History

LESSONS FROM HISTORY

According to ALP deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, in her Arthur Calwell Memorial Lecture (30 April 2015), the former Labor Leader, (1960-7), wanted Australia to be a country with a national identity based on values, not on birth.

However, some of us remember Calwell better than her revisionist portrait of him.

Calwell deserves to be known as the Father of Immigration, (as Chifley’s minister in that portfolio between 1945-9), as much as Scott Morrison deserves to be known as the ‘Man who stopped the Boats.’

Both men were highly effective immigration ministers.

However if Plibersek thinks Calwell was a multiculturalist she is very much mistaken.

Calwell was a fervent supporter of a White Australia –in other words European immigrants only and the post-war program reflected that fact. It stayed that way until Harold Holt and Gough Whitlam finished off the White Australia Policy.

Nowhere in the memorial speech was there recognition of Calwell’s defence of that policy. In 1947 he said, in a jocular riposte to the SA Liberal member, Sir Thomas White, “Two Wongs don’t make a White.”

Ironically, today, a Wong is the ALP Senate leader-Penny Wong (SA).

If Calwell was around in this era, and made that comment, the sky would fall in on him, as per shades of Andrew Downer’s comments on abusive husbands. Downer as Opposition leader was addressing the party faithful, in 1994, on the Liberal slogan, ‘Things that Matter.’

Downer, with his usual quirky humour, then labelled wife-beaters as the ‘things that batter,’ and it went over like a lead zeppelin! In fact the South Australian never really recovered from that and was replaced, as leader, by John Howard early in 1995.

So, humour reflects societal changes.

Yet political courage usually prevails and reaps a justifiable reward.

President Harry S. Truman once upbraided, in colorful language, the Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov, on the breaking of agreements. Molotov sputtered he had never been spoken to like that before. Truman replied, “Well keep your agreements and you won’t have to be spoken to like that.”

Truman’s directness of approach struck a chord with the US electorate because in the 1948 presidential election, although given a snowball’s chance in hell of beating challenger Thomas E. Dewey, the incumbent president won.

Contrast that with the approach of Dr H.V. Evatt in his dealings with Molotov. In 1955 Evatt, as Opposition Leader, wrote to Molotov asking him whether there were any Soviet spies in Australia!

 It was breathtaking naivete from a man who had been a former High Court judge, then Attorney General and External Affairs minister in the Curtin and Chifley Labor governments, between 1941-9.

It destroyed whatever chance he had of becoming PM. Asking a liar like Molotov,  the man who had co-signed signed the infamous Nazi –Soviet Pact (23/8/39) that led to the destruction and division of Poland a month later, to reveal the truth on such a matter was ludicrous.

When Morrison became Immigration and Border Protection minister he was told he could not turn around the boats because it would offend Indonesia.

After his huge success at doing just that, the Labor Party, as late as October last year was still having two bob each way on border protection. ALP spokesman Richard Marles then said that a future Labor Government may turn back boats but only if Indonesia approved. That certainly won the Doc Evatt Award for Madness and the total surrender of national sovereignty. However, even that was too much for Labor leader Bill Shorten who jumped all over Marles.

Now we see the world asking Australia for advice on how to deal with people smuggling. Is it any wonder the Australian Silent Majority are yearning for a Morrison prime ministership?

He has the courage to make the right decision while Labor unfortunately learns nothing from History.

Shorten, in Adelaide on May 20, was asked six times whether he would turn back the boats and on every occasion he fudged on the reply. He will never be PM and the current Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, will not miss him for a target.

As for Plibersek, she has been dubbed ‘Plibersplit’ because she is demanding that the Government have a free vote on Gay Marriage while insisting her own Labor colleagues are tied to a binding party vote on the subject!

There are currently 11 in the Federal Labor caucus, (including six in the Senate) who are prepared to cross the floor on this issue, right now. Why on earth would anyone in Labor, let alone the deputy leader, want to put the party through the wringer on such an issue?

Plibersek is a political dunce. The Labor Party has had four major splits in its history and each has proved costly. In 1916 the Labor Government split over conscription and did not return to government until October 1929 –just in time for the Great Depression.

The 1931 split saw the party in Opposition for another decade and then after eight years in government lost at the polls in December 1949 and stayed in Opposition for 23 years, helped hugely by the 1955 split.

Does ‘Plibersplit’ really want to become another Billy Hughes, ‘Stabber’ Jack Beasley, or Doc Evatt –all of whom did huge damage to the ALP?

Labor’s post World War II immigration program was planned to develop Australia while helping the displaced people of Europe.

It contrasted with Labor’s attitude to immigration, (and jobs for returning soldiers), following the Great War (1914-18). Then, Labor had opposed such schemes, particularly the Men, Money and Markets policy of the Bruce Government (1923-29).

Labor simply misjudges the electorate today if they think there is a huge groundswell for multiculturalism. There is none, rampaging Islamists have killed that desire, if it ever existed.

While a multi-ethnic Australia is a possibility, for people willing to subscribe to the Australian traditions and way of life, a policy that turns Australia into a collection of warring tribes is not wanted and is going to be resisted.

Cultural and moral relativists can howl at the moon but all cultures and morals are not equal.

Put simply Australians do not want this country turned into another Lebanon, or any other Middle Eastern hell hole. The lessons from 1400 years of Islamic aggression should be obvious and no other religion/ideology comes close to killing 270 million people. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot are not in the same league as the Death Cult.

Australians know Islam is a supremacist political ideology that encompasses everything promoted through a veneer of religion; it treats all others as inferiors and makes them second class citizens when it has control; it is violent and intolerant; it treats women as second class citizens; it promotes murder through ‘honour killings’ that are despicable; it wants to replace western Law with Sharia which places all non-Muslims in a lesser status by law; and  it is a religion that promotes taqiyya (deceit) as appropriate conduct towards non-Muslims.

The Left can use nonsense words like Islamophobia and xenophobia as much as they like, but Middle Australia is not for turning and nor should they be.

The Weekend Australian, (Inquirer section, 23/5) had a feature on how Muslims feel and they really have replaced the ‘10 pound Pom,’ of the 1940s and 1950s, as arch grizzlers.

One Sheikh, photographed, looking like someone auditioning for the part of Faisal, in a remake of Lawrence of Arabia, was bemoaning the fact he no longer felt as welcome in Australia, as he did in 1983.

 Is it hard to wonder why, simply read a newspaper or watch the news?

 In addition, if a western male walked through the streets of Riyadh in a pink tutu it would probably be comparable to the Sheikh trying to emulate Sir Alec Guinness, in Australia, although the latter was a far more convincing actor.

After the Canadian terrorist shootings, in the Federal Parliament at Ottawa, car stickers appeared with the best two words since Gough Whitlam’s memorable 1972 slogan, It’s Time.

The Canadian stickers simply said: Fit In.

It’s time that happened.