Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan had many things to say on Monday about the challenge of migration.
But the last paragraph — where he called some refugees “parasites” — stole the show.
Sure, the overall tone of his piece was alarmist. Eg. “Under the Rudd Government, Australia’s net immigration intake is now larger than Britain’s, even though it has almost three times the population of Australia.”
And that’s before you count New Zealanders, he said.
It wasn’t until the end that he really fired up.
Noting that the Rudd government must explain its immigration processes, Sheehan warned that “thousands of Australian [sic] have paid a heavy price for the failed refugee-vetting processes in the 1970s and 1980s, when thousands of parasites who should never have been allowed into the country were approved [Crikey’s emphasis].”
Sheehan’s “parasites” are now Australians too, but perhaps not the right kind.
Within three hours of being online, the copy had been amended on The SMH website to read: “Thousands of Australian [sic] have paid a heavy price for the failed refugee-vetting processes in the 1970s and 1980s, when many people who should never have been allowed into the country were approved.”
PC balance was restored. (Apparently, the sensibilities of Queenslanders are not quite so delicate — the original version is still up on the Brisbane Times.)
But how had it got through in the first place with its vilifying taint? After all, it would have been subbed and possibly legaled. And just what did Sheehan mean? Could he really be railing against the influx of Vietnamese boat people during the 70s and 80s?
Not at all. It seems he was returning to a favourite topic: Lebanese Muslims (in Sydney).
After civil war broke out in Lebanon, around 14,000 Lebanese Muslims migrated to Australia between 1975 and 1977.
As the the National Archives recount, at this time, “the pace and scale of Lebanese-Muslim migration changed dramatically … Most arrivals continued to be sponsored by existing residents, but many of the usual requirements for entry into Australia (such as health and security checks) were held in abeyance or waived on humanitarian grounds.”
In April, Sheehan was also dishing it out to Tongan “morons” who, because they were violent, are “regrettably, Australian citizens”:
…last Monday a group of violent racists acted out their YouTube fantasies and stormed into Merrylands High School at 8.50am, armed with machetes and baseball bats. They then started to beat the crap out of people.
A week after this rampage, any member of the public interested in this crime could have deduced the alleged perpetrators were Tongan morons. Or perhaps morons who are, regrettably, Australian citizens but portray themselves as “nigga gangstas”.
In the article, titled “White lies about dark crimes”, he referred to Cronulla’s “violent, racist Lebanese Muslim men”.
We couldn’t finish up this week’s Wankley without a special mention to Channel Ten news. The hypocrisy of their story on Nicole Kidman bringing Sunday Rose to Australia was truly impressive.
While detailing Kidman’s privacy concerns for her one-month-old, Ten’s entertainment reporter Angela Bishop went to the frontline, embedding herself with the paps to report on their invasiveness, as the Channel Ten cameras got all the footage.
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Migrants sick of migrants hey?
What a world we live in. Good to see the ‘I am alright thanks Jack’ mentality is cross-cultural.
dear janE, is jane your real name ?///? good…you dont get da point coz we love da foreigner and we love da stranger in dis country but dese days even da mwigwants are sick of mwigwation open ya eyes grasshopper
N. Roberts: Yep. One of the first things I learned in my student protest days was that hell had no fury like a European (usually German or further to the east,) for, in those days, Vietnamese, Greeks or Italians.. Made me wonder about the Germans!
Paul Sheehan; where does that name come from, Ireland? Could at least square his political agenda. It was under the government of John Winston Howard that migration to Australia really took off. That Kevin Rudd will continue on this path is undoubted. God botherers are alway pro- immigration. Personally I don’t give a f*ck where our immigrants come from; it’s just that at our present rate We are multiplying so fast we’ll breed ourselves into extinction. John Brumby; can you read?
It was under the rule of Malcolm Fraser that the citizens of Lebanon flooded into Australia. They had been at
war for yonks, had no place else to go and Fraser told his henchmen not to bother with all the usual checks about health, etc. Having seen the video clips about Crunalla (spelled wrong-but thank Chr*st I’ve never been there, and don’t know how to spell it.) I have since felt that it was the white guys who weren’t Australian.
And, please correct me if I’m wrong Mr Sheehan, Malcolm Fraser led a Liberal/Coalition government.
Amazing. “Opinion columnist for a major Australia newspaper” must be the easiest job in the world. No need for data, for research, for any kind of specialised knowledge at all, just a basic command of the English language and a knack for appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Angels tread …. I’m having a colour blind ‘i’m not a racist but … nothing ‘ kind of existence, nor do I like floury faced Paul very much.
However he is echoing a real phenomenon in Sydney – notwithstanding lead letters by certain ex Democrat Senators who fight the good fight against systemic racism in the Deep North slumming it down here in the Sydney Morning Herald. But what exactly is that thing?
I’ll say it again – hyper levels of immigration are a racket long dreamed of by Big Retail and Big Real Estate – structural desperation of poor folks like systemic unemployment. Take Big Frank Lowy and Big Harry Trigaboff at their word … they both aspire to a 50-100M population country – to hold our own in the big tough world they say patriotically. As immigrants made good way back when, they know a fair bit about it too.
But that’s all 20C mindset. It doesn’t work. It’s dumb. I like my neighbours, barely a pinky amongst them. I think it’s not really about immigration – it’s about over population. I took careful note of Sheehan’s due regard for refugee levels stagnating. In short I think there is ample room for colour blind criticism of hyper immigration. And Pauline is not on my dance card either.