11 September

John Howard popularised the ‘assimilationist’ view of immigration. The one that constantly bangs the drum about how migrants have to ‘integrate’ with ‘our way of life’. The problem with this view is, who is ‘our’? For example my father was part of the massive European migration to Australia post-WW2. That wave of migrants changed this country fundamentally. Our ‘way of life’ became something much different. The Australia Howard and his descendants defend had disappeared already before the 1970s. Similarly today, I personally don’t subscribe to many of our new ways of life, particularly those where social media replaces older social structures. I’m more like the dreaded migrant. Howard’s call, and Hanson’s and the modern LNP’s calls today matching it, and now Trump and Farage et al too, is really just a call for the world to be like the one a (very small and getting smaller) sub-group of Australia likes. It’s just one of many ways of being Australian. It’s how all social change works. Lots of people bemoan the loss of ‘great’ music or cars, for example, as new forms emerge. It’s not about the music, or cars, or anything really, it’s about their place in the social status hierarchies of society. Their team. They don’t like no long being the ‘in’ thing. The average Australian from the last census is a 37-year old woman, often (and increasingly) of Indian descent. Not the flag wavers.