em ‘we grew here, you flew here’.”

Continue reading "Grew here, flew here… what matters is what you DO here" »

The Korean War stopped for practical purposes in 1953, but technically, it never ended.

This is a matter of theory for most people around the world, but clearly for the North Korean leadership – and many of its brainwashed people – it’s a brutal reality.

This week’s shelling by North Korea of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong was just the latest illustration of this attitude.

Continue reading "The Korean War never ended" »

Some people really just shouldn’t open their mouths in public - a woman called Emanuela D’Annibale is one of them.

D’Annibale was trying to fix a major PR problem she’d created for the brilliant new Generation One initiative to increase indigenous employment, when she managed to make things oh so much worse.

She told this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald that the reason she hadn’t hired a young indigenous woman she thought was too white to represent Generation One was because “I wouldn’t have picked her for Aboriginal at all ... to me she looked like an Aussie girl.” As opposed to all those un-Aussie indigenous women I suppose.

Continue reading "To fight institutional racism, start with the idiots" »

Earlier this year a mate and I drove 300km across North Carolina to have a pork sandwich. The town of Lexington is the capital of what our American friends call “barbecue” –slow-cooked, shredded pork shoulder served with a vinegary chilli sauce and coleslaw. You can feel your heart slowing down as you eat it and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Heading west from Lexington, towards the hillbilly heartland of the Appalachian Mountains, we saw a huge billboard on the side of one of the backroads.

It said: “You are now entering Klan Country” and bore the swastika-inspired logo of the Ku Klux Klan and a huge Confederate Flag.

Continue reading "Freedom of speech extends to the vulgar, vacuous and vile" »

This mural has appeared in the trendy Sydney suburb of Newtown.

It was painted by the owner of the property, shop owner Sergio Redegalli who also, apparently, has a ban-the-burqa bumper sticker.

Locals have complained and council officials have visited the owner to talk to him about removing but have said in a statement that legally their hands are tied. There’s a pretty simple freedom of speech issue at play here: should it be painted over?

Continue reading "The burqa mural: should it be painted over?" »

Three weeks ago, in a small town on the NSW coast, a man and his mate were both stabbed during a brawl.

The man died.

That brutal act sparked a family feud. The small, tight-knit community, sodden with anger and grief, was then faced with the violent fallout. Chaos reigned. Up to 50 people took to the streets, wielding weapons and venting their fury on cars, houses, people. For two days they raged.

Continue reading "The 100 desperate people Australia forgot" »

One in four Australians experiences some form of racism. (“The People of Australia”, AMAC, April 2010).

83% of Australians agree that there is racial prejudice in Australia (“Challenging Racism, The anti-racism research project”, Prof Kevin Dunn et al, October 2008).

In his discussion of different kinds of racism, Prof. Kevin Dunn includes amongst them that which protects “privilege” usually as perceived by the White establishment.  The “quality of life” arguments of the current political debates around population are dangerously close to the privilege arguments of racism.  Words such as conformity to “Australian” ways of life are being aired bravely.  As Dunn points out, assimilationist positions are inherently anti-multicultural.

Continue reading "No holds barred for racism in Australian politics" »

Andrew Bolt, the man all lefties love to hate, has really done it this time.

Bolt’s a great opinion columnist. He is well researched, eloquent, and knows exactly which buttons to push to whip up indignation and outrage. That’s his job, and he’s bloody good at it.

But his latest effort treads a dangerous line. It fuels racist thinking. Even more than usual.

Continue reading "Sorry Andrew, you’ve bolted headlong into racism now" »

Tory is very quick to use the “racist” slur to disguise her lack of argument and of comprehension. It’s a dead giveaway these days.

But there is an even more telling sign that she is totally unable to refute, let alone understand, my argument.

It’s that rather than deal with what I actually wrote, she imputes to me sentiments I do not share and arguments I have never made.

Continue reading "Sorry Tory, you should try reading what I actually wrote" »

Another day, another tape exposing Mel Gibson as a wretch. In the latest recording his ex-girlfriend asks him what kind of man hits a woman with a child in her hands, “breaking her teeth twice in the face”. Gibson shouts back: “Oh, you’re all angry now? You know what, you f—king deserved it.”

