Australia, Where The Bloody Hell Are You?

Yesterday Australian treasurer Peter Costello, the man who would be PM, tried to lessen the impact of the AWB Iraq sanctions-busting scandal by further alienating Muslims in this country:

Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objections to those values, don't come to Australia.

Today, Pauline Hanson, a failed right-wing racist politician, claimed Costello's comments as vindication of her views:

If Peter Costello is wanting to be a future prime minister of this country he needs to take a tough stand on this. He needs to deal with it harshly. He needs to throw these people out of this country who do not embrace Australia.

Embrace Australia, Pauline? By my standards, it is you who do not embrace the mulitcultural and harmonious Australia that I want to live in. I would be more than happy to throw you out of the country, but where would I throw you? Austria, perhaps?

Richard Walsh describes debates like this as part of an epic struggle for the very soul of Australia:

It's a "Whatever it takes" world we live in now. If it takes lies to stay in power or bribes to sell our wheat, no matter.

We cling to our tenuous prosperity as though Howard were its only begetter and as if money really can buy us happiness...

All in all, I would say say the latest tourist advertising slogan is entirely appropriate for this new, meaner Australia:

"Where the bloody hell are you?"

This issue of broader values is something I have blogged about again and again and again and again! We get the governments we deserve, and our pro-Fascist, Big Business governments should been seen as a symptom of a wider social disease, both in the USA and Australia.

Of course, a compliant media reaping the financial rewards of $1.6 billion-a-year government propaganda campaigns doesn't help!