The Howard Legacy

For those who haven't heard of this book yet, I recommend picking up a copy of The Howard Legacy: Displacement of Traditional Australia from the Professional and Managerial Classes by Dr. Peter Wilkinson (you can read a review here).

Below is an extract from the book:

In 1994 the acerbic Lee Kuan Yew, then Prime Minister of Singapore, forecast that Australians were destined to be the poor white trash of Asia. Today one can say that white Australians are destined to be the poor trash of Australia.

What is the enduring contribution that Prime Minister John Howard’s regime has made to the future of Australia?

The scope and nature of taxation, industrial relations and so on can be changed, all in the space of a few years. There is one change that can not be reversed in less than many generations. That is demographic change.

This book is about the impact of the Coalition’s selective immigration policies. In selecting skilled immigrants, those who have done a degree in Australia receive bonus points in the criteria for acceptance for residency. In effect the policy selects those Asians who have higher cognitive ability, predominantly ethnic Chinese. In the ‘knowledge economy’ of today a premium is paid for qualifications and cognitive ability. They and their children (who will inherit their higher intelligence) will fill the professional and managerial ranks in Australia. They will dominate the cognitive class and hence have disproportionate influence in the country. This has important ramifications for both internal and external policies as ethnic demographic change continues.

The Chinese have been described as the Jews of Asia, but they are more than that. Throughout SE Asia and Oceania they are overwhelmingly dominant in the commercial and financial fields, less successful in the professional fields, because there is often discrimination to offset their superior performance in examinations. They form the ‘market dominant minority’, a term used by Amy Chua (Chapter 7). In this book the term ‘economy dominant minority’ is used to describe the equivalent in advanced knowledge economies. In such nations, and in underdeveloped ones where they have the opportunity, the Chinese have moved smoothly into the professions.

Affluent established nations over the centuries have allowed in unskilled manual workers at the expense of the host countries’ own cohort of people who have least economic advantage in terms of skill and/or IQ. Aggressive reaction can occur. In many underdeveloped countries where immigrants, who have above average commercial and cognitive ability, have been introduced, usually by a colonial/commercial power, violent reaction has occurred frequently and continues to do so.

Under John Howard Australia has become the first ethnic European nation to openly invite in distinct ethnic groups to provide the skills required in today’s knowledge economy. The need arises because governments have not been prepared to provide the necessary finance and motivation to sufficiently educate our own children. They have allowed ideologues in the education system to persuade parents and children that achieving certain skill levels does not matter. Recent arrivals are not fooled, they exploit existing Australian human and physical capital at the expense of the long standing Australian families in our schools and universities. The intergenerational transfer which has been an integral part of our society has been denied to many long established families without them realising it.

How has this come about when Prime Minister Howard has been stigmatised as ‘racist’ by the multicultural/left lobbies? There are no reports of groups participating in a ‘grand plan’1 to introduce a dominant ethnic minority. It seems to have happened through the combination of a number of Government policies, at both the Federal and State levels. Maybe the need for Howard to hold on to his own seat is a contributing factor. Significant changes in selective immigration policies happened over the period when Philip Ruddock, another hate figure of the Left over immigration matters, was the Minister responsible for immigration (1996 to 2003). Ruddock consistently opposed having a population plan. It is difficult to believe that Ruddock and the highest levels of DIMA were not aware of the implications described in this book.

Political correctness has meant that these topics are rarely raised2. Silence on the issue occurs because key players such as the universities, and increasingly the schools, are financially locked in. Few staff raise the question because they will be censured or sacked, since cries of discrmination/xenophobia/racism will be raised, leading to the fear that foreign enrolments will fall creating financial disaster for their institution.

After only five years of the selective immigration policies the results are apparent. In the 18 selective schools in NSW, 12 have more than 50% non-English speaking background, one over 90%. At the UNSW, students who are recent arrivals, Asian or Chinese, are 52%, 44% and 35% respectively. With recently announced increasing immigration and higher skilled quotas this disproportionately high over-representation will accelerate throughout the entire education system. It is true that signs of a significant number of Chinese were moving into the cognitive class before the Coalition took office, largely as a result of the Hawke decisions to allow students to stay after the Tiananmen massacre. But now it is a flood.

Australian politics has a set of largely unspoken bipartisan beliefs and policy directions whereby:

• We believe that our own citizens do not have sufficient innate ability to make Australia a prosperous knowledge economy, so we need immigrants of high cognitive ability.

• We can skimp on educating our own children and compensate by bringing in immigrants with the advanced education which is necessary for the knowledge economy.

• Even better, they must pay for that education in Australia, so that the government can cut grants to the universities for educating Australians.

• We are comfortable with letting the children of recently arrived immigrants have unfettered access to our premium schools and universities, displacing children of long standing Australians from the prestige universities and the lucrative professions.

• We are not concerned that universities discriminate against Australian students by lowering the standard for overseas students, who can then apply for a visa on the basis of the conceded pass.

• We are comfortable with introducing an economy dominant ethnic minority at the expense of long established families.

• We are not concerned that the combination of the economy dominant Chinese and increasing trade pressures will place Australia under the influence of super-power China rather than the USA.

The ALP has a policy to further discriminate against Australians. They would not allow them to enter fee-paying courses leading to prestige and lucrative courses, while overseas students would be free to do so and then apply for residency.

These are issues which need to be discussed prior to the election. We are already at a stage where the Chinese community is influencing immigration policy. In the seats of Bennelong (Prime Minister John Howard) and Watson (Shadow Minister for Immigration, Tony Burke) nearly one-fifth claim Chinese ancestry. Indeed, with less than one-third of his constituents speaking English at home, Burke is better styled the ALP Shadow Minister for Immigrants.

The crucial hold that the ethnic Chinese have over Howard in Bennelong means that the Coalition is unlikely to proclaim any changes. Indeed Howard has promised his Chinese constituents more of the same (see Chapter 12). Burke has no option but to remain silent, in keeping with the ALP strategy of bipartisan-ship on major issues leading up to the election. Kevin Rudd spent time in China, is a noted Sinophile, Mandarin speaker. Is Rudd the Manchurian candidate3 to lead us under the Chinese sphere of influence?


The Abandonment Of Intergenerational Transfer And Displacement Of The Traditional Australia.

"If ever there was a migrant success story, the life of 19 year old Tianhong Wu must be it."

So starts an article by education writer Chee Chee Leung in The Age 13 December 2006.