Troubled artists are hardly a modern phenomenon but the ways in which their darker sides get exposed certainly are. Their worst character traits are amplified by “Hollywood enablement”, the destructive modern culture of the Thirty Mile Zone that allows stars to believe they can behave as they wish, supported as they are by coteries of flunkies and yea-sayers instead of actual friends. By the time this behaviour takes hold - as in the case of Gibson but also arguably in that of the much younger Lindsay Lohan - they have no fear of failure any more because their success is already secure.

In the best piece I’ve read on the affair since the first tape emerged, Tina Brown at The Daily Beast outlines how it makes a devastatingly strong case for celebrity leaks. She calls it a “high watermark in celebrity outing”, arguing the most unsettling aspect is not his racism - of which much has been made over his use of a particular word - but his vile misogyny. Amen to that.

Continue reading "Mad Mel Gibson and the stars we have to hate" »

Some people dismiss political correctness too easily.

Political correctness, when we are protesting a person being demeaned publicly, is simply about insisting that people pay due respect to others. At one level, it is about insisting on civility. At a deeper level, it is about upholding fundamental values about what it means to be human and to have dignity.

I know that many Australians, and especially in my experience of sports clubs, many Australian men, think that racist comments aren’t racist – they’re just funny.

Continue reading "Racist remarks betray a lack of simple respect" »

Timana Tahu should be incredibly proud of himself and his family incredibly proud of him.

Not many people are prepared to put their money where there mouth is on issues of discrimination, and the impact of a player of Tahu’s stature taking the stand he has might mean something in the NRL actually changes.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if a player such as Tahu took a similar stand when instead of calling someone a “black c***”, like Andrew Johns did, a senior figure in the League calls someone a “dumb slut”?

Continue reading "Bravo for dealing with racism, now for sexism" »

In a startling and unprovoked piece of scapegoating, rugby league suit Geoff Carr telephoned Qld Origin star Greg Inglis this weekend to apologise “on behalf of the game” for the Andrew Johns racial slur

But the game itself has lashed back at Mr Carr for implicating it in the latest Johns brothers misdemeanour.

“Nope. Nuh-uh. No way known should anyone have apologised on my behalf,” the 13-a-side code told this website this week.

Continue reading "Rugby league responds: I’m not racist" »

You can’t blame Pauline Hanson for stipulating that her Brisbane home not be sold to a Muslim. Just imagine what they would get up to in there. All those lovely Heuga carpet squares covered with prayer mats, the fridge stripped of ham steaks and pineapple rings to make way for so-called “halal” tucker, the Hills Hoist replaced with a minaret, the Commodore with a WRX.

The concrete Aborigine, gone. And possibly even the installation of a complex network of underground caves from which Jihad – or “holy war” - can be launched on the people of Coleyville in the first step towards establishing an Islamic caliphate running from Caloundra to Surfers Paradise.

Hanson’s latest spray is consistent with her past efforts in that it is both unworkable and irrational.

Continue reading "Happily swamped by dinki-di Asian Australians" »

Lefties and other decent folk are wetting their pants at the prospect of that beacon of excellence Barack Obama and his telegenic family visiting our shores next month.

Since coming onto the public radar, Obama has achieved pop-star status as the great hope for our shared dreams of equality.

But is this really what he represents?

Continue reading "If minorities want equality, don’t look at the Obamas" »

Everyone looks at my neck and thinks I’m a red-necked Indian-bashing racist.

The day before Australia Day, I caught the bus to work. Sitting up the back, sweltering in the heat and breathing in the sweat of the others condemned to the ride, I was tapped on the shoulder. The man behind me, breath heavy with booze, declared me a “sister of the Australian cause”. 

Confused and a little scared, I tried to ignore him. But the curious journo in me won out, and I asked him what he was talking about. Beaming and red-faced, he pointed to my neck, and THAT tattoo.

Continue reading "My Southern Cross tattoo now brands me as a racist" »

I’m sitting in my lounge room looking at the swag of contemporary political philosophy books I own, simmering with resentment at the noise the uneducated wogs downstairs are making.

