There was a time when asking this question would have seemed as pointless and unnecessary as asking which way is up? The answer was just as obvious: an Australian was either an Aborigine or a descendent of the Anglo-Saxon/Celtic soldiers, settlers and convicts who brought civilization to such an unpromising land. Later, the second group was expanded to include members of other closely related racial groups who were absorbed into the host population like salt in water.
Although some die-hards, even today, would remain fastened to this definition, it has become far too simplistic to be any longer tenable. One has to be realistic enough to accept at least part of the fait accompli employed as the primary weapon by those that have marked this nation for destruction.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the official contemporary definition of an Australian is so watered down as to be meaningless as well as insulting to real Australians. The image conjured up in official circles is one of a type of universal human. (Presumably, if interplanetary visitors were to arrive they would be eligible as well.) Anybody who resides on the Australian land mass, or anybody whose boat will stay afloat long enough to reach that land mass pretty well qualify (although some boats do sink their occupants are helped the rest of the way by the Australia navy). If any doubt at all does exist, a glossy document can be obtained from the Australian Government guaranteeing citizenship. This process has been a boon to a kaleidoscopic variation of inhabitants of Planet Earth from bone-nosed natives of darkest Africa, to hatred-curdled Muslims to dart-pipe-blowing pigmies transported from banks of the Amazon River. Sadly, no Inuit as yet have been spotted on the shores of sunny Australia. This must be cruelly unsettling to the architects of the brave, new multicultural world who would no doubt be more than willing to organize government grants for the construction of refrigerated igloos.
Fortunately, this official version of who is an Australian really doesn’t fly where folk wisdom is more instrumental in constructing reality. Real Australians, that is, ordinary Australians, as opposed to those overcome with Utopian visions stronger and more dangerous than the most vivid opium dream, know better. They know that anyone who sets foot for the first time in the country as an adult can never be an Australian. It need not be absolutely necessary to be born here, but the sooner one arrives after being born, the better.
Having touched on who isn’t an Australian, it may be more practicable to proceed in this vein and thus approach our question from the opposite direction. Who else is obviously not an Australian?
The prerequisite of being born here is one that has changed over the years. Paradoxically, it is the tyrannically imposed institution of Multiculturalism that has been the catalyst. The over-riding message of Multiculturalism to new arrivals is virtually a command to grip ones heritage and culture as firmly as accompanying luggage and, conversely, to resist being absorbed into a new culture as though it were death itself. Dual citizenship is another factor that militates against non-natives ever being capable of becoming Australians. Anyone with feet planted in two different lands, and therefore incapable of giving a complete commitment to an adopted country can never be Australians. Similarly, hyphenated ‘Australians’, be they Chinese-Australians, Samoan-Australians or Nigerian-Australians, by definition, can never be the real thing. A man with a split personality can never be normal or whole.
Before Multiculturalism, it was possible for a man or woman who had come of age in a foreign land to become an Australian – and they did. Our immigration programme first veered away from its traditional British source with the conclusion of World War Two when tens of thousands of homeless refugees were displaced by the destruction wrought on Europe. A great proportion was from Eastern and Central Europe. Accepting them into Australia was a form of symbiosis, as the rallying cry after Australians had been terrified by the threat of Japanese invasion was populate or perish! The thinking here was sluggishly unable to keep up with the advent of weapons of almost unimaginable destructive power. It was these and the concomitant technology and not weight of numbers which would determine the course of future wars. Be that as it may, the programme, carefully managed with ‘New Australians’ skillfully presented to the Australian people by selecting the most attractive and able bodied for inclusion in newsreel films, was a success.
It should be born in mind though, that the immigrants of this era, a significant proportion still arriving from the British Isles, had little choice but to succeed. There was little opportunity for turning back. Bridges were burnt, mixing with the rest of the ashes of Europe and the homes that most had left behind. Awaiting them here, instead of a Welfare State to cater for their every need, as it was for later generations of immigrants, was a place to either sink or swim, and swim most of them did. This required a willingness to work hard – the Snowy Mountain Scheme is testament to their efforts – an appreciation of the value of the opportunities afforded them and an unequivocal commitment to their new country. Given the extra benefit of their being closely related racially to the host population, it must be granted that these people became genuine Australians.
On the other hand, after the emphasis of our immigration programme had abandoned the surety of assimilation, to flirt briefly with integration to blunder into full blown multiculturalism, it must also be accepted that some people, even if born here, can never be Australians. The most obvious example is that of Lebanese Muslims who, by their self-identification as well as their identification of the majority population as the enemy, are most definitely not Australian. Their term for the enemy is ‘Aussies’. The word is spat out with almost as much venom as an epithet reserved for their rape victims: ‘Aussie slut’. Having not even seen Lebanon, which many of them haven’t, it still figures as their spiritual home. Australia is merely an unfortunate accident in their lives.