Tianhong Wu had just scored a perfect ENTER and had applied to Monash University to do medicine. As she had just received citizenship, she would be eligible for HECS. She came to Australia from China five years ago and attended Glen Waverley Secondary College (which is a de facto selective high school). Her English was poor on arrival, and her mother is less fluent. There is no mention of the father in the article, but the mother, a computer science teacher in China, works part time in a fashion house and has applied to do a laboratory skills TAFE course next year. She is applying for citizenship. The tone of the article is that by applying language skills tests to prospective migrants we would be denying Australia the benefits of having Tianhong Wu.

Let us look at her story from another perspective.

Taxpayer subsidized places at medical schools are Government limited. Somebody missed out. Since nobody can specifically claim to have missed out, let us construct a picture of a candidate who just missed out.

Jenny Smith is member of a family long established in Australia. Jenny lived in an outer suburb, one where the school facilities are run down, freely admitted by the Victorian Government. Students in schools in these suburbs are disadvantaged in following academic pathways as shown by declining success of such schools in university enrolments4.

The top matriculation teachers had transferred to de facto selective schools like Glen Waverley. Jenny’s parents did not have a tertiary qualification and did not realise the necessity to shift to another school zone. Besides, they had other kids and relocating costs are considerable. At Monash University, at equal ENTER, students from ordinary public schools perform better than those from selective schools (see Chapter 3), so Jenny was innately superior to some of those who made it, but she didn’t get a chance to prove it.

Jenny’s parents (maybe grandparents, and even further back) have dutifully paid their taxes for many decades, funding the considerable capital, human and financial, that has gone into building up the first class institutions such as Glen Waverley and Monash University. Tianhong’s mother has contributed virtually nothing to this during her short stay. Furthermore the medical course, and the TAFE course for her mother, will be part paid for by Jenny’s parents. Tianhong Wu will study medicine at a Group of 8 university, which guarantees her a very comfortable income for life. Her mother will build up very little super and so will be eligible for a pension.

If Tianhong Wu had never come to Australia, her position would have gone to Jenny. Maybe Jenny is committed to the health professions; then she can apply for the lower status, less well paid profession of nursing.

In effect the traditional Australia is being displaced. Their birthright is being handed to the overseas born on a platter. Not one letter published in The Age made this point in response to Leung’s article.

Immigration policy and health care costs in Australia

From The Social Contract:

How Long Is a Public Purse String?

Immigration policy and health care costs in Australia

By Denis McCormack
Volume 14, Number 1 (Fall 2003)

Try this from a bygone era of Aussie public health pragmatism. It's an item from Melbourne's The Age dated 24 August 1896.

"Leprosy in New South Wales: Chinese patients shipped to Hong Kong"

"Arrangements were recently carried out whereby 19 of the 20 Chinese lepers in the Little Bay Lazarette [hospital in Sydney] were shipped on board a vessel, and they are now on their way to Hong Kong... but one of them managed to hide himself and could not be found in time... Everything has been done to make them comfortable... now in [the] charge of an experienced warden... a small sum of money has been given to each so that on their arrival in Hong Kong they will have means to go to their respective districts. It has been ascertained that no trouble will be experienced in landing the lepers in Hong Kong... Some two years ago a leper was deported from Victoria to China at great expense..."

Contrast the above with today's public health/immigration insanity. I'm listening to radio news as I write (6 August 2003) and by coincidence it carries a report of Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock having exercised his lawful but controversial "discretionary powers" to intervene in a "humanitarian" case in favour of allowing an African with AIDS to be reunited with family already in Australia. One could be forgiven for thinking this is just a bit of image softening from a government lashed for and to its tougher border protection policy of recent times, but the facts would suggest a wider set of problems arriving.

"African migrants will double this year with 5206 expected... African refugees will make up 43% of Australia's humanitarian intake."(1)

It's just this sort of no-brainer from a supposedly conservative government that drives reasonable people nuts in this country. We the reasonable majority who read of police services mobilizing against nascent African gangs (2) are supposed to continue supporting the "conservative" Government of John Howard because the Labor Party Opposition tells us that they would be even more "compassionate" on refugee/asylum issues should they take government at the next election. Heads they win, tails we lose, but I digress...

Unraveling immigration's costs to full length, to separate and identify the many strands, to tease them out and run the micrometer over the cascading, inter-twined masses of fibers, is a forensic accounting task which can be accomplished, but only by a willing bureaucracy directed to do so by government at all three levels in a federal, state and local government system.

In 1991, impatient of successive governments ever undertaking such purse string measurement and analysis, Stephen Rimmer, a senior economist knowledgeable on all three levels of administration, wrote a no-nonsense booklet, "The Cost of Multiculturalism" which was briefly reviewed in The Social Contract (vol. II, no. 4, Summer 1992, p.251). Having had an arms-length hand in editing, proof reading and funding the first print run of Rimmer's booklet, I wasn't surprised to see the consternation it attracted from all the usual suspects in the mainstream Australian press and the immigration industry at the time. Happily he was given right of reply in the press, nor did he lose his job.

A point he was at pains to make on page one was the difficulty in cost separation when tracking Federal funding of immigration and multiculturalism once those funds are added to, atomized by, and filtered through:

"Hidden expenditures by other state and local governments... The control of information is designed to minimize public debate and allow governments to hide from the public the economic costs... In addition the indirect costs... including the growth of organized fraud against governments; organized crime; terrorism; declining community health standards and affirmative action policies."

He even touched taboo topics like migrant workplace accident and motor accident insurance fraud. It was a punch-packed 71-page booklet not since bettered, and for the above good reasons laid no claim to be comprehensive. It begs statistical update and reissue for its shock value alone.

Here is what Rimmer had to say on "Community health and the policy of multiculturalism... Measuring the indirect economic costs" pp. 48, 49, 53, 57 about which little has changed:

"For instance, in the 1980s the Federal government assured the Australian community that all migrants and refugees settling in Australia were medically screened prior to migration (Senate Hansard 22 August 1988). However, throughout the 1980s State governments and medical professionals publicly claimed on numerous occasions that such medical screening of immigrants was ineffective.(3)

For example, in 1986 Dr Streeton, Adviser to the Victorian Public Health department, indicated that of the 246 cases of tuberculosis in Victoria, sixty percent were migrants and most had not been effectively screened prior to entering Australia. Professor Boughton, a leading figure in the development of the hepatitis vaccine, claimed in 1988 that approximately 10 percent -- or 4000 -- of Asian migrants who came to Australia each year carried the hepatitis B virus (Daily Telegraph 1988).(4) In addition, the incidence of syphilis had increased dramatically in Australia since the 1960s, when there were tougher health screening procedures for migrants. However, a spokesman for the Minister for Immigration, Mr Holding, said that health screening procedures were considered adequate by the Federal Government (Messina 1988a).