My family moved to Balmain when I was a teenager and until recently I’ve mainly lived in the Inner West of Sydney. I tried the Eastern Suburbs for a while but decided it was too cashed up and pretentious for my left-wing sensibilities. So I stayed close to Glebe and Newtown, went on the right marches, studied the right subjects at uni, and voted for the right political party.

But a couple of years ago my boyfriend and I found ourselves priced out of the inner city rental market - a direct consequence, I told myself, of my lack of materialism and desire to pursue a modest creative life.

Continue reading "How I became a nasty little racist" »

As we head towards yet another Australia Day, a lot is being raised and debated about how we see ourselves as a nation, as a people, and as a part of a global community. Tensions have arisen of late regarding topics of border security and the safety of foreigners on our shores.

But perhaps, most intriguingly, as an aside to these debates, there has been a strong suggestion that the Bogan identity, which has plagued Australians for decades, is no longer being worn as a badge of honour, but rather, and rightfully, as one of shame.

Could we finally be seeing the end to our redneck wonderland? Are Australians favouring intellect over yobbism, manners over crassness, compassion over blind patriotism? When articulated in these straightforward binaries, one can only wonder - why it has taken so long?

Continue reading "Alas poor bogan I knew him well" »

We should cut the coppers some slack as they grapple with the public handling of the attacks on Indian students in Melbourne.

Policing has long been a closed culture. Less than a generation ago the only way police reporters could get stories was to spend months or even years hanging around the Police Club, drinking with detectives and slowly building enough trust to get the inside running on big stories. These days, whenever a cat gets stuck up a tree there’s an expectation that an all-in press conference will follow within the hour to discuss its breed, name, and how the pesky little varmint got up there in the first place. 

There is no point in police complaining about this. It’s a reflection of the public’s legitimate conviction that information should flow freely from every arm of government. People have a right to know what is happening in their community and, these days, it is the job of the police to tell them.

Continue reading "Police credibility decamps in a northerly direction" »

DAVID Penberthy is spot on with his piece on Australia Day - and I’m not saying that because I’m some boss-schmoozing suck up or because I’m protecting some fat paycheck (I’m seriously not).

The day’s been bastardised by bogans and for a while now has been descending into a celebration of banal racism.

But Penbo does not go far enough when he says we need to transform the day into a celebration of belonging to this country.

Continue reading "Our national flag has been highjacked by hillbillies" »

Amid the so-far unfounded speculation over whether the murder of 21-year-old student Nitin Garg in Melbourne was racially motivated, it’s worth remembering what we do know: a brutal killer is at large in Melbourne.

According to his housemates who spoke to a doctor at the hospital hours after their friend was killed last weekend, the young man was slashed from the abdomen up to the heart.

“Whoever did this knows how to kill,” Sandeep Sandeep, who lived with Garg, told The Age.

Continue reading "Crying wolf on racism" »

What really defines these three aspects of our society: Its race or colour? Peace or violence? Street crime or racial crime?

You might have thought that race, peace and street crime are more commonly seen in our society. People generally do. But take a second to think about your answers. 

To my mind, every person who lives in Australia should be given a ‘fair go’, an ideal that many Australians aim to hold. Australia was built by immigrants, and the influence of immigrants stretches broadly throughout society.

Continue reading "We need to face up to the reality of race based crime" »

Yesterday The Punch went to Footscray in Melbourne’s West to talk to its people about crime and racism following the stabbing death of a young Indian student in their suburb.

Footscray is not a particularly nice place. That’s not to say it’s a bad place, but there’s a reason the yuppies in the “run rabbit run” Melbourne tourism ads didn’t play hide and seek around Footscray station.

Footscray is the kind of suburb that is pretty typical of outer urban suburbs throughout the world: a working class suburb close enough to the city that becomes a cheap base for brand new arrivals to live and set up shop. The suburb’s density and multicultural population means it often described in terms like “cultural melting pot” by people who see it as a great source of authentic Pho soup.
It’s also the suburb where 21-year-old Nitin Garg was stabbed to death on his way to work at the local Hungry Jacks.

