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budgiesmuggler

Listed below are comments made by budgiesmuggler between Wednesday, 9th September 2009 and Wednesday, 21st October 2009.

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Seeking asylum by boat or by plane 3:13pm on 21 Oct 2009 "Illegal immigrants" is an odd term. I'd like to point out that an act is not illegal until the Court says it is. Beforehand, it is just alleged that someone has committed an offence.

So they should actually be referring to them as "alleged illegal immigrants".

Why don't we use the correct term - "refugee".
A good Australian read 09:45am on 20 Oct 2009 Re class in the UK, I work for a UK law firm and I can tell as soon as someone starts speaking whether they are a lawyer or support staff. The UK universities seem to level out students accents, so they end up with an "educated" accent, rather than the yorkshire etc one they used to speak. On the whole the support staff have maintained their accents. It seems to help with placing people in the social structure. Its an interesting observation.
A good Australian read 09:59am on 19 Oct 2009 #13 - my view is that the Americans go for aspirational soaps, the Brits revolve around class, and the Australian soaps are egalitarian. ie. in the Aussie soaps there are not usually rich/poor etc, everyone is just the same.

I'm reading The Slap at the moment and quite enjoying it.
Australia and Afghanistan 09:59am on 15 Oct 2009 The other reason for Australia's low death count in Afghanistan is because only our special forces troops are fighting in Afghanistan (ie. SAS, 3RAR) and are engaged in specific targeted missions. Compared with lots of groud troops from the US and UK.

Also, the nature of the missions that the Australian troops are on make it more difficult to imbed journalists. They're not doing the patrolling missions that US etc troops are doing.

I think sending more troops won't make any difference. The Russians couldn't do it, so I don't see why the US think they can defeat the Afghans.
Is Australia unusually racist? 11:03am on 13 Oct 2009 Is Australia unusually racist? There is no denying that actions taken in the past smacked of racism. Yet since the abolishment of the white australia policy, Australia has definately become less racist. Of my friendship group, I'm the only one who has all 4 grandparents born in Australia, the rest are all of Indian, Asian and European decent. This is the same amongst all the people I come into contact with.

For those saying that Australia still has a white Australia policy, or something similar, here are the major countries of immigration from last year. FYI, there are no visa restrictions on NZlanders coming to Australia.

Settler arrivals by region of birth between July 2008 and June 2009:

Oceania and Antarctica 30 010
Europe 29 294
North Africa and the Middle East 11 143
South East Asia 21 008
North East Asia 20 977
Southern Asia 25 900
Central Asia 1 731
Northern America 2 254
South and Central America & the Caribbean 1 979
Sub-Saharan Africa 13 025
Supplementary Country Codes 671
Not Stated/Not Elsewhere Included 29
Grand Total 158 021

#13 claims that Aboriginal people are under-represented in Australian life, media, politics etc. Well, only 2% of the Australian population is Aboriginal. On this statistic, they are massively over-represented. I support positive discrimination for Australia's indiginious population, however I think we need to look at things in perspective. From this, actually, Australia's Asian and European decendents are more under-represented than Aboriginals...
Code dead? 6:06pm on 05 Oct 2009 Re #8 - as Nick points out, AFL is the 4th most watched code in the world (on spectator numbers), so I think the other codes have to worry more about dying out before it does!

I watched the recent AFL grand final after being out of the country for a few years. It is such an athletic game, I much prefer it to football and rugby.
Why Australia prefers political prose to political poetry 10:46am on 05 Oct 2009 #19 - I agree with #22 that Keating gave some amazing speeches - the opening to the tomb of the unknown solder was amazing. Beazley called it the most moving address he has ever heard.
The Curious Case of Senator Fielding 12:04pm on 11 Sep 2009 I think Australians like to give the balance of power in the Senate to a party other than the government, otherwise the greens/dems would not have received so many votes. In this age of party line voting it does at least provide dialogue on government legislation.
The wonder from down under 12:26pm on 09 Sep 2009 And in relation to Costello's Future Fund, wasn't the GFC just the sort of event we were saving for?
The wonder from down under 12:24pm on 09 Sep 2009 Credit should also go to APRA, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, that sets the standards about what Australian banks can and can't invest in. Having close monitoring of banks meant that Australia was much better equipped to deal with the crisis than the US and UK (although note that the banks were complaining about APRA hampering them during the boom times).

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