In 1987 the Australian Health and Medical Research Council said that large numbers of immigrants with active cases of leprosy and tuberculosis had passed through Federal Government medical screening tests without their condition being recognized. The Council recommended that the immigrants from high-risk areas be screened prior to reaching Australia by the Federal Government, and evaluated again when they reached Australia. (Sun, 1987). This finding was confirmed by the "Medical Journal of Australia," which expressed alarm about the number of immigrants and refugees entering Australia with infectious diseases (1987).

In 1988 the Victorian Health Minister, Mr White MP, called on the Federal Government to upgrade medical screening of migrants for infectious diseases. He argued that because of the ineffective screening Australia faced the threat of existing and eradicated diseases being reintroduced and Australian children contracting and spreading the diseases further (Messina 1988b). Consequently, large numbers of migrants with infectious diseases such as hepatitis A and B; AIDS; tuberculosis (TB); leprosy; malaria and syphilis are reported by such authorities to have been allowed into Australia over this period.

However, the Federal Government appears to have ignored these pleas, arguing that only a small number of persons with infectious diseases slip through current screens. By 1989, 238 cases of tuberculosis were reported in Victoria and 73 percent of these were migrants. Dr Jonathon Streeton, who co-authored a National Health and Medical Research Council report on TB, indicated that unless effective screening measures were implemented, TB would be spread throughout the community (Australian 1990b). In addition, in 1989 Dr Rouch, Victoria's Chief Health Officer, claimed that 10 migrants from Africa, who had settled in Victoria, had been found to have AIDS shortly after migrating to Australia. He indicated that both the Victorian and NSW State governments had consistently urged the Federal Government to introduce more widespread medical testing and stated that: "Its really high time there was an adequate policy for screening migrants" (Allender 1989).

In 1991, the Medical Journal of Australia again expressed concern about inadequate screening of migrants, who were contributing to the spread of TB. While there was an apparent shortage of statistics available to health researchers, some 225 of the reported 290 cases of TB in NSW in 1986 were migrants. While the United States government was campaigning to eradicate this disease by 2010, negligence by Australian governments had seen cases of the disease increase rapidly to the point where it might become common. The journal stated that: "It would be an indictment of our public health system if a disease of yesteryear, so close to elimination, returned with its resultant human and economic costs" (Canberra Times 1991b). The Medical Journal of Australia was also reported to have found cases of migrants entering Australia with live roundworms as long as 13cm in their bodies. It was claimed that the worm had infected 1.3 billion people worldwide and that immigrants who tested positive were not routinely treated, as it was felt that the parasite did not pose a significant risk (Canberra Times 1991c).

It has to be taken into account that medical screening of migrants, foreign tourists and students will not be effective in all instances, because of the nature of the diseases and the inexperience of many health professionals in identifying the early signs. However, it is also clear that throughout the 1980s the administration by governments of health screening of migrants has been negligent. Australian governments appear to have displayed an arrogant disregard for the health of current and future generations of Australians, regardless of ethnic background. The policy of multiculturalism has assisted governments to ignore pleas by health professionals over the last decade to implement effective health screening in the national interest...

While the economic cost of ineffective screening of immigrants are unknown, Mr Paul Gross, Director of the "Institute of Health Economics and Technology Assessment" estimated that in 1987 Hepatitis B, which is far more infectious than AIDS, cost the community over $50 million per year diagnosis and treatment costs and indirect costs such as lost productivity and premature death. The cost per patient was estimated to be more than $22 000 (Romei 1987). Given that approximately four thousand migrants are reported to come to Australia each year with this disease alone, the estimated cost to the community of ineffective health screening for Hepatitis B is $88 million per year, expressed in 1987 dollars. However, the cost of other infectious diseases imported into Australia by legal and illegal immigrants, foreign students and tourists cannot be ascertained. Nor can the cost of Australians infected with such diseases be ascertained. Clearly, a conservative estimate of these costs would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year - the total cost is likely to be several billion dollars higher than the estimate provided here."

It is fair to say that over the last decade or more as increasing numbers of Asian, Sub-continental, and Middle Eastern immigrant doctors have become more established across the Australian medical scene, one sees and hears less of the criticism catalogued by Rimmer above. Can professionally prudent self-censorship in the service of "community harmony and understanding" be more accurately described as institutionalized cowardice leading to abrogation of responsibility and duty of care?

Three years after Rimmer's booklet, The Age of 5 December 1994 carried the article "Migrants more likely on welfare" by Karen Middleton reporting unsurprising but surprisingly-admitted findings of the then Labor Government created and funded pro-immigration think-tank, the Bureau of Immigration and Population Research (now defunct):

"A higher proportion of migrants receive age or invalid pensions, sickness benefits, and the dole than do people born in Australia..."

According to a report in The Australian Doctor, 4 April 1997, "HIC swoops on medicine exports at airports" by Christina Anastasopoulos, a one-day search operation of passengers' luggage run jointly by the Health Insurance Commission, Federal Police, and Customs Officers at Sydney International Airport in November 1996 resulted in 24 people being charged under the National Health Act for attempting to illegally take medicines overseas which had been obtained through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (read public purse):

"All travelers involved were boarding flights bound for the Middle East or South East Asia."

Multiply by number of international airports, times 365 days, by how many years? (5)

Most recently a Melbourne University study of increased welfare dependency over the last twenty years reported in the Australian, 11 July 2003 by Christine Wallace said:

"Most of the increase appears to have occurred after 1989-90 and has been most pronounced among single males, particularly those born outside Australia."

Worry as we should about immigration's day-to-day public health costs, they are minor in the order of things most concerning about immigration. Think about the mass mental health implications for frustrated dwindling white majority societies whose well-founded and well-documented fears about our ongoing multiracial immigration continue to be flatly ignored by their elected governments, decade after decade. To what degree does the generalized repressed frustration and resentment so generated feed into mass subliminal post-modern apathy and political disengagement? Think about rising levels of despair, depression and dysgenic behavior -- conspicuous consumption, substance abuse, below replacement fertility. For too many people who have never considered the culture/history/curricular wars to be their business, life seems naturally disconnected from their past or future. As life's passengers they work, shop, eat, drink, watch TV, party, and too often holiday right on past family and children, trying to be merry today -- for tomorrow, continued bipartisan immigration policy ensures displacement, and eventual replacement by Third World immigration. Although a whole range of demographic and social indicators don't look good at present, these trends need not be terminal -- which reminds me of an alternative title I considered for this article, "Immigration Overdose: When tonic turns toxic, STOP!"

