Bannerman dislikes intensely highlighting the works of other bloggers, purely because there are very few, in the B-man’s eyes – who warrant attention being drawn. However, and this will not become a regular occasion, attention is drawn this morning to Dunlop’s Murdoch-sponsored bandwidth boon.
As always, Bannerman is not especially enamored by Dunlop’s style, however, he realises that not everyone has the same sense of delivery as he does. Allowances must be made. Let us take issue with the content. Citizenship, specifically Australian citizenship. A multicultural nation we most certainly are, more as a result of the egalitarian approach to distressful events in other parts of the globe from which people of all races, colours and castes fled. Post World War Two many persons immigrated to these shores from European countries devastated in that conflict. Following the Vietnam conflict of the seventies, many South-East Asian peoples fled oppression to come here. And so it’s gone.
Bannerman often vacations on the Queensland border, where great wines and good food are paramount considerations. The ethnicity of that region is primarily southern European, the original immigrants being sometime, if ever, english speakers who came here after the war. They brought their cultural mores with them. Wine-making being one. Bannerman hesitates to state that english was an immigratory necessity in 1946. One wonders how many Italian newcomers, for instance, could actually speak english, let alone know why the large star on the flag has seven points, for example.
The Australian Jewish communities posed a valid question in their submission to DIMIA on this subject.
“The proposition that Australia introduce a formal citizenship test begs the vital question of what it might test for, and how.”
And just who will formulate the basis upon which this test seeks it’s answers. Just what IS the ethos here? Is it really, as Howard stated, to determine just who will and won’t be prepared to defend the country should the need arise? A ridiculous assertion in Bannerman’s eyes. No, this citizenship test/affirmation/entry criteria is yet more ideology from the Howardian stable of staunchly pro-American, ethnically divisive, exclusionist ideals for which Australia is most definitely not known and admired, but for which Howardians desperately yearn. And the timing is just right. The Yanks are introducing a re-vamped test as well. What better opportunity?
The politics of Fear and Loathing are being taken to a new level. Not only will we decide who comes to this country and the manner in which they come, we’ll decide by ameri-centric ethos who get’s to become a second-class of citizen and who remains as a citizenship pariah. The politics of disgust!