While I am sometimes in less than full agreement with the Age's Catherine Deveny and don't always think her columns are 'good' (unlike many bloggers, I think there's a very clear distinction between those two things), I have just decided that I want her for my new best friend.
That's because I've just caught up with her Wednesday column (my secret Terrist name is Pavlov Bin Busy), in which she expressed the feelings of -- I'm guessing -- about three-quarters of the Australian populace, thus:
You can shove your citizenship test up your poxy date.
Like many others, including -- again -- many bloggers, she then goes on to provide her own citizenship test, and I must say this is the best one I've seen so far. After long consideration I've decided that my favourite question is #1 under 'Customs':
'Macca, Chooka and Wanger are driving to Surfers in their Torana. If they are travelling at 100 km/h while listening to Barnsey, Farnsey and Acca Dacca, how many slabs will each person on average consume between flashing a brown eye and having a slash?'
(Zoe from crazybrave may well be able to answer this correctly, but I don't like anyone else's chances. Those who have had the experiences are unlikely to have been doing the arithmetic.)
Showing posts with label Multiculturalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Multiculturalism. Show all posts
Friday, August 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Prime Minister kills two linguistic birds with one stone
John Howard has always hated the word 'multiculturalism' and has grabbed his chance to erase it from the country's vocabulary:
The PM also announced he would rename the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
Yes, the former Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs -- product of an earlier erasure in which the word 'Indigenous' had been likewise obliterated --- was most recently known by the acronym DIMA (pronounced DIMMER, at least by me). It has been replaced as of today by 'Department of Immigration and Citizenship' and I am quite sure is already being referred to as DIC.
And, as I've said over at LP, I am sure that they will proceed to wave it, along with the flag.
Could this have been a deliberate longterm two-step plan to bid a symbolic good riddance to formal acknowledgement first of Aboriginal people and then of any reference to any culture other than Australia's narrow grey outgrowth of 1950s Anglo-Saxon dreariness, to which the PM has been systematically attempting to return us for eleven years now?
But wait, there's more:
The whole purpose of immigration is to recruit more people to the broader Australian family,'' Mr Howard said.
Oh, that's clever. Propose assimilation, a fundamentally racist policy that has been comprehensively and internationally outdated and discredited, and then dress it up with the 'family' reference, by which, as we all know, the PM means hubby, wife and 2.4 children, in that order. Two bits of reactionary rhetoric in one sentence.
I wonder whether it's all his own work.
The PM also announced he would rename the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
Yes, the former Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs -- product of an earlier erasure in which the word 'Indigenous' had been likewise obliterated --- was most recently known by the acronym DIMA (pronounced DIMMER, at least by me). It has been replaced as of today by 'Department of Immigration and Citizenship' and I am quite sure is already being referred to as DIC.
And, as I've said over at LP, I am sure that they will proceed to wave it, along with the flag.
Could this have been a deliberate longterm two-step plan to bid a symbolic good riddance to formal acknowledgement first of Aboriginal people and then of any reference to any culture other than Australia's narrow grey outgrowth of 1950s Anglo-Saxon dreariness, to which the PM has been systematically attempting to return us for eleven years now?
But wait, there's more:
The whole purpose of immigration is to recruit more people to the broader Australian family,'' Mr Howard said.
Oh, that's clever. Propose assimilation, a fundamentally racist policy that has been comprehensively and internationally outdated and discredited, and then dress it up with the 'family' reference, by which, as we all know, the PM means hubby, wife and 2.4 children, in that order. Two bits of reactionary rhetoric in one sentence.
I wonder whether it's all his own work.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Astonishingly relevant anniversary post
Inspired by ThirdCat's blogiversary post, I looked back at my own archived post for December 14, 2005, and this (see link for the whole article) is what I found :
If it's good enough for him ...
Longtime Fatwa victim Salman Rushdie on the realities and the virtues of multiculturalism:
"This is the question of our time: how does a fractured community of multiple cultures decide what values it must share in order to cohere, and how can it insist on those values even when they clash with some citizens’ traditions and beliefs?
The beginnings of an answer may be found by asking the question the other way around: what does a society owe to its citizens? The French riots demonstrate a stark truth. If people do not feel included in the national idea, their alienation will turn to rage."
If it's good enough for him ...
Longtime Fatwa victim Salman Rushdie on the realities and the virtues of multiculturalism:
"This is the question of our time: how does a fractured community of multiple cultures decide what values it must share in order to cohere, and how can it insist on those values even when they clash with some citizens’ traditions and beliefs?
The beginnings of an answer may be found by asking the question the other way around: what does a society owe to its citizens? The French riots demonstrate a stark truth. If people do not feel included in the national idea, their alienation will turn to rage."
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