For the hyper-informed readership of activist newsletters and journals such as The Social Contract, the daily deluge of bad news from the mainstream media continues to confirm our worst fears about where immigration is taking us. We sift and clip, copy and fax, post, email, download and quote, discuss, catalogue, file, and otherwise integrate and incorporate the latest details into a broader more intricate mental landscape of related information. Sometimes for we realists, it may all seem a bit daunting or depressing even, but that's only to be expected:

"Indeed some studies have postulated the existence of 'depressive realism,' on the basis of evidence which suggests that depressed people have a more realistic assessment of both their level of control over events and their likely future circumstances than the non-depressed... those who are in a condition of mild depression that tend to see themselves and their world with the least amount of cognitive distortion." (6)

So there you have it -- our well-earned excuse to wallow in the occasional downer. Yet, irrepressibly, we are the types who leap at the letterbox on arrival of the latest edition of expert distillations on our collective predicament. We read in wonderment the detailed mirroring of our local immigration-derived problems reflected from around the world. We observe increasing numbers of journalists who are no longer able to so comprehensively avert their gaze from immigration's multifaceted downside. They signal an awakening that is as yet inchoate as it is general among Europeans worldwide: that Third World mass immigration and multiculturalism are unfolding disasters, only brought into sharper focus and magnified since 9/11. As social capital heads south along with social cohesion in increasingly multiracial "western" countries, collective white survival anxiety must eventually rise as a result. But what of the white masses around the world right now? Do they not fret as we do over the immigration/multiculturalism/demographic bad news stories sprinkled throughout the media? Do they not ponder a dim future for them and theirs? As T.S. Elliot observed in his Four Quartets, "humankind cannot bear very much reality," a concept perhaps reflected by some recent research:

"Humans possess a psychological immune system that allows negative events to fade from memory much faster than positive ones...� Researchers have found the human memory to be heavily biased toward the positive. But far from simply being in denial, the study says our memory systems process pleasant and unpleasant emotions differently. The study to be published in the Review of General Psychology says that the fading of negative memories faster than positive ones should be viewed as a 'healthy coping process.'" (7)

"Perhaps that might be one explanation..." -- so mused Jean Raspail through his narrator (more than once) in The Camp of the Saints when pondering the docility of the "paralyzed west" facing imminent immigration inundation. (8)

Having blacked out for too long under the accelerating G force of immigration-induced social change, more of our opinion makers and leading writers are awakening in white-knuckled fright to an imminent civilizational psycho-sonic boom-crash scenario. With immigration's reality kicking in so rudely and widely, some of print and TV journalism's long-embedded left are turning right. In Britain especially (9) they are stimulating the release of more adrenaline fueled "future fear" into the white English-speaking world than has been pumped into its mainstream organs since Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, along with President Woodrow Wilson, won their unorthodox tag-team TKO at the post-WWI Paris Peace Conference. Against the odds, and at times each other, these two men prevailed to ensure immigration restriction and regulation remained in the domestic policy domain of sovereign nations. They stopped immigration becoming the plaything of internationalist do-gooders in Paris and thereafter at the soon forthcoming League of Nations.

We live in hope. It's only the end of the beginning. The fat lady is merely clearing her throat. There is every chance that eventually she'll be singing our song, in harmony with a growing chorus of those who are now hurriedly rehearsing to make the lyrics their own.

Denis McCormack is Australian correspondent for The Social Contract.

Notes:

1. Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun, 25 May 2003, "African intake to rise."

2. The West Australian, 23 July 2003, "Police plan gang squad." "It will respond to the bloody machete and knife fights between the Asian gangs... the unit will also target the predominantly Lebanese gang the Sword Boys and smaller groups including an African gang with the potential to develop into a powerful..."

3. On the Australian Government website covering immigration health clearances updated to 30 June 2003, all the predictably exculpating caveats are cited including:

"Australia's health requirements are designed to:

a) Minimize public health and safety risks to the Australian community;

b) Contain public expenditure on health and community services including Australian social security benefits, allowances or pensions... No health condition with the exception of tuberculosis automatically precludes the issue of a visa...where signs of earlier infection, however small or old are apparent...you will not be permitted to visit Australia until you have completed recommended treatment and successful re-testing" Needless to say, cases of TB x-ray substitution fraud are not unknown."

4. Australians Against Further Immigration with Graeme Campbell, former Federal MP for Kalgoorlie, expended great effort and attracted much P.C. flack for politicizing the immigration -- Hep B connection as spelled out herein by the medical profession heavy-weights. A Federal Government recommendation for childhood Hep B immunization was eventually declared in May 2000 with little fanfare and no public acknowledgement as to Asian immigration being the driver of the belated recommendation.

5. Cited from an Australia First Media Release by Campbell and McCormack, 6 April 1997.

6. Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Post-modern World by Oliver Bennett, Edinburgh University Press 2001, pp.194-5.

7. Melbourne Age, 10 June 2003 "Bad News? Forget it, we all will."

8. The Camp of the Saints is available from The Social Contract Press.

9. There is next to no daylight between what the top end anti-immigration literature has been saying for fifteen years and the recent anti-immigration writings of widely published British journalists like Anthony Browne, Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchins et al. Sample Anthony Browne in The Spectator, 2 August 2003: "Some truths about immigration" (or "Britain is losing Britain" also by Browne in The Times, 7 August 2002) in which immigration/public health concerns are worked in well with all the usual themes. British tabloids such as The Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, and Daily Mail have been pounding the Blair Government on immigration's downside, including its impact on the National Health Service. For a good summary see Spearhead, September 2003, "The great health scandal" by Rob Smyth. Also a very useful and welcome change has been BBC Radio World Services' frank reportage on immigration. Ethnic demographics, multiculturalism's dilemmas, and mounting asylum problems are now getting something closer to the coverage they deserve on BBC radio which is in stark contrast to their previous studied neglect of these issues.

