Pauline Hanson must've woken up this morning a satisfied woman. Despite the fact that her One Nation Party has no political power, it is still strong in spirit, as you can see from this article in todays Sydney Morning Herald. This is quite disgusting actually; some of the Tamworth councillors' comments are sickening, not to mention displaying a breadth of arrogance and ignorance.
--"Earlier this month Tamworth won the Best Western Friendly Town award. It's hypocritical."--
I feel sorry for the few councillors who made an effort to accomodate the Sudanese refugees, and for the church that raised money for them. It is sad that they will all be lumped together and branded racist.
A Chinese friend of mine went on a road trip last year, after which he commented that of all the towns he travelled through, Tamworth was the least friendly and most racist. He felt so unwelcome that he cut short his stay and moved on. At the time I was surprised, mainly because I had never experienced this sort of thing in Australia, but obviously it exists.
-- several residents had said they did "not want the refugees coming and drinking our water supply, or taking our jobs, that sort of thing", Cr Woodley said. "I think you would have to say there was a racist element at play there."--
I've heard the "they'll take our jobs" argument often enough (there's a really cool south park episode on this issue), but "they'll drink our water"???????? Wow, the drought has really taken hold hasnt it?? I bet when they need cheap labour to dig a few more wells, they wont be complaining about bringing in a few refugees, at least temporarily.
Here are all the comments made by the councillors of Tamworth. I think Councillor Warren Woodley sums it up pretty well:
--"The explanations of my fellow councillors who voted against this proposal held no substance. In fact they reminded me of the ultra-conservative, right wing guard of the past that once ruled this region."--
The comments of those who opposed the refugee settlement all revolved around a few key key themes:
1. washing their own hands clean- it wasnt my fault, it was the people of this town that rejected the refugees.
2. taking the moral high ground- personally, i'd like to see the refugees settle in tamworth
3. blame someone else- the government has no plans to assist these people long-term. we dont have enough health-care resources for our people as it is.
4. bring in irrelevant material- we dont want cronulla riots in our backyard (excuse me, exactly how are 10 families going to cause cronulla riots. if i remember correctly, those were caused by a bunch of drunken young men. maybe tamworth should ban alcohol while they're at it)
2 comments:
speaking of idiotic comments..my gosh, mahesh, i've heard some similar comments down here - one woman who started chatting to me about the bus stop said that the drought was probably due to "the foreigners...you know, I don't think they speak English, so they don't understand about the water." Yeah. That's right. We are overrun with 20 million foreigners who don't understand out non-existent water policy and are using the dishwashers three times a day, bugger 'em. That's why we are moving to stage 3 restrictions when we should be on 4.
As for Tamworth? Toowoomba, Tamworth, and QLD. 'Nuff said.
wow!! thats pretty seriously retarded....its like these people say to themselves "what r our problems??", the usual ones being stuff like jobs, schools for their kids etc and in our special el nino/global warming situation, water. but instead of thinking of logical answers to these questions (eg "we have a drought coz there's been no rain for 10 years" and "uni fees r going up coz johnny keeps cutting funding") they just come up with "its all the immigrants' fault". quite amazing- its not all that dissimilar to hitler's insistence that all of germany's problem sprang from the existence of the jews and to a lesser extent, gypsies, homosexuals and other minorities.
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