What on earth do you think Laurie Ferguson represents in the party? I think you'll find on issues of racial integration he's actually one of the most progressive MPs out there, having built strong links with several migrant communities in his area. This whole paragraph comes off as someone who's commenting on something they really don't have any great knowledge on. Rudd wasn't "knifed" for being a social democrat and for refusing to treat asylum seekers like a political football, anyway. Gillard's far more a leftist than he?
And in the process have created two of the world's greatest humanitarian crises of the past decade.
And when Rudd's policies been at times unfair, they were never xenophobic. His rhetoric was never implying that there was good reason to be scared or disdainful of migrants like Gillard's is, it was always framed carefully to avoid doing so.[/QUOTE
HE EXPLICITLY SINGLED OUT TWO RACES WHO WERE NO LONGER WELCOME TO COME HERE. Whether his rhetoric outright said that or not, that was the message and intent of what he said. Plus he echoed Howard with the whole "We will choose who comes here" bullshit. You've completely whitewashed Rudd's legacy so as to counter your longtime dislike of Gillard. She's hardly been scared or disdainful of migrants, just saying we need understanding in the debate. And when one side's saying they're terrorists and the other side saying people against it are a bunch of rednecks, that's pretty spot on?
Again, he froze claims from two specific countries. I don't see how you can say that's not giving creedence to xenophobia? Which she looks she'll unfreeze for Afghans, which Rudd probably would not have done. And has called for a "frank political discussion" and has backed much of Burnside's claims while distancing herself from his calling voters from certain electorates rednecks.
I think people whose concern, for example, is that migrant families are all drifting to the western suburbs where there's no infrastructure to handle such large numbers aren't necessarily backward thinking rednecks. I also wasn't necessarily referring to you when I made the point, just saying there's a point to be had that this rhetoric is elitist that does more harm for social liberals than good. I've lived in Blacktown since I was four years old myself, and don't question there's racists in the area, but to write off all people with issues in the area as people with invalid, backwards issues is, well, invalid and backwards.
I would have had vastly more to do with Laurie than any other contributor to this place and the man is an old fashioned nationlist. Fiercely dedicated to Guildford and Merrylands where he group up but heartbroken for how the demographic has changed over the past thirty years. He does everything as he thinks his father would have and fails to recognise that Jack Ferguson was already behind his time when he finally reached deputy premier thirty five years ago. As the member of I think is close to Australia's most multicultural electorate he has been forced to swallow some of his misgivings but his Tuckeyesque racism still shows its ugly head time to time like during Petro Georgiou's private member bill back in 05.
As a researcher with the group, I've sat in on meetings members of the YCW have had with him for various reasons and he often says things like "I'm sure people like you aren't in anyway the cause of these problems but with those kind of people out there we're under a lot of pressure to..." "Obviously we're having some trouble with, well you know the types of people I'm referring to" "These sort of people will create a few headaches but ultimately...." No prizes for guessing which groups he is talking about on each and every occasion. He actually sounds like he anticipates us to be racist and wants to make sure we don't feel uncomfortable being honest and open about it.
And no Gillard is certainly not more progressive or socialistic than Rudd, her membership of the Ferguson left is all about unions, sticking up for the blue collar aussie, reclaiming Howard's battlers. Honestly, why do you think that the last stand before the coup (I don't count Emerson because he's the only mp with less friends than Rudd) did not come from any of the state right factions, but from the socialist left, in particular Lindsay Tanner? What do you think the prime minister meant in his second last press conference when he said "I will not be lurching to the right?" They explained as much on insiders recently, that any hope he had of continuing as leader necessitated a move away from all his intellectual progressivism and an invasion of Howard/Abbotts favoured turfs.
The merits of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have nothing to do with left or right, progressive of conservative. The only possible relevance they have is on the question of whether we should be accepting refugees from Afghanistan and you'd be barking mad if you thought Gillard opposed the decision to freeze them in cabinet or kitchen cabinet wherever the decision was taken. At any rate Rudd never singled out two races like you say, albeit incorrectly he singled out two areas of conflict as no longer being dangerous enough to automatically warrant refugee status. Again, that was a very unRudd like line of thought and his language the whole time suggests to me and anyone else with atleast two brain cells that it was a decision taken against his better instincts, proposed by the jackals who would later take his job for refusing to lurch to the right on asylum seekers and for refusing to back down over a tax on overpaid blobs in western Australia.
Finally the people that get so worked up are almost all inherently racist. They might try to cloak their racism in the thin veil of such infrastructure concerns but its just so damn uncanny how few of them are remotely impassioned about getting more infrastructure money (or higher taxes) as opposed to keeping the immigrants out. It's uncanny how quickly they get whipped into a frenzy about a possible mosque and the traffic concerns it will bring but couldn't care less about three new churches and a pre school being built in the same area. And what has your champion done? She has pardoned them, she has exonerated them and said they were being reasonable and she understood them. She is either lying or being racist, neither of which are qualities to defend from a so called progressive.
Calm down Lentern. She's better than Rudd (she actually negotiates and consults for a start) and the Greens still have balance of power. Unless she makes a deal with the devil (Coalition) nothing of hers will pass without Greens support, which makes inhumane refugee policy an uphill battle.
Get real, how accepting of such an argument were you when someone here suggested that the filter was nothing to get worked up about because in its present form (or anything that remotely resembled its present form) it would never get through both houses? Her language, he pardoning of racism has been enough for me in itself, it's disgusting and it will make it all the more harder when we finally get another progressive leader to repair the damage.