Original article

Mark Krikorian on skilled immigration

American immigration reform advocate Mark Krikorian, author of The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal, on the problems associated with "skilled" immigration:

Trying to do large-scale skilled immigration would have a number of problems: first, there just aren’t that many Einsteins around. Secondly, almost all of today’s skilled immigrants went to college here — in other words, American taxpayers have massively subsidized their education (as with subway fares and the like, tuition doesn’t come close to covering the cost of education). This subsidy, as Borjas says, is “sufficiently large to outweigh any of the productivity benefits that foreign students presumably impart on the nation.”

Maybe most important, skilled immigration creates its own problems — different from the problems created by unskilled immigration, but conflicts nonetheless with a modern society. Chief among these is assimilation; this sounds odd, since skilled immigrants are obviously more likely to successfully undergo the preliminary kinds of assimilation — learning English, getting a job, and driving on the right side of the road. But “patriotic assimilation” — the growth of a deep emotional attachment to America — is less likely to occur among educated immigrants. This is both because they have the resources to live a trans-national life, flitting back and forth across borders, and because they are likely to have already developed a fully formed national identity before they get here, precisely because they went to elementary and secondary school in the old country.

Full interview

Rudd's immigration program "dumb" and "dangerous"

From the Herald Sun:

Door squeaks as PM peeks

Andrew Bolt
October 08, 2008 12:00am

EVEN on the day it was announced, the Rudd Government's plan to import a million extra people in just three years seemed stupid.

Now, as stock markets melt and shares shrivel, it's positively dangerous.

Question: Why is the Government running the biggest immigration program in our history just as the economy may be careening into a wall?

Why does it plan in its first term to import the equivalent of the population of Adelaide when even Prime Minister Kevin Rudd concedes unemployment is about to climb?

Oh, sorry - you didn't know Rudd had so ramped up immigration?

Don't blame yourself. He never mentioned in his campaign launch last year that he had any such intention.

*snip*

Fact is, almost all the other policies of the federal and state governments leave us totally unprepared to deal with an intake that huge.

For a start, most states have got out of the habit of laying on the essential infrastructure we need for ourselves, let alone for migrants as well.

These are now green times, so they hate building dams. They despise building power stations. They shy at building city freeways. They resent releasing farmland for houses. They even want less irrigation of crops, and not more.

Result? They can't even give those here already enough water. They can't unclog our roads or unjam our trains. They can't make new houses affordable or food cheaper, and soon they'll struggle even to generate enough electricity.

So how are they going to offer land, water, power and transport to more than 500,000 permanent newcomers Rudd hopes to settle here permanently in just three years?

No wonder Premier John Brumby two months ago cried enough on immigration: "I think we are probably at the limits of growth."

Sure, eager-to-please Rudd thought turbo-charging the intake of migrants and temporary workers would please big business.

After all, importing workers thrills companies that want to keep down wages. Importing migrants puts a glint in the eye of house builders and car makers salivating to sell the new arrivals homes and wheels.

But, as the Productivity Commission warned just two years ago, for the rest of us immigration just means more competition and not much gain.

Even with a modest rise in immigration of some 40,000 skilled workers each year, the commission said in Economic Impacts of Migration and Population Growth, "the impact of migration is very small compared with other drivers of per capita income growth".

Britain's House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs this year found the same was true there: "Our general conclusion is that the economic benefits of positive net immigration are small or insignificant."

In fact, thanks to the Rudd Government's manic belief in man-made global warming, a lot of migrants could actually make us a lot worse off.

That's because every new migrant, with his eating, burping, driving, computering and light-switching, adds to the greenhouse gases we pump out - just when the Government is determined to bring an emissions trading scheme in 2010 to make us cut those gases. Or pay.

That means the more migrants we bring in, the more the rest of us will have to cut our own emissions to make up for them and meet the cap the Government eventually sets. So importing migrants is importing carbon pain.

And remember: all this was clear even before our economy started to slide. How much dumber does it seem now to amp up immigration when we could be on the brink of mass lay-offs?

Even Rudd last week conceded: "The global financial crisis is having a greater impact on economies around the world, including in Australia, and that will mean unemployment in Australia could now increase more than forecast earlier in the year."

So the plan is to bring in even more migrants to compete for jobs with Australians who are now losing their own? I don't think so.

But I said Rudd's plan was not just dumb but now dangerous.

Here's why. We may hate to admit it, but we today struggle to assimilate some groups of migrants as well as we once did -- especially those with poor skills and worse English. In NSW, for instance, Lebanese-born citizens are twice more likely as the rest of us to be jailed. In Melbourne, police battle ethnic gangs of African refugees.

So it's important that future immigrants have the background and the skills to fit in, and especially the education they need to land good jobs and make their own way.

But the Rudd Government, crazily enough, has skewed its immigration policies to allow in more poorly skilled immigrants who may not even speak English.

Full article

Australians strangers in their own land

From Immigration Watch Canada:

Strangers In Their Own Land

Tim Murray
May 17, 2007

This bulletin is a synopsis of many major points made in "All For Australia" written in 1984 by Australian Geoffrey Blainey, Professor Of History. The National Trust of Australia has classified Dr. Blainey as an "Australian Living Treasure". His thoughtful and critical observations (primarily social, but also economic and environmental) on Australian immigration policies are particularly relevant for Canada today.


All For Australia

A. Principles

* Every nation has the right to control immigration. Ironically, the Third World countries which some Australians are afraid to "offend" have no hesitation in using this right to retain their present ethnic composition. (P.164)

For the sake of national unity, the typical nation practices discrimination against migrants. Every nation in Asia limits the entry of immigrants from other ethnic groups, especially those ethnic groups that seem to be very different. "A family of Australians, of European descent, would now have faint chance of emigrating, if it so wished, to any Asian land." (P.52)

Sri Lanka "would not allow the typical Australian family to become citizens". The former Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma (now Myanmar) requires an applicant for citizenship "to speak well one of the Burmese languages". Japan requires any of the hundreds of thousands of Koreans who live there "to be financially stable" and to be "judged capable of contributing to Japanese society in order to gain citizenship. Few (Koreans) have become citizens." Papua New Guinea calls for "a knowledge of English and one local language, demands a willingness to contribute to the nation's culture and requires eight years' residence...before a resident can apply for citizenship". Thailand demands that those applying for citizenship should have a regular job, a knowledge of the Thai language, and five consecutive years of residence. Thailand limits to 100 the number of immigrants from any one country.... That is one reason why the Indo-Chinese living in the refugee camps in Thailand have to look elsewhere for a haven." (Pp.52-53)

