Scott Morrison has introduced into the immigration debate the concept of ‘country shopping’, said in a sneering way, to imply the Falun Gong Ten have no right to be uncertain whether New Zealand or Australia is the better country to live and raise kids in.
He suggests by his tone that country shopping is a bad thing, done by bad people.
But Julia Gillard’s parents were country shoppers. Joe Hockey’s. Tony Abbott’s. Alexander Downer’s. Sophie Mirabella’s. Malcolm Turnbull’s mother. Natasha Stott-Despoja’s father. Ben Chifley’s grandfather. Bob Hawke and Malcolm Fraser and Kim Beazley when they went to Oxford. Kevin Rudd when he went to Scandinavia. Tanya Plibersek’s parents. Nicola Roxon’s grandparents. The German ancestors of Nick Minchin. Mike Rann’s parents, who first thought to go to Rhodesia, and decided instead on New Zealand. Spike Milligan, who migrated from India to South London to Woy Woy. Peter Finch, who migrated from India to Australia to England and then America and became an American citizen. Googie Withers. Richard Pratt. Bob Dyer. Don Lane. The New Zealanders Bruce Spence, Jack Davey, Fred Hollows, Sam Neill and Russell Crowe. The Rhodesians Hugo Weaving and Tony Llewellyn Jones. The Dutchmen Paul Cox and Rolf de Heer. The West Indian Andrew Symonds. Mary Gilmore and all the Australian socialists who went to Patagonia. Henry Lawson’s Norwegian father. Ned Kelly’s mother and father. All the Potato famine Irish who came here. Tom Keneally’s great grandparents. Les Murray’s great grandparents. My Jewish, English, Scottish and Indian great grandparents. My wife’s English and Scottish great-grandparents. All the Jews who went to Israel after World War Two. All the Syrians fleeing to Turkey now. All the Jews who came in the nineteenth and twentieth century to New York. All the Poles who fled to England and fought in the RAF. Albert Einstein. Sigmund Freud. The Jewish parents of Ed Milliband. Winston Churchill’s mother. Robert Hughes who went to America and Clive James and Geoffrey Robertson and Cathy Lette and Germaine Greer and John Pilger and Peter Porter and Keith Michel and Robert Helpmann who went to England to seek and find their fortune and, sometimes, change the world.
What is Scott Morrison talking about?
What is he talking about?
Is he mad?
Does he not know that out of war and civil war and persecution and poverty for these last five thousand years impelled and suffering people have gone country shopping? Like those Moses led out of Egypt, and the Polynesians who came in small boats out of South America to the Pacific islands. Like the Germans who came from the wreckage of the Third Reich to the Barossa Valley, and the Ukrainians who came to the Snowy River.
Against this human tendency, is he? Against this human inevitability? Against this human right?
Will he apologize to all these people please? All these heroes he has libelled?
Will he admit he has talked like a fascist and resign?
Name:
I think everyone but aborigines went country shopping, many against their wills.
Like prisoners, prison guards and stolen child migrants but what would Morrison know.
Scott Morrison is a politician and he’s clever, he says what most Australians want to hear…
I have just read the comments on Sarah Young-Hanson’s blog on ABC and I’m ashamed for living here…
For every Bob Ellis and Marilyn there are twenty Morrisons, or a hundred or more in this country, on any blog;they are here too, Bob.
Are you saying that you prefer Geert Wilders, Helvi?
People are much the same everywhere. Thinking otherwise is what racism is about.
No, I don’t have time for any racist in any country, Australia wasn’t like this before, it was a caring place, what we are reaping now is the result of the bad seed Howard and Hanson were sowing…
I lived in Holland for three years, Dutch girls were happily marrying Turks, Moroccans…
Things might have changed in there too, but then they took in an awful lot of foreigners, Surinames…
There’s Gert in Holland and any minute R1 will come with the miniscule numbers of the True Finns.
I live here and what happens here affects me.
I don’t think it’s true to say it was Howard and Hanson that turned us into racists and that Australia used to be a more caring place. I did my Honors thesis on the history of immiagration policy, and Australia has always sought to keep people out. We’re an island nation with lots of exposed borders, colonised by a people who are “different” to their neighbours. This is always under the surface. It ebbs and flows, very often due to our economic situations, but it is always there. After the war, we needed that post-war labor force but it’snot as if even then we just threw open the doors for all and sundry. Some governments stand up to it but very rarely. More often, they let people in quietly. Who we like and don’t like changes over time. “Boat people” have for a very long time have been a special source of fear in Australia.
