and sexuality. In both these areas the absolutely fundamental cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s are irreversible. The vast majority of the people, whose origins are in the robust Irish Catholic layer of Australian society, who had their education in the 1960s and 1970s, have a totally different attitude now, on questions such as sexuality, censorship and race.
Like me, quite a few of those people respect Calwell's contribution on the other matters, but they laugh in a slightly embarrassed and amused way about just those things that Thompson and Betts celebrate in Calwell, because as a social group, the Irish Catholic-identified section of the Australian population have painfully shed those prejudices - rather more so, possibly, than Anglo-Australians.
We respect Calwell for his great contribution, but we understand him as a man of his place and time, and there's not the slightest chance that his backward prejudices on some matters will strike any chord at all among the majority of those who come from the cultural background that he came from. It is really cynically eccentric for reactionary Anglos like Betts and Thompson to be hanging their hats on Calwell's weaknesses. I revere Calwell, but he belongs to us, not to them! <В
Why B e tts a nd c o mp a ny c a n ' t w i n
The Betts-Birrell bunch have been conducting an energetic and resourceful campaign against migration and multiculturalism for the past 25 years, and this new outbreak is only the latest episode in their campaign. In my view they have to be combated and opposed, but happily I don't think they have much chance of winning. Australian society has evolved well and truly past them. p> If you look at the books that they have published at intervals during the course of this campaign, the actual scale of migration that has taken place subsequently has tended to be at the top end of their direst predictions, and at the top end of their predictions for Asian composition etc.
Happily, none of their gloomy prophecies of social disintegration, racial conflict and other baleful results from this high immigration, have taken place. In fact, throughout the period, there has been a steady, small decline in unemployment during periods of fairly high migration - a real conundrum for Betts and company - and a steady improvement in prosperity and economic activity, despite the obvious persistence and even widening of inequality.
The decisive major obstacle to their campaign to stop migration stems, however, from the real class formations that currently prevail in urban Australia that I have described above. In modern urban Australia, the population is now so diverse and marriage and family formation has now such an exogamous element, that the objective basis for nativist opposition to migration and multiculturalism of the Betts-Birrell-Sheehan sort is constantly being eroded by the new social circumstances.
All Australian tertiary institutions outside the smallest provincial centres are now ethnically and culturally diverse and produce many, many multiracial couples in all levels of society, from the poorest to the very richest. Most urban schools are now ethnically and culturally diverse, with the same result. The civilised attitude of both the Liberal-voting managerial group, and the Labor-voting public service and education group, among university graduates, is not going to change. p> The next layer, the bank clerks etc, are also ethnically and culturally diverse, and opposition to migration is steadily declining among these people because of the diversity of the group. The bottom segment of urban society is overwhelmingly made up of recent migrants. In one of her asides, Katharine Betts remarks that, from her point of view, the group that she found in her old opinion polls who had the highest figure of support for migration and multiculturalism, were that dogged, hard-core, pro-migration group, NESB migrants with university degrees.
Well, of course, that group is growing constantly as well. In the real terms of actually evolving Australian society, many of the arguments of the anti-migration lobby are educated atavisms and unpleasant shrieks from the primeval past, but we have to work hard, educate people and campaign vigorously to keep it that way.
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R o b e rt B i rr e ll a nd th e M o n a sh a r ea t i t a g ai n
You have to hand it to the Robert Birrell, ...