In the space of half a year (circa 1984), about 40,000 illegal migrants from Bangladesh have settled in Assam in India. The Indians, fearful of heavy immigration, are now planning a long fence along the border at an enormous cost." (P.54)

"Our immigration policy is increasingly based on an appeal to international precepts that our neighbours sensibly refuse to practice. We are surrendering much of our own independence to a phantom opinion (that ethnic composition makes no difference) that floats vaguely in the air and rarely exists on this earth. We should think very carefully about the perils of converting Australia into a giant multicultural laboratory for the assumed benefit of the peoples of the world." (Pp.54-55)

* "The controversy about immigration is a controversy about about who we are and where we are going." "Immigration is everyone's business: it is one of the most important national issues. The idea that it is too dangerous to be debated is a mockery of democracy. It is too important not to debate." (P.164)

* "The present government believes an immigration policy should primarily reflect the truth that all "races" are equal. On the contrary, an immigration policy should not, any more than a trade or tariff policy, be designed primarily to reflect that fact." (P.164) (Note: Blainey's point is that the interests of the majority of Australians come first, not some social experiment which will probably damage those interests.)

* Australia, in normal conditions, should accept its share of genuine refugees, irrespective of which continent they are fleeing from. At present, Australia is taking far more than its share of refugees." (P.165)


B. Asia

* "It is vital that Australia maintain sound relations with Asian nations", but it is simplistic to think that admitting more Asians is "a certain way of improving relations with Asia". A careless Australian immigration policy "can too easily lead to social and ethnic tensions within Australia, thus weakening relations with Asian countries from which immigrants have come." (Pp.165-166)

* "There is little evidence to support the government's view that increasing migration from particular Asian nations will improve our trade with them." (P.166) In fact, Australia's dramatic increase in trade with "China and Japan occurred in years when we admitted only a handful of migrants from East Asia". (P.77)

* Immigration is not the most effective way of giving aid to the nearer parts of Asia. A humanitarian policy should place emphasis on educating engineers, geologists and agricultural scientists for Asia and on supplying new technology and, in a famine, food. It is more humanitarian to supply food for 10 million than to bring in a mere one-hundredth of that number of Asian immigrants." (P.167)

* Our attitude to Asia has oscillated widely. Whereas half a century ago, we saw ourselves as part of Europe, we now say that we are part of Asia, a proposition that is true and false. Our danger today is that we so emphasize the importance of Asia that we forget the importance of Australia." Australia's immigration policy "now gives the tiny Asian portion of the Australian population four out of every ten migrant places". (P.167) Australia's Minister of Immigration, Stewart West, has commented that "the increasing Asianization of Australia" was inevitable". There is nothing inevitable about Australia's future. It has a choice. (Pp.28-30)

* "Australia will have to find ways of impressing on Asia and the rest of the world that much of its territory is arid. ...(and that it) "can support few people". (Pp.167-168) (Note: As of 2007, Australia has suffered from a drought for 7 years.)


C. Recipe For A Sound Policy

* "The ethnic composition of the population--and the particular mixture of nationalities, language and cultures--is a matter of importance to all nations. (P.168)

* "Any rapid alteration in the ethnic composition of the population can lead to strong social tensions and the placing of strong pressure on democratic institutions--unless that rapid alteration has the support of a majority of Australians, especially in the districts most altered by the new migration." (P.168)

* "Every nation relies on a sense of community. That sense of belonging is delicate and can easily be upset by the too rapid entry of peoples who unintentionally challenge the sense of cohesion." (P.169)

* "One lesson of Australian history is that immigration should not be encouraged in times of economic adversity. This (1984) is the first depression in which immigration is not being discouraged, overall. (P.169) "For those arriving from Asia since the start of 1983, the unemployment rate is the remarkable 55 per cent. It is as if Australia is importing unemployment, but not announcing what it is actually doing." (P.74)

* "It is a fallacy to believe that Australia's present difficulty in digesting or welcoming immigrants is a close parallel to that of the 1950's, and will be solved with equal ease. Thirty years ago, there was almost full employment, the public overwhelmingly believed that immigration was vital to Australia's future, and most immigrants came from a cultural background that was similar. All these advantages have ceased." (P.169)

* "The social effects of an unpopular immigration policy are probably far more important than the economic effects. And the social effects are felt mostly by the poor, the unemployed and the people who are tied to the neighbourhood where they live. Whereas the prosperous residents protect their neighbourhood from heavy traffic, factories and high-rise flats by collective action, they are the first to object when other neighbourhoods, faced with an influx from a different culture, quietly protest." (Pp.169-170)

* "An immigration policy is unlikely to succeed if the entire parliament supports it, but millions outside parliament do not support it." (P.170) "In June 1984, only three out of every ten Australians supported the present immigration policy." (P.44) "...our present policy, in its divisiveness, makes greater numbers of Australians feel...like strangers in their own land." (P.125)


D. Multiculturalism

* "The multicultural policy has, at times, tended to emphasize the rights of ethnic minorities at the expense of the majority of Australians, thus unnecessarily encouraging divisions and weakening social cohesion. It has tended to be anti-British, and yet the people from the United Kingdom and Ireland form the dominant class of pre-war immigrants and the largest single group of post-war immigrants." (P.170)

* "Recent governments emphasize the merits of a multicultural society and ignore the dangers. And yet the evidence is clear that many multicultural societies have failed and that the human cost of the failure has been high. Many of our refugees actually come from multicultural societies that are faltering or in disarray." (Pp.170-171)

* "There are dangers in the increasing belief that toleration can simply be imposed on people by a variety of new laws and by a bureaucracy specializing in ethnic affairs, cultural relations and human rights. Unfortunately, the laws and regulatory bodies, introduced in the hope of promoting toleration, can be invoked to attack freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and those principles on which minority rights must, in the last resort, depend. A sensible humane immigration policy is more likely than most of these new agencies and laws--present or proposed--to maintain and foster racial toleration." (P.171)


E. Immediate Reforms:

* The changes in the immigration ideology and policy that took place under the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke governments were attempts to cope with new situations, but it is time to re-examine closely that change in direction, because of the new economic climate and the experience gained in the last decade." (Pp.171-172)

* "There is a strong case for reducing--perhaps halving--immigration while unemployment is so high. (Australia was experiencing its most severe depression in 50 years.--P.23) The reduction should not affect genuine refugees, but should affect the increasing emphasis given to family re-unions. (P.172)