How caring are we as a nation? That’s a topic for another discussion. Depends what you see as caring and how closely you look. But I’m well and truly sick of this national myth that we are the land of the fair go, as if fairness and justice is something uniquely Australian.
“…but then they took in a lot of foreigners”. And the foreigners changed things for the worse? That almost sounds racist to me.
Helvi, in my childhood people spoke often, openly, publically and loudly about “Malts, Balts and Wogs”. The antagonism towards Asian migration didn’t change until the early 70s.
The society is far more well informed and tolerant now, in my experience.
I’d agree F.I Kendall that we are generally more informed and tolerant. But those old fears and hangups are still there and despite this and they are the fears that get pandered to on the debates about treatment of asylum seekers arriving by boat.
Bob raises in my mind another point with the discussion on “country shopping” and that is that we like our people in need to be desperate. We don’t like it when they actually want to make choices or be active in how they help themselves. That’s why we have such a national problem with boat people. Real refugees, those who deserve our help, are
supposed to languish in camps in other countries until we decide how many we want and which ones are deserving. When theycome by boat they are not adhering to the script. The audacity! And so, we malign them. Real refugees can’t afford boats. Let’s just forget shall we some of our lessons of history where very often the first to be persecuted are those in whichever minority you are seeking to persecute that are educated and have money. Instead, let’s grind the spirit and the determination out of them by locking them up.
Of course nations must and will regulate our borders, but let’s expose some of the myths that shape our nation’s debate for what they are and get a bit honest with ourselves.
The truth, Helvi, is some Australians are racists but not all. Some Japanese are racists but not all. Some Afghanis are racist but not all. Need I go on?
This is what human beings are; some good, wholly or partly, some bad, wholly or partly.
Australians are no different to other nationalities and, while I support an increased refugee intake, I accept that others may not, and that in itself does not make them racist.
Morrison plays to the redneck constituency, as he is no doubt encouraged to do by his feral leader. A certain ex minister assures me he ia better man than he seems, but I certainly have my doubts.
Once upon a time it was possible for oppositions to support the government, as in the phrase “loyal opposition” when the government followed good policy; this opposition seems incapable of agreeing with anything, and will carp snidely at every opportunity.
They do not deserve to be allowed within cooee of the government benches, unless and until they can find an entirely new leadership and senior ministry – in about 2019, perhaps.
Every politican and emerging politican has their apologists. “Yes, I know “so and so” sounds like a ding-bat and a bit of a jerk, but they really are alot better in person. They just haven’t had their chance to shine.” Excuse me while I roll my eyes.
Come on down Malcolm Turnbull. I’m no expert on the polls nor do tI think they add any value, but when he gets another go at leadership we’re looking at a whole new game I think. I hope.
I’m a Labor gal myself but I’m so over them federally and locally. I’m not about to convert but I’m seriously considering becoming an agnostic. I look at some of the self-proclaimed leaders of the future and hang my head. All these young turks coming through the ranks, modelling themselves on those who have gone before them thereby making sure we won’t see any cultural change, claiming to be part of the solution for Labor’s future but really just part of the problem.
So cynical this morning. Perhaps I didn’t put enough sugar in my coffee.
Morrison drones a lament that’s meant for the common man; the cynical use of language designed to reinforce the illusion of threat to the fabric of Australian society posed by refugees.
And yes, I agree with the blogmeister. He’s a fascist, by definition.
Girl Pearl says “…Australia has always sought to keep people out.” Is that true? The word ‘always’, in relation to which people? In our relatively short history, after the colonisation & settlement and the gold rushes with their Chinese & European fortune seekers, which people?
It’d be hilarious, these posturings by politicians in relation to refugees, migrants, country-shopppers, if only it weren’t so inconveniently associated to real consequences, real humans, real suffering.
Why does Morrison do it? Because it works, at some level. At the level of the little people, the ten in a boat, it’s a game being played beyond their ken, their country-shopping search for an unharassed existence mere fuel for the bonfires of political vanities.
