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And in Australia ...

Julia Gillard has become the first female prime minister, pleasing those on the left in the United States like Huffington Post since, it declared, ?[s]he is from a left-wing faction of Labor....?

So, perhaps the left here should take notice of one of her first policy initiatives, breaking from the policy of her Labor predecessor, former prime minister Kevin Rudd. ?Here is a politician? reports The Australian, ?with a solid pedigree on the ?anti-racist Left rejecting former prime minister Kevin Rudd?s call for a ?Big Australia? formed by continuing large-scale immigration.?

Instead, Gillard has said she understands the anxieties of folk in western Sydney, western Melbourne or the Gold Coast growth corridor in Queensland.

As for the boats of asylum-seekers, Gillard has made clear she wants to be even more effective in stopping them in order to protect ?our sanctuary? and ?the Australian way?.

In other words, Gillard is signalling that she sympathises with the concern that large-scale immigration and multiculturalism are threatening Australia?s core values and identity, a position the Left denounces as bigotry.

Consequently, Gillard?s remarks have produced predictable cries of ?racism? .... So why has the new Labor leader ventured into this particular cultural minefield? The explanation is that something tumultuous is happening, not just in Australia but in Britain too, something so unusual that people are stumbling around in a state of stunned disorientation.

It is that politicians are at last actually taking seriously what their electorates are saying to them about immigration and multiculturalism. This is that they will no longer put up with a policy which threatens to destroy their country?s values and way of life, and will vote accordingly.

And not just in Australia and Britain but also Arizona, and perhaps the rest of the United States. Unlike Australia, however, the leader of our version of the Labor Party has time and again shown no inclination actually to take seriously what his electorate is saying.

ADDENDUM

I wonder if the fact that, according to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald [HatTip to reader Jian Li], ?Migrant pupils top the entry tests for selective schools" explains some of the opposition to immigration.

CHILDREN of recent Asian migrants are dramatically outperforming students from English-speaking households to dominate the ranks of the top selective high schools.

A Herald analysis shows 42 per cent of children from non-English speaking backgrounds who sat the annual selective high school entrance test last year won a place in the elite system.

Fewer than 23 per cent of students whose families speak English at home were successful....

The percentage of students from migrant families entering the selective system has risen dramatically from 29 per cent in 1995 to as high as 62 per cent in 2008. The component is sharply skewed towards children from Asian-origin families.

Actually, Australia need not restrict immigration in order to deal with the problem of over-achieving Asians. All it needs is affirmative action admissions policies like ours.

Full post as published by Discriminations on July 05, 2010 (boomark / email).