* "There can now be little doubt that (Illegal immigrants) exceed 15,000 a year. (P.152). This matter "should be tackled vigorously. It fosters the fear that we cannot control our own ports and airports and even our own destiny." (P.171) Amnesty is "an official confession of failure, a mockery of the concept of a planned immigration programme, and an incentive for others to arrive, hoping to benefit from a further amnesty." (P.151)

* "The immigration department should produce and present more realistic statistics and forecasts. Confusing and deceiving statistics should be no more acceptable in immigration than in the federal budget." (P.171) Reports that UK interest in migration to Australia had declined were untrue and were deceitfully used to justify high immigration from other areas. (Pp.111-112) In spite of pretences that they were deities impartially dispensing justice, immigration ministers and their departments have deliberately withheld important statistical and demographic information from Australians in order to cloud what they were doing. (Pp.65-66)


NOTE: "All For Australia" was published by Methuen Haynes. Its ISBN number is 0 454 00828 7.

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"Hidden" immigration changing Australia's ethnic makeup

From The Australian:

'Hidden' migrants drive ethnic change

Ean Higgins
May 16, 2008

AUSTRALIA is undergoing an unparalleled movement of people and ethnic change through "hidden immigration", but lacks a comprehensive policy to deal with it, according to an eminent demographer.

Monash University professor Andrew Markus said raw immigration numbers masked the magnitude of a demographic revolution that had produced a population where one in four residents was born overseas.

At 24 per cent, the overseas-born proportion of the population is twice that of the US at 12 per cent, and three times that of England and Wales at 8 per cent, where racial tensions have flared again.

"Opinion polls in England in July 2007 and March 2008 indicated that immigration and race issues are the main concern of electors," Professor Markus said.

He said that while Australians had been tolerant and migrants committed to their new home, strong political leadership was required to convince the nation of the benefits to all of high immigration to avoid a backlash.

Professor Markus presented his analysis at this week's Australian Davos Connection Future Summit.

"The elements of a policy to promote social cohesion within communities characterised by diversity of language and culture are well known - and difficult to implement," he said. "At present, Australia lacks full clarity of vision, coherence and consistency - while the largest movement of people in the country's history is under way."

Speaking to The Australian yesterday, Professor Markus said that although many Australians regarded the rate of immigration as high, they probably had little idea that the transformation was far bigger than they imagined. The usually quoted "headline" number of permanent arrivals - people successfully applying each year for permanent residency from overseas - rose 67 per cent between 1999 and last year, from 84,000 to 140,000. But Professor Markus said this figure failed to include on-shore "conversions" from foreigners on student or temporary work visas to permanent residence.

That number rose from 15,000 in 1999 to 52,000 last year. Taking those figures into account, the annual increase in new permanent residents nearly doubled over the past nine years, from 99,000 to 192,000.

The number of permanent departures - Australians leaving the country without any immediate intention of return -- doubled from 35,000 in 1999 to 72,000 last year.

Many of those departing were taking highly sought skills to more highly paid jobs overseas, Professor Markus said.

Added to an ageing population, future economic growth would require filling Australia's skills shortage largely from overseas. But the result would accelerate the pace of ethnic change, and because immigration had been skewed towards "magnet" destinations, in some areas the transition would be extraordinary, he said.

"With the uneven distribution of the overseas born, this translates to 34.5 per cent of Sydney's population, 31 per cent of Melbourne's, and over 70 per cent in some urban localities," Professor Markus said.

He proposed several measures towards a national policy to make immigration work.

These included challenging disadvantage in education and employment, tackling institutional discrimination, and a "consistent set of policies to be implemented at the community level to promote inter-cultural understanding, bridge building and participation".

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Australia importing a new overclass

From VDARE.com:

Enter the Dragon: Australia Imports a New Elite

By R. J. Stove
November 26, 2007

As you have probably heard by now, Australia’s general election of November 24 swept from power Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard, who had held the office since 1996. It proved a triumph for his opponent, the Australian Labor Party’s new and largely untested leader Kevin Rudd, who has a 27-seat majority in the federal parliament.

Among the election’s issues: Iraq (to a very limited extent), the economy, tax cuts, national security, climate change, and quasi-generational change (Rudd is a youthful-looking 50 years old, Howard an increasingly tired-looking 68). Almost everything, in fact—except mass immigration, on which both candidates were locked in a bipartisan embrace.

Sound familiar?

Don’t expect the average Australian newspaper editor to notice, let alone to challenge, this state of affairs. There is a reason why VDARE.COM has a disproportionately high number of Australian readers.

But, happily, one Australian noticed it—and not only noticed it but published a whole book devoted to it before the election campaign started.

Peter Wilkinson, editor of the quarterly Independent Australian, brought out The Howard Legacy: Displacement of Traditional Australia from the Professional and Managerial Classes (Independent Australian Publications, Post Office Box 8, Essendon 3040, Victoria, Australia, 2007, 170 pp). A past president of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute , Dr. Wilkinson comprehensively knows whereof he speaks.

The Howard Legacy is entirely unmarred by the crank-pamphlet Gestalt. Its author has concentrated severely upon number-crunching (Steve Sailer will enjoy reading this study). It bears no personal rancor towards the Chinese immigrants whose invasion he chronicles. When a government is foolish enough and short-sighted enough to roll out the welcome mat regardless of the possibilities for long-term assimilation, then, as Dr. Wilkinson says, "Who can blame people for taking advantage of these policies if they can?"

In table after table, diagram after diagram, Dr. Wilkinson explains the trends. Once John Howard first obtained office in 1996, he immediately cut back on immigration from all sources. In the 1995-96 fiscal year 99,139 immigrants were admitted; the annual total fell to 85,732 in 1996-97 and then to 77,327 in 1997-98.

But then it crept up after Howard’s narrow victory in the 1998 election to a postwar peak of 107,366 in 2000-01. Another cutback followed this peak—the totals for 2001-02 and 2002-03 were respectively 88,900 and 93,914 immigrants. But by 2003-04 the total was ballooning again: in 2005-06 we had another postwar peak of 131,593. (A much more detailed statistical breakdown of immigrants’ arrival patterns over the last decade can be found here. [Settler arrivals 1996-97 to 2006-07 Australia States and territories (PDF)])

To give Howard credit, he remained tough on illegal immigration, ever since his deeds in 2001. It was legal immigration that he encouraged and increased to record levels. But his 2001 success meant that his opponent declared his own opposition to illegal immigration, too. [Rudd to turn back boatpeople, By Paul Kelly and Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, November 23, 2007]

Australia is famously "girt by sea," and is a luckier country than the US with no shallow, fordable Rio Grande River for immigrants to cross. Illegal immigrants are thus a minor element in Australian demographics. The real problem will always be those immigrants the Government allows and encourages to immigrate.