Canguro,there’s a lot in your post that I agree with,the ordinary man, the “almost rednecks” are being incited to become true blue haters by the likes of Morrison, it’s now OK to be a hater, and MY tax-dollars ought never to go to those who are now seen as country-shoppers….
But what good refugee policy does any party have in this country? Both majors just want to shove them away illegally and media won’t stop prattling endlessly about non-existent off shore processing as if we are tinning fucking peas.
I would love to see a post by Marilyn in which she does not use the f word. I have no objection in principle to its use, ans use it quire regularly myself in conversation, but other regular posters to this blog seem to be able to express themselves quite well without using it so often.
There are lots of good adjectives in the English language, Marilyn; choose some.
Fuck off mate, if I want to swear I have that right.
It’s called free speech you tosser.
Now what I want to know is why Newsltd is still whinging about the arrival of a few refugees by sea as if not one other person in the history of the universe ever travelled by sea and as if there is some law against it.
Here here.
It is a very useful word; as an intensifier it has excellent shock value, especially when used on conservative morons.
When used sparingly, that is; if it is used regularly it loses force, and becomes the equivalent of “very” or “so” – as in “I am so over it”.
As Marilyn might say, fuck off and comment on the substance of what she says and not the way it is said.
(smiles)
Put aside refugees and asylum seekers, where is it written that for eternity, a person must remain in their country of birth and can only move when in possession of an internationally recognised piece of paper? What are we protecting in stopping people from moving wherever they like for whatever reason? Why can we fly troops from one side of the earth to the other and invade beaches or drop them from the sky, but a family can’t decide to move to another country simply because they want to try living somewhere else?
If the free traffic of humans was allowed, would it really be a catastrophe? Would it really?
Why must we stick to the patch of soil allotted at the time of our birth, and only move by dint of official decree? Ah mate, how long have you got?
Governments know best, eh? Govts. are all-seeing, all-knowing, all-wise, omnipotent really. Essential entities, and we’d be lost without them. We need them to reify our sense of purpose, our identity, our being-here in this time & place.
And, oh yeh, we need them too, to give us permission to go, or stay, or leave and find a new place and a new govt. to replace the previous determiner. Fucking oath, mate, it’s the govt wot’s the locus and centrality of the human experience, innit? Don’tcha think so?
Some people seem to think that the society they have built up over their lifetime, and their ancestors and their friends built up over the last few centuries, was actually built for them!
That the freeways, railways, hospitals theatres universities etc etc etc are actually for them and their children to enjoy!
Do you get my drift, that if borders were open and citizenship meant nothing, it would not be long before millions wandered in to countries which once had land “borders” from those less fortunate.
Do you see the problem? Please reply.
Some people seem to think that the society they have built up over their lifetime, and their ancestors and their friends built up over the last few centuries, was actually built for them!
The Ottoman Empire believed that, as did the Austrian-Hungarian Empire did, as did the Roman Empire, The British Empire, Spanish and French Colonialists, India and Bangladesh, as did the Soviet Union and the rest of Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain. Nation states come and go.
I was in Austria when Yugoslavia disintegrated and I saw thousands of Bosnians, troop over the border with nothing more than a suitcase in their hands, when peace was finally restored, most of them returned to their homeland.
For most of history, you did not require a passport. Worked out OK.
Yes, and transport was by foot, or with a horse and cart, with all belongings piled on top; and for most of the last 1,000 years a feudal or semi-feudal system applied, with peasants tied to the land as serfs or the like.
Freedom was for the wealthy and powerful.
Bosnians walking across the mountains Doug, walking, I saw them.
And you are right another hindrance to the inundation is lack of funds to get from one place to another, or leaving their family behind, or a frail parent in need of care, familiar surrounds, memories and friends, medical conditions that require treatment, insufficient language capability, the prospect of grandchildren, the marriages of their sons and daughters, non transferable superannuation savings, collapsed real estate prices, nationalistic fervour and patriotism, fear of the unknown, dirt farm land holdings, jobs and careers, the obsessional love of a football club, ask yourself Doug what would stop you leaving OZ tomorrow, why wouldn’t the same reasons apply to other people. I would leave Oz tomorrow at the drop of a hat but for the responsibilities I have taken on, I can’t.
I never felt that sense of entitlement or ownership for those things that were made possible by those that went before me.
I have never made any reference to the miniscule number of the True Finns.