Continue reading "Talking crime, violence and racism with Footscray" »

Recently on ABC’s Q&A panellist Todd Sampson (from The Gruen Transfer and CEO of ad agency Leo Burnett) insisted that if we do not regard racism as a serious issue in Australia “we have stuffed our heads up our butts”.

Not only are such proclamations damaging to our national spirit, they are fundamentally false. If anything, the opposite is true.

Try this experiment - something I’ve done consistently over the past decade - ask Australians from a minority background what racism they have experienced.

Continue reading "We’re not as racist as people think" »

Imagine our disgust the other night when we went to the Marconi Italian Club only to discover the joint has been overrun by wogs.

“Table for four, signore?” the lippy waiter asked incomprehensibly, so I shot back: “Don’t signore me champ, this is Australia and I didn’t come here to be insulted with your jibber-jabber.”

Speaking slowly and a little bit more loudly to help him understand, I explained that all we wanted was a quick tea - nuggets and chips for the kids, a steak for me and a bowl of spaghetti bolognese for my lady wife.

Continue reading "Speak English and just bring us the damned gelati" »

The Sydney broadcaster, Alan Jones, interviewed me recently on his morning radio program. During a conversation about my contention that we should have a national discussion about our future population, Jones asked me about Muslim immigration to Australia. Let me quote from the transcript:

Jones: ….you’re saying that any migration program should be in the national interest. You further say that, basically, in all of these issues we should be taking the public with us. Right, should we therefore be worried about the growth of the Muslim population just as people are concerned in Europe, you’re not allowed to talk about this?

Andrews: Well firstly I think you should be able to talk about it Alan. It is ridiculous if you can’t talk about any subject and in fact what happens when a subject becomes politically incorrect to talk about, then it ends up with a backlash. I think part of the Hanson movement, back in the early 1990s, was because some subjects were simply said to be off the table, they couldn’t be discussed and a lot of Australians wanted to discuss them.

Continue reading "This isn’t racism, it’s called democracy" »

Twenty years ago myself and five friends painted our faces black and performed the Jackson Jive skit on Hey Hey It’s Saturday to great acclaim.

Two nights ago we did exactly the same skit and we’ve been pilloried for it.

It’s no defence to say that we didn’t think it wouldn’t have caused offence, because we’re all grown men now, not uni students, and we should have known better.

Continue reading "Hey Hey’s Jackson Jive explain: why we did it" »

7.30pm That’s a wrap. The online polls from news.com.au and other sites today show decisively that most people didn’t find the Jackson Jive skit offensive. You can follow how the reaction unfolded in the post below.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think it should have aired. It was one of the most offensively racist things I’ve seen on television in years. But there wasn’t any malice in it. The doctors seem like good blokes. Going blackface was a mistake.

6.33pm: Blast from the past but he’s still around - Australia’s original blackface artist Louis Beers, also known as King Billy Cokebottle, is still around. His rather rudimentary website is here (may offend).

6.21pm Global report Associated Press has filed an extensive story from its Adelaide bureau. It zeros in on the fact that the performers were in blackface, explaining:

Continue reading "How reaction to the Jackson Jive skit unfolded" »

Have we grown up as a nation at all in the past 20 years? There’s never been an event more perfectly designed to answer that question than last night’s Hey Hey it’s Saturday reunion special.

The Jackson Jive skit that sent Australian conversations into melt-down from about 10.30 last night is like a smelly time capsule that’s been opened up, in front of 2.6 million of us, and a guest no less.

And in case there was any doubt about it, the guest’s face immediately give away what a stinker it was. The Hey Hey reunion specials should now be put reburied for good.

Continue reading "Hey Hey BOOM!" »

Update 11.30am: Click here for the latest reaction on this story from Australia and around the world.

Update 10.50pm: Daryl Somers just apologised to Harry Connick for the skit. Connick said if he’d known it was going to be on he would never have agreed to be a part of the show.

Harry Connick looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him tonight when as a judge on Red Faces on the Hey Hey it’s Saturday reunion he was confronted with a troop of black and white minstrels taking the piss out of the Jackson Five.

The American crooner, possibly sensing a backlash back home, gave the Jackson Jive act a big fat zero, and said if the show was on air in the US it would be off air again immediately, “Hey Hey No Show”.