Whence come these immigrants?

One thing for which we can be (slightly) grateful: in Australia, the U.S.-style family-reunification racket is no longer the juggernaut it was. Skilled migration has become much more prominent. There are even, mirabile dictu, attempts made to demand from skilled-migration candidates a certain proficiency in English. So far, so good.

But note how theory breaks down against the seemingly irresistible onrush of open-borders practice. Theoretically, as Dr. Wilkinson explains, overseas applicants for university study in Australia need to have passed Band 6 of the International English Language Test System (IELTS), which declares them to be "competent" in the tongue. But if a migrant is already here and wants the so-called Subclass 880 skilled-migrant visa, he need only pass IELTS Band 5. Two-thirds of those migrants who qualify for Subclass 880 are, in fact, stuck at the Band 5 stage. How very reassuring if you are forced to depend on them for preparing your tax return, or removing your brain tumor.

And yes, naturellement, however far behind the eight-ball the ethnic lobbyists might be at actually writing or uttering grammatical English, there is one word which they have perfectly mastered the art of pronouncing, to good careerist effect. That word is, of course, "racist".

Dr. Wilkinson takes us on a guided tour of the giggle-house now euphemistically known in Australia as "university education", with its zeal for handing out degrees to even the most inept foreign students. He quotes the surreptitious—and, necessarily, anonymous—confessions of the academics faced with such students: such as "I give them 51% to get them out of my hair", and "An audit demonstrated that it was almost exclusively international students who appealed against penalties."

The little darlings are impressively gifted in plagiarism also. Encouraged, no doubt, by the plagiarism-mania already flourishing locally at the highest levels, thanks to the likes of David Robinson, former boss of Melbourne’s Monash University, who resigned after the third time he was caught committing plagiarism.

On and on it goes, with a particularly valuable rogues’ gallery of modern Chinese-Australian legislators, few of whom could be trusted on any topic more controversial than tomorrow’s sunrise. Most of them have nuisance value rather than anything more sinister. Some are downright amusing, such as one Peter Wong. Mr. Wong served in New South Wales’ parliament (from the 1999 state election to the 2007 state election) as representative for an anti-Pauline-Hanson operation, only to fall out with the party’s Jewish executive director by denouncing Israel.

The sole gallery member to make a national name for himself has been Melbourne’s mayor John So, subject of a reverential rap ditty called "John So He’s My Bro."

Mr. So’s more or less total inability to speak English, despite having lived in Australia since 1964, is the stuff of Internet legend. It briefly threatened to derail his chances of obtaining the mayoralty, when that office was thrown open to popular election for the first time.

An opposing candidate, Peter Shepperd, bravely raised the matter of Mr. So’s difficulties with the English language. Then, in Dr. Wilkinson’s words, "The dreaded cry of ‘racism’ was raised and Shepperd withdrew from the contest."

Clearly, no one has dared tell Mr. So about Tom Lehrer’s deathless epigram: "If a person can’t communicate, the very least he can do is shut up."

VDARE.COM readers will already have encountered the saga of Australian law professor Andrew Fraser, suspended from Sydney’s Macquarie University after he dared to question the prevailing utopian dreams of multiracialism. These ludicrous proceedings The Howard Legacy discusses at some length.

Dr. Wilkinson makes it clear—without actually saying outright—that the single most tragic element in modern Australian society is not the "racist" culture in which we are supposedly marinated, but rather, our complete lack of a First Amendment or anything like it. The anti-Fraser campaign was, after all, doing nothing more obscure than imitating the success of the lynching bee that 20 years earlier had forced the eminent historian Geoffrey Blainey out of his job.

Dr. Wilkinson’s interests are not confined to the Australian scene. One book to which he repeatedly refers is Amy Chua’s World On Fire, with its first-hand accounts of successful but locally detested Chinese in the Philippines, and its surveys of economically dominant but politically hounded market minorities (whether Chinese or other) elsewhere.

Malaysia has famously addressed the problems resulting from its own Chinese market minority by two methods:

1. mass murder, such as Kuala Lumpur’s May 1969 anti-Chinese rioting, which remains off-limits for public discussion in Malaysia;

2. a racial quota system, which Prime Minister Abdul Razak formulated in 1971 to give preference to Malays in education and bureaucratic employment.

Dr. Wilkinson is not, need one say, advocating such anti-Chinese maneuvers by Australian rulers. But one does wonder how far Australian administrative Caucasophobia has to continue before alienated and marginalized whites start pining for a Malaysian-type solution.

Thus far, The Howard Legacy has been totally ignored by Australia’s predominantly dopey Mainstream Media. Meanwhile, said media are happy enough to report with slavering enthusiasm such fatuous schemes as former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie’s demand that the country’s population be raised from 20 million to 50 million. And no, this is not an official bulletin from the Lyndon LaRouche brigade. This is reality, or what passes in Australia for same. ['We need 50 million Aussies', The Courier-Mail, September 04, 2007]

As for the November 24 election, its outcome combines with Dr. Wilkinson’s text to inspire the hope that the Liberal Party will be euthanized altogether. (Already the Liberal Party has proved unable to control any state or territorial legislature since 2001.)

A good precedent exists for this collapse: the annihilation during the 1940s of the United Australia Party. Since this movement was little more than a shill for Big Business at its stupidest—and had forced from office Sir Robert Menzies, its one leader of stature—there was no point in trying to revive it after it had been clobbered at the 1943 general election .

Instead, Menzies had the insight (even before that election) to start a genuine conservative movement from scratch. The movement which he envisaged—and which, after 1943, he very largely effected—would avoid the UAP’s dim-witted class warfare, and would focus on those whom Menzies himself called "The Forgotten People." In this respect, Pauline Hanson may prove to have been a harbinger.

Merely to read Menzies’ remarks is to realize anew how unthinkable they would be, from any large Australian political organization’s head, today. To find out exactly why they are unthinkable, we need look no further than Dr. Wilkinson’s painstakingly assembled statistics.

R. J. Stove lives in Melbourne and is a Contributing Editor of The American Conservative. The views he expresses are his own.

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