It is extremely doubtful that Muslims of any stripe, given their complete antipathy to Australian culture and their hatred of the infidel, can ever be Australians. It is as unlikely as an Australian being accepted into the warm embrace of the social body of Saudi Arabia or Iran. Muslims simply do not like Australians. A conversation with any Australian not too infected with political correctness will reveal that the feeling is reciprocal. This is hardly surprising given that Australia is currently waging an escalating war with one Muslim nation even as it winds down a war with another. In a saner time, having a large percentage of people in your population sharing much with people with whom you were at war with would be rightfully seen as simply asking for a time-bomb-ticking fifth column.
Aside from the so-called ‘clash of civilizations’, Muslims in general have so little in common with the people in whose image Australia was created they will never be anything other than an alienated minority group and so could never be accepted as true Australians.
With the flood-gates opening wider and wider, the problem of unbridgeable chasms between the host population minority cultures plague a multitude of others claiming Australia as their home. Because of the perennial east-is-east and west-is-west reality, all Asian races face an exercise in futility in being Australian while the Anglo Saxon hegemony continues to exist. Still, in huge swathes of Australia, Asian-Australian is a contradiction in terms (that is, when Big Brother isn’t watching) Just as in many parts of Britain still, Black Englishman is an oxymoron. The ghetto-clinging Asian in Australia, as perhaps distinct from the individuals who manage to wean themselves off the ethnic group teat, will only ever be Australians when Australia is no longer Australia, but a country overrun and merely retaining its old name.
As already noted, the Chinese have been here for over one hundred years in varying numbers but up until the last thirty years have rarely ventured out of Chinatown. The China towns have now of course exploded and proliferated but still they remain Chinese ghettoes with their inhabitants remaining every bit as self-segregated as the Asian students on the brink of forming majorities on Australian campuses.
The Australian Government, becoming increasingly emboldened by the appearance of the crushing of all resistance proceeds to push the envelope. In recent years, immigrants from darkest Africa have begun to appear on Australian streets. It is unlikely the depths of the impossibility of assimilation could be plumbed much lower. Africans have lived in the United States for hundreds of years and still they remain a separated part of America, still the problems caused by their presence are no closer to a solution, and more than likely will never be solved. In fairness to Afro-Americans (as they are currently called) their original residence in the US was not voluntary, and indeed was not wanted by any other than rapacious capitalist, of which there is no shortage of in modern times. By contrast, the only need for Africans in Australia is in the desire of inhabitants of self-created hell-holes to be living somewhere nicer, as well as in the dreams of a multiracial paradise sapping the sanity of white Utopians.
It is self-evident that any racial group trying to sink roots in a foreign country but at the same time remaining too fearful to leave the security of the ethnic group to which they belong – as is so vehemently encouraged by Multiculturalism – can never really be a part of the overarching population.
The early post-war immigrants thought and acted as individuals; not as collectivist members of transplanted chunks of their former homelands. They were too busy to do otherwise. The Snowy Mountain Scheme, for example, was a true melting pot – not the salad bowls Australian cities have become. Their labour was a stake in the land they had adopted. In stark contrast, the financial handouts of taxpayers’ money by generous politicians is honey to the contemporary immigrant fly. It has been said, quite rightly, that Britain could never have become the racial catastrophe it is today if not for the elaborately constructed Welfare State that stood as a lamp to the swarming ex-colonials. If it had been a matter of sink or swim, as it was to our early post-war immigrants, most would have stayed at home.
To compare Australian immigration, as well as the ‘Refugee’ programme of today with the life-line extended to dazed and stunned survivors of post-Apocalyptic Europe is laughable. There is no comparison. With only ashes and rubble behind them and a new country and life before them, there was no choice. The people who represented the first veering away from the reliance on British stock for the source of new blood to pump through the heart of Australia, were not offered the luxury of wrestling with whether or not they wanted to become real Australians. They just did so.
It may not be drawing too long a bow to say that being a true Australian is a state of mind. You know when you have it. You know when others have it – or don’t have it, or could never have it.
The acid test of who is a true Australian perhaps is this: try to imagine a time (inevitable if current trends continue) when the tectonic stresses of Multiculturalism eventually result in the Balkanisation of Australia. Who will be with us; and who will be slinking off in other directions?
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