The Jackson Jive, complete with cheap afro wigs and boot polished faces had been on Red Faces 20 years ago. The joke might have been funny then, but have things changed?

Continue reading "Did Hey Hey undo all its good work in two minutes?" »

Has anyone else noticed there was something missing from the reaction to last week’s failed terrorism plot to stage a Last Stand at Holsworthy?

I pricked up my ears and sniffed the air but try as I might I could no longer detect a dog whistle, that barely audible call to channel justified fear into something altogether more ugly.

In a sign that the Howard era is finally over, both the Prime Minister and the besieged Opposition Leader exhibited a fundamental decency in playing the men and not the race.

Continue reading "Down boy - no more whistling to tune of terror" »

Violence against Indians in Australia is now so out of control that Indians have started attacking each other.

Not that you would know this from reading the hysterical coverage in the Indian press, because the latest case has been deliberately shorn of one key fact so that the white clique which runs this country can be held to account for an Indian bloke beating up an Indian woman journalist.

The ABC did a very thorough job on its AM program this morning documenting the extent to which sections of the Indian media has gone to maintain this beat-up about being beaten up.

Continue reading "Now even Indians are attacking Indians" »

Ed’s note: Stephen is the BBC reporter who asked former Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo whether Australians are racist. Here he explains why he asked the question.

G’day, mate! Strewth. Did you hear what Kevin said about that Mexican and his amigos. Gave it to him straight, cobber, like a true blue Aussie. Senor Sol won’t be going walkabout near our billabong any time soon.

Offensive, isn’t it? And it’s offensive because it’s patronising. It’s a tired cliché that portrays Australians falsely as hicks and provincials and so distorts and devalues a modern country.

Which is presumably exactly what all those sombreros and cheap Mexican tunes and words like “adios” were meant to do. Rather than take Sol Trujillo on his merits, it was his background that was the salient point about him.

Continue reading "Is Australia too immature to examine its racism?" »

From the Chk Chk Boom girl to the anti-Indian ratbags in Melbourne, Australians are racist. I’ve come to this conclusion not because I’ve got three university degrees but because I’ve spent the past four decades being asked if I’m a curry-muncher.

Not in a rude or insulting or abusive way, well, generally not. But in that genial, good-natured, piss-takey Australian way.

Which is still racist, and which explains why so many foreigners – to use a popular and racist Australian term for non-Australians – regard us as such.

Continue reading "Are we racists? Chk Chk Chk boom we’re racists" »

Update: The Times of India is running this as its second lead story, after the Air France crash, under the headline “Australian police punch, stomp on peaceful protestors”. It also reports local travel agents saying people are cancelling planned holidays to Australia. Screenshots below.

You’d hope that only time you’d see this photo would be in, oh, 2017 when Rudd’s been in power far too long, and half a dozen students who think he doesn’t stand for their generation stage a tired protest ahead of a campus visit where the PM is due to declare victory in the education revolution.

But no. It was New Delhi. Yesterday.

This doesn’t need to be a long recap of the alleged racist attacks on Indians in Melbourne. You can read about it here and here. I’ve included some links to how the Indian press is reporting it.

But I think the comments below might be a good place to voice condemnation of any race-related violence against Indians or anyone else. Over to you…

Continue reading "This race row with India is getting out of hand" »

Two Fridays ago we were all blissfully unaware of the impending doom about to be unleashed by those damn Mexicans and their unusual domestic arrangements with pigs. By Monday April 27 we were in the brace position – suspiciously eyeing anyone who appeared to be of Latin origin – and being warned not to cause a run on the national supply of Tamiflu.

By midnight that night all pilots in charge of flights coming from affected countries were ordered to report any passengers with flu-like symptoms, while TV news bulletins led with the installation of thermal imaging scanners at the airports. The NSW Government rushed through emergency powers to detain people with suspected cases in their homes. But swine flu jokes were already rampant as the death toll from suspected cases in Mexico climbed to the low hundreds.

Then the unthinkable happened – a 23-month-old became the first person to die of suspected H1N1 in the United States. The UNITED STATES!

Continue reading "The racism in our response to the swine flu